Week 3: Joining Online Writing Communities and Humour

 

 

First Hour: 

1. Publish emotion pieces on BBS; read and comment on three other people's work. Choose someone you do not even know.

2. Joining online communities:

On the Internet, there are two meanings of the word community. 1. an existing real life group which increases its communication potential by using Internet technologies. An example of this might be the Jewish community in Sydney who have a number of We b sites linking like-minded members. And 2. a virtual, or online community which only exists by virtue of the Internet such as the Technical Writing community worldwide. We are going to join some of the second brand of online communities in order for us t o experience the joys (and problems) of interacting on a global scale. Here is a small excerpt on the subject of Communities on the Internet.

There are basically two kinds of virtual communities which are open to us: 1. Listservs, and 2. the Usenet. A listserv is basically an e-mail list. If you send a message to the listserv, then the program forwards your message on to all members of the l ist. This could be dozens, or hundreds of other people. Of course you can always reply to individual post’ers of listserv messages.

The Usenet, (or newsgroups) is a set of thousands of computer conferences which are updated about every 10 days. A user has to actively search out the most appropriate newsgroup and use software to read the current set of articles. Netscape has provision on for both kinds of online communities, but unfortunately we cannot use Netscape Mail or Newsgroups, since they have been disabled as being a security risk on our network.

As you may have realised, the Usenet is much more active - you have to actually go looking for the newsgroups you are interested in. Listservs are pretty passive - messages are just sent to you every day. You decide whether you read them or not.

Instructions:

A. Check out the Liszt Web site for details of 71,000+ lists around the world.

B. Search Deja.com for details of appropriate newsgroups.

C. For further information on the Usenet and newsgroups here is an article of mine which may help. Just found this link, Building Authentic Communities in Virtual Spaces which might help.

 

Common Hour: In groups, read and discuss "emotion" pieces. Can you name the central emotion? Dominant personality aspect? Is the piece on the edge of your comfort zone or well within it? How does that affect your response? How hard was it to expose your emotions? To render them in words? How might the piece be used in a larger text or purpose?

 

Third Hour:

New Topic: Humour

You have some samples of reality-based humorous pieces before you. On the Web there are lots of sites devoted to humorous writing: eg http://www.arcfan.demon.co.uk/pgg/index.htm, or http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/6925/humour.html; and especially, http://www.rah96.com/; 

A recent anthology of short humour called the Great Australian Bite contains dozens of very short pieces of experience-based humour on familiar topics such as dogs, family gatherings, road trips, fashion, best friends, people you love to hate, family m embers, etc. Sometimes the incidents are exaggerated for effect, but exaggeration is a time-honoured technique in this genre.

On the quieter side, if look at Bianca Canacichi's food piece on the BBS, you will find a different sort of humour, a self-reflective, verbally descriptive piece that 'makes you hungry' as one person said. This sort of piece is on the fact/fiction edge. It reveals quite a bit about a particular person's sensibility/personality. It's like looking inside someone's head, and seeing something quite human and funny.

By contrast, look at Leif Galaen's piece on lost illusions. More an admission of guilt, it is funny, and serious at the same time. You understand the hero's plight, probably have imitated it yourself, but it still remains humorous, even though you know the punchline.

If you deal in black humour and irony then these are best delivered in small doses. A story about laughing at a funeral or a piece called "Aren't road accidents fun?" may not meet with universal applause. But if you enjoy reading or writing on this "edge" try basing some pieces on the "opposite" reactions you experienced or observed in a real situation -- a funny funeral, comic car crash, the most fun you ever had standing in a movie queue.

Genres of Humour

There are many genres of humour from slapstick to the shaggy dog story that ends in a terrible pun.

Choice 1. The backs of magazines almost always contain a short personal humour piece by a columnist. Some like Richard Glover's have a continuing cast of characters (Bat Boy, Space Cadet and Jocasta-- sons and partner). Kaz Cooke sends up fashion victims. One of my favorites is a piece by Emma Thom on her daily requirement of the five major mood groups. Anything that pokes gentle fun at human foibles will work. Sometimes the humourist adopts a persona or role. If you've been a salesperson, you could write a comic piece from the perspective of the clerk who doesn't want to be bothered with customers, lies to them about how they look in the items, hides the last sale item for a friend or whatever. Your working life is a good source of experience-based humour that would have general appeal. Use what you know from behind the scenes at a restaurant, supermarket, music store.

Choice 2. If you're involved in sport or some special interest group, you have ready source of humour. There's office humour, Internet humour, college humour, football humour, hospital humour, etc.

Choice 3. Try explaining something blokey to girls or girl-talk to the boys. Explain local customs to a Martian or other foreigner or vice versa.

Choice 4. A popular technique is to exaggerate some facet of everyday life, often a frustrating one: Getting a speeding ticket, have to ask an embarrassing question, locking your keys in the car with the engine running, trying to find what you want on the intern et, trying on swim wear, getting ready for a blind date. Think of embarrassing things that happened to you or that you observed. Think of funny things that have happened in the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, parking garage, shopping mall, fitness center. Gro up several incidents to make a day at the mall. Take several dog stories and make them happen all in one day.

Choice 4. Two of the most enduring comic genres are the fake how-to and the fake quiz.

Choice 5. You've probably seen comic how-to pieces based on personal experiences and common situations. For instance, a Reasoned Writing student "explained" how to make toast as a comedy of errors: It's 2 am when you've been up all night trying to writ e an assignment and the toaster's broken, etc. etc. For some reason of my own, I've wanted to write "How to remove a guilty consciences and other black marks".

Choice 6. The "recipe" is another fruitful base of humour. What about a parody of a "feminist" cookbook; good driving; getting good marks from...

Choice 6. Another form is the "rules" approach: rules for having a good time at a nightclub; rules of a "great" camping trip (rule 1: There are no good campsites. Rule 2: Roughing it builds character); rules for Panthers supporters?

Choice 7. Parody and satire are usually considered verbal genres in that they depend on the reader knowing the "base" text which is being sent up.

Parody is usually done by imitating the style of a base text but using different content or by putting the "wrong" subject matter into a particular style. Try to write a parody of an advertisement or commercial or TV show. Write your first impressions of UWS as if it were a Star Trek episode. You could parody the Simpson's, but it would be hard to satirize the program since it already is an ongoing satire of American life. But you could do piece making Bart or Homer Aussies. For satire, try a sports figure, political figure, or public situation. Satire is hard because both the writer and the reader need to have a good understanding of the situation.

Parody: course outlines, movie/music reviews, new age slogans, restaurant menus, ads, commercials, news stories, poems, sermons, academic articles, technical manuals, romance novels/stories, X-files.....

Make up lists: 10 reasons why Sydney is better than Melbourne; 5 reasons why UWS is better than UTS; 2 reasons why you should break up with your boy/girl friend.

Some writers make money by selling short "filler" bits such as the anecdotes you find in the Reader's Digest or compilations of odd bits of information.

In the 30-Minute Writer, Connie Emerson explains the structure of the Reader's Digest anecdote as a one-two-three punch sequence: "The first sentences introduce the characters and the situation or problem. The middle section describes the action o r expands on the conflict. The anecdote closes with a satisfying ending, usually a punch line or twist that catches the reader off balance" (217). The average anecdote is 5 to 7 sentences long. The key is brevity.

Poetry: What about an Ode to a barf bag and other strange verse. If you're poetically inclined, humour verse is a very popular magazine filler. Give it a try.

Web humour

The web is a funny place. You'll find tons of humourous material, the most popular tends to be based on lists: How do you know you're a ....... 101 ways to ....... Top ten reasons ....... How to create a spaceship (If you drop a buttered piece of br ead...)

Explore the web, find example of humourous writing and/or comic writers on-line workshops. Find 101 ways to be obnoxious on Usenet at http://www.epsilon3.com/home/usenet. (Please do NOT do this on the Usenet!)

 

Workshop Exercise

In class: Brainstorm and write a comic piece on this topic: "You know you're at UWS when ..... "

 

Assignment for Next Week:

Write a short humorous piece or two short-short pieces based mainly in reality, but with creativity added (choose a topic and/or genre different from any other pieces you've done so far). The group piece doesn't count. Choose any genre. Remember that humour has many moods and doesn't have to be uproarious or put people down; you can go for the gentle, wacky, or absurd. The object is to find and try out your comic voice.