Humour in Writing - or not by Victoria Chatham

AVAILABLE HERE

I would love to say I inject humour into all my writing but that just isn’t so because I find writing humour incredibly difficult. It isn’t that I don’t have a sense of humour. I do but, as I tend to be a visual person, ie: I learn best by seeing and doing, it follows that I find visual humour, such as slapstick comedy, the funniest. That is not easy to write and if humour does find its way into my writing, it’s more by accident than design.

Being funny, and humour as a whole is subjective. I remember a movie from the early 80s called ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy.’ Very briefly, a Kalahari bushman encounters civilization and its stranger aspects. It was a low budget of $2.5 million South African film, which netted about $20 million. I couldn’t stop laughing at it, my kids barely cracked a grin. Another movie which I found funny and fortunately they did, too, was 'Start the Revolution Without Me,' starring Donald Sutherland and Gene Wilder as two pairs of identical twins, one aristocratic (The Corsican Brothers) and the other set poor. As France is about to be torn apart by the revolution, both become victims of royal plots. 

So, what is humour? Like the example above, what one person finds funny another won’t. It’s a bit like beauty being in the eye of the beholder. Humour is defined in Webster’s dictionary as having the quality of being amusing or comic. Wit, on the other hand, is defined as having a natural aptitude for using words and ideas in a quick and inventive way to create humour. Forms of wit include the zinging one-liners aka Violet, the Dowager Duchess of Grantham in Downton Abbey. Other forms of humour can be satirical, self-deprecating, surreal, or plays on words as this by John Lynn: his legacy will become a pizza history.

But in every instance, I come back to the slapstick comedy routines favoured by Victorian music hall and vaudeville audiences everywhere. These I remember, not from personal experience (I'm old but not that old!) until the advent of BBC TV’s series The Good Old Days, but from hearing my aunts and uncles talk about them and sing songs when I was little. One of my father’s favourite acts, Wilson, Keppel, and Betty, did a sand dance routine and they still make me laugh. You can check them out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sn83cCEpZV0

Before we had a TV in the house, we listened to radio programs such as Hancock’s Half Hour, Round the Horne, and Much Binding in the Marsh. Later there were TV programs with the comedy duo of Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise, Fawlty Towers and Monty Python. These were all the English programs but I Love Lucy and the Carol Burnett Show were amongst my favourite classic comedy shows. Who could ever forget Carol Burnett's priceless performance as Scarlett O'Hara?

And then, of course, there is humour of  Donald McGill’s classic but saucy English seaside postcards of the 50s and 60s. They were risqué humour at best but that didn’t prevent one of his postcards, featuring a bookish man and an embarrassed pretty woman sitting under a tree, with the caption: "Do you like Kipling?" / "I don't know, you naughty boy, I've never kippled!", holds the world record for selling the most copies, at over 6 million. (source: Wikipedia.) That was the upside. The downside was a police raid on stores in Ryde, Isle of White, confiscating 5,000 of his postcards for indecency.

I love reading books that make me laugh out loud. Elizabeth Dearl’s Diamondback and Stuart J. West’s Zac and Zora series are recent reads that did exactly that. They are the positive side of humour. The negative side of humour is about deriding, belittling, demeaning and ridiculing which are all aspects of bullying and there is nothing funny in that.

I find it impossible to write about the scenes that make me laugh. What I think I do manage from time to time, is more wit than humour. I can only hope my readers agree.

​Victoria Chatham

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How Dare They Teach Women to Read by Diane Scott Lewis

Last month was Women's History month (we only get one month?)

Women have been fighting for equal treatment for centuries. And education, learning to read, was one of their desires.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, many women, especially the poor, could not read. It was viewed as a waste of time to teach them when they were to be child-bearers and house keepers. Women were taught to be useful, sewing, cooking, etc.
The richer girls were taught to embroider to beautify their husband's home.
Men handled the complicated contracts, leases, government business. Reading as a leisure activity was unheard of, even for men.

Between the 1500’s and the mid-eighteenth century, male literacy grew from ten to sixty per cent. Women, with less opportunity, lagged behind, ranging from one to forty percent, but still an improvement. Female literacy grew the fastest in London, probably with the rise of the merchant class.

As literacy grew so did the desire for books. A spurt in publishing started in the late seventeenth century.

Books had been rare, usually of a religious bent. Cookery books were found in many households. Sermons and poetry were the most widely published literary forms. History books were national or Eurocentric.

In the eighteenth century a new phenomenon, the populace wanted to read for pleasure.

Books became widely available from lending libraries, booksellers, and peddlers: abbreviated versions of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, or Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones.

Periodicals, such as the Gentleman’s Magazine, advertised what new novels were available to order and purchase from the booksellers.

The large circulating libraries offered places where patrons could browse, gossip, flirt, or actually read a book. Novels and romances were the most checked-out. History remained popular.

Library at Margate

The fee of three shillings a quarter kept out the poorer people, but libraries were still a bargain because books weren’t cheap.

Unfortunately, libraries earned the reputation as places full of fictional pap for rich ladies with nothing better to do. Men remained the majority subscribers, visiting to read or discuss religious and political controversy.

Church libraries offered books to the poorer, though not the variety.

Coffee houses maintained collections of books, to be read on the premises. Any man, merchant or laborer, could wander in, order punch, and read a newspaper—a sign of English liberty.

Even the illiterate were encouraged to buy books so their more literate friends could read to them.

In 1650 few country houses had a room set aside for books and reading, while in the late eighteenth century a house without a library was unthinkable.

With this wider reading public, more women authors and romantic writers emerged, such as Fanny Burney and Ann Radcliffe. Women read critically to lift the mind from sensation to intellect as well as men.

Fanny Burney

Everyone profited from increased literacy, education and the availability of the written word. Why teach women to read? Because, as earlier thought, their minds are not feebler than men's

Source: The Pleasures of the Imagination, by John Brewer, 1997

For a heroine who does far more than read, she decodes ancient Greek during the American Revolution, check out my historical novel, Her Vanquished Land.

Purchase Her Vanquished Land and my other novels at BWL

For more info on me and my books, check out my website: Dianescottlewis

Diane Scott Lewis lives in Western Pennsylvania with her husband and one naughty puppy.

Earth Day Celebrates Its 50th Anniversary by J.Q.Rose

Terror on Sunshine Boulevard
Paranormal Mystery
Click here to find more mysteries by JQ Rose
from BWL Publishing

Earth Day Celebrates Its 50th Anniversary

by J.Q.Rose

Earth Day April 22
Image courtesy of pixabay.com by PrettySleepy

Since 1970, April 22 has been designated as Earth Day. This year, Earth Day celebrates its 50th anniversary with the ongoing goals to stop the destruction of our environment and to preserve our world for future generations. 

The movement brought awareness to saving our climate by stopping factories belching black, toxic smoke into the air, factories dumping toxic waste into our water systems, the unlimited use of pesticides and the destruction of the wilderness and loss of wildlife.

According to the Earth Day site, "Earth Day led to the passage of landmark environmental laws in the United States, including the Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species Acts. Many countries soon adopted similar laws."

In 2020, citizens from around the world focus on the dire need for us all to take care of our planet.

People today are more environmentally conscious. Schools and families make an effort on this day but also throughout the year to educate children to care for our earth. Even the simplest thing like not littering makes a big difference and is an easy lesson for our kids and for us to learn and choose to do.

Being good examples to kids by turning off lights in a room when not in use, not letting the water faucet run and separating recyclables from trash reinforce the importance of saving our environment from destruction.

Reading eBooks is environmentally friendly. Thousands of books can be stored digitally on e-readers and reading devices, saving trees that otherwise would be cut down for making paper.

What are some ways you can help our environment, not only on Earth Day but every day? Please leave a comment below. Thank you.

About J.Q.Rose

J.Q. offers readers chills, giggles and quirky characters woven within the pages of her mystery books. She and her husband live the snowbird life, traveling to Florida in the winter and to Michigan for the summer where she spends time with her family including four grandsons and one granddaughter. Travel, photography, reading and playing pegs and jokers help to keep her out of trouble when she isn't writing fiction and non-fiction.

Click here to connect online with JQ.