How to write comedy

Humor

• Humor is undefinable, it comes in a million different forms from a pre-thought joke, to a random event, to dry sarcasm, so no one can really define what makes something funny. So here are some rules, although no one can ever prove why they work.

• Pickle, Chicken, Alka-seltzer, Buick. All these words are funny, and all these words have a hard k or c sound, coincidence? No, it turns out that words with a hard k or c or just funny.

• Timing, things that re surprising are commonly funny so putting a pause before the end line will excite the reader's attention and make it more funny.

• Always put the punch line at the end, don't continue after.

• Funny Ironic headlines, they're all short!

• Man Struck By Lightning Faces Battery Charge
• Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers
• Iraqi Head Seeks Arms

• Be witty, your characters should have the nerve to say things that aren't perfectly politically correct all the time.

• Random fact
• Many funny writers are OCD that spent a lot of time alone as kids! 

How to write Fiction Part II

1. Read!!!!!! Reading teaches us what makes a good story, what makes a bad story, and gives us inspiration. Being a writer without being a reader, is like being a sports commentator without knowing the sport, you don't really know what's going on, and chances are you'll probably end up being really bad at it. However if you've watched other sports commentators and understand what you should do first, you will have all the tools you need to become a great commentator, or writer :)

          Classics like the Odyssey, and Shakespeare. Books in the genre your writing about, like maybe The Hunger Games, or Divergent. Weird books that no ones ever heard about, analyze each as you read for what works and what doesn't.

1. Don't drown your main character in a sea of insignificant other characters. Only give your main characters, recurring, or viral to the plot characters names. Likewise don't put in unnecessary dialogues with random strangers that don't have any relevance to the plot. This might seem obvious, but these conversations are everywhere, a conversation with a neighbor, a waiter, someone a the bus stop, they're insignificant and boring, so cut them. For example: pick up the scene after the food has arrived. 
2. Know the back story of your characters. How can your readers be expected to believe your character is real, when the author hasn't even fully developed them yet. Knowing the back story will help you the author to write more easily and confidently.
3. Dialogue can be tricky, and there are a few things to remember. Don't directly answer questions in dialogue for example:  from http://theeditorsblog.net/2011/11/03/bad-dialogue-bad-bad-dialogue/

 ”Did you get the aspirin? I really need it.”

“Yes, I got the aspirin.”

“And the burger buns. I hope you got those.”

“Yes, I got the burger buns.”

“Did you remember to stop by my mother’s house? She said she had something for us.”

“No, I didn’t remember to stop by your mother’s house. I didn’t remember that she said she had something for us.”

Don't repeat 

“Yeah, Jack ran after Melanie,” Arthur told us. ”Jack tried to get her to turn around. Jack ran down the street, calling Melanie’s name, determined she’d listen to Jack’s pleas one time.” Arthur snapped his fingers. Nodded. ”Yeah, Jack would get her to listen. Jack had that way about him. Melanie didn’t stand a chance. Not with Jack dogging her that way.”

Poetry Research!

Why are poems different from short stories?

Five literary devices used in poems that differentiate them:

1.A trope: a word or expression used in a figurative sense, has meaning that is different from its literal meaning, there are many different types of tropes like hyperbole, irony, litotes, metaphor, metonymy, oxymoron, personification, pun, rhetorical question, simile, synecdoche, and zeugma.

         I wandered lonely as a cloud by William Wordsworth

          I WANDERED lonely as a cloud         Similie
          That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
          When all at once I saw a crowd,
          A host, of golden daffodils;
          Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
          Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

          Continuous as the stars that shine
          And twinkle on the milky way,         Hyperbole
          They stretched in never-ending line
          Along the margin of a bay:                                  10
          Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
          Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

          The waves beside them danced; but they     personification
          Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
          A poet could not but be gay,
          In such a jocund company:
          I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
          What wealth the show to me had brought:

          For oft, when on my couch I lie
          In vacant or in pensive mood,                               20
          They flash upon that inward eye
          Which is the bliss of solitude;
          And then my heart with pleasure fills,
          And dances with the daffodils.

2.Metrics: The reason behind a poems rhyme and rhythm, made of iambic pentameter. This includes rhyme scheme, metric feet, metric lines (stresses), rythm

3. Sonics: Are related to the sound of a poem

4. Forms: Forms are the reason poetry is written in stanzas.

5. Poems don't have to rhyme they only have to have contain some of the above literary devices that distinguish it from a short story or essay.

Five things I learned about short stories this week.

1.Simplicity. Most short stories only have one overarching theme or story, I think this is important because a short story is so short that it is important not to confuse the reader by making it too complicated.

2.The time period is often short. Many short stories happen over a time period of a few days or a week, even stories that include longer time periods will often focus in on a certain day or two.

3. Characters, and setting. Both can vary greatly, but a common theme is to be in a world that's similar to ours so that it doesn't take a long time to explain, and the characters are often pretty simple too, with maybe one main problem that they have to overcome.

4. The Hero's Journey. A lot of books and longer writings follow this format, but not short stories they almost always completely ignore the steps, the writing is more about the emotions and a snap shot rather than a story of events.

5.Purpose. I think the purpose of short stories is to allow for someone to write a story without having to plan a more complicated theme, motives, develop characters, ect. A short story allows the writer to focus in improving their writing skills like imagery, metaphors, ect.

Welcome Post

Hello and welcome to my blog!
            My name is Adrianne Holland and I am a sophomore here at FHS. I love school and am in the IB diploma track which can be pretty stressful sometimes so I like to do other things outside of school like horse riding, violin, and tennis to balance all the homework out. My favorite thing to do however is travel, so far I've been lucky and have gotten to go to nine different countries on three different continents. Because of my dad's job as a CU physicist he gets to go on a sabbatical every six years which involves moving to a different country and sharing his work. So when I was six we lived in Trento, Italy for a year, and more recently we went to New Zealand for my with grade year, sadly I did not pick up the accent though, :( My parents really wanted to go back to New Zealand since that's were they're from and I got to live in the same house my dad grew up in. Our family has a big love of sailing, which is ironic living in the desert state of Colorado, so we like to go back to NZ to sail our big Davidson boat there and also visit the relatives! However I don't think I could move there because it never snows, and I love to ski and ice skate a lot too, even though I'm not very good at either. A few other strange things about me are that I can ride a unicycle, I can make paper cranes, and I love to put mint chocolate chip ice cream in smoothies! Here is a descriptive moment that I wrote a while ago.

         The waves crash against the rocks sending up a spray shimmering like a thousand diamonds. Up above the seagulls squawk and circle the bright sun, fighting their way to its warmth with beady eyes. The sand below filled with shards of shells, bottles and pebbles worn out, small and smooth ground down to uniformity by the endless swirling waters. The waves rush in and out of the tidal pools creating eddies of swirling water that spiral and foam, the starfish clinging on for dear life in order not to get swept away, over and over in the relentless certainty that is the great Pacific Ocean.