Revisiting Old Work: Trenchant

I recently had an in-depth conversation with a friend about our personal journeys and histories in creative writing. During this conversation, I recalled a writer’s craft class I took in grade 12 (for Americans, that’s my senior year of highschool). Specifically, I recalled one of the final projects for this class: a pilot episode of a sitcom, something that would generally look good in a writing portfolio.

When I got home I decided to dig through some old Google Drive folders, many of which had not been touched in over five years, since I was seventeen. I managed to uncover my sitcom pilot.

It was a kind of dark parody taking place in the trenches of World War I. It featured a pair of smarmy, unaware English soldiers who were under the impression that they were undergoing a rigorous training regime rather than participating in the actual war.

The influence of my adolescent obsession with Monty Python fully came through in this piece, to the point where I could almost picture John Cleese and Michael Palin in the lead roles. One could also easily detect trace amount of Armstrong and Miller’s RAF pilots throughout.

There were some formatting and editing errors which needed to be ironed out, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a mostly complete, polished piece of work. I even chuckled at some of my old jokes.

Reading this work reminded me how much I enjoy writing comedy, not just as a way to elevate drama but as the centrepiece for the entire story. In retrospect, the past few projects I’ve worked on have been quite heavy in terms of drama, with very little levity provided by comedy. This is especially the case with Mythos Ascending, which is nearly devoid of humour and has a perpetually sombre mood about it.

I’d like to reintroduce more lighthearted, comedic elements into my stories going forward, and I believe the next novel that I write for Wattpad is a great opportunity to try to do so.