Writing Humor: Creativity and the Comic Mind

Capa
Wayne State University Press, 2002 - 329 páginas

Learn how to expand the humor in your imagination into the most fulfilling and fun-filled genres in creative writing--from comedy to a satirical essay to a joke monologue--with the help of Writing Humor, the first textbook of its kind for college students.

Providing both theory and praxis, this insightful and creative textbook explains how to write humor, comedy, satire, parody, nonsense, and both the literary and the joke monologue. Through its close analyses of short stories, sketches, essays, and scripts, it is a must-read for serious and not-so-serious writers of every genre. Guiding aspiring writers through the many techniques for creating humor, it illustrates and analyzes what works and what doesn't, suggests ways to energize passages that fall flat, and offers insights into brainstorming, team writing, and revision.

This book includes the history and cultural background of each major genre, followed by a rich array of writing exercises. Readers will find an inventive selection of examples to learn from, including a script from M*A*S*H and pieces by such humorists as Woody Allen, Ogden Nash, and Art Buchwald--and by students as well.

 

Índice

Acknowledgments
17
The Sense of Humor Test
23
What are some ways nonwestern cultures use laughter that
29
So What Exactly Is Humor?
32
Simple Techniques for Writing Humor
43
Concreteness
61
Still Nobody Laughed What Then?
70
Comedy
83
Absurd Humor
178
Nonsense
180
Light Verse
196
Parody and Burlesque
201
Have You Heard the One about ?
233
So How All You Guys Doin Tonight?
242
The Literary Monologue
253
Ok So Who Threw the Tomato?
260

Slapstick
112
Stuck? Writers Block?
117
Oh Lord Oh Lord Not Again Not Again
123
Whatever It Is Im Against It
141
Irony and Wit
159
Grotesque Black Sick
172
Notes
283
Bibliography
301
Contributors
313
Index
321
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Mary Ann Rishel is an associate professor in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College.

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