Essays: How out-there is too out-there?

<p>I've seen that in the past, mainly for the Waldo essays, people have written short stories for their essay. Does that work out well? I chose the joke essay, and the majority of it is a short story I used as an example intended to bring the reader to realize the meaning of the joke without being too obvious and joke-ruining. Would that be straying from the format too much? With the whole "A joke is a very serious thing" quote, I'm worried that it may not work out as well with this prompt as it did for Waldo. What do you guys think?</p>