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About This Author
Well, hello. I’m still testing this.
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Music Notes
A blog, generally about music, usually for projects hosted by Jeff  . I may also write about the 48-Hour Media Prompt Challenge if I don't feel like writing a story or poem inspired by the given song. Other bits of poetry or different topics of discussion might end up here as well.
November 17, 2025 at 5:12am November 17, 2025 at 5:12am
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A couple months ago, a mentor friend and I were discussing having ChatGPT assist us with our humor. I said I would never use AI because I thought its humor seemed repetitive and exaggerated. I think the difference here is that I didn't tell it to rewrite my story to make it funnier; instead, I asked it for advice, breaking down what exactly humor is in the first place, so I could do it myself. Following is the entire extent of our conversation about my November Bard's Hall entry, "Exotic Species" 
✅Start Chat✅
Me: I need some advice on creative writing. There's a prompt I wrote a story for, for a contest, but I'm not sure it's as funny as they're expecting. I'll give you the prompt and my story, and you can give me some tips on refining the humor or making it more culturally sensitive.
Sure — I’d be happy to help with that.
Go ahead and share the prompt and your story, and let me know anything specific you’re worried about (tone, humor style, cultural sensitivity, etc.).
I can walk through what’s working, what might land differently with readers, and offer concrete revision suggestions.
Me: Insert prompt and first draft...
Here are **high-level strengths**, **potential risks**, and **concrete revision ideas** for humor and cultural sensitivity — without flattening the emotional realism you’re clearly good at portraying.
---
# ⭐ First: What’s working well
**1. Your voice is strong and believable.**
Layla feels like a real person: earnest, observant, and slightly overwhelmed. The sincerity actually *helps* set up a humorous twist, because earnest narrators can be unintentionally funny when chaos swirls around them.
**2. There *is* humor here — it’s just subtle, situational, and character-based.**
The leprechaun-like boy trying to pick her up in a Garda lobby? Fatima yelling at him? That’s great.
**3. The ending “Inshallah!” tag is genuinely cute.**
Because it mirrors the parents’ probable exasperation: “Even her *joke* ends with religious hedging.”
**4. You’ve chosen a risky but rich cultural terrain.**
Fish-out-of-water humor between Muslim American students and Irish locals is *viable*, if handled lightly.
---
# ⚠️ Where readers may get uneasy (and how to fix it)
Right now the story leans toward **political realism** (riots, hate crimes, protests, accusations, databases, deportations). Comedy contests generally expect a bit more *exaggeration*, *whimsy*, or *delightful absurdity* rather than **real contemporary tensions**.
What risks humor deflation:
* The protestors’ lines echo real-world xenophobia very closely.
* An innocent Muslim young man being mistaken for a criminal migrant and detained is *plausible* — but not *funny plausible*.
* Deportation to Afghanistan is extremely high-stakes.
* The No-Fly List is connected to real-world trauma for some Muslim readers.
None of this is *wrong*, but for a **light comedic contest**, it can feel too real, too sharp.
What you want is exaggeration that signals: **this is obviously comedic and not commentary.**
---
# 🎭 How to make it funnier *and* safer: Specific revision approaches
Below are three ways you can shift tone while keeping the same general structure. Pick whichever aligns with your style.
---
## **OPTION A: Lean into absurdity rather than realism**
Instead of real hate groups and current events, make the antagonists comically misguided or ridiculously misinformed.
Examples:
* Protestors holding signs like *“Ban All Foreign Spices!”* or *“Save Our Potatoes!”*
* They accuse Abdullah of “stealing the Book of Kells,” “smuggling shamrocks,” or “tampering with the Guinness flavor matrix.”
* The Garda’s “international database” flags him because a medieval Irish saint had the same name.
**Effect:** The culture clash becomes *silly* instead of political.
---
## **OPTION B: Shift the “mistaken identity” into pure farce**
Instead of confusing him with a criminal migrant, he’s confused with:
* A famous Irish TikTok prankster
* A legendary Gaelic folk hero reincarnated
* A wanted sheep thief
* A banned Eurovision backup dancer
* Someone who owes €4,000 in overdue library fines
**Effect:** Readers laugh *with* the situation rather than feel bad for the character.
---
## **OPTION C: Use Layla’s devoutness as a comedic engine**
You already do this well. You could amplify it safely:
* Sean says, “Would you like to see my favorite pub?”
Layla internally panics: *Does the Qur’an address Irish pubs specifically?*
* She sees a statue of St. Patrick and worries he’s watching her.
* She tries to politely decline snacks because she can’t identify whether anything contains alcohol, pork, or “Irishness.”
**Effect:** The humor stays character-based, affectionate, and harmless.
---
# 📝 Structural, scene-level suggestions
### **1. Cut or soften the hate-crime backstory.**
Replace the “Afghani attacked a girl” line with something neutral but funny:
* “A rogue alpaca escaped from a petting zoo and everyone blamed the foreigners.”
* “Someone graffitied a Viking statue and the Irish blamed outside influences.”
### **2. Make the protesters ridiculous rather than hostile.**
Example dialogue:
> “You foreigners stole our cultural heritage!”
> “Sir, this is a halal butcher shop.”
> “Exactly! Ireland was founded on… uh… non-halal principles!”
### **3. Change the detention reason to something humorous.**
E.g., the Garda thinks Abdullah is the mastermind behind:
* A conspiracy to turn the Spire into a giant kebab skewer
* A stolen batch of corned beef
* A rogue drone that keeps delivering kebabs to the Prime Minister’s house
### **4. Let the host parents be slightly eccentric.**
Dr. Naik could keep accidentally making things worse:
* “Officer, surely you can see my son is far too cowardly to commit a crime.”
* “What do you mean cowardly?”
* “Sweetheart, you fainted at a loud sneeze.”
### **5. Build a stronger comedic crescendo in the letter.**
Everything should escalate:
* Protestors → misunderstanding → detention → bizarre interrogation → surreal bureaucratic twist → panicked “call immediately!”
Then the P.S. becomes a bigger, funnier snap.
---
# 📬 Suggested micro-edits that improve humor without changing plot
You could keep 90% of your story and only change certain lines:
* Make the protest signs silly:
*“Ireland for Irish People and Irish-Themed Tourists!”*
* Replace the accusation:
“Someone claimed Abdullah was the mastermind behind a harebrained scheme to replace all Irish traffic lights with blinking ‘Inshallah’ signs.”
* Adjust Fatima’s line:
“Sean O’Donoghue! You cannot ask a Muslim exchange student to go to a pub. We talked about this at the diversity workshop.”
* Change the No-Fly List detail:
“His name matches a man wanted in Bolivia for smuggling llamas into a soccer match.”
These kinds of shifts keep your culture and characters intact but lighten the emotional stakes.
---
# 🧭 Summary
**Your story has heart, vivid cultural texture, and clear humor.**
For a comedy contest, the safest path is to nudge it out of **political realism** and into **heightened ridiculousness** or **character-driven farce**.
If you’d like, I can:
1. **Help you rewrite specific sections**,
2. **Punch up individual jokes**,
3. **Tone-map the story** to balance humor and sincerity, or
4. **Produce a fully revised alternate comedic version** while keeping your characters and voice.
Just tell me what you’d prefer.
Me: Oh my, those are good suggestions. I'm never good at exaggeration - I have a tendency to overrealism and kinda struggle with humor. I'll definitely work on it with your advice :) Thank you
You’re really welcome — and honestly, your “overrealism” is a *strength*. It’s why your scenes feel textured and lived-in. Humor built from realism can be fantastic; you just need to let one or two elements tip gently into the absurd so readers can see the comedic frame around the emotional truth.
If you ever want to practice exaggeration in a way that still feels natural to you, here are a few gentle techniques:
### **1. Shift only one detail out of reality.**
Keep the situation real, but make *one* element nonsensical.
Example: a very serious Garda officer who believes Abdullah looks exactly like “The Great Dublin Chicken Thief.”
### **2. Let characters misinterpret each other.**
You’re already great at cross-cultural nuance. Humor often arises from earnest people misunderstanding each other in harmless ways.
### **3. Add contrast, not silliness.**
If everything is realistic, and then one character is comedically confident or illogically sure of something (“It *is* illegal to wear green on Wednesdays, lassie”), the joke lands without cartoonishness.
### **4. Make the stakes sound dire, but for a dumb reason.**
Instead of real deportation, something like:
> “They said they’d send us to County Offaly if we didn’t comply — and Mom, you know how I get around peat bogs.”
It keeps your tone grounded but gives readers permission to laugh.
### **5. Let Layla’s inner monologue do the heavy lifting.**
Her confusion, politeness, religious conscience, and occasional panic are naturally sweet and funny. Lean on that.
If you end up revising and want a second set of eyes — or if you want me to help you turn one scene into a comedic version so you can see how the exaggeration might look — I’d be happy to help anytime.
Me: Here's my second draft. I had fun editing it :)
Insert draft
Your revision is **genuinely delightful** — and you’ve made *exactly* the kind of tonal shift that elevates this into true comedic territory without sacrificing your grounded, character-driven voice. Let me give you a clear, craft-focused evaluation so you can revise confidently or tweak before submitting.
---
# 🌟 What You NAILED in This Draft
## **1. The absurdity is spot-on.**
It’s whimsical, not chaotic; exaggerated, not cartoonish. It hits an excellent “Gentle Farce” tone. Examples that are perfect:
* *“Ireland for the Irish setters!”*
* Two hundred hungry camels loosed in a cathedral
* Glitter-bomb riots
* Hidden Arabian dune mice
* “Outlaw pork” petition littering
* The No-Fly List replaced with “spray-painted inshallah five thousand times in crosswalks”
This is **exactly** the kind of exaggeration that keeps cultural humor safe, affectionate, and funny.
## **2. Cultural sensitivity is handled with warmth and playfulness.**
You don’t mock Muslim identity or Irish culture; instead, you heighten misunderstandings in silly, impossible ways.
Your choices are respectful *and* hilarious.
## **3. Layla’s voice is consistent, sweet, and charming.**
Her polite panic (“…how much would that offend Allah!”) and earnest confusion are comedy gold.
The humor *flows from character*, which is the safest and strongest type.
## **4. The pacing is dramatically better.**
You escalate beautifully:
* Protestors → glitter riot → mistaken identity → detention → ridiculous suspicion → threat of monastic exile.
The final beat (“my manuscript illuminating skills have never been especially good”) is a perfectly quirky closing before the P.S.
## **5. The exaggerated cultural mashups are extremely funny.**
“Corned beef and cabbage with a side of hummus” made me laugh out loud — and it does exactly what you think:
it shows the Commissioner is irrational, not prejudiced.
---
# 🔧 Micro-tweaks That Could Make It Even Funnier (Optional)
These are tiny polish-level notes — not “needs,” just “coulds.”
## **1. Clarify the running gag about animals.**
You have:
* Irish setters
* Exotic animals
* Camels
* Dune mice
It’s funny, but if you want the humor to feel even more cohesive, you could tie them back to one absurd rumor (“Arabian animals are taking over Ireland”). But it already works as-is.
## **2. Boost Professor Naik’s absent-mindedness once more.**
One additional line could set up the “alibi” joke earlier, making it land even bigger.
Something tiny, e.g.:
> Professor Naik wandered off at one point because he thought he smelled cardamom in the air and wanted to “follow the trail.”
## **3. The “cloistered life on the Isle of Man” is great — you could push it one notch.**
Example:
> “Males to the monastery, females to the convent, and any pets to the monastery gift shop.”
But again — optional.
## **4. Consider giving Sean one more silly line before he slinks off.**
He’s funny, and one extra beat could make him a recurring comedic note without overuse.
E.g.:
> “Sean, we talked about this!”
> “But the pub is having a buy-one-get-one shepherd’s pie night…”
Small, not required.
---
# 🎉 Overall Evaluation
**This draft is contest-ready.**
It’s warm, culturally aware, respectful, tonally consistent, and genuinely funny in a literary way — not slapstick, not satire, but charming character-driven comedy.
You kept your original strengths (voice, detail, sincerity) and layered the humor lightly but effectively.
If you’d like, I can help with:
* A polishing pass for line rhythm
* Making the humor even punchier
* Adding or trimming 50–100 words
* Giving you a “judge’s perspective” on which moments stand out most
* Or even helping with your “Full Disclosure” note formatting.
But the core story? **You should feel proud of this.**
❌End Chat❌
This was a lot of fun for me; it took something I'd been dreading and felt inadequate to do and sounded more like sad political commentary than an absurd prank, and guided me on what needed to change and how. I think it's a good example of how we can use AI as a coach and adviser, without leaning on it to modify our voice or do the work for us.
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© Copyright 2025 Amethyst Autumn Angel (UN: greenwillow at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
Amethyst Autumn Angel has granted InkSpot.Com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work.
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