Creative Writing: Satire Lessons

Satire:

Lesson 1

Using Headlines: Use publications, online publications are fine. Find a theme or topic that has a number of headlines (politics, crime, romance, natural disaster, the environment) to tell a message. You can use between ten and fifteen headlines to tell your story. Write them down in a sequence you feel best tells your story about your topic. Add punctuation that is appropriate and title your message. Remember headlines don’t have punctuation, so what you add may emphasize a statement, or make it less important.

This lesson often has funny products and can be used in conjunction with following lessons on satire.

Lesson 2:
Satire Lesson A Modest Proposal
Read Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. This is satire at its best. Jonathan Swift is known for Gulliver’s Travel’s as well as A Modest Proposal. Dig deeper into the culture of the times when Jonathan Swift wrote this piece in response to government conflict.

You may do research on the time period, as well as the lifestyles of people during this time to assist you write the assignment.

Write no less than two pages in response to the article, A Modest Proposal. You may write as a journalist, responding to his writing. You may write as a person living in “A Modest Proposal’s time or write in the present responding on the topics this piece presented.