Avoiding narm

I'm working on a comicbook hard and for a long time (building up a world with a lot of character is time consuming), but some of the planned scenes seem a bit cheesy to me instead of being either dramatic or awesome as I wanted.

Are there any general rule for this? Or I should learn from bad works more?

Turn the characters' actions down - but not to Dull Surprise levels - and let the drama come from what actually happens, not how the characters react to it.

To quote a grammar article I read once, "never use more than one exclamation point." I think that's a good all-around metaphor for drama.

edited 19th Jun '14 4:27:05 PM by Wheezy

What if you're writing dialogue for Brian Blessed or Jerry Stiller?

In his reviews of the Spiderman films, James Berendali of Reelviews cited how the Green Goblin was wonderfully over the top while Doc Ock found the right balance between being too low key and chewing the scenery. He game special mention to JK Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson whose drill sergeant delivery had him steal every scene he was in. They might be worth looking over to help determine what you are trying to aim for.

It's also probably worth mentioning that Narm can have a lot to do with context. It's one thing to have someone reacting insanely overdramatic early in a scene before any tension builds, and quite another to have it happening right after a huge reveal or in the middle of the climax.

It also helps if a character's dramatic actions match up with their character in some way. This can be kinda... complicated... but as long as how they react makes sense, it should work out. Maybe some quiet nods to how they really feel as foreshadowing if you need it, but other than that it just needs to come out because that's what they'd do.

And lastly... what do you think the likelihood is that you feel this way because you put it down and stopped thinking about it for a while? Because this sounds a lot like me going back and reading old writing of mine. Just curious.

@Redneck Rocker: Then they'll provide the emphasis themselves.

I know this kind of thing can be very difficult, especially when it comes to comic books where the visuals and the words are equally important. I would suggest reading it allowed to yourself and maybe asking someone else to do it for you.

Something I personally engage in is rewriting the same scene a few times and saving it in a file specifically for rough drafts. Try looking up words, synonyms, facial expressions and posture that conveys feeling without being over the top.

It also depends very much on genre and setting. Westerns are often unsuited for overblown reactions, and for Western films, slo-mo and zoom-in are nearly required for emphasis—but for most other movie genres, too much slo-mo and zoom are seen as over the top.

High Fantasy is often suited for monologues/speeches in archaic language, but for low fantasy or a deconstruction, said speeches can often be intentionally narmy and out of place to highlight how someone is out-of-touch, naive, or Wrong Genre Savvy.

Basically: Know your genre and make sure your reactions/events are appropriate. If characters/reactions are supposed to feel narmy, make sure to do that throughout the story so audiences know it's supposed to be narm.