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ABOUT

WRITING

CREATIVE WRITING PORTFOLIO

IT WAS AN ARC & STORY NIGHT...

Before and after everything else, I consider myself an architect of narratives. While creative fiction is my passion, I try not to limit myself to a medium or genre. Instead, I let the story tell me how it needs to be told (even when it kicks and screams, and changes its mind halfway through). The work below spans several approaches, from the interactive space, to screenplays and traditional prose.

Kairos

INTERACTIVE FICTION (TWINE)

Kairos is a branching, interactive narrative created for a course in Interactive Stories.  It chronicles the struggle of Mareike Martin, a very average teenage girl living in a universe where everyone else is blessed with the power to arrive 'at the right place, at the right time'. Because Mareike lacks this power, the decisions of the player/reader impact how on-time or late she is for events she only has minimal ability to predict, with often dire consequences. As well as a story, the piece is an experiment in our ability to judge cause and effect as we move through our own world at blinding speeds.

 

IMISPHYX II

INTERACTIVE FICTION (TWINE)

Presented here as an interactive piece, this version of Imisphyx follows a separate ensemble living in the novel's established world. The idea was to allow players to navigate an extremely subjective universe, slipping in and out of characters minds by a subtle set of interaction laws. I hoped to make players begin to question who they were, and what they were doing in a story that seems at first glance to be about other people.

 

BACKLASH

SCRIPT VIGNETTE

This is the first of three vignettes. My assignment was to invent a man, a woman, & an animal, and write three versions of the same scene. In the first, the man and woman break up; in the second, they stay together; and in the third, the animal has some direct impact on the outcome. The exercise was meant to make us consider what variables impact a narrative in an interactive setting, but it was good scriptwriting practice too.

 

WONDERFALLS - "Curious Cat"

TELEVISION SPEC SCRIPT

This is a speculative script for the 2004 television show Wonderfalls created by Bryan Fuller & Todd Holland. It follows Jaye Tyler, an ivy league grad who suddenly finds herself hearing instructions from animal figurines in the gift shop where she works. I chose to write this show because it appeals to my somewhat quirky sense of humor, and because, beneath the ample sarcasm, Jaye's struggles with faith and purpose are things everyone can relate to.

 

NAMES IN RAIN

NOVELLA - EXCERPT

Names in Rain is a short novel about a little girl who finds herself suddenly existing in a peculiar world. It was inspired by our tendency as humans to create euphemisms for taboo words. Many people hold on to the superstition that something terrible might happen if we ever speak a curse, but how do we know that something else isn't going wrong because of the nonsense words we speak instead?

 

DEFIANT GREEN

SCENIC VIGNETTE

One of my graduate courses, Narrative & Argument, approached written composition through the lens of design, focusing on achieving effects by the inclusion and omission of stylistic elements. One of our assignments was to visit a place, observe it for several hours, and then pull the audience with us into the scene. Though scenes are often defined by the people and objects present, I took a slightly different approach and tried to use what was present to underscore what was absent.

 

Imisphyx III 

A story told through Objects

This latest manifestation of the Imisphyx universe was built in 2012 for my final project in a course called Sequential Visual Narrative. Because a major theme in the work is belief and subjectivity influencing the reality of situations, I was eager to extend the concept, and give my audience the chance to develop their own assumptions about what the 'real' story was. I refer to this piece as 'objective' storytelling, because of the use of physical artifacts, but in truth it is anything but, and attempts to show just how subjective even tangible evidence can be.

© 2015