Make It Comedy

 

Photo by Quinn Dombrowski via Flickr

When Candace Kearns Read shared a humiliating experience from her childhood in her memoir she didn't expect this scene to be met with laughter from her readers. As the saying goes, “If it’s painful make it a drama. If it’s too painful, make it a comedy.” Often the best way to write about difficult things is to make light of them. Find the emotional truths that contain an element of absurdity. There is usually some angle from which these things that have made us cry can also make us laugh, and sometimes making our readers laugh can actually touch them more deeply.

Read all of Candace's post here:

Make it a Comedy

Candace Kearns Read is the author of the memoir The Rope Swing (Eagle Wings Press, Sep 2016). She is a screenwriter who has also been a Hollywood script reader for actors and directors, including the likes of Anthony Hopkins and Michelle Pfeiffer. Her screenplays have been optioned by producers and developed with Fox, Disney, HBO, and Lifetime. She teaches creative writing for Antioch University and the Young Writers Program at Denver’s Lighthouse Writers Workshop. She’s the author of the screenwriting handbook Shaping True Story into Screenplay, and co-author of the memoir Bogie’s Bike. Her essays have appeared in fullgrownpeople.com, The Manifest-Station, and The Rumpus.