Zany, mean, and stupid characters can be really funny, but it’s easy to go over the top and make them impossible, and once that happens I don’t enjoy the book as much. The strange thing is that oftentimes these kinds of people actually exist – they really are that stupid. I’ve known a few, but if I shared some of their words and deeds with you, you’d never believe me. You’d spend the whole book rolling your eyes and saying “come on!”\u009d So I can never write about them, because it just wouldn’t be believable, and therefore it wouldn’t be funny. I admire writers who are able to capture zaniness and stupidity without going over the top – it can’t be easy.<\/p>\n
(Of course, in some genres, it’s ok. In science fiction, for example, characters can be as insane as you want – you don’t need to worry about suspension of disbelief. But in chick lit, when readers usually want to relate to the book, you have to be more careful.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zany, mean, and stupid characters can be really funny, but it’s easy to go over the top and make them impossible, and once that happens I don’t enjoy the book as much. The strange thing is that oftentimes these kinds of people actually exist – they really are that stupid. I’ve known a few, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_analytify_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[35],"tags":[42],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-info","tag-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgrK2-v","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lklawless.com\/chickliterate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lklawless.com\/chickliterate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lklawless.com\/chickliterate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lklawless.com\/chickliterate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lklawless.com\/chickliterate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lklawless.com\/chickliterate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":295,"href":"https:\/\/www.lklawless.com\/chickliterate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions\/295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lklawless.com\/chickliterate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lklawless.com\/chickliterate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lklawless.com\/chickliterate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}