Humor combined with skillfully collected knowledge make's Jennifer 8. Lee's spoken essay fun like an all-you-can-eat-buffet. I learned the value of humor, not from cooking, but from my old Biology teacher in high school. Doc entertained a class of Juniors and Seniors with excellently timed stories completely relevant to the subject. This helped me retain the otherwise skeletal information because it was related to a story. Stories beef up and flesh out the facts so they're easier to remember. You may not remember the story verbatim but you remember the gist. I continued to use the Doc's method when I started working for historic sites and museums. I used humorous stories to engage the audience while providing the factual information. This always improved the audiences experience.
However, writing humor into an essay is hard for me because humor requires an audience reaction. How do you write for an audience when you don't know know who the audience is? Even that's not my biggest roadblock, it's really the years of collegiate molding restricted to academic writing that I'm having to break free. Well, there's a book that supposed to help (you knew that was coming right?!): "Writing Humor: Creativity and the Comic Mind." This is supposed to help break down what's funny and what's not, as well as help make flat writing... fluffy? We'll see.
*Okay, so the campus library does not have this book. Actually, it doesn't have any books about writing with humor. Talk about reinforcing the mold! I declare, "I will write with humor. I will make you grin, smile and laugh out loud!"
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