Humor in writing

The boys' summer writing exercises are coming, in part, from a book called Games for Writing by Peggy Kaye.  Today's assignment called for a mom-child collaborative game, where we each rolled a die to see how many words we would contribute to a story.  I started Zach and Tyler with the exact same introductory lines, and it was fun to see where their stories went without any encouragement from each other.  Neither of them were very excited about the game at first, but by the time we had filled a page together, they were both laughing, and so was I!  It was a great exercise for stimulating creativity...even if boy-sponsored creativity inevitably involves explosions, mayhem, and death.

In case you can't read from the photos below, I will translate, with the boys' words in bold and mine in plain text.  I will preserve spelling just for fun.  (You can click the pictures to enlarge.)

Tyler's story:

It was a dark and stormy night.  Dr. Who was busy in the laboratory.  He was working on an exciting experiment for the children he was teaching.  It was scary, exiting, hypnotizing, and big.  He had strange substances bubbling in his beakers.  Electricity shot out of the robot creation as it hypnotyzed the children.  It jerked and moaned and said,"You are now under my spell, minions!  You will now be a pig when I snap my fingers.  Then, Dr. Who will say 'taco,' and you will oink."  With a snap, the robot turned the kids into pigs who oinked.  Dr. Who said, "This was crazy!  This class is dismissed."  The robot shot a hole in the ceiling and flew away.  Then, from high above, he set off an awesome fireworks display.  Then he turned evil but Dr. Who created another good robot.  They fought and good conquered evil.  Evil regenerated itself and turned good evil.  Robots are bad inventions.  The end.

Zach's story:

It was a dark and stormy night.  Dr. Who was busy in the laboratory.  He was building a very dangerous Robot for a super-secret agency called the super secret robot agency.  It would be the single greatest agency for robots, if only it was indestructible.  Quite suddenly, a bomb exploded in the lab!  Dr. Who barley exaped with his life, but the robot was destroyed.  Everything inside the lab disintegrated.  Dr. Who needed a new plan.  He's going to join the circus as a super smart ringmaster.  During his first performance, something strange flew into the tent.  It was a monster with huge fangs.  It started to attak! The crowd screamed and ran away.  The great fanged beast killed many of the slowest runners.  It also wounded the tiny flea circus.  The beast carried away the frightened ringmaster, who couldn't do any magic to escape.  So he figured that speaking persuasively might frighten Fangface so it might release him.  Dr. Who said, "Please drop me so I'll be safe.  You aren't smart!"  Fangface roared angrily.  Fangface threw him down forcefully.  Dr. Who plumeted and crashed!  He had not respected Fangface's power.  Dr. Who didn't survive.  What a tragic tale!  From brilliant to slowly dying.  These were sad times!  Dr. Who's life ended very painfully.  His careers were unexpectedly hazardous.