Today I'm venting. Couldn't sleep all last night. Want to know Why?
Well, yesterday I decided to have some fun at my Writers Group and as luck would have it, I was the first to sign in to present an essay. My essay was a satire on the rules and regulations of Writing. I had spent three days writing it and as all good satire requires, I had ridiculed, sarcasted, and exaggerated all through it. And it was loaded with what I thought were very funny metaphors. In introducing the article I told my fellow writers that I had deliberately inserted every mistake possible, so they didn't need to "correct" it: I was well aware of every unnecessary, superfluous word, comma, italic, capital letter, repetition, conjunction and preposition, with exaggeration. It had been a huge struggle to get all of those in and , with irony, make it sound like a normal piece of writing. I thought I would hear a chuckle begin with the fourth word and become roaring laughter by the end as they enjoyed my poking fun at all the critiquing errors they usually comment on.
Instead, I was met with relative silence. Just a couple of snickers. I was dismayed. At the end of the reading time, the leader of the group remarked, "Since Janice has indicated she doesn't want any comments, we'll move on to the next presenter."
I was so disappointed. I had expected comments on how I had taken a Rule and stood it on its head, or at least turned it inside out in a very humorous way.
When I got home, I sat down and read each returned copy for comments. Out of ten copies, six had not one word written on them, one had the word "Cute" at the top, one had commented "We're not mean!" One had corrected every single mistake and covered the entire thing with curlique "e's" meaning Eliminate. And one had written "Good tongue-in-cheek."
All night long I dwelt on it. They didn't understand at all what I had attempted to do. I hadn't called them "mean"; I had written that the POWER of Critiquing turned them into monsters. I thought that was funny exaggeration. But I countered it by saying that after the meeting they shed the critiquing robes and were the sweetest people ever! I had written that writing Memoirs had been a very steep learning curve, more like a suicidal cliff, referring back to my article about How Far Do You Go? when writing a memoir. Didn't even get a smile. The only thing that got a laugh was the ironical mention in regard to conjunctions connecting thoughts and sentences together: that at my age, I needed all the help I could get to hold my thoughts together.
Towards dawn I finally figured it out. I had succeeded so well in making the essay sound like a normally written one, that they had all ignored that I had told them it was satirical. Satire can't be subtle; it has to be right out there in your face kind of humor.
So I Googled How to Write Satire and they gave me a few good examples:
- If voting changed anything, they would make it illegal. (This uses sarcasm to undermine democracy.)
- Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation. (This uses exaggeration to highlight the vices of politicians.)
- When I was a boy, I was told that anybody could become President. Now I'm beginning to believe it. (This uses humour to allude that the current President has no talent.)
I just thought satire was more subtle.
See you next week. With a more serious approach. Janice
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