First thing first, I absolutly loved The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared (despite it’s ridiculosely long title; let’s just call it The Book from now on). And before the comments section turns into a fist fight, no, I don’t really think there are any rules to creative writing, but there are guidlines you should try to follow until you know how and why you’re ignoring them.
And in The Book, author Jonas Jonasson shows that he has the skills to break some of the most hardcoded writing “rules”, and the answer to both how and why are usually the same: comedy.
Let’s start by examing the characters.
One of the cardinal “rules” of writing is that character motivation should be clear for the protagonist. Without a clear motivation, it becomes difficult to root for the protagonsit or care about the plot in general. But in The Book we aren’t really told why Allan Karlsson, the protagonist, climbs out the window in the opening sequence until the very end of the the book. That’s the inciding incident, the point of no return, and it seemingly happens, just because. In most other stories, this would’ve been a good reason to put the book down. The same goes for the second most important event in the story, when Allan decides to steal a suitcase at the local bus station. We’re given no reason for this. And, of course, both the reason and the effect is comedy.
When Allan pulls off absurd acts like running away from his retirement home on the day of his 100th birthday and stealing a suitcase for absolutely no reason, we’re left with two options: we can laugh at the absurdity or say “this is weird/horrible” and leave. But the key here is that the author has set the right tone early on and indicated that this will be a comedy so that laughter will be the natural response.
It’s the same kind of humor most TV comedy series like Friends or How I Met Your Mother rely on. Absurd events happen, and the characters react in ways that no sane person would, and we can either be appalled or laugh. Mr. Bean and Forrest Gump are two other good examples which are even more similar to the way the comedy works in The Book.
But motivation isn’t the only way the character, especially Allan, the protagonist, differ from most stories. It’s an often given advice in writing circles that the major characters should have arcs, that they should change throughout the story and learn something. I’d even argue that following the protagonists on their journeys and learning as they do is one of the reasons we read stories to start with. Yes, there are stories with circular arcs and “literary” stories will often have flat character arcs, but as a guideline, the best stories have strong characters arcs.
But in The Book, Allan doesn’t really change at all. None of the characters do. Sure, some of them might switch side, but they don’t really learn anything or change their personality. And the reason for this is, once again, comedy.
Since the humor in the story comes from the way the characters act and react, letting them grow smarter would run the risk of making them less and less funny as we neared the end. A good example of this is John Scalzi’s Red Shirts, which is an excellent and brilliantly funny book I recommend to anyone who enjoys comedy and/or science fiction. However, in Red Shirts the characters do learn about what’s going around them as the story progresses, and as good as the story was, the second half of it wasn’t nearly as funny as the first (instead, it rellied, as a more traditional story, on compelling characters and plot). Not so for The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared (The Book). It just kept being funny until the very last page.
Sticking with the characters for a little while longer, authors can’t seem to agree on what makes a good character, but one thing seems certain: we should root for the protagonist (unless, of course, you’re writing an anti-hero story. I mean a real anti-hero not Batman-anti-hero, but those stories are few and far between, because, really, no one likes to read about a douchebag).
Using fantasy author Brandon Sanderson’s now quite popular way of analysing what makes us root for a character, it’s the combination of ther level of competency, likeability, and proactiveness.
Allan Karlsson is certainly a competent explossives experts, and he’s got a knack for drinking, but other than that he’s quite incompetent. He only comes of smart compared to Herbert Einstein and the latter’s wife. Allan’s reasoning is often unbeliveable stupid, and he usually only survive through pure luck.
As far as being proactive, he does sometimes take charge, especially in the latter of the timelines in the story, but mostly, stuff just happens to him.
You could claim that he’s likeable, that he’s a nice guy, but I’d argue that isn’t really the case. We like Allan because we spend a lot of time with him and the crazy situations he gets himself into makes us laugh. But really, he’s a thief and a murderer who shows very little sign of remorse. But again comedy is the relieving factor. He makes us laugh, so we root for him.
But the characters aren’t the only point where Jonasson breaks the “rules”. Throughout large parts of The Book, especially in the beginning, the story is written in what seems like a close third person narrator. Until it isn’t.
Shifting POV type in the middle of a story is another big no-no, but The Book will often shift into an omniscient narrator when it provides an opportunity to deliver a solid joke.
I must admit the first time this happened it was a bit jarring, but as it occured more and more often, it started to feel natural, and the jokes were always worth it (which is how you can tell Jonasson knew what he was doing; he never broke the rules to deliver a weak joke).
You could, of course, argue that the story was really written in an omniscient narrator throughtout then, but as far as I could tell, the omniscient part was never included unless a joke was being delivered.
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Comedic writing often gets an undeserved bad rep. Yes, writers like Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams have enjoyed commercial success, but they aren’t exactly favorites amongst the critics and award judges.
I think it’s partly because some people feel that good writing should hightlight important social themes and be critical of what’s going on in the world around us, that good writing should be serious, not funny. But while not all comedic writing is social satire, Terry Pratchett especially managed to show that comedic writing can highlight society’s problems in unique and interesting ways. In fact, the humor is often what makes an otherwise bleak reality work as entertainment too. I, for one, would never have suffored through a 300 pages long lecture on the unfairnes of the inequality between men and women, but Pratchett’s Equal Rites on the other hand… And as Neil Gaiman puts it: Serious isn’t the opposite of funny. Not funny is the opposite of funny.
It might also be that some people feel that comedic writing lacks literary merrits, that the humor is a mean used to cruise by with mediocre writing. And while that might be the case for some writing, it worth remembering Sturgeon’s Law: Ninety percent of everything is crap. That includes comedic and non-comedic writing alike. And as The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared clearly shows, good comedic writing circumvents the tradional writing rules for a reason.
Besides, being funny is an entire skill on its own, one a lot of writers could benefit from learning to implement once in a while. Reading The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared made me want to practice writing funny stories at least.
Toby Backman 