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Monty Python is a great example. I started watching it and I didn’t get it. Then I watched a sketch about the Spanish Inquisition. Two people sitting on a couch, looking at pictures and chatting about inane topics when...red robed priests break in the room and shout, “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.” Wow, how stupid, I thought. Later in the show, another boring sketch when...you’ve got it, “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.” By the end of the show, the minute a door popped open and I caught that first glimpse of a red robe, I’d start laughing. It was a great example of a RUNNING GAG. And as I wrote it up for my upcoming talk I realized, I’d done a running gag in my first Harlequin Duet, without realizing what I was doing. I didn’t give it a name. Throughout the story the heroine keeps referring to her first kiss with the hero. He keeps insisting that it was mouth-to-mouth (she blew up the chemistry lab in school). Finally, they kiss and she realizes what kissing him was really like. She turns to him and says, “Wow, it was mouth-to-mouth.” Ah-hah...I realized I wrote running gags. Who knew?!! LOL
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