3 page essay.

[girlsmiley]

I believe you are misunderstood.

My intent was not to be sarcastic at all, or snide.

The intent was to have you all do exactly what you did. I did it when I wrote it.

You wrote it, I read it. Intention or no. There was no misunderstanding.

F.

 

[heather_baby]

You wrote it, I read it. Intention or no. There was no misunderstanding.

F.

Alright.

 

[girlsmiley]

Alright.

Now that.

That is impressive.

A+

 

[k_m_d_]

Listen to some stand-up comedy. Turning a 10 second experience into a 3 page story is basically what they do for a living.

 

[SeaDaddy1]

So I have this three page essay to write about a funny event that happened in my life. First of all, it has to be authentic, and genuine. It needs to be funny, but without you actually saying the punch line, so to speak.

Well, I'm one of those people that when I tell a joke, I have to explain why it's funny, or when I tell a story, it's always one of those "you'd have to be there" lines.

I suppose my question to you would be, how do I make one funny joke or event that typically took less than ten seconds to happen, span over the link of three pages?

I know three pages isn't a lot, but for one little thing, I find I'm having quite a difficult time.


Now I know you guys are all level headed, and well rounded thinkers, so I thought you might know of something.


Thanks for your time.

You could say you voted for Obama by mistake twice. That's less than 10 seconds of voting action w/the results being one hell of a lot longer than a 3 page essay.

Oh wait, you said it had to be funny. Sorry.

 

[SweetErika]

I'd go with an event, not a joke. Describe the situation well, then you can go back and set the scene, elaborate on the person(s) involved and maybe wrap it up with some observations/commentary.

For instance, my best friend and I decided to cut our hair right before our kindergarten school pictures. Then, when we realized what we'd done, we hid the hair and scissors, figuring no one would be the wiser, until our moms saw that we both had big gaps in our bangs.

The event took maybe 30 minutes, and can clearly be described in a couple of sentences, but I could easily go back and talk about what kind of day it was, how we had been styling the hair on our Barbies that day and my friend's aunt was a hairdresser (which gave us the brilliant idea to try for ourselves!), the red safety scissors we used, what each of our styles turned out to be, how our moms reacted, how we felt during the whole process and my observations about it now. Surely that would take up at least 3 pages.

if I were you, I'd focus less on a joke and more on an event that makes you grin/laugh when you look back on it. Something you can really craft a scene and story around, even if it was so long ago that you have to create a few details.

Good luck!

 

[Colonel Hogan]

Lol, wouldn't that be a sight to see?

Yeah, this guy is just irritating.. It's hard for me to think outside of the box when it comes to writing because I have my own methods and processes. Now i have to change them? Grrr.

This is the very definition of "education." It's all about developing skills and gaining knowledge that you don't have now. The prof is doing exactly what he should be doing -- asking you to stretch.

In the meantime, you won't get better advice than Aquagal's suggestion to embellish and Sinny's point about details. Your task is not to find the funniest event in your life and then write about it. Your task is to take any event in your life and use it as a focal point to invent funny.

I once won several subsequent speaking contests with the story of when my mom once fell out of a car. Now that's more tragic than funny if she was hurt, but since she wasn't we're at least back to kind of funny.

I got the most mileage out of the fact that after she got up off the ground, she went chasing after it. Comparisons to the family dog were inevitable and yielded opportunity for lines like: "Had I known she wanted wheel covers that badly, I would have bought her a set." Also, "Can you imagine how black your teeth get after biting at tires for 30,000 miles?"

How about the driver of the car which her vehicle eventually hit? Imagine turning around to flip some idiot off only to suddenly realize that nobody is there?

Funny is not about what happened to you. It is about what could have happened to you if you let your imagination run wild. In fact, your topic is as easy as this: "Whenever bad things have happened to me I usually took the common relativistic viewpoint that things could always be worse. But I never appreciated the full truth of the speculation until I made The List."

Name the event and start inventing ways it could have been worse. The more outlandish the better. Details, details, details (Sinny). Embellish (Aquagal).

Off you go!

 

[RobDownSouth]

leave it to the pedo to bring up elementary school pictures.

Incredible coincidence, no?

 

[neci]

Incredible coincidence, no?

naiveté is a blessing. no monsters in this night.

 

[neci]

Incredible coincidence, no?

he tends to repeat himself, slipping up here and there. constantly testing the waters around childish women.

 

[neci]

and the truth is, i have no idea who the person is, or why he is compelled to share his brain the way he does. i could be right about a hunch or dead wrong. he could be him or her. hence it's just the way the puzzle is presented on a particular day and my call on that. in a way it can be a great big exercise for the mind, because we leave so much of ourselves exposed. sometimes i feel like i should edit myself, but then i say fuck it. it's the general board, so i am going to say whatever the fuck i want to say. slowly it helps translate that into real life with minimum damage. i also tend to oversee shadows, but a shadow called is a shadow to be developed. baby kitties are killed all the time.

 

[Adre]

Ask yourself, what would JBJ say? Write it down word for word. A+