the problem of pastiche

[cimorene]

the problem with writing a pastiche of an extremely famous comedian is that the reason someone becomes known as one of the brightest humourists of their generation, or one of the wittiest dialogue-writers working in television, or the cornerstone of the british humour tradition, or whatever, is that they are already funnier and wittier than almost everybody else.

it's easier to write a pastiche of the sort of surface feel of a style (both a talent and a skill in itself, separate from comic genius, and not all that rare) than to create the humour, but not easy enough to eliminate the tremendous unlikelihood of someone else being nearly as funny and clever as terry pratchett or pg wodehouse or joss whedon or tom stoppard or kevin smith or douglas adams. it's like going into ice-skating with an eye to becoming a michelle kwan impersonator.

a good short-term impression of the rhythm or feel of the right dialogue or narration is much more common than a successful longer piece, but simultaneously rather unsatisfying for the reader; substance is both what you want, and what gives away most pastiches as inadequate.

Comments

[norah.livejournal.com]

Oh, God. I'm moving further and further into HHGG as my primary writing fandom, and I FEEL THIS PAIN. So true. SO TRUE. I can't imagine writing anything longer for HHGG than I have, and I'm pretty sure my stories are close to the longest ones out there.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

the length of your yuletide story is probably the best length for that kind of pastiche, in my experience/personal opinion/etc from ... all the fandoms listed above by author (good omens, jeeves & wooster, buffy or firefly, hitchhiker's guide, west wing or sports night, rosencrantz & guildenstern are dead, askewniverse). it's long enough to have some substance, without taxing a competent writer's grip on the pastichey feel too hard. x.x but it definitely varies by how much knack you have for the voice! another bad thing about humour pastiche - the good ones are much rarer than they are in some other fandoms simply because the voice is so hard to match.

[norah.livejournal.com]

Oh, GOD, yes - and some are excellent but push the rating and lose me with the sex, which is incredibly difficult to do in some of these pastiche styles. I think in many of these fandoms (Wodehouse, R&G, and HHGG particularly because of the overpowering authorial voices) you get into style dictating content - you can't do too much outside of What Canon Already Does because the style precludes it, rings false - I mean, nobody writes R&G plotty action fic, or HHGG introspective character exploration, or schmoopy J/W romance (well, they do, but I can't like it much) - because it just doesn't work very well with the voice.

[almostnever.livejournal.com]

I used to think I was good at pastiche, but that was from either doing pieces so short it was easy, or doing longer pieces imitating people whose prose is distinctive but not exceptionally good (yes Anne Rice, I'm looking at you). When I made attempts at tackling styles that are more original and awesome like Wodehouse? Hoo boy. DIFFICULT!

[cimness.livejournal.com]

yeah, the more distinctive styles are harder. i'm sure i haven't read a single piece of wodehouse pastiche that i couldn't find fault with, although most styles aren't quite that difficult.

but i do think there are some factors like how well acquainted you are with the writer's style by reading. possibly everyone can be said to have a 'natural' style (although of course, that might just depend on what you read and listen to and so on), and no doubt the closer that is to whatever you're trying to imitate, the better.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

yeah, it really, really doesn't. and extending the voice there feels ironic or meta, almost sarcastic or parodic (even assuming the voice was pinned down properly - it's worse when it isn't!). i was pondering the matter again recently - i never have been able to see a clear way to taking jeeves & wooster believably to sex in the story, not even a good way to handle a fade to black, because bertie's narrative voice doesn't go for that sort of coyness.

an amusing situation was in apple_pi's lotr rps/wodehouse fusion called 'very good, boyd', with dom and billy - dunno if you've read it. she had an authorial interjection from dom, who was playing wooster, talking about how he could fade to black and leave out the smut since the story was pretty much over, and then said that since the smut was very nice he thought he'd leave it in. which was very funny and rather bertie-ish, but i'm still not entirely sure i see that working for real jeeves & wooster or not.) i have read other wodehouse books with romances in them - i wonder if it would be possible to adapt a technique he himself uses elsewhere to make it blend in. perhaps i should read some more of his non-jeeves ouvre to that end.

[oneko-briar.livejournal.com]

"it's like going into ice-skating with an eye to becoming a michelle kwan impersonator. "

this is the most fabulous sentence ever.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there are some fandoms I'm just not sure I could write in. I managed Seinfeld really well with last year's yuletide, which I'm still amazed by. But even then, it's not a full episode. I only allude to the other plot rather than write it out and I'm not sure I could successfully pull off a whole episode, cool as it would be.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

i'm so relieved that someone appreciated it! ;)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

yeah, that's a good technique, because the reader familiar with canon can readily fill in the right kind of elaborate crack from imagination.