Sometimes less IS more

When I first had this scene in my head, it was enormous.  Ginormous, even.  Do the cool kids still say "Ginormous?"  Why does this feel like the start of a "Back in my day..." statement?

In my original idea Killian was waving his arms about, there was pacing, maybe even a raised voice.  In my imagination he was off delivering a full, impassioned rant to the entire room.  He was winning an argument not just against the people in it, but the furniture, the lighting, and the very concept of bad taste itself.  It was theatrical.  It was funny.  It was also doing far, far too much.

And then I realized something important.  That version wasn't nearly as funny.

Volume was doing Killian no favors.  The more loudly he reacted, the more ordinary the scene became.  What made him work wasn't outage but his certainty.  The humor sharpened when he treated the situation as entirely reasonable, even when saying deeply unreasonable things.  He spoke as though his logic were unimpeachable, as though the room was wrong for simply existing the way it did.

So I had to let him calm down and everything got worse.  In the best possible way.

Letting Killian fuss with the little details, derail himself with side arguments, and then calmly circle back to what offended him, it made the scene far funnier than any rant could have.  His restraint became the joke itself.  His seriousness turned the absurd into something sharper, more precise.

So I scaled it down.  Scaled him down.  I took away the shouting.  I gave him small, meticulous actions instead of grand gestures.  And in doing so I found the scene misbehaved quietly.

It turned out that subtlety didn't make the moment smaller.  If anything, it made the scene far more dangerous.

Is it wrong I'm low key jealous someone thought of this crazy idea first?

Enjoy my excerpt.

“I hardly see how that’s a disqualifier,” Killian said sharply. He adjusted the infant’s blanket with unnecessary precision, smoothing out a wrinkle that offended him on mere principle.

“Girls can be excellent assassins. They have far better reach when they’re underestimated. Far more patience. And they don’t announce themselves by knocking things over.” He flicked a glance at Lord Whitcombe. “I tried opening an assassin school for girls. But apparently ‘after school knives’ alarmed some parents.”

He paused, his gaze sliding inexorably back to the glove.

“Anyway, where was I? Oh yes—who decorated this room?”