MOROCHEY -- #3

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Author's Note

To Joke or Not to Joke

       After coming up with a solid outline, it came time to actually fill in the blanks and write the comics. A big question that popped up was exactly how much humor to add. In previous versions, there had been all kinds of random humor and absurd situations. Some were semi realistic, while others were downright immersion breaking. Each new rewrite came with the same question: does comedy have a place in this story?

       After about the fourth or fifth reboot, I was hyper-critical of everything. I think it happens to a lot of writers. We love our stories to death when we're putting them on paper, but turn into a ball of nerves, dipped in doubt, when we get into edit mode. We tell ourselves "This sucks, that sucks, those parts suck, everything sucks because it's not perfect." Sometimes, at this point, we toss the story in a drawer, or lose it in a file on our computer, and give up on it.

       When I finally decided to pull MOROCHEY out of the hypothetical drawer again, I wanted to try out an idea inspired by Walt Disney. I'd heard on a behind-the-scenes doc that Disney never had a song in a movie just to be sung; rather, they always had to contribute something to the plot. I decided to try to approach jokes the same way. I chucked everything that was out of character, felt like filler, or basically didn't advance the plot in any way. It really helped me to figure out when I was leaning on unnecessary jokes as a crutch, and when something actually belonged in the story.

       That's the story of how Winnie The Pooh helped me learn one of the golden rules of writing.

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