I’ve managed a writers’ critique group in Roswell, GA for over a decade, which has afforded me the chance to meet and help a number of talented up-and-comers as well as established authors. Combined with the Atlanta Writers Conference I run twice a year for the 102-year-oldAtlanta Writers Club, I’m able to satisfy my desire to give fellow scribblers plenty of opportunities to learn more about the craft and business of writing. Even better, over a dozen conference participants have signed with agents and a number of them have landed major publishing deals.
It feels great to have played a role in those life-changing events, but I never imagined that I’d end up changing anyone’s life as significantly as I indirectly did. A few years ago, a talented sci-fi/fantasy writer nicknamed JD joined my critique group and a terrific mainstream fiction writer named Ellie found the group as well. They both were in tumultuous marriages at the time and bonded during our group meetings as we critiqued each others’ manuscripts. Friendship and admiration turned to love and suddenly two painful relationships ended and a beautiful new one emerged.
Due to child-custody issues, the happy couple had to marry in a speedy, unsatisfying way, but they always wanted a public wedding celebration with family and friends. This year, they picked a date, and they asked me to officiate. The good news was that I wouldn’t have to become ordained or in any way certified to perform the ceremony, as they’re already legally married. The bad news was that, other than the vows they wanted to exchange, I had to script and deliver an entire wedding!
Fortunately, they wanted an irreverent, funny event rather than the traditional (i.e., plodding and didactic) service most of us have endured. As much as I like to write soulful, stirring, or tension-filled scenes, funny and irreverent I also can do. I went online to learn the usual order for a ceremony and put my own spin on it, starting with a PowerPoint presentation comprised of photos from all of the couple’s pop-culture touchstones (e.g., Star Wars, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, superheroes, Harry Potter, Monty Python, and more) to punctuate each step. For example:
Finding photos is easy, though–writing comedy is hard. Mindful of the presence of children and the parents of the already-betrothed, I couldn’t veer toward ribaldry or profanity. “Snarky” was probably as much as I could get away with. The additional challenge–and even more daunting–was that I’d have to deliver every line aloud (as well as loud, because no mic would be used in the ASW Distillery where the wedding would take place), so this book author would have to learn the secrets of cadence, aural comprehensibility, and the other factors affecting word choice that standup comedians, playwrights, and screenwriters must master.
In my critique group, we each read our five pages aloud to those assembled to help to identify missing words, awkward phrasing, and dialog that doesn’t ring true, as well as to illuminate where the writing excels. The exercise is so effective that I always read the draft of my novel-in-process as if I’m narrating an audio book, to find those mistakes our eyes tend to skate over. It turns out, this process had prepared me somewhat for creating a wedding script. The part I found hardest, though, was the humor. I didn’t want the ceremony to be merely amusing–I wanted it to be hilariously funny.
Countless rewrites led to ad nauseum renditions that my dogs had to endure first before I finally felt ready to subject my wife to what I’d come to think of as “my routine.” After her critiques and lots more rewriting, I did a trial run for JD and Ellie, along with a couple of fellow writers. They laughed in all the right spots and the PowerPoint was a hit, but I continued to tweak the weaker points in the “show.” I would have the script in hand, but I wanted to memorize as much of it as possible. More practicing, more rewriting, more photo tweaking, more assaults on my wife’s eyes and ears (the dogs quickly learned to sleep through my ten-minute shtick).
Inevitably, the big day came. It was the Friday evening of a terrible week in U.S. news, with more police shootings of African-American men and the sniper attack on cops in Dallas. Suddenly, hilarity and joy seemed to be entirely the wrong tones, so I wrote a quick preamble, asking for the audience’s permission to give them some laughs and levity.
How did I do? The bride and groom told me they loved it, as did the 35 in attendance. As with most artists, though, I’m my harshest critic. I botched a couple of punchlines, stammered over some sentences I’d 
never had trouble delivering in rehearsal, and even crossed up the bride and groom’s parents’ names–which everybody thought I did on purpose, as the sentence before was a joke about me being too drunk to recognize them. Afterward, while the couple enjoyed their first dance and then a dance with their parents, I was numb.
Writing, I’ve decided, is far easier than performing standup comedy or live theater. How soothing writing this blogpost is: stringing words together, rewriting them, changing their order. Such a calm, stress-free process. No memorization, no practice, no performance pressure. I could do this all day–in fact, that’s exactly what my best days are like.
On the final PowerPoint slide of the ceremony, a silly send-up of copyright warnings and end credits, I’d written that, for the right price, I’ll officiate your sham wedding, too. Well, I’m telling you now, folks, since I created that slide my price has gone up quite a bit.