#5: finding the contradictions
plus, a major announcement about our next steps...
For major Murder for Dummies news - scroll down!
But first - let’s talk genre!
About a year ago, I read Eight Detectives by Alex Pavesi.
Thanks to my winning* (*self-sabotaging) combination of ADHD and saying ‘yes’ to too many projects, taking time to just sit and read - even though it’s always something that gives me pleasure - is hard for me. I feel precariously close to becoming a real life Garth Marenghi in this respect. In a bid to build a life where reading becomes part of my routine, I bought Atomic Habits, but… yeah.
But I devoured Eight Detectives. The premise is that a reclusive murder mystery author is being interviewed by an editor about his book of short stories; each of those stories is in the book, meaning you read them one at a time before, in alternate chapters, returning to the ongoing conversation between the author and his interviewer.
He’s constructed each story to demonstrate what he believes are the principles of detective fiction: for example, that every story must have at least one detective, murderer and victim, but that these roles can be layered on top of each other: the victim can be the murderer, the detective can be the victim, and so on. Or there can be multiple detectives, and multiple killers!
But as the book continues - of course, a further mystery begins to unfurl in the story between the editor and the author. To say more would spoil it.
Any story that expresses awareness of the tropes of its own genre is catnip to me - especially when it does so without breaking the immersion. I think this has always been what has drawn me to comedy writing: being a comedy writer is being a novelty seeker. You inherently want to subvert something you’re being presented with.
That doesn’t mean breaking the rules, necessarily. It means understanding the rules, and using them against it. A lot of comedy thrives on breaking the fourth wall, but my favourites all stretch out the elastic without snapping it.
Musical parody is a great example: the best comedy songs work within the rules of the genre they’re parodying, while still undermining them. They find an inherent contradiction built into the form, and exploit that contradiction for jokes.
Flight of the Conchords’ “Most Beautiful Girl (In The Room)” took pop’s tendency for hyperbole and wrote a song about how sexy its subject is - but without exaggerating. The Lonely Island’s “Like a Boss” takes being a “boss” extremely literally by making it about a guy in a corporate job.
Here’s one of my favourite musical examples, from Crazy Ex Girlfriend - a romantic, sweeping, Sinatra-esque number, but it’s all about how that kind of grand, romantic love isn’t always very healthy as a real relationship. (Or, if you want to avoid spoilers for the show, here’s a non-spoilery example).
(This one, like many of the songs in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, reliably makes me cry - it’s too real! But it’s also very funny: it’s taking all the grand romance of the genre and bringing a hard dose of realism to it. Oof).
Finding contradictions that other people might not notice isn’t just what comedy writers do - it’s what detectives do in murder mysteries. Being good at either means always having an eye out for the thing that just feels a little off - then pulling the thread.
One technique for doing this outside of musical comedy is blending two different genres, which is the basis of a lot of sketch comedy: like SNL’s recent blend of gritty realistic post apocalyptic HBO show The Last of Us with… a Nintendo game. Here, it’s exploiting the contradiction of applying videogames’ inherent silliness to prestige drama fare:
Or - if I may be so bold as to use a Casual Violence example: I co-wrote a sketch with Luke a few years ago about the recent trend of adverts making emotional short films advocating for awareness about important social issues, while still… being adverts trying to sell you something.
With Murder for Dummies, I wanted to steer away from just doing a straightforward true crime documentary parody. Whodunnits and true crime documentaries obviously have a lot of overlap, but it’s the differences between them that make Murder for Dummies special.
In a whodunnit, everyone is a suspect - whereas documentaries tend to centre around one likely culprit. Whodunnits often feature a cast of heightened, comedic characters, instead of the real-life humans at the core of true crime. And true crime documentaries don’t often have their interviewees die during the show, but whodunnits regularly kill off characters we’ve already gotten to know.
Mashing two genres together - leaning on both where they overlap and where they diverge - is often, at the very least, a worthy writing exercise. Next time you’re not sure what you want to make, pick two genres - even if they don’t seem to have ANY overlap - and see if you can find a story that combines them…
Murder for Dummies TRAILER - and KICKSTARTER - launching next week!
We know, we know. Kickstarter’s cringe. What is this, 2012?
And yes, we’re going to ask you to back us when we launch. You can visit our landing page right now to be notified when we go live.
Sorry not sorry. But hear us out!
In February, we shot four more days of Murder for Dummies material. We’ve now filmed 70% of the series, with three more shoot dates planned for late March.
We shot scenes with some incredible actors, including CLAIRE MARIE-HALL (from hit musical Operation Mincemeat), IAN HOUGHTON (who starred in the National Theatre’s touring production of War Horse) KATH HUGHES & ED EASTON (from rival hit sketch group Tarot, as well as Ricky Gervais’ After Life and BBC3’s Ladhood respectively), plus LUCY FARRETT and our own, inordinately talented LUKE BOOYS and ALEX MCCALLUM.
HAVE (NEWSLETTER EXCLUSIVE) PROOF:
On Tuesday 14th March at 4pm GMT / 8am PST, the Kickstarter goes live.
On top of the £11,000 we’ve invested ourselves into Murder for Dummies, we need to raise at least £6,000 to finish making the show.
Kickstarter is an “all or nothing” crowdfunding platform - meaning if we don’t raise the full amount within thirty days, we get nothing.
And if we get nothing, we cannot finish making the show.
Yes, really.
If we don’t raise the money, we can’t finish the series.
We wanted to shoot as much as we could before launching the Kickstarter to give you the best possible look at what we’re making.
We hope you’re as excited about this project as we are - and if you can help us reach our £6,000 goal, we’ll be ludicrously grateful.
We aren’t asking for money for nothing - as well as the series itself, you’ll also be able to get some real fancy rewards if you back us…
We’ve collaborated with some incredible artists on these: we don’t want to spoil them all, but - exclusively for the newsletter - here’s a sneak preview our KICKSTARTER EXCLUSIVE “MURDER FOR DUMMIES” ENAMEL PIN, designed by Kevin Jay Stanton, which backers of £25 ($30) or more will be able to wear on their bags and lapels with pride - as well as receiving DVD style audio commentaries for every episode!
Having this badge will be like having membership to a secret club - and like the old saying goes: you want to be part of any club that you’ll have you as a member. Like ours!
We’ll follow up with secret handshake instructions.