The Mad Scientist’s Guide to Composition: A Somewhat Cheeky but Exceedingly Useful Introduction to Academic Writing

Considering the composition classroom as a mad scientist’s laboratory, The Mad Scientist’s Guide to Composition introduces different kinds of writing as experiments. Writing an essay is a task that can strike fear into a student’s heart, but performing an experiment licenses creativity and doesn’t presume that one knows the outcome from the start.

The Mad Scientist’s Guide covers the kinds of writing most often required on college campuses, while also addressing important steps and activities frequently overlooked in composition guides, such as revision and peer reviewing. Actual examples of student writing are included throughout, as are helpful reminders and tips to help students polish their skills. Above all, the Mad Scientist’s Guide seeks to make writing fun.

Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock is Professor of English at Central Michigan University and an Associate Editor for The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. He is the author or editor of 22 books on questionable topics ranging from The Rocky Horror Picture Show to Edgar Allan Poe. These include The Monster Theory Reader (University of Minnesota Press), The Cambridge Companion to the American Gothic (Cambridge UP), The Age of Lovecraft (with Carl Sederholm, Minnesota), Goth Music: From Sound to Subculture (with Isabella van Elferen, Routledge), The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters (Ashgate), The Vampire Film: Undead Cinema (Wallflower), and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Wallflower). Visit him at JeffreyAndrewWeinstock.com.