question meme

[fearlessfan]

I've got two stories (and one not-quite-a-story thing) that I by all accounts SHOULD be working on (having promised the two stories to specific people, and having missed those dates by embarrassing margins), but they keep getting longer than I anticipated! And more awful! And so I will avoid them and in the time before Lost starts, instead I offer this:

Gacked from callmesandy: Ask me a question about one of my stories. Whatever you ask, I will attempt to answer truthfully.

Comments

[callmesandy.livejournal.com]

How you think of all those jokes in your 30 rock fic? I mean that in the deep intellectual sense of like making sure they fit the structure of the show and how far you could go and stuff?

[fearlessfan.livejournal.com]

I am hideously late replying to this! I'm sorry!

How you think of all those jokes in your 30 rock fic? I mean that in the deep intellectual sense of like making sure they fit the structure of the show and how far you could go and stuff?

Writing jokes for 30 Rock was actually kind of fun because the show is so zany and out there that I felt like I could try anything that came into my head, which was good (nice outlet for creativity!) and bad (creativity sometimes leads to awful jokes!). I started from my recipient's prompt and kind of worked from there. She asked for a classic sitcom plot like jury duty, loved Jenna, wanted Jack and Liz there (but no Jack/Liz) and the entourage. I just tried to come up with the wackiest scenarios I could that would fold together into a workable story.

I really relied on my two betas when it came to judging if the jokes were appropriate or not, and even after that, I didn't always take their advice. It was definitely a gut-check thing. There was one Jenna joke I kept in that someone suggested I change/remove, and the original ending for the story had a different Oprah angle that one of my betas didn't like, and I did end up changing it. The one that's in the story was suggested by the other - so my betas were really good at helping me shape some of the most important parts of the story.

One challenging thing about writing the story was how the show uses a lot of visual humor and it was hard to write that into the story without slowing it down with lots of description. I think the Jenna fug angle was helpful with getting that element in there a little bit.

Aaaand that's my late, super-long answer! :)

[callmesandy.livejournal.com]

Yay, thank you! I just wanted to know cause when I've written sitcom fanfic before and getting that right brand of humor for the show is so hard to me!