Creativity is excess

18 June 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

image by thegospelcoalition.org

I'm not very good at writing humor. In this next book I'm writing, I'm trying to have some humor, because let's face it Son of Shadow Hero of Light has none.

Looking back on how I wrote Son of Shadow Hero of Light, I realize that during my editing, I took out many things that initially I thought would be funny. We'll never know if they were actually funny, but I'm going to analyze why I took them out and learn something humor and relate that to creativity.

3 Reasons for removing humor

I took out funny things because upon reading them again, I felt they were too subtle and audiences wouldn't get them or appreciate them.

I took out funny things to save on word count because it wasn't moving forward the scene.

After removing some of the funny things while editing the first few chapters, I told myself that maybe this book didn't need to be funny. By the end, I had convinced myself that humor didn't fit with the tone of the story. I started hunting any remaining humor and removing it.

Why that was bad

Instead of trying to make the funny things work, I just took it out. Instead of trying to make them less subtle or testing them out on my wife or a friend to see if they were actually funny, I just resigned and removed them. I gave up and took the easy route of just not adding humor.

I changed the tone of the story or redefined it bit by bit until humor was gone. Instead of making an explicit choice about humor, I gradually edged myself out of humor and by the time I had really decided, I had removed most of the humor.

What I realized about humor and me

The second reason for removing humor that I listed above was about my own minimalistic tendencies. I'm a minimalist. I don't like waste and I don't like doing things or being part of things that don't drive toward a purpose. Just shooting the breeze or small talk or even playing pointless games are hard for me because there's just no point (except for when I'm hooked on a video game for a couple months … inconsistency in my personality much?). So if a word or sentence didn't move the scene forward, it was removed with prejudice.

Is humor possible within minimalism?

That's probably deeper than I want to go, but let's just say that because I tend toward minimalism, humor is harder for me and especially in writing.

But it made me realize that humor is excess. It takes more "unnecessary" words to make something funny. Probably not in every situation, but it feels like humor is like a layer on top of communication that just transfers information. Humor is an emotion on top of that information. Again, maybe deeper than I should go.

Innovation is excess

But it makes me think that maybe innovation is also excess. Innovating on top of just doing day-to-day stuff takes more "unnecessary" energy than just doing the day-to-day stuff.

It's kind of like education. It takes way more energy to teach the new generation than it would be to just keep that learning locked away. Education is excess, but so necessary. And so is innovation. Without innovation and without education, our lives would be no better than cavemen's. Because of expending so much extra and "unnecessary" energy, our world has improved in so many ways you can't begin to describe.

So it takes more to be funny and more to be innovative. More energy, more effort, more work, more from you. It takes more of you to be funny. It takes more of you to be innovative.