The odd one for sure Rosy. Certain in family jokes and bastardised names. A friend has also offered me money to work in a character called Mindy Chuffington- Smythe.
We used to do it all the time in court - you know, first solicitor or barrister to get in 'it's a game of two halves' was popular. We used to also come up with different names for each other to confuse the judge. Ah, those were the days.
HB x

Sorry Helen, when pasting an excerpt it's difficult to know where to cut. He's a gangster, she (his girfriend) is a QC, it's the opening night of their bar. He is trying to get rid of her for a few moments. And (spoiler) parts of her life she's lied about. Left handed revealed in that passage, their all American. How come they are her uni-buddies

Mindy Chuffington- Smythe

Brilliant!

I've also has undergrads making me work silly words into my lectures. ('Possum, once, I recall.) Evidently, they are the robing room jokers of the future...

R x

Glad to see others are human.
Misunderstandings are the basis for good comedy. I wrote (and deleted) a funeral scene of pure self-indulgence. It worked as an okay piece of drama. The only way to unlock the humour, would have been to include the original synopsis as an epilogue. Every piece of dialogue referenced the author, or the synopsis.

Byron's mother looked to the heavens. "Why did you take my son? It wasn't his time. It wasn't supposed to be this way" (What's going on, this never happened in the sysnopis.) She turned to his girlfriend. "How dare you show your face?" (You're not in the sysnopsis either.)
"It is so written." Alex tried to console her.


"Now that we're on the same page."
"You are a strange character."
"It's time to start a new chapter."

I wore them all out! It was good fun to write though.

No practical application or purpose.

I've got one or two in-jokes in mine too - nothing that disturbs the flow of the novel, but they are little nods to my best friend. The name of Annie's cat is one of his strange nick-names, and one or two other, secret things.

I think it's fun - I wonder how many other 'real' writers do it.

Didn't Rose Tremain once auction off one of the names for her characters in The Colour? I think it was Rebecca - one who met a sticky end.

And the money went to charity, if I remember rightly.

I guess:

Some simply won't see it in which case, fine.

Some will see it and laugh.

Some will sense there's more too it - will trip, slightly, on it if you like - but not know what, of which half will be intrigued and half will be annoyed.

Depends whether you can rely on your writing to keep the headcount in that last half-category as small as possible, I guess.

I'm deeply annoyed by film and other references in books which I know I'm not getting: either it's lazy writing, substituting a reference for actually illuminating something by means of the writing itself, or it really is adding something, but what that is is escaping me because I don't geddit (being the most film-illiterate writer on the planet), and I know my experience of the book is the weaker for it. The latter isn't the writer's fault, necessarily, but they're one reader the less because of it.

Emma

Sorry - I've admittedly skimmed these posts, but Beethoven wasn't deaf til later on his career and basically, he was so bloody good he could compose by instinct and vibration. None of us should be that arrogant as to not be prepared to listen and learn. None of us are that good!

Sorry - I've admittedly skimmed these posts, but Beethoven wasn't deaf til later on his career and basically, he was so bloody good he could compose by instinct and vibration. None of us should be that arrogant as to not be prepared to listen and learn. None of us are that good!

Yeah, you did kinda skim! Below Beethoven, I stuck in I'll not budge one inch - I think I read that somewhere.

So yeah, I've thumbed the odd page before.

As for games and trivia, apparently, Green Eggs and Ham derived from a bet. The Author had to use fifty different words.