My first comedy plot draft is very bland - how far can I go on calling this out?
I'm currently working on my first book, a sci-fi comedy set on an alternate history Earth which has progressed at twice the rate of our own planet (they were at our current tech when William the Conqueror was born).
However, I notice that my primary character basically has one of the most classic origin stories: he's a human being from our own near future (around 2065) who ends up on that alternate history earth due to events outside his influence and learns that he is put there because he needs to resolve an enormous issue which is kept on the down low for the normal public.
This is done in:
- HHGttG (Arthur Dent has the meaning of life in his brain)
- Futurama (Fry is sent a millenium in the future because of brain waves)
- The Sword of Truth series (Richard Cypher is the only one who can save the world)
- Wheel of Time (Rand Al'Thor is the only one who can save the world)
- and nearly every other sci-fi/fantasy book, game or movie.
My main character is basically "generic fictional hero with prophetic cause" number 23496. He even bears a striking resemblance to the first example mentioned above. Because it's comedy, I had the idea of extreme lampshade hanging for the sake of comedy, and fish-out-of-water references and shout-outs by the main character to those other stories, as well as celebrities.
The hope is that any readers of similar fiction will find the references and shoutouts funny. However, I don't know how far I can take these references.
Can I use them as throwaway comments? Minor plot points? Character naming? Plot twists? Entire chapter premises?
At this point, I'm kinda hesitating to continue working on my book (even though I only have basically a rough outline of the first 30 or so chapters, the idea for my main character and some disconnected ideas) because I don't know how far I can go in handling this.
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The idea of the term "lampshade" is too reduce the glare. Not to highlight it! Instead of completely shading the lamp, conventional lampshades will rather blend off parts of its emission, and let it through where the illuminated surfaces--generally the ceiling and walls--will diffuse it and reflect a soft ambient light.
In that sense, you could let shine through, tone down and colour the direct emission (physically, the shading material absorbs light, but also reflects back away from the outside; this gives the transmission rate of the cover).
For reflection, I guess, you could foretell how far it is going to go, how far the character is willing to go, what you deem non-sense or cliched, etc.
The mechanics and tropes to achieve this can be generic and cliched themselves.
FYI: Lamp-design is an utterly ridiculous topic. Not only do they come in different forms, from chandeliers to Bauhaus style globes, but the prettiest and most expensive lamps are a hell to install, because compact as they are they hardly leave enough space for wiring and installation, I tell you. Too long wires from the outlet wont fit in. To short wires on the other hand cannot be connected, if they are just long enough to have it sit in place, but not enough to remove it just a bit for a hand to get behind. If the blends and spot reflectors are metallic, you have to wear satin gloves, lest visible finger prints taint the material (butteric acid will edge in permanent stains over time, even). Many lamps in a row should be perfectly alligned. Lamps hanging closer to windows should light stronger, to emulate daylight falling in. Color temperature depends on the emitter and can only be filtered, not changed or amplified, unless through LASER stimulation (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radition) or diffraction through optics (prism, lens, gas), that can hardly be called shading, though in fact the apperture, i.e. the blend, of a camera refines the focus, saturation or blur, especially around edges (Depth of field, Field of View, contrast and abberations); "apperture" is a doublet of "overture", by the way.
In astronomy, the diameter of the aperture stop (called the aperture) is a critical parameter in the design of a telescope. Generally, one would want the aperture to be as large as possible, to collect the maximum amount of light from the distant objects being imaged. The size of the aperture is limited, however, in practice by considerations of cost and weight, as well as prevention of aberrations (as mentioned above). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture]
The opposite of "foreshadowing" is "telegraphing", by the way (viz What's an idiom for "making something too obvious")
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...shout-outs by the main character to those other stories, as well as celebrities.
The hope is that any readers of similar fiction will find the references and shoutouts funny. However, I don't know how far I can take these references.
Don't Make Those Reference At All.
They just emphasize to the reader you are imitating Douglas Adams or others, that they are just reading a rehash of Hitchhiker's. That feels like plagiarism to me, not an original work. As a reader I would resent it, not laugh at it.
It is plagiarism in the sense you are trying to steal somebody else's successful comedy and use it to make your own work funnier. It is like a stand-up comic telling us:
"Remember that joke from Ellen DeGeneres, about the airplane seats? Hilarious, right? Pretend I just told you that joke."
Come up with your own original jokes.
Do any of those stories you talk about have shout outs and explicit references to the work of other authors? I know Douglas Adams' work doesn't, I doubt the others do either.
There is nothing wrong with writing another character that is the only one that can save the world. As you said, it has been done thousands of times. It is the equivalent of coming up with two characters that meet, conflict, fall in love, argue, reconcile and live happily ever after. It is still being done, and doesn't require any back-references to "Cinderella" or "When Harry Met Sally" or "Pretty Woman" or "Grease" or "You've Got Mail" or "Sleepless in Seattle".
There's nothing wrong with it being a comedy. Leave the other works alone, make your comedy original. Your plot can echo other plots, but make your characters original and your comedy original, not a rehash of other's comedy, and don't try to steal some glitter from the works of others.
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Get it on paper, and make sure it's funny to you. Then find beta readers and editors and see if it's funny to others.
You can always fix something after it's written, but you can't edit a blank page. Start writing. Figure out the joke too far later.
P.S. please reference Martin Freeman, for several obvious reasons.
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