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Q&A How to Introduce Something Potentially Laughable?

Here's the set up. You're reading a traditional fantasy. Something is attacking the land of the elves. At long last the invaders are discovered, and they are... intelligent rabbits. My idea isn't...

3 answers  ·  posted 8y ago by Thomas Myron‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question novel style
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-12T17:49:00Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/24442
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T05:33:20Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/24442
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T05:33:20Z (almost 5 years ago)
Here's the set up. You're reading a traditional fantasy. Something is attacking the land of the elves. At long last the invaders are discovered, and they are... intelligent rabbits.

My idea isn't quite _that_ far out, but it is similar in nature. Assuming you aren't writing a comedy, how could you pull something like that off while still maintaining the serious, epic, LotR feel you're going for? More importantly, **how can you introduce something potentially laughable, and have the reader accept it as part of the story?**

My ideas:

At first I thought you should do it bit by bit. Find signs, tracks, rumors, that sort of thing. That would lessen the shock. The problem I see here is that doing so would increase the suspense, which could then result in a big let-down for the reader when the invaders aren't what he expected.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2016-09-02T02:41:56Z (about 8 years ago)
Original score: 6