Class Description
Humor has the power to entertain, surprise, enlighten, and even move readers. If you appreciate it in other people’s writing but aren’t quite sure how to bring it to your own, this class is for you! We’ll look at the building blocks of comedy and explore how writers use incongruity, hyperbole, dialogue, detail, and other elements of craft to bring humor to their work. Whether you're looking to write an all-out comic essay or novel, or you simply want to bring moments of humor to otherwise “serious” work, you'll walk away with concrete tips, techniques, and inspiration. (And you'll have fun along the way.)
Note that this class is focused on using humor in fiction and essay/memoir, not writing humor pieces like those in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Shouts & Murmurs, etc.
Writing Roadmap: We've created a simple, goal-based writing roadmap to help you find the perfect GrubStreet course for your writing needs.
Thanks to the excellent literary citizenship of our donors, scholarships are available for all GrubStreet classes. To apply, click the gray "APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIP" button. In order to be considered for a scholarship, you must complete your application at least one week before the start date of a class. Please await our scholarship committee's decision before registering for the class. We cannot hold spots in classes, so the sooner you apply, the better. Scholarships cannot be applied retroactively.
For more detailed information about GrubStreet scholarships, including how to contribute to scholarship funds for other students, click here.
This class will take place using Zoom videoconferencing. After registering, a yellow Resources tab will appear in this section containing a link to join class. Please note that you will need to be logged into view the Resources tab.
Zoom Participation:
In our experience, the intimate nature of a writing workshop benefits from on-camera participation. Students are of course welcome to turn their camera off whenever they need to, but it is a community norm for cameras to be on most of the time. You can learn more about using Zoom here.
Zoom Accessibility:
You can enable closed captioning at any time during the meeting by clicking the CC button at the bottom of the screen. If you'd like to access the transcript after class, please make sure to let your instructor ahead of time that you'd like a copy.