44. Wasting the
reader’s time
You don’t have to be a genius to know that being silly can be a lot of fun (which is how come I figured it out years ago). Telling stories provides plenty of opportunities for silliness and nonsense. Another way of thinking about nonsense is as a way of ‘wasting the reader’s time’. The surprising thing I’ve found is that many readers love having their time wasted!
For instance, we assume that when a story starts out it is going to make sense and that it will have a beginning, middle and end … but it doesn’t necessarily have to. In ‘Barky the barking dog’, the ‘story’ gets stuck on the one action …
The 13-Storey Treehouse
Or, in the case of ‘The very very very bad story’ it gets stuck on the same two words for 11 pages until the book finally ends.
The last page of The Bad Book.
But hey, if you think I’m good at wasting the reader’s time, then you’ve obviously never done one of Terry’s annoying page-number quests.
Just Doomed!
Sometimes a story might pretend to be telling you something when in fact it’s not telling you anything that you don’t already know from reading the title.
The Cat on the Mat is Flat
A nonsense story may hold out the possibility of an explanation that never comes.
The Very Bad Book
Nonsense riddles and jokes are fun too (the punchlines make no sense at all—in case you were wondering!).
Write your own ‘time-wasting’ cartoon
Create your own ‘time-wasting’ cartoon in the style of ‘Barky the barking dog’. There are many possible characters you could have fun with.
For example:
• Buzzy the buzzing fly
• Purry the purring cat
• Mooey the mooing cow
• Chirpy the chirping bird
• Hooty the hooting owl
• Roary the roaring lion
• Pooey the pooing parrot
• Fighty the fighting fish
• Argy Bargy the angry aardvark
• Beeep the foul-mouthed kitten
• Snoozy the slowest snail in the world
… OR THIS
Rubber-stamp story
And hey, you can waste a lot of time creating stupid stories with a rubber stamp, or even better a whole set.
STAMPEDE: AN AFRICAN ADVENTURE
