You Want Me To Do What? Stand-Up Comedy and Other Pushed Boundaries

I love expanding my horizons. It helps me grow as a person. When I push past my comfort zone, I find a new place of normal, a new horizon, a new dimension to myself previously unexplored. Life has winked many a time I have pushed past those previous boundaries and found new ones.
Of course, sometimes I blow past my comfort zone then have to live with the deer-in-the-headlights feeling. It is often followed by me wondering how I got myself in that situation. Sarah, dude, what were you thinking?! It has always turned out awesome (probably why I keep doing it), but some of the hang time can fluster.

Personal growth . . . Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Enter When Words Collide (WWC). It is an all-genre conference held in Calgary for readers, writers and publishing types. I'm active in WWC. I love this conference. I love this crowd. I have a blast the second weekend in August playing with other writers and readers types. (It starts next week!!)

I have a solid line-up this year, including my third year on the Humor in Fiction panel. Our dear moderator is rocking it organizing us this year and innocently asked if I'd prepare a brief stand-up comedy piece.

After I picked myself up off the floor from laughing so hard, I looked at the computer screen and  realized he wasn't kidding. Crap. Stand-up comedy? Me? Deep breath . . . Good 'ol Sarah pep talk . . . Then sanity returned.

That's me, next to pilot.
This boundary pushing was pretty fun.
Well, until the weather got crappy.
But we made it. Another round
to personal growth.

And I realized some boundaries I wasn't ready to bump out. Then I realized there was personal growth in that, too.

A week from Friday, at When Words Collide, I will be a panelist for the 2014 version of Humor in Fiction, but I will not be doing stand-up comedy like a couple of my fellow panelists. (Whew!) I will be sharing how this past year especially, including humor in my writing has added depth and relate-ability to my characters, it has upped the human and emotional element, it has been an avenue for my author "voice" and it has been straight-up delightful to write funny characters.

Write on.

Comedy in our writing, what is the perfect amount?

I've noticed something in the current fiction book I am reading, there is a threshold for comedy.

Who knew, right? This author is brilliantly funny . . . which I love, but because there is so much of it, the jokes have less punch than they would if there was more space in between punch lines. The zingers are getting lost among joke after joke after joke after joke. Each one of these jokes, independently, would have me on the floor in hoots laughing, nearly peeing my pants. But the sheer volume has made me numb to them. Shoot!

How can this be? I love to laugh when I'm reading. I had no idea you could have too many snappy lines. Dang!

So, how much is too much? How much comedy is just right? What amount for each story is at that perfect equilibrium, that perfect harmony that makes each zinger have zam!

Good question. Hmm, how about trust the handy tips of reading your work out loud and asking your trusted writing partners for a read-through. There is also the completely tangible you'll just know.

Whatever you decide, good luck!