Comical Essay

Essay Three – Comedy
The Assignment
Write a short comical essay on any topic of your choice. While this might not seem like an academic pursuit, it really is. Comedy requires deliberation about your readers’ perceptions. It requires that you develop a specific voice that is consistent in your paper. Many developing writers never think much about their voice and instead try to write over-performative “fancy” essay language. The skills we develop when crafting this essay will help you avoid the overperformance that too many students fall into. We should always be using these skills when writing, but we often don’t. For the comical essay, these skills will “make or break” your essay.
Guidelines
This will be the hardest writing assignment you’ve ever done. You will be free from the burdens of MLA citations, research, and integration of sources; you don’t have to develop a outline to prove your thesis; the paper is the shortest one we will write; yet it will be the hardest. You will spend more time on it than any other paper this semester. Writing comedy requires that every single word is perfectly selected. You will revise at the sentence level more times than you’ll be able to count. Do not underestimate this. Do not wait until the last minute to start.
We will study both comic essays as well as stand up comedians. Many of you are probably not familiar with comic essays, but I’m sure you have a favorite stand-up comedian. While writing to perform on stage is different than essaying (for instance physical voice, timing, demeanor, and facial expressions etc. play into a stand-up act), many of the writing techniques work in both forms. While this assignment is to write a comic essay, if you wanted to approach it as writing the script for a stand up bit you’re welcome to try that as well. I would love it even more if you then recorded that act to video!
The Rules
Comedy has a rich history in being subversive, contrarian, and crude. Stereotypes are a common staple of comedy, and to a degree that is because we recognize ourselves in stereotypes that we are a part of. I can relate to the jokes about being a father to toddlers or jokes about being a teacher, and stereotype plays into this. If done well, writing about stereotypes and being a little subversive can provide insight into our zeitgeist. If done poorly, it can sound mean, petty, and even hate-filled. While I’m not the censorship police, we do need to set some ground rules on what is acceptable and not for this assignment.
1. You cannot mock any person in the class or that is part of the CWI community. Let’s not hurt the feelings of those around us.
2. No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, etc. That’s not to say you can’t talk about such topics, but walk that tight line carefully. You’ll notice that some of the samples we’ll read do engage these topics, but they do so in a pro-social situation that actually mocks these hateful viewpoints.
Basic Requirements
• 4 pages, typed, double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font
• Follows MLA guidelines for format