Do you…

[rgraham666]

ever put subtle jokes and metaphors into your stories? And how often do your readers get them?

I finally had someone get one of my little jokes. That felt pretty good.

I'm still waiting for someone to get a very subtle metaphor in one of my other stories in spite of over 20,000 reads.

So, how about you?

 

[Guest]

 

[rgraham666]

*grin*

Not intentionally. I mostly just sit down and let whatever story/essay is nagging me just sort of pour out. I then find it intensely amusing when someone finds a meaning that I didn't intend. A friend thought that "Sock Love" was a metaphor for the increasing gaps between the rich and the poor in America.

*chortle*

That's a good one!

 

[neonlyte]

ever put subtle jokes and metaphors into your stories? And how often do your readers get them?

I finally had someone get one of my little jokes. That felt pretty good.

I'm still waiting for someone to get a very subtle metaphor in one of my other stories in spite of over 20,000 reads.

So, how about you?

Got to hand it to you Rob, I have enough trouble writing them without stopping to put jokes in

 

[Guest]

Every one of my stories has some subtle humor in it. Even the really dark ones like "Do You Still Love Me". Do people get it? Good question. No one has ever really mentioned it so I don't know.

 

[mack_the_knife]

*grin*

Not intentionally. I mostly just sit down and let whatever story/essay is nagging me just sort of pour out. I then find it intensely amusing when someone finds a meaning that I didn't intend. A friend thought that "Sock Love" was a metaphor for the increasing gaps between the rich and the poor in America.

*chortle*

I get that from time to time. The readers find some 'deeper meaning' in it and I'm left scratching my head. I also enjoy when they find a metaphor that I must have slipped into the story subconsciously, because I never saw it till they pointed it out to me.

 

[impressive]

*grin*

Not intentionally. I mostly just sit down and let whatever story/essay is nagging me just sort of pour out. I then find it intensely amusing when someone finds a meaning that I didn't intend. A friend thought that "Sock Love" was a metaphor for the increasing gaps between the rich and the poor in America.

*chortle*

*nods* Happens with my poetry a LOT. I consider that a good thing -- flexible poetry.

ex sighs in particular. I got comments ranging from suicide to the death of a child.

In stories I seldom sneak in hidden meaning. I'm more of an in-your-face writer. My entire "It's Just Sex" chain story was a slap at my rigid Catholic upbringing.

 

[Whisky7up]

Not so much subtle...more of a pun really. I have a couple of short tales, leading to a sort of punchline.
Here's one


It's very short

 

[elsol]

ever put subtle jokes and metaphors into your stories? And how often do your readers get them?

I finally had someone get one of my little jokes. That felt pretty good.

I'm still waiting for someone to get a very subtle metaphor in one of my other stories in spite of over 20,000 reads.

So, how about you?

Yes... a LOT of the time.

It is usually a high point when someone makes the connections and writes me about it.

Sincerely,
ElSol

 

[elsol]

Although, the funny part is when readers make connections... point them out to you and you think 'Oh wow... they're right! How the fuck did I do that?'

Makes me a deep believer in writing having a direct connection to your subconcious.

Sincerely,
ElSol

 

[Stella_Omega]

I do, and sometimes people get it. And I've also had people read more into a story than I ever intended.
I had feedback where the reader went into such rhapsodic detail about something I had only touched on in passing- that I wonder if they were confusing my story with another they had read.

 

[Svenskaflicka]

Normally I don't, atleast not in Lit-stories, but I did threw in tons of jokes in "Wild Dancer" - little puns about gay love, seeing as the guy in the story doesn't know that his room-mate, whom he has a crush on, is actually a girl.

 

[Stella_Omega]

*grin*

Not intentionally. I mostly just sit down and let whatever story/essay is nagging me just sort of pour out. I then find it intensely amusing when someone finds a meaning that I didn't intend. A friend thought that "Sock Love" was a metaphor for the increasing gaps between the rich and the poor in America.

*chortle*

Well, that's what I thought!
And then I remembered that you can in fact., get those lacy socks at T.J.Max and places like that.

 

[Kassiana]

So, how about you?

Nah. I never make jokes, and no one can tell that I'm funny.



Seriously, I once told my mom (when I was very little) that she never makes jokes. She was really offended. The thing is, my dad is far more funny by habit, and my mom more funny at specific times. And yes, someone once told me, after several months of knowing me, "I never knew you were funny!"

Of course I have jokes in just about everything I write. I even got through a very dark piece of mine, where a character's personality was fragmenting in a death camp, by putting subtle jokes in the midst of things. I don't think anyone noticed those, but they're there.

 

[Boota]

My novel is loaded with stuff like that. There is one major thing in particular that I expected to hear about, but so far no one has caught it without having me point it out to them. In my story on Lit there is an element to the story that very few people caught, but the ones who did really liked it.

In my new novel I'm putting in a few obscure references and inside jokes for people who have read Mr. Undesirable. A few little things that someone who has read Mr. U will catch, but won't matter for someone who hasn't. The new book has to be able to stand alone, it's not a sequel to Mr. U. I don't really bother explaining any of it, I figure people will either catch it or they won't. Maybe they'll ask, maybe they won't. Maybe they'll give a shit. Maybe they won't. Either way, I get a kick out of doing it, so I'll keep it up.

 

[Liar]

Subtle jokes? No. Jokes? Yeah.

 

[Guest]

everything i write is a serious work of fiction, fictitiously.

 

[Quiet_Cool]

*grin*

Not intentionally. I mostly just sit down and let whatever story/essay is nagging me just sort of pour out.

*chortle*

This is it for me. I can plan out the basics of the story, I can even know at the beginning how the story will end. But I don't see any particular meaning to each part, or to the whole of each story. In my writing, I do or do not; there is not try. Whatever comes out in the details, just comes out in the details. Half the time, when I'm finished writing something and analyze it in my own right, I learn something new about myself. I went from being Anti-abortion to being undecided in such a way.

Q_C

 

[BlackShanglan]

One of the PC's I cherish most came from someone who "got" the metaphoric/symbolic nature of the story. It was good to be understood.

As for jokes and games ... At such time as the novel (the mostly finished one) is ever polished, it well have a note appended to it. The note is currently at the end, but may eventually be moved to the beginning in order to forestall suspicions of outright plagiarism from the few who recognize the game I enjoyed playing throughout:

The author wishes to observe that the various unattributed references and quotations doubtless recognized by the reader are, of course, by way of a gentle amusement and are by no means intended to usurp the rights of the original authors. The author therefore gives thanks to Messrs. Stoker, Wilde, Parrish (with Lady Seymour and Lady Shuckburgh), Shaw, Tennyson, Chaucer, Wordsworth (of whom we must all be deeply fond, Lord Vayne’s pretensions notwithstanding), Baudelaire, Pater, Swift, Shakespeare, Mallarmé, Masters, Browning (Mr. and Mrs.), Swinburne, Thompson, Yeats, Flaubert, La Clos, Byron (Lord, inexcusably slighted by Lord Vayne despite his many notable accomplishments), Poe, Huysmans, Rossetti, Burgess, Dowson, Ferguson, Grimm (Jacob and Wilhelm), Goldman (who acknowledges his debt to Morgenstern), Arnold, Goldsmith, Mill, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Bell (as the nomme de plume of Ms. Charlotte Brontë), the gentlemen of the Rhymers’ Club, and Messrs. Heaney, Jordan, Beckett, Dickens, Eliot, Joyce, Ishiguro, Fitzgerald, Pratchett, Barlas, Horne, Symons, South, Beardsley, Lane, and Keats, all of whom, the author is certain, would have the good taste and breeding to be appalled at finding themselves thus incorporated into a work of dubious style and salacious content.

They all feature in the text somewhere, either in direct quotation given as such, a line or phrase dropped in silently without attribution, or more oblique allusions like use of similar actions or brief events. I think I shall keep them as they are at the moment - in chronological order as they appear in the text. It would all be worth it to have one person smile while reading a work featuring a (fictional) decadent poet and recognize the refrain of Dowson's "Cynara" slipped in amongst his thoughts on his love affair.

But I suppose it really is too elaborate and silly of a game even for me. Pay no attention to the horse behind the curtain.

Shanglan

 

[Boxlicker101]

Occasionally I will slip in a literasry reference or a pun or something of the sort. In one of my stories, "I Take Emily Out to the Ball Game", there is a part of the story that is a rewording of the venerable old song. I don't know how many people picked up on that because I have little or no PC or email on it, even though it has over 50,000 views. I wrote it before the advent of PC.