Comedy, Drama and why not to make fun of school assignments.

Today I was too lazy to write a "writing a story" writing assignment. So I'm going to write about nonsense and why I love it.

The other day I made a goofy little CD for myself. I sang a bung of goofy songs I made up, put them on the computer and put them on my iPod. The CD is just plain weird. My favorite song is called "He Probably Hates You Anyways". The song makes absolutely no sense. Which is why I love it!

What does my strange music have to do with writing? Nonsense. Don't be afraid to write things that are.... out there. I'd say about two thirds of my writing is about goofy things. Like my songs, who finds a song about marring Ronald McDonald interesting and profound? If someone did I would like to suggest seeing a psychiatrist. Your writing doesn't nessecarily have to be serious. Sometimes you do have to write serious things, which is very difficult for me! I was assigned some poorly written, over-dramatic, oddly worded books for book reports. I wanted so badly to make fun of them in my writing... but alas, I could not. Instead I made it sound over-dramatic. My friend got a kick out of what I wrote and I still got a good grade because it did sound serious. I'm not giving you a way to do your homework. Don't try that at home! Or school. Or if your homeschooled I guess that would apply to both...

Drama can be written as comedy. You can completely turn it around. Which is fun to do. Here comes the assignment: Write a short piece on any subject, don't make it longer that a page. Write it and make it sound incredibly serious and dramatic. Then write essentially the same thing, only funny. Show both to someone with a good sense of humor. If they don't laugh, write the second one again.
When that is done, you can submit your work to our reader writings page. 

Short, funny things are probably my favorite thing to write. Every time I hear something I think is funny (and would fit on a T-shirt) I write it down. I'm filling up a note book with things like "There's a pachyderm on my trachea" and "suddenly a plane landed in a field and out came Abraham Lincoln in a polka-dot dress, doing the cha-cha". Even now I have "I said sophisticated, not English" written on my hand. And my the way, that isn't an insult to the English, I was trying to act sophisticated and I started talking with an English accent. 


Comedy is also about the words you choose. If you said "last night I ate salsa before bed which made me have a dream about Justin Bieber wearing a tutu" that's funny, but it might be funnier to say "Last night I had a dream that Justin Bieber of all people was in my ballet class. He can NOT pirouette! That'll teach me to eat salsa before bed!" 


This post is getting really long. I'm going to keep writing!


Making fun of things is also good for comedy. Be VERY, VERY careful! Don't make fun of a person. Unless that person is yourself. If you resort to poking fun at things, ask close friends or your mom to make sure it doesn't sound offensive. The way things are written and the way things are read are very different!


Two writing assignments in one day:
That one I mentioned before and write a piece of comedy writing about a famous person from the past (like a LONG time ago) and write a story centered on the comic situations they would get in. (I just ended a sentence with a preposition... ignore that.) Submit your writing to the reader writings page and/or comment! 


In retrospect, it would've been a lot easier just to write a "writing a story" blog post. I'm not looking over what I wrote because that will be a lot more work. Sorry for poor grammar and spelling and whatever. Have a nice day.