Buffalo Flats, Ep. 9: Humor
At risk of making Martine’s humor less funny, we take apart the humor in Buffalo Flats, from set-ups and punchlines to adding a funny twist, from individual sentences to full subplots.
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[00:00:00] Anne-Marie Strohman: I don't know, a good poop joke…
[00:00:02] Erin Nuttall: Doesn't exist!
[Music intro]
[00:00:03] Anne-Marie Strohman: Welcome to the ninth episode of the Kid Lit Craft Podcast. The season we're taking a deep dive into Martine Leavitt's YA novel, Buffalo Flats. Today we're focusing on humor. I'm Anne-Marie Strohman and I write for children and young adults and also short stories for adults.
[00:00:23] Erin Nuttall: Hi, I am Erin Nuttall and I write stories for children and young adults.
[00:00:28] Anne-Marie Strohman: On Kid Lit Craft, we look at mentor texts to discover the mechanics of how writers do what they do, so we can apply it to our own writing.
[00:00:37] Erin Nuttall: As Anne-Marie mentioned we are looking at Martine Leavitt's Buffalo Flats in this story, that takes place in the late 1800s in the Northwest Territories of Canada, Rebecca wants more than anything to have her own piece of land.
[00:00:53] Anne-Marie Strohman: Humor is one of those things that's really tricky to define and it's kind of a, you know it when you see it, but it is also something that we can analyze and fair warning, analyzing it usually makes it not funny anymore. So we will do our best to show you the humor and then look at how it happens. And also humor is notoriously subjective. We don't all find the same things funny. So Erin, given all that, what are we doing today?
[00:01:19] Erin Nuttall: We're gonna break down things that I found funny and track the ways people talk about humor in the books and see what Martine does to lighten the mood and to make their readers smile. And there's a lot of different ways that you can use humor. It doesn't have to be like a laugh a minute or, you know, Laurel and Hardy. I don't know why that was my example 'cause I don't know if I've actually ever seen Laurel and Hardy.
[00:01:41] Anne-Marie Strohman: I used to watch them on the big screen TV at the pizza parlor when I was a kid.
[00:01:45] Erin Nuttall: You had a big screen TV at your pizza parlor?
[00:01:48] Anne-Marie Strohman: Oh yes, we did projection, like super old school projection tv, and they would show cartoons, and Laurel and Hardy, and Charlie Chaplin.
[00:01:55] Erin Nuttall: Oh, oh my goodness. So…
[00:01:57] Anne-Marie Strohman: And it was called Pizza Pirate. And the doors on the bathroom said buoys and gulls.
[00:02:05] Erin Nuttall: That is a very strong memory. We did not have a pizza parlor that I can think of, but we had a video, like a video rental that also sold pizza. They only had a small TV up in the corner like the hospital, and they played VHS movies of the day. So, not as cool.
[00:02:29] Anne-Marie Strohman: Not, definitely not.
[00:02:30] Erin Nuttall: And I don't think I ever went to their bathroom. So..
[00:02:34] Anne-Marie Strohman: You wouldn't know.
[00:02:35] Anne-Marie Strohman: One of my favorite humor techniques is contrast: something dark and something light or something small after something big. So tell us how this works in Buffalo Flats.
[00:02:45] Erin Nuttall: Okay, well, so we have already talked about the picnic lunchbox social, but in case you missed an earlier episode, all of the single females make a cute box lunch and then the men bid on them.
And things don't go right for Rebecca. It's actually all goes kind of wonky for her. Her box lunch gets ruined. So it looks really ugly and she gets a pity bid. And then when it's all over she's also had to spend some time with her arch nemesis, Radonna, who also has a crush on Levi.
So not great for Rebecca. But then at the end of the social, we have this interaction. “Brother Card walked by,” and he's the guy in charge, “’Eating alone, Rebecca?’ ‘Brother Card, why do girls cook and boys bid? I say next year we do it backwards.’ ‘Why Rebecca,’ he said with a pleasant smile. ‘Boys don't cook.’ ‘Then let them make medicine and have a taste of their own sir’, she said.”
Sorry, I could barely get it out. Rebecca is such a smart mouth sometimes and I just love it because you don't expect it 'cause most of the time she's really obedient and wants to follow the rules. But she also notices when the social rules are a little wonky. This is a contrast, like what you were talking about. So we have Rebecca making a strong feminist statement because she noticed that the rules didn't serve everyone equally, and particularly women and girls were getting the short end of the stick.
She points this out to somebody who is in charge. And so that could be seen as too much of a pushback or as being not respectful enough of her elders and it could make the reader not like Rebecca and feel like she was being sour or something like that. But we have the contrast with the funny line that we get at the end.
So we get the feminism and the noticing of things that are not quite right and then we get the punchline of the joke. I think that that is an important craft tool to think about. If you have something that you want your character to say that maybe the people in your story aren't going to like or if you want your character to be saying hard truths and you wanna make sure that you have the reader on your side, this is a way to do it.
[00:05:12] Anne-Marie Strohman: So give us another example of this contrast idea and how it functions.
[00:05:16] Erin Nuttall: At an earlier time, she's at a dance. And we, as the reader have just met Levi, her crush, and Coby the regular guy next door, who she seems to have an emotional connection with that she doesn't quite realize yet. And at this point, the reader also knows that Rebecca really wants to be a better person. And so here we go. “Levi.” Oh, and also Levi: one of the very charming things that he did was ask her to dance a waltz with him, which was, as we've discussed, a little risque and kind of made Rebecca's night. So…
“Levi had a way of making naughtiness seem all right, and she liked that about him. It was comfortable. Coby, on the other hand. There he was helping Mother with the serving, doing what Rebecca herself should be doing. Somehow without saying a word, without even meaning to, he was always making her want to be better than she was. Well, she wouldn't look at him.”
So I think that the scene is really fun because it could make you dislike Coby because there he is doing what she should be doing, right? And it could also feel a little cheekily but the joke saves us. So we have the contrast between Levi and Coby. We have the contrast between Rebecca knowing what she should do and seeing Coby do it.
And then we have the contrast of this pressure of duty and then the joke. And so there's a lot happening in that little scene. And the joke just really saves us from too much sincerity, too much looking inward for Rebecca.
[00:07:03] Anne-Marie Strohman: We've seen a couple of contrasts here and the jokes coming at the end of kind of a longer section that could turn sentimental. Does Martine ever kind of just launch into a joke or have a flat out joke?
[00:07:17] Erin Nuttall: She does actually. We talked about the scene in an earlier episode where Rebecca is trying to do better and so she decides before church that she will pick the scariest widow and go and talk to her because she's probably lonely, but she was also very scary.
And so she does talk to her and she finds out that she was wrong, and she's a very funny, nice lady. And so…
“Rebecca looked for Father to tell him she didn't go to church now. For in discovering how wrong she had been about Sister Gladden's, true nature, she had already had a sermon in how not to judge others.”
I personally feel like that is a flat out joke. It's not like, you know why did the chicken cross the road? But it's very funny in that even while trying to do better, she's also trying to get out of going to church. And so I, I just thought that that was really funny. And as we look at something like that on our own work, I think it's good to think about ways that we can put these little pieces of lightness in. Like if you look at the themes of this book, they're pretty heavy, but the book itself is a very pleasant joy to read because in large part of the humor that Martine goes ahead and lightens it with that, that little joke.
'Cause she could have finished the scene. Oh, and Rebecca discovered that she was wrong about Sister Gladden. She totally could have, but oh my gosh, how boring would that be?
[00:08:52] Anne-Marie Strohman: Hmm, we, we had a whole episode on how not to make your book boring, so we're adding to it. Add humor.
[00:08:59] Erin Nuttall: Yes. Humor for sure.
[00:09:02] Anne-Marie Strohman: So often funny ideas only work in the right sentence structure. And we've said again and again how Martine is a master at the sentence level. How does this play out with humor in the book?
[00:09:13] Erin Nuttall: So one of the storylines actually, that I don't know that we've even talked about yet was there's this mountain man named Joe Cosley and he shows up to the dance. Everybody seems to know him. He's a trapper mountain man kind of guy, big personality. Everybody seems to know and like him, and he has a girlfriend in the city where they are not. And he shows up to the dance with a $2,000 diamond ring, which I think most ladies at that time were lucky to get even a gold band. Everybody's very excited about this.
None of them have seen something like this before. And so Martine says “the girls must each look at the ring wishing it could be theirs, glancing at Joe Cosley as if to remind themselves that such a ring would necessarily come with him as a husband.” So yes, you can have the ring, but you'll have to be married to mountain man Joe Cosley.
[00:10:12] Anne-Marie Strohman: We get the funny part at the end, right? And that's been consistent in the examples that we've looked at, that you'll have information or context, and then the funny line comes at the very end. And here it's all in one sentence.
[00:10:27] Anne-Marie Strohman: But him as a husband comes right at the end. And that's just the pin in it.
[00:10:31] Erin Nuttall: Yeah, and Martine could have said—I can't even think of a way to structure it worse 'cause it's so lovely. It just sits there nicely. But there's definitely a way to structure it worse. Many ways, I'm sure.
[00:10:44] Anne-Marie Strohman: You could say they look at the ring, they look at Joe Cosley. They'd have to be married to him, but then they'd get a ring.
[00:10:50] Erin Nuttall: Right. That is awful.
[00:10:51] Anne-Marie Strohman: With all the same information, it's terrible.
[00:10:56] Erin Nuttall: That, that one is pretty awful. Yeah. So a, a nice concise sentence structure, there's just a lot in there, is, is a nice way to do it.
And I mean, it gives you a lot of information too about the community, about ideas of marriage and, just again, Rebecca's personality 'cause she's noticing this, right?
[00:11:20] Anne-Marie Strohman: And that's so great to think about. Like I'm not always naturally a funny person and so when I'm writing, the humor doesn't necessarily come through, but I can go back and have a moment where I'm like, it would be great to have humor here and I can even just look at the sentence structure and try it a few different ways to see if I could get something funny to happen.
[00:11:41] Erin Nuttall: Well, and I think another good thing is if you're looking at your pages and you're like, I feel like a funny beat would be good to lighten the mood to cut the sweetness of this moment.
Or whatever reason you might want to have humor. You could look for the absurd. So we have Joe Cosley, who is absurd. We have Rebecca, who's trying so hard to be good, wanting to get out of church, who is absurd. We have her not looking at Coby. And that therefore not having to know that he is a better man. Absurd.
I think Martine uses absurdity a lot and I think it's the basis for a lot of excellent humor. Now, that is my opinion. I have, you know, I have my views on humor as does every person. We all think different things are funny. And you're not gonna get any tips on scatological humor from me. Sorry if you're writing middle grade or below, or even above I guess, but..
[00:12:46] Anne-Marie Strohman: I don't know, a good poop joke…
[00:12:48] Erin Nuttall: Doesn't exist!
[Laughter]
[00:12:52] Anne-Marie Strohman: I think it probably does. So we've talked about using humor in these specific moments that are really about other subplots or main plots, but Martine uses the Sempels’ cow that we've seen before as a humorous subplot, and as we've talked about, the Sempel subplot does get more serious by about halfway through, but the first part, it's only a humorous subplot and it pays off at the middle of the book. Can you dig into how the humor works in that longer subplot a bit?
[00:13:26] Erin Nuttall: The Sempels’ cow has been eating the Leavitt's grass, which is a big problem because it’s theft basically.
And so Rebecca's dad tries to talk to Brother Sempel about it. And Brother Sempel is kind of a jerk, but he tries to be funny with it. And the humor does kind of diffuse a tense situation. He tells Rebecca's dad that he's tried to talk to the cows about eating the neighbor's grass, but they don't understand English.
And then, and then it's fine. It's funny, right? So you can picture the situation where you have Rebecca's dad trying not to be mad at his neighbor 'cause he wants to love his neighbor. That's the commandment.
But yet cows are stealing his food and he's like urgh this is like food my cows could be eating. And so Brother Sempel makes that joke. And he also makes a joke that if Brother Leavitt can't think of a solution on his own, he should pray about it. Which, you know, they're in a very religious community.
And so we have that. And then we have a, a few other interactions with the Sempels. But the biggest thing in this cow story is that one of the cows starts coming in, eating the hay right out of the barn, and Rebecca decides that she is going to milk that cow, at least partially to pay for the grass and the hay.
And then we don't really hear about it again. We know that that is good for Rebecca 'cause it helps her make money for her goal of land. But that's really it until we get to the middle. Brother Sempel comes over and he is mad. M-A-D mad because Rebecca's mind had been on other things and she had totally milked the cow dry. And so he comes over and he says, “My milk cow has been giving us barely enough milk for our own use for some time now. First my wife said it must be sick, but now I know that somebody must be stealing.”
Then Ammon, we have a little bit of humor from the brother. “‘Your cows go home,’ Ammon said pertly.” So we have, oh, I just picture this situation 'cause we have this guy who's so mad, so mad, and he is mad at the Leavitts and Ammon just can't keep it inside. And he makes that smart mouth funny comment. I'm sure his dad was not thrilled with it, but, Father says, “‘You must be in error sir for I have—I have never in my life taken what isn't mine.’ And Brother Sempel stood his ground. ‘I've come for apology and compensation.’” So here we get the funny starts happening. “Rebecca wondered briefly if it would be okay to love the world minus one, but that would be like living in a world where one candy apple was always an onion and you could never be too sure about anything.”
That is actually a very nice throwback and it's funny, and we're throwing back to a very funny situation that happened earlier when her nemesis Radonna accidentally ate a candy onion, and Rebecca thought it was really funny. She thought…
[00:16:26] Anne-Marie Strohman: We talked about that too in one of our episodes.
[00:16:29] Erin Nuttall: Yeah. So we have that little bit of throwback and then, and then we have with Father, he says “Rebecca is the one who does the milking. Daughter, would you know anything about this?” So poor Rebecca is on the spot. And then we have another funny line. “Studying the situation and coming to the conclusion that the only one who could get her out of this trouble was God, she decided upon a strategem of telling the truth.” So this is what happens. “‘I do, Father,” she said. Why did all her good ideas shrivel under the scrutiny of her parents? “The Sempels’ cows eat our grass and the milk cow has been in our barn eating our hay. I tried to get it out, but it wouldn't understand English. So I suppose I thought milk for hay. It seemed only fair.’
‘Milk for hay,’ Father repeated.” So here, Rebecca's worried that her dad's gonna be like no. But then he says, “Milk for hay. A fair arrangement, wouldn't you say, Brother Sempel? Your cows have been eating our grass and our hay. We have been taking milk in payment.” So then brother Sempel, of course, doesn't think this is only fair.
He's very mad. He says some rude things to Rebecca, and then as he's stomping away, he says, “‘I see. I shall have to find a way to keep my bossies at home,’ Sempel said. Father nodded. ‘Pray about it, Brother Sempel,’ he said soberly. ‘Only pray and a way will be provided.’”
So Martine does so much in that scene. She gives us insight into the family dynamic. She gives us insight into Brother Sempel. She shows a family bond. She shows how clever Rebecca is. We have those throwbacks to the beginning of the story and to like a third of the way through the story. And those, those touchstones are actually funny originally too. So, you could look at the comedy rule of three for that.
[00:18:31] Anne-Marie Strohman: She really uses that storyline to build, starting with a little humor and building it then up to this moment at the— near the midpoint where all that humor build pays off.
[00:18:43] Erin Nuttall: Yes. So that is another thing to think about in your writing is if you don't think that you know you are a comedian, then that's totally fine.
You can just insert a few funny lines and then by referring back to them, then it makes your second time funnier. Like her father spouting the words back to Brother Sempel, makes him way funnier than they were originally. And also like her father's kind of stern and he's a real down the road kind of guy.
I've never in my life taken something that I have not paid for, right? Like he is, he's that guy. And so it makes you really like him too 'cause he can see the funny in the situation.
[00:19:30] Anne-Marie Strohman: So for this last example, because I've gotten a sneak peek at what it is let's return to that idea of contrast. So late in the book, the family suffers a tragedy. One of many tragedies actually, and their house is swept away in a flood, and that's really a dark thing to have happen.
Why are we talking about that in an episode on humor?
[00:19:51] Erin Nuttall: Because we do see some humorous observations by Rebecca and mostly that's what it is, but it does help us to process the tragedy in a way that does not become overwhelming. And I don't think that you have to write about a tragedy and then stick humor in it. You can have a just full on sad, sad, sad story.
But personally I like to have a little bit of humor in those sadder episodes, and I think you'll see this in some TV shows. My daughter, loves the old, she's 14, but we have watched the old episodes of Elementary. and they are dealing with really serious topics but they also have funny pieces to them and that helps her enjoy it more. Serious scenes, tragic scenes even, can have humor interspersed with it.
[00:20:55] Anne-Marie Strohman: Sometimes it can even amplify the heartbreak too. If you have a funny moment and then a sad moment, that heartbreak is gonna hit you harder. If you have a sad moment and then a funny moment, that lightness will hit you harder. I like the example of This Is Us, make you cry every time, and it was a very—there was a formula to it that they would show you a very happy scene and then something heartbreaking would happen or there was a heartbreaking thing, and then there's a large, like a happy victory. And so that contrast is what hit you in the feels every time.
[00:21:26] Erin Nuttall: That is interesting. I have not watched that show, but I do think that you're right like any sitcom, if they ever go into a heavier topic before they go to commercial, there is going to be a joke. And that I think is wise because that joke keeps you around for the commercial break so that you come back 'cause you're not left on that really heavy feeling. You're left on that oh yeah, that was, that was kind of funny.
[00:21:53] Anne-Marie Strohman: And we've seen that with these examples from Martine's use of humor, that it's often at the end of a section or at the end of a paragraph, and it keeps you on that page turn into that next chapter or into that next scene.
[00:22:06] Erin Nuttall: Yeah. So here we have this tragic scene. This tragic event in that the Leavitt's home is washed away in a flash flood. Their home, their barn, all that stuff is down by the creek, which makes sense.
What a lovely place to be. But the men are all gone out working and doing their things when Rebecca and her mom are the only ones home. And Rebecca's mother recognizes the signs of the flash flood coming. So they are able to escape, but their home is not, and their home is swept away. And this is a little bit after: When Father found them, he leaned his head on his wife's neck and wept. ‘Thank the Lord’, he said over and over, which Rebecca thought was rather generous of him, given that the Lord had just swept away his house and it was likely floating toward the sea at this very moment.” So we have this super touching scene of her very, again, very stoic father, crying on her mother's shoulder and just being so relieved and showing his emotions and, obviously Rebecca is also sad that this happened. And maybe a little angry at the Lord right there. But, but also in a funny way, which I like too, because we can feel that maybe she is a little bit mad at God for doing this to her and her family. Right? And yeah, it's funny. So it gives you space to absorb the tragedy, her father's emotions and then that anger to God, right? There are a lot of other little funny pieces in that scene. Well, maybe not a lot, but there are a few other funny pieces in that scene. So it's not just this one kind of salty comment, but there's a few other places where Rebecca is observing absurdities in a humorous way.
[00:23:59] Anne-Marie Strohman: And that's consistent in all of the episodes that we've seen that a lot of it is Rebecca's perspective. The book is a very close third from Rebecca. We don't see into anybody else's head. We just see Rebecca's thoughts and observations of the world, and she has that humorous edge that it's not quite snarky, but…I wish I had a word for it.
[00:24:21] Erin Nuttall: I'm glad it's not snarky because I don't think that would fit someone of her era. I feel like snark is more of a modern way of expressing yourself. If you were to go back a few generations, I just don't think that adults were putting up with snark from children. It's not to say that people might not have these snarky thoughts in their heads, but I do think that that is a more modern, humorous take.
And so if you are writing historical fiction that is something to think about is like, is this the type of humor that people would use?
[00:24:57] Anne-Marie Strohman: And in this case too, because it is from Rebecca's perspective and she doesn't say it out loud a lot, we get the benefit of that humor. But then in her functioning within the context of the society and her family, she's not expressing that humor as often.
[00:25:14] Erin Nuttall: For sure, because she could not say that to her dad while he's crying. Like, oh, I don't think the Lord deserves your thanks. Maybe you should be shaking your fist at him. You know? To that point, it also wasn't snarky. You're right. I just think she, it's a keen observer.
[00:25:34] Anne-Marie Strohman: So Erin, what are you taking away from today?
[00:25:36] Erin Nuttall: For me, I think it is important to remember, I can add back the humor because I do like to try to write funny. And guess what? It doesn't always just like come. Maybe it does for Martine. I don't know. But I do like to try to write things that are funny. I enjoy funny things. I enjoy absurdities if you haven't figured that out. But like I said, if I'm writing an early draft, it isn't always something that comes right away.
So it's good for me to remember that that is something that you could come back and do. So that's not something from Martine. That's something that we actually, that you and I just barely discussed. What about you? Did you learn something from Martine?
[00:26:20] Anne-Marie Strohman: I did, I really, I'm thinking a lot about the character's observations of the world. I have a YA novel that I'm working on right now that has, it's dark and I've put in humor because my litmus test is I write and write and it gets darker and darker, and then I'm like, oh, there's gotta be something more.
When I get sick of it, I'm like, my readers are definitely sick of it, so I'll add, you know, a humorous scene. And, like the Sempels’ cow, I have kind of my main character's friends tend to be funnier than the dark stuff that's happening in her family. But I think I can probably get a little bit more of her internal observations of the world in there. And I really love this idea of being able to craft sentences that have humor and go back and see those moments where I want to add something and look at what I have, use the content that's there, and see if I can shape that into something funny. So those are my two things.
[00:27:18] Erin Nuttall: I love that idea to take what you have and see if you can make it funny.
[00:27:26] Anne-Marie Strohman: So Erin, give us one beautiful sentence.
[00:27:29] Erin Nuttall: Okay, well I'm gonna give us one funny sentence.
[00:27:32] Anne-Marie Strohman: Okay. I was gonna say that would probably be a better choice for today.
[00:27:36] Erin Nuttall: So this takes place after church. And Brother Card, if you recall. He's in charge of a lot of things.
And he asked everyone to stay for a special meeting 'cause they're gonna talk about the canal and all this other stuff. But that's the key that you need to know. They've already been at church for several hours and because that is what happened back then. It's a lot of hours of church. And so this is what she says.
“It took people a while to settle. They needed to stand and shift about and chat after being reminded of their sins for an hour.” Oh, guess it was just an hour. But anyway, again, that's Rebecca's observation of the absurd. And maybe that wasn't as absurd. It is just her funny observation of life.
[00:28:21] Anne-Marie Strohman: I think we've covered as much humor as my sad little heart can handle.
[00:28:26] Erin Nuttall: Well, you and your dark heart, you mean.
[00:28:29] Anne-Marie Strohman: So that's it for today.
[Music outro]
[00:28:31] Anne-Marie Strohman: If you're enjoying this podcast, you can find more content like this at kidlitcraft.com. Find us on social media @KidLitCraft. You can support this podcast on Patreon. We'll be sending out Kid Lit Craft stickers to the first 20 subscribers at least. Maybe more. We've also got t-shirts and you can find them at Cotton Bureau,
[00:28:51] Erin Nuttall: Please download episodes; like, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen; let your writer friends know about the podcast, and we can't wait to nerd out with you.
[00:29:02] Anne-Marie Strohman: Thanks for joining us. See you next time.
