Books · Comedy
A personalized comic novel, written for you.
A comic novel needs a situation that keeps getting worse and people you root for anyway. Tell StoryStepper the setup and the feel you want, from dry to warm. The whole book is planned so the jokes build toward a real set piece instead of fizzling out.
Below is a real comedy written with StoryStepper: the brief it started from, and the book that came back.
The brief
- Shape
- Humor / Comedy
- Ending
- Leave it open
- Feel
- cozy, dry, unexpectedly heartfelt
- Language
- English
- Who and what it is about
- A former children’s-show host takes the overnight slot at a tiny community radio station, hoping to rebuild her career without anyone recognizing her. Then one lonely caller begins phoning in with increasingly elaborate complaints about the town, and listeners start tuning in for their nightly exchange. She wants to keep the show—and her anonymity—while the station manager pushes her to turn the caller into a regular feature.
The book that came back
Midnight at Transmitter Hill
- Delivered in 32 minutes
- 21,304 words
- 16 chapters
Contents
- A Safe Low Hum
- Section 4, Paragraph B
- Bypass Mode
- Rate Card Realities
- Civic Pruning
- The Rotary Patch
- Perennial Grievances
- Filter Sweep
- The Fifteen-Thousand-Dollar Marker
- Under the Gas Lamp
- Ground Fault
- Coaxial Treachery
- Air Horns at Midnight
- Calfskin and Brass
- Transmitter Hill Radiothon
- Epilogue
From chapter one
It was 11:48 PM on Monday, October 4.
The log sheet was yellow legal paper clamped into a scarred aluminum board. Across the header, Keith Larkin had written in red marker: WKLT 91.3 FM — THE VOICE OF OAKHAVEN COUNTY — OVERNIGHT AUTOMATION & CIVIC CONTINUITY.
Brent Okafor sat three feet away in the engineering alcove, his boots propped on an empty steel chassis. A heavy gray cable snake ran between his ankles into the crawlspace. In his right hand he held an unsharpened lead pencil, with which he was nudging an azimuth adjustment screw on an obsolete eight-track cartridge deck. On the ledge above his head sat a chipped red enamel mug, empty except for a dry circle of instant grounds at the bottom.
"Levels on the town council playback are hot on the left channel," Brent said. He did not turn around.
"I pulled the master trim two decibels," Nadine said. Her voice sat in the lower third of her chest, flat and uninflected, the cadence she had spent three weeks practicing in an unfurnished kitchen two miles down the ridge. "The mayor had a lapel clip that was brushing his necktie."
"The mayor wears polyester," Brent noted. "It builds static."
"I saw."
"He was moving his head whenever the water superintendent spoke."
"I notched it at four kilohertz."
Brent gave a single, downward nod. It was the entire shift-change ceremonial. He reached out, pulled his boots off the chassis, and reached for his windbreaker. He did not ask her how her first week had gone, nor why an operator who knew what a four-kilohertz notch sounded like had taken thirty-five dollars a night to watch four automated cart machines spit out public service announcements between blocks of archival brass band recordings.
A real book from the StoryStepper library, written from this brief.
$2.99 your first month: two books like this a month, written for you.
Questions
Is it jokes, or a real story?
A real story. Comedy is planned like any other book, with an arc and an ending, and the humour comes out of the situation.
Can it be heartfelt too?
Yes. Describe the feel in your own words, such as "cozy, dry, unexpectedly heartfelt".
How much does a comic novel cost?
Books costs $2.99 for your first month and includes two complete books a month. A single book without a subscription is $5.99.
Your own book, within the hour.
Six answers, one complete novel, written for no one else.
Get a whole book