Goal for the day: For students to consider how to integrate humor into their writing. I started today's class with a passage from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad that does a good job at using the setting to create a tone and atmosphere that will be carried through the rest of the book. We then moved on to talking about the pages in Nick Hornby's About a Boy. I discussed them in relation to switching of point of views that happens throughout the book AND in terms of the humor strewn across the first few pages. |
Comedy is about things being out of balance. It is about incongruities, things that don't line up. Humor comes from expectations NOT coming true in either a good way or bad way. Comedy provides the perspective of an outsider or misfit and these are the most common characters in a comic story. This outsider perspective means that there is a natural distance between the reader and the story, the narrative voice necessary for comic writing is usually more lively and more alive to irony, which can prevent readers from falling into the story. But this isn't a bad thing. The best comic writers make you laugh and care deeply about their characters. They help you find your own comic spirit and leave you uplifted in the midst of challenge, difficulty, and death.
I called out a few of the ways in the passage from About a Boy that embody this outsider perspective and then asked everyone in class to reflect on the imbalances in their own stories and whether they have elements that are ripe for comic treatment.
Assignment for Monday, September 29th
Keep working on the draft of your "Telling a Story" assignment that's due Tuesday.
I called out a few of the ways in the passage from About a Boy that embody this outsider perspective and then asked everyone in class to reflect on the imbalances in their own stories and whether they have elements that are ripe for comic treatment.
Assignment for Monday, September 29th
Keep working on the draft of your "Telling a Story" assignment that's due Tuesday.