This week is all about cheering people up, including myself, so I decided to make the genre about humour.
The following is from Life Writing: a student e-workbook
Click on the link below for more information.
What is it about?
We all have funny memories. Our lives are enriched because of the humour we create or appreciate. Often when we relay stories to others, we choose funny stories because we know that people enjoy being uplifted.
To create humour, a writer can:
- upset expectations (what we think will normally happen)
- re-invent common sayings (clichés) and plays on words (puns)
- change and alter myths (stories about the origins of things)
- turn rules in life upside down
- change human ideas of reality (what is real)
- think outrageously
- make the familiar strange and the strange familiar
- day dream.
What you can do?
- Think of a funny memory. Imagine you are talking to a friend and write a monologue reflecting on that humorous memory. Build the story up, as if you are telling a joke. A monologue is a spoken form of writing.
An example
Below is a memory of a funny experience with a dear friend (who incidentally could do with some cheering up this week). Hope the memory brings a smile to your face Jen.
My girlfriend Jen and I arrived at a quaint cottage winery in the Hunter Valley. We entered the wine tasting area. It had more of a sense of a family bar that the formal wine tasting areas of the larger wineries in the area.
I was a bit nervous, never having been to a wine tasting before. I watched my girlfriend for guidance on protocol. She was experienced in such affairs as she worked for a wine distribution company at the time. She was the closest thing to an expert I’d ever come across apart from family members who could easily claim that title.
I carefully perused the wine list, looking extremely serious, trying to cover the fact that I had no idea what the difference was between a sauvignon blanc, Chardonnay and a carafe. After a while I looked to Jen for suggestions. She pointed to one of the bottles on the bar, pronouncing the name of the wine perfectly to the bar tender. He poured us a small quantity of the drink, while telling us a bit about the wine - the size of the grapes, the length of maturation time, that sort of thing.
I picked up my glass and I gulped the whole amount down. Jen let out a bit of a laugh as she pulled me away from the bar and whispered to me that small sips are the way to go. Apparently to let the wine linger in your mouth. Oh I replied.
The bar man asked us if we’d like to try a red. Jen suggested a variety we would like to try. She told me that I now needed to clean out my mouth with water to prepare my palette for the next wine. I watched Jen pick up a small pottery cylinder in front her and take a swig, swishing it around her mouth. I too picked up a pottery cylinder in front of me, although it was quite a bit larger than Jen’s cylinder, and prepared to take a sip.
It occurred to me as the container come towards me that the colours weren’t right. It was a mixture of reds and browns, but I disregarded the thought as the nature of the pottery. The smell wasn’t right either, definitely wine, but I thought that was the drink I had just had. So I continued to feign etiquette and gulped the liquid fervently into my mouth. As soon as the liquid touched my lips I knew what I had done. My natural impulse was to regurgitate the liquid back up in an act of defiant refusal to accept my stupidity. It spurted out of my mouth like a fountain, sending the patrons bowing down for cover.
Despite my extreme embarrassment, all I could do was laugh. Jen was doubled over with laughter, holding onto her stomach with one hand the bar with the other. Me, standing there with the spittoon in my hands, eyes clenched closed, mouth wide open in laughter, sucking in breath at unnaturally long intervals. It took quite some time for Jen and I to compose ourselves. I could hear the bar tender and the other patrons laughing and relaying to those who missed it what happened, this making us laugh even more.
When the bar tender offered us more wine to taste, we humbly declined.
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