Aaron Matis

Professor Peter Schmidt

Short Story in America

16 December 2013

Classroom Assignment/Discussion

In “How to Tell A Story”, Mark Twain declares that the deliverance and performance

of a story is integral to the translation of it’s meaning and value. The performance of

a story is what makes it humorous, which, for Twain, is synonymous with American.

Twain separates comedic stories into three separate groups: Humorous (American),

Comic (English), and Witty (French). Twain says that, “The humorous story depends

for its effect upon the manner of the telling; the comic story and the witty story

upon the matter” (Twain, 1). The aim of this lesson plan is to analyze what makes a

story humorous by applying Twain’s basic instructions: the teller, the pause, the

diction, and the character.

I have provided the class with three assignments. The first is to read and analyze

Mark Twain’s methodology in “How to Tell A Story”. Each student must provide an

outline of Twain’s basic storytelling elements that they have gathered from their

reading. The next assignment is to have each student record his/her own rendition

of a contemporary work of humorous fiction, “I Love Girl” by Simon Rich. Students

are encouraged to read through the text once before attempting to record their own

performance. Students are also encouraged to perform their final rendition of “I

Love Girl” for a small audience. By doing this, I am hoping some students will step

out of their typical comfort zones and realize the potential of spoken stories. The

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final assignment is to listen to an audio file of Michael Ian Black performing “I Love

Girl” from the Selected Shorts Podcast. In class, we will break down which of

Twain’s methods that Black uses in order to immerse the audience in the telling of

his story. I will be asking students how their recordings differed from Black’s

recording. If students are willing to perform their own rendition of “I Love Girl”, a

small amount of bonus points will be administered. Questions and discussion topics

will be provided via PowerPoint. I will facilitate the class discussion by posing my

own answers to these questions if discussion becomes stagnant.

The objective of this assignment is to highlight the full potential of comedic writing

and performance. It is also an exercise to help students consider how comedy has

changed since the time of Mark Twain. Michael Ian Black’s minimalist performance

will be discussed. I will ask students whether Twain would have approved of Black’s

performance. As next week’s assignment, students will be asked to write their own

2-5 page humorous short story. Students must upload their performances on a class

YouTube Channel. Each student is required to watch his classmates’ performances.

A vote will be taken via YouTube’s “Like” system to determine which two students

will perform their own stories for the upcoming class.

This class plan and discussion is important to me, because I have attended several

Selected Shorts readings in New York City. I have submitted my own work several

times and continue to do so. I would like to begin a short story reading contest here

on campus over the course of the next semester. There would be two categories:

original and retelling- the objective being to foster a sense of creativity and

innovation through comedic expression on campus. I believe that the short story is

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growing in popularity and I would like more people to recognize the power that a

short performance can hold.

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