Show, don’t Tell Writing Podcast Show Notes & Links
- 📰 Sign up for the Inspired Writing Newsletter HERE
- 📝 Submit Your Page for our Show, don’t Tell Coaching Episodes
- 🌟 Leave a Review on Apple Podcasts (Thank you!)
- Intro and Outro Music is Daisy by Zight and used under a CC by 4.0 DEED Attribution 4.0 International license. For more music by Zight visit https://www.youtube.com/zight
In this episode, Suzy chats with Author Ian Page about his book The Naked Ambition: A Field Manual Novel and how he incorporates humor in his writing. For part 1 of this two-part series, they focus on Characters that make humor work and how to ‘write what you know.’ They also dive into the complex task of walking your reader through the jokes and making sure your humor lands with an audience who can only experience your story through words.
🌟 Grab your spot in Suzy’s Inner Circle at www.suzyvadori.com/innercircle
Podcast Episode Transcript (unedited)
Suzy Vadori: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Show, Don’t Tell writing podcast with me, Suzy Vadori, where I peel back the layers of how to wow your readers with your fiction, your nonfiction. Anybody can bang out a first draft, but it takes a little more work to make your book as amazing as it can be. Join me as I share the step-by-step writing techniques you could apply to your writing right away, as I host successful writers who share a behind-the-scenes look at their own [00:00:30] writing lives, and as I live coach writers on their pages, giving practical writing examples that will make your own writing stronger.
Nobody is born knowing how to write an engaging book. There are real and important skills that you need to learn. On this show, I cut through the noise and get you all the info you need. I can’t wait to see how this information is going to transform your writing Fasten your seatbelts, listeners, because today we have [00:01:00] Ian Page coming on the podcast to talk about writing with humor.
I first met Ian several years ago when I developmentally edited his debut novel, which has just come out, The Naked Ambition. It was really fun to work with Ian because he has so many opinions and so much to say, and to work on the tone of his humor, to work on the sarcasm, to work on the political bent that he wanted to convey.
We’re gonna talk about all of that today on [00:01:30] the podcast, so listen up. If you’ve ever considered writing with humor, wondering how to do it, wondering if you’re doing it well, wondering why you’d wanna do it, we’re gonna answer all of that today. Ian Page draws on decades of professional geophysics in the oil patch for his debut novel, The Naked Ambition.
Ian gained his BSc in geophysics from University of Alberta, never to set foot in the halls of academia again. At various times, he’s been a wretched musician, an unreliable soldier, [00:02:00] and a failed treasure hunter. Ian is a native of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and currently resides in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia with his wife, where he spends ridiculous amounts of time playing hockey, golfing, walking, and goofing off, much to the annoyance of his publisher.
As you can tell from the bio that he submitted, Ian is absolutely hilarious, and I can’t wait for you to hear this episode Welcome to the podcast, Ian. So awesome to talk to you now that your book is [00:02:30] out.
Ian Page: Well, thank you very much. Appreciate being here.
Suzy Vadori: So book one is what we’re gonna be talking about, although you can share snippets from the next couple of books that you’re writing as well.
The Naked Ambition, a field manual novel by Ian Page. What’s field manual novel, by the way?
Ian Page: That, that is, um, an, probably an, uh, an older term for some people. Field manual, there’s a quasi-military aspect to that, that term. So when I wrote The Naked [00:03:00] Ambition, that was intended as a standalone, and then somewhere along the line I got the idea for a couple sequels, and so I needed something to, uh, if you forgive the, the expression, a brand for the trilogy.
And that’s what I came up with. Yeah.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah, I love it, and I think, I mean, having read them, I think it’s really appropriate. I think it’s also tongue in cheek. We’re here to talk about the humor in the books today. The tagline that is on the back of the book is, “Power, prestige and complete [00:03:30] nonsense. Welcome to corporate warfare in the oil patch.”
What was it that you set… I mean, it’s so intriguing. I just love your sense of humor. What exactly did you set out to write when you first started?
Ian Page: Well, the, this essential problem was I had the character before I had a plot, and I had a bunch of misfires with that character. So the main character started as Chester Field.
He’s just all too comfortable, as the name implies. And
Suzy Vadori: I wanted, wanted to- Yeah, just, just, just one second, ’cause it, it doesn’t [00:04:00] come across necessarily on the podcast, but I wanna pause for a minute and point it out. His name is Chester Field. Like- Yes … as in a sofa. Yeah. Right? Like, everything in this book is amazingly well thought out.
So keep going. I just wanted to not miss that point.
Ian Page: Okay. Fair enough. I
Suzy Vadori: mean, it-
Ian Page: He’s too comfortable So yeah, he’s all too comfortable and, and I wanna put him in situations where he’s forced to unravel a bit, and the first few tries I had with the character didn’t seem to really [00:04:30] go anywhere. The stakes weren’t high enough or, or it was just a little too languid.
And then probably about seven years into the character’s life, one of my colleagues at work said, “Well, you’re in the oil patch. Why don’t you write an oil patch story?” And-
Suzy Vadori: Mm-hmm … okay.
Ian Page: Well, that, now we’re starting to, uh, think a little more clearly and pointedly. And then the plot came along where I thought, all right, it, what would make a comfortable executive engineer uncomfortable?
[00:05:00] Threaten his job, bring in a romantic interest that he really has no interest in, but all of a sudden really wants to be interested in, and then put a couple other, uh, layers on there and, and that’s where the family dynamics came up. So that, primarily it’s, you know, write what you know about. Sure, that, that made a lot of sense, and that’s where things really started cooking.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah, and I think it, it, you’re right. I mean, it’s really hard, ’cause sometimes writers come to me, and this was one of those cases, where the [00:05:30] character you literally wanna show that he’s comfortable and complacent And that’s a tough place for a main character to be, and so we had to work on, well, what does he want, and all those things that people say, “Oh, Suzy, you’re a broken record.
You keep asking the same questions.” But it’s tough because you- you’ve got this character in mind, but for a book to work and for the whole arc to work, he has to kind of have some agency, right, and be working on things that, which he does in this book now, but that was tough because you were bringing him kind of from being complacent to being more active.
Ian Page: [00:06:00] Yeah. That’s probably the, um, if I’m being honest, the weakest part of Chester is, as a starting point, things are all too easy for him. And so thematically what I was looking for was the third certainty in life. So, you know, we, we joke about death and taxes are the two certainties. The third uncertainty is, or third certainty, sorry, is you don’t get through life unscathed.
You’re gonna get pushed about, you’re gonna get, uh, nicked, and so on. [00:06:30] So the first book is really an exploration of that alongside of the plot action. So the plot action, we’ll call that the A story. There’s a crisis at work, and he’s gotta deal with it, and he’s got competition, so he’s gotta deal with rivals.
He’s got a love interest that, it baffles him. Uh, he’s gotta deal with that. He’s got family dynamics who all of a sudden pop up and interfere in his life, which he absolutely loathes. He hates it. And so all these things were intended to kind of [00:07:00] come crashing down, uh, on him, and does he get through it?
Suzy Vadori: Yeah. Okay, so you set out to write this story about Chesterfield ’cause he’s just hilarious, right? And also complacent. And how did that evolve till you got, then the plot came together when you kind of wrapped into the oil field, then you tried to make the stakes higher, and you, you did a good job, not tried to.
You did it. And how did that all evolve? What changed about your original idea about what you set out to [00:07:30] write?
Ian Page: Or
Suzy Vadori: did it stay the same? Part of it is,
Ian Page: I’d say part of it is the number of characters. It’s an ensemble cast. And with a certain amount of thought about, you know, the different parts of, of my own experiences.
One, one of the advantages perhaps I have is I’m old, so I’ve got, I’ve got all this experience, I’ve got all this knowledge, which is supposed to equal wisdom. And so that’s a natural advantage for someone who sets out to, to write something like this. And [00:08:00] then bringing in all these different characters, uh, that he deals with.
Most of them he deals with, uh, just fine. They’re, they’re, they’re his pals or his, you know, his dinner club friends. So I was taking a lot of slice of life things and surrounding him with that. But then he’s got the dynamics, uh, at, of what are his weaknesses. He hates arrogance, and he’s baffled by it. He can’t deal with it.
And so it’s a natural conflict for him. So that was one thing. The fa- family dynamics, [00:08:30] Mother and Motherish, kind of the yin and yang of, of his, uh, each family. Yeah,
Suzy Vadori: so explain that for a moment. Just like we stopped and made a point about Chesterfield. Mother and Motherish, right? Like, explain that.
Ian Page: So Mother is straightforward enough.
That’s his, uh, local mother. He’s got kind of a teeter-totter of chumminess and re- and restraint, uh, in dealing with her. She’s, uh, a powerful woman in her own way and q- very demanding on his time, and he’s not very good at dealing with [00:09:00] that. And her health is in, in, is declining and, and he’s trying to manage that while he’s managing all these other things that, all these other crises that have just bloomed like dandelions.
So Motherish is a stepmother, and what I call his biologic father is Rodney, who’s, he’s alluded to in this first book, but, uh, he pops up in the next two in, in a more substantial way. That’s his third marriage, and of course it falls apart very quickly and, uh, but [00:09:30] Motherish stays in Chester’s orbit, or more properly, the other way around.
And of course he’s forced to kind of do her bidding from time to time because she wants to be a power wheel in the local town. And that’s, so these kinds of dynamics, these kinds of conflicts are complicating for him, and these are part of the unraveling, the scathing issues that, uh, you know, where he’s singed, he’s tattooed, and, and he’s basically pasted about
Suzy Vadori: Yeah.
Your characters are part of, we’re gonna get [00:10:00] to the humor part in a second, but your characters alone, and their names, and everything, and all their personalities is part of the fun for you, I think. You know, in just working with you, it was part of what you m- most were interested in developing, and, um, you had lots and lots of characters to bring to the table.
Who was your favorite?
Ian Page: Um-
Suzy Vadori: Who was the most fun to write?
Ian Page: The most fun to write, there’s probably a few. I think anytime I get Jester and, and Motherish [00:10:30] together, sparks fly. There’s a lot of, uh, witticisms and snarking back and forth. And, and so I think dialogue is probably one of my, uh, greater strengths, and the characters allow for a lot of fun back and forth.
So I’d say it, sometimes it’s more the dynamics between two characters rather than a favorite character. If there’s one that, that intrigues me more than the others over the three books, it might be the sergeant major. And I’ll stop here just to say that I’ve met all these characters. Again, [00:11:00] one of the advantages of, of age is that y- you run across a lot of people on your journey, and I remember them all, fortunately and unfortunately.
And I, I met the sergeant major, the character, for all of about 15 minutes when I was in the Army. And I, I got in a little bit of trouble. I was brought up on charges. I had rust on my rifle, and so they were gonna take me to a kangaroo court. And so I, I arrived in the room. There’s all these guys sitting around.
One guy, he had forgotten to get his [00:11:30] hair cut that one week, and so he, he was charged, and he had to pay a fine of $105 for that. So-
Suzy Vadori: To cover a haircut. That’s why you didn’t save anything by not getting a
Ian Page: haircut. You had, you had to have a fresh haircut every week, and this was in basic training. So when I was, uh, in this room, a sergeant major pops out, and he was a ramrod straight, no-nonsense kind of character, very gruff and very clipped in his manner, just like the fellow in the book.
And he marched me into the, see the colonel, and there’s my captain finking [00:12:00] on me, and it took, five minutes later I’m out the door, uh, with a fine of $89 for having rust on my rifle.
Suzy Vadori: Wow. Yeah, right way, you know, kind of. And the funny thing is we could put all these people, I do the same thing, I put people into my books.
By the time they evolve, I mean, he’s in three books now. He’s changed and grown and all the things. They don’t recognize themselves. I’m sure if that man, I don’t know if you know his name, but- Nope … even if he read your book, he would have no idea Maybe you just gave enough [00:12:30] detail on this, uh, podcast, but I’m sure other people have gotten fines for having Ross on
Ian Page: their bike with them.
Yeah, these, these are, these characters are, are, they start as an embryo, and there, there’s, that’s where the tinge, uh, of the, the tint of reality is, is formed. After that, once you get them into the situations in, in, in your writing, they do evolve, or you’d like to think that they do evolve. They have their own arcs, they have their own attitudes, and, and they, they, they start to spark some sort of sense of originality.
So
Suzy Vadori: I
Ian Page: could, I could say [00:13:00] that Mother and Motherish are really one person From reality, and I simply, uh, split them. You know, one wanted to always play with, uh, the big boys and the, the power games, and the other was just someone who complained and someone who, who was not interested in participating in life in the same way that, that, uh, the other one did.
So- Hmm … we, we meet lots of people in, in our life who have kind of a, almost a schizophrenic, uh, aspect to them. [00:13:30] They have one side that really is driving hard f- towards things, and then they have an- another side where it’s just, you know, just leave me alone.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah. No, I can get that. And for all the writers out there listening to the podcast today, I’m sure that you’re putting people in there into your writing.
It, it happens because we can write through our own lens in some respects, and that’s what gives it authenticity. That’s what gives it your perspective, everything. Okay, so when you set out to write this, what was the feeling that you wanted to invoke in readers? I actually don’t know the answer to this. [00:14:00] I was excited to ask you the question.
Ian Page: Um-
Suzy Vadori: What were you hoping for?
Ian Page: That, that my, my original call it point of origin thought was I wanna write a, a great beach novel. Uh, something that people can, you know, uh, sit in the hammock with w- whatever their favorite drink is and, and just flip pages on a vacation. So my aspirations were pretty limited.
You know, I wasn’t trying to write the great Canadian novel or great, uh, world f- uh, classic. Uh, you know, I don’t [00:14:30] look like Dumas.
Suzy Vadori: All right. I- But was humor always at the forefront of what you wanted?
Ian Page: I, I think so, and, and, and really the, the origin for that is when I was, uh, playing on a beer league hockey team in Calgary, we got into a, um, a situation where there, there was all kinds of strange incidents on the ice during the season and, and I s- I said to my captain, “You know, we should write about this.
Uh, let’s just put, put together a little comic book and some player profiles and, and just amuse ourselves.” And so we would collect all the [00:15:00] stories at the end of each season, and we’d put it out and we’d call it the, uh, the Media Guide and Coloring Book. And so I would write all the stories, and I would write all the player profiles, and this went on for 11 seasons.
So it became kind of the training grounds for the satirical voice, the edgy humor, and of course being, you know, the uber, uh, masculine rebellious types that we were on, in hockey. I mean, you can imagine the crassness in, in, in all of that. But the funniest thing to [00:15:30] me about doing all of that was at the end of the year, we’d have a, a wind-up golf tournament.
All the guys would show up, and they got used to the idea that, oh, the media guy’s here. And they couldn’t wait. And then we’d hand them out, and they’d start flipping the pages, and they’re laughing. They’re laughing out loud. The,
Suzy Vadori: the jokes are- Are they trying to find themselves?
Ian Page: Their jokes are landing, and then they get to their own player profile and the laughing stopped And I just-
Suzy Vadori: Yeah
Ian Page: and, and [00:16:00] my captain, I, we, we just look at one another, “What is going on here?” And we had one fellow who was probably the closest thing to a non-evil Hugh Rectum, who was one of the characters in The Naked Ambition, a rather arrogant prick.
Suzy Vadori: I’m gonna pause again. Hugh Rectum.
Ian Page: Yep.
Suzy Vadori: Hugh Rectum, right? Yeah. Yeah.
These characters are amazing. Sorry. They, they- I just wanna give you credit …
Ian Page: and, and the idea behind a lot of the character names was, was just to give you a quick shorthand, because there were just so many characters. [00:16:30] So you immediately are reminded, until you reach a point where, “Oh, yeah, I know who that is,” rather than trying to come up with some Hollywood great hero name or whatever, a great female name or something.
Anyway, the, the, the most narcissistic character we had on our hockey team, he was the only one who laughed at himself, and I found that fascinating. And, and-
Suzy Vadori: Ah …
Ian Page: he’s a, he’s an interesting guy. He’s become a recluse now, but he was a bright executive, had a gambling problem. He was just, he [00:17:00] was just a really interesting guy, uh, with, with all these, these bizarre frailties, but he always had the best suits.
He always smelled the best, and he always looked the best. He was the only guy who brought a hair dryer to the dressing room.
Suzy Vadori: Oh my goodness.
Ian Page: So-
Suzy Vadori: That’s unheard of.
Ian Page: That’s unheard of … so these, these are the, these are the characters and, and, and these are the, the situations, and that, that 11 years probably provided more training ground than any creative writing classes I could take, and I did take-
Suzy Vadori: Yeah, I mean, that honed your [00:17:30] humor.
You got real-time reactions from the people that you were writing about- Yes … or who knew.
Ian Page: I mean, that’s like amazing feedback. And, and, and, and that’s an advantage. You, you, we talk about or we read about actors and, and what, do you prefer film, TV, or stage? And w- the general answer usually is, “I like the stage.”
Why?
Suzy Vadori: Yeah.
Ian Page: Because they get the immediate response. They know if they’re hitting it, right? Yeah. In film, you don’t know.
Suzy Vadori: And you can adjust, and you can adjust, and you can pause, and that’s the [00:18:00] thing. I mean, writing humor is tricky, and I wanted to talk about that specifically on this podcast because you’re so good at it, but at the same time, you know, even when we’re working through things, it’s important to get that feedback because on the page, the writing, sarcasm in particular, is very difficult to convey- Yes
in writing without kind of calling out, “He said sarcastically,” or something, right? Like, you almost have to say it because you don’t have the advantages that we have in [00:18:30] life, which are timing and intonation and pause for effect and, um, and sort of that emphasis, right? Now, and you have the- Like, we don’t have any of those tools
Ian Page: that’s right, and n- and the obvious example is, is, um, when you get an email answer to something you’ve said, uh, and it doesn’t even have to be sarcasm, and, and, and you’re, you’re looking at their response. They must have misunderstood me. That’s not what I wrote.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah.
Ian Page: Uh-
Suzy Vadori: And then you reread your email, and you’re like, “Ooh, I could
Ian Page: see where they-” Well, yeah.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah. [00:19:00] Yeah.
Ian Page: Yeah, you could see that. And you know, the Twitter wars or, you know, social media, you know, backlash or something like that, you’ve got those kinds of problems because a misunderstanding or misdirection, sometimes on purpose, can be, um, great fuel for humor, for sarcasm. But from the point of view of the reader trying to grasp all that, you have to have some sort of obvious signpost or s- or series of signposts for the characters.
[00:19:30] So one of the things you had pointed out when you went through my first book as an editor was, I get it But it has to be more on the page. Mm-hmm. It has to be, there, there has to be elements there so the reader can go, “Aha.” And then-
Suzy Vadori: Yeah, and-
Ian Page: Either enjoy the book- I’m like that
Suzy Vadori: though sometimes. I, yeah, sometimes I have to read things two or three times ’cause I’m like, “Oh, what?”
And then I’m like, “Oh, I get it.” But it- Yeah … but, but readers aren’t necessarily gonna take that time. I have to as an [00:20:00] editor, but you’re right, and, and I can point out those places where it didn’t land quite right. That’s right. Um, because you want them to be able to digest it the first time, and sometimes we need to be incredibly obvious even though it feels like if this is how you and your hockey team talk all the time, it may make sense.
When you read it to yourself, you’ve gotta know that it’s gonna land the way that it’s gonna land, or it either won’t make sense, it might offend somebody, it might, you know, like lots of different things can happen. Humor is often [00:20:30] based in insults and, and in inside jokes and things. And like you said, the comics that you used to do, the people loved everybody else’s.
They didn’t so much like it about themselves, right?
Ian Page: No.
Suzy Vadori: Um-
Ian Page: No. We, we, holding up a mirror to ourselves is fraught with problems. I think the, from a humor perspective, you have to recognize that even within your own cultural group, call it your, you know, your dinner club gals or, or your, your golfing buddies or, well, it could be any number of combinations.
Could be mixed company. There’s usually a [00:21:00] shorthand that gets developed over time, and you can exploit that shorthand with your own jokes amongst your friends, but none of those jokes would make any sense to an outside party who’s just not hung around with you.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah.
Ian Page: So that problem amplifies once you get into writing for a broader audience.
And in the first time through, I recognized that there were a number of jokes and a number of, uh, of things that I was writing about that, you know, they seemed [00:21:30] absurd. My mind is basically a Tilt-A-Whirl of, of, you know, an endless engine of observations. I’ve probably left thousands of jokes in my head on the cutting room floor.
Mostly because I can’t remember them all, but partly because, well, that doesn’t make sense to, to- Yeah …
Suzy Vadori: a reader.
Ian Page: Or,
Suzy Vadori: or how do you walk them through? And so part of the trick, and you’ve done a good job of this in this and the subsequent novels that you’re still working to release, um, with a giant cast of characters, what you need to do is [00:22:00] bring the reader along on those inside jokes and make them part of the gang so that they can see where the joke developed, and then when it’s used later, they understand it, right?
So it’s kind of like one of those things when you’re writing humor that you need to have the setup and you need to bring that reader along that you don’t always think you need to do. It’s kind of like world building or magic or all the things that people throw in as another element that we have to teach the reader along the way.
Your job is to actually teach them how to [00:22:30] interpret the humor so that in that moment when you need them to really get it, it works, right? So there’s work to be done to trace that or to thread that through, and I think you
Ian Page: did a really good job. And you- and, and you’re probably gonna have to make a decision if you decide that you wanna write something humorous, you’re gonna have to just decide what the warmth level is.
So think of it, uh, as a, a light bulb. You know, you can go into Home Depot or any store these days and you can get the cool white, or you can get the warm, you know, warmish light[00:23:00]
that p- what people used to call incandescent light And you have to decide how warm you want to be. And the problem that, that I faced in writing especially the subsequent books, now the universe is kind of established, how consistent can I keep that warmth level? Do I wanna get into the shock humor on the cool side, or do I wanna be something more warm and witty like a, like a, a Wodehousian kind of, uh, writer [00:23:30] would?
The problem for humor is keeping that tone consistent so that, uh, the, the readers aren’t enjoying, enjoying, enjoying, and all of a sudden they get slapped.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah.
Ian Page: And they, they go, “Well, that, where’d that come from?” That’s really kind of
Suzy Vadori: like a terror- Which is something you can do in real life or you could do as a comedian on the, on the stage.
You could have sweet humor all the way along, and then slap your audience, and it would be a shock, and you could wait while they recover. You’re there to coddle them when they’re reading your book, so you’re right, you kind of have to set the tone. [00:24:00] It also might attract
Ian Page: a different reader. Yeah, and, and then that, that creates a second problem, and, and that is the difference between, you know, landing the joke in the present tense of, of, you know, the situation that the characters are in, and throwing a little, you know, not really a breadcrumb, but a little bit of foreshadowing.
So in the second book called Patron Games, which is a theatrical farce, the plot lines, uh, there’s, and there’s several that, that collide, detonate, and, and create, you know, lots of, uh, fun [00:24:30] disaster, uh, at the end. They need a lot of foreshadowing, so there’s a long buildup. The architecture of how that got put together was different than The Naked Ambition, which is more of a straightforward intrigue.
Y- you know what the end is gonna be. That’s the ticking clock.
Suzy Vadori: Thanks for tuning in to the Show Don’t Tell Writing Podcast with me, Suzy Vadori. It is my absolute honor to bring you the straight [00:25:00] goods for that book you’re writing or the book that you’re planning to write. Please help me keep the podcast going by helping people find us. You can subscribe to the podcast and leave a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever else you’re listening to show how much you enjoy the show.
That’s how other listeners will find us. Also, visit Suzyvadori.com/newsletter to hop on my weekly inspired writing newsletter list, where you’ll stay inspired and be the first to know about all the [00:25:30] upcoming training events and writing courses that happen in my community. Want my eyes on your writing?
Submit a page of your current draft for a chance to come on the podcast at the link in the show notes. I’d love to chat with you about your writing in my always positive, incredibly supportive way so that you can make great strides towards your writing goals. I’m here to cheer you on. Remember, that book you’re writing is gonna open doors that you haven’t even thought of yet, and I can’t wait to help you [00:26:00] make that it the absolute best it can be.
See you again right here next week