Without Feathers: Day 3

Writing Time: Try one of these humor prompts:

Comedy Techniques to Try: Use incongruity, hyperbole (exaggeration, overstatement, innuendo, or understatement), and ridiculous situations, settings, or characters. 

Some idea prompts include:

1. Your writer's journal has been lost and buried for 100 years. When it is uncovered, what do scientists (or scholars or clergy or the common person) think of you? Do they consider your writing insightful, prophetic, scandalous, inspired, dangerous, etc.? 

2. Like Gorey's "The Unstrung Harp" tell the story of yourself as a famous author. Feel free to include photos or drawings.

3. Pick a favorite or hated non-fiction type of book and write a parody of that form. For example, a game manual, a how-to book, a cookbook, advice about how to raise children, a self-help manual, astrology, a bestiary, a history of some alien or forgotten race, a textbook, an advice column, etc.

4. Write the performance companion notes for a play or opera or musical or the liner notes of an album that should never have been made.

5. Rewrite a well-known scene from a Shakespeare play (perhaps a lost scene from Romeo & Juliet, for example) or rewrite a well-known fairy tale or Bible story with annotations.

6. Write a silly rhyming poem or children's book, like Shel Silverstein or Dr. Seuss. Take a look at these links for inspiration. Silverstein. Dr. Seuss.
7. Rewrite your detective or horror story draft as a comedy. Use comedic writing techniques to change your horror/mystery draft into something ridiculous.
8. Choose an author you hated or loved in school. Write about the "secret life" or the "hidden manuscript" from this author (with writing samples that echo the author's style).
9. Write a short scene or play (or film) in play script format from a one-word title that overdramatizes itself. Ex. LIFE or SICKNESS or ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT or FLOOD or CHAOS or LOVE or MISERY or WORK or BOOK or CAPITALISM or ART or YODEL or PLESIOSAUR. You get the PICTURE. The play can be about anything as long as it's funny (or attempting to be) and uses some of those comedy techniques...
10. We all know what a vampire or tyrannosaurus is, but what about a googledigoo or a parthenogenisaurus or a whatchamacallitopotomus? Make up a few ridiculous monsters or animals or "beasts" and describe them as new cryptozoology specimens.

When time is called, let's return to finish the play "Death" by Woody Allen. With time remaining in class, we'll continue reading the collection. Here's the guide...

• "Fabulous Tales and Mythical Beasts": Bestiaries were an old fashion (Medieval) form of the nature guide. They were all the rage in the 1500’s.
• "But Soft, Real Soft": There is a scholarly debate over who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays. Many critics say that Marlowe (another Elizabethan playwright) wrote Shakespeare’s work. Others say Queen Elizabeth or Francis Bacon wrote the plays. Probably, odd as it may seem, Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare’s plays. The title refers to a line from Romeo and Juliet.
• "If the Impressionists Had Been Dentists": The Impressionist painter Van Gogh kept close correspondence with his brother Theo. Later a song and a movie were made from Van Gogh’s private letters. The title tells the rest of the joke.
• "No Kaddish for Weinstein": Kaddish is a Hebrew prayer of mourning usually recited at a person’s grave. Woody Allen often jokes about Freudian Psychoanalysis or therapy. He is using a comic technique of the non-sequitur (or surprising a reader by saying something unrelated to its subject or something that makes no sense or is nonsensical.)
• "Fine Times: An Oral Memoir": Another parody of a book review and autobiography of a fictional character. This one is about Flo Guinness, a speakeasy owner in the 1920’s. Alcohol was prohibited (illegal) in the early 1920’s and later repealed. Guinness is the name of a popular beer. Allen references many famous 1920’s musicians and people.
• "Slang Origins": The English language has so many weird expressions and sayings. Allen pokes fun at them in this “essay.”

HOMEWORK: Finish the collection in Without Feathers. Bring your books back with you to our next class. Continue to write your humorous draft. These will be due soon.