Skip to content
Menu
Teresa Fannin
  • home
  • about me
  • what sits on my desk
  • what i read
  • contact
Teresa Fannin
06/14/201106/14/2011

writing funny and more…

“Maybe you can help my cellmate, Mineola Potts. She’s such a nice lady.”
“What’s she in for?”
“Jaywalking.”  …
“Was she really arrested for jaywalking?” Tony asked.
“Indeed she was, poor woman,” Mrs. Carillon replied. “She was very hungry and had nothing to eat, so she borrowed two cans of lobster meat and a tin of caviar from the supermarket. She was jaywalking when the police stopped her.”

Ellen Raskin, The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I mean Noel)

Funny is hard. I read this. I blinked and I started to giggle. then laugh. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t explain it. And, I doubt if I can replicate it. It’s not as funny now as it was when I first read it. It was very awesome feeling. A giggle just bubbling out of you. A giggle you just can’t stop. A giggle that builds into a full-blown laugh.

I think this is dynamite and tough. This laugh-out-loud line came at page sixty-something. Well into the story and I was surprised to find it there. A delightful tidbit for me, the reader.

Today, funny seems to be based on a ‘sound bite’ type of humor. The one liners. Sort of vaudevillian, if you will. Funny today in a book, movie or on TV is a one-liner, and you can almost hear the drum in the orchestra pit, ba-dum-bum-CHING.

It’s what we see on the Disney channel. Small people [it’s hard to call them kids they are so sophisticated!] making statements [we would have called them chops/a disparaging statement, a put-down] And then, the laugh-track, the new version of the drum in the orchestra pit :), which tells us that it’s funny. Although, if we thought about it, we might wish we were the one making the statement rather than the one who is on the receiving end.

Ellen Raskin is an writes funny and interesting.  She won a Newberry Honor for Figgs & Phantoms, in 1975 and the Newberry Medal in 1979 for The Westing Game. When my oldest was in fifth grade, The Westing Game was the trade book all 5th graders read. I had not, so, I did. And, when the topic came up again recently, I realized I could not remember the ending, so I found my daughter’s boxes of books stacked in the attic. The mystery is well developed, as are the characters. And when I finished the ending, I realized why I couldn’t remember it. It wasn’t that the book didn’t have a good ending, what it has was a very complete ending. I wanted to know more about Ellen. So via Amazon I purchased the three mentioned in this post, plus The Tattooed Potato and other clues. All have a mystery elements, word plays, and eccentric characters.

Ellen Raskin wrote for a different time. A time before instant communication, a time before ‘friending’ became a verb. She wrote when you could take 20 pages to set up the story. When backstory was part of the plot. When an ending ended it for all the characters. [Think the  last book of Harry Potter. We find out who married who and where all our favorite characters end up.]

I’ve gone back and read the first [supposedly] mystery book ever written, The Moonstone. Published in 1868 it is long, convoluted, melodramatic. Books are different now. Readers are different. Not good. Not bad. Just different. And we as writers need to know what came before us.

Musings from a reader first, lover of dark chocolate and Irish whiskey, tennis player, writer of mysteries, science fiction, and historical non-fiction.

Recent Posts

  • Cleaning Out
  • First and Normal
  • The Boy…
  • ENGAGE
  • THE GETAWAY POSITION

My Favorite Places

The Society of Children’s Writers & Illustrators
Sisters in Crime
SCBWI Carolinas

Categories

  • Art & Craft
  • Musing
  • Reading
  • Writing The Past

Archives

  • May 2025
  • February 2025
  • February 2024
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • February 2019
  • March 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • June 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • December 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • August 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
©2025 Teresa Fannin | Powered by WordPress and Superb Themes!