Hello viewer! This site features some fiction pieces I am proud to have written for a fiction class in Lehman College. My goal is to be a better writer overall, I have only just started truly creating characters and storylines in depth in this class. I truly believe my writing has improved since the beginning of the semester. I am much better with writing dialogue, using characterization to describe characters and creating a world for someone to read. I do want to further improve all these skills, however. Maybe one day write a piece that I can submit for publishing, but I won’t get ahead of myself, the overall quality of my work in college is still raw after all. The only thing I found difficult about the fiction pieces was really trying to create this world and its rules in a manner that will be understandable to others who read it, in this class we had others provide feedback on the fiction pieces we all contributed, when I got my feedback I realized that I definitely needed to go more in depth but in a short way to make my characters come to life in the stories.
Self- Assessment:
The first fiction story was daunting to write. I had a hard time getting my creativity flowing to think up a good story to write for a class to read. I was scared that my dialogue and writing wouldn’t be up to par and I was having a hard time, even with my love of the horror genre writing a ghost story that really held the weight of what was happening to my character. An interesting thing about this assignment is how I got the idea to create it. I was listening to a song called “Bury a friend” by Billie Eilish. The lyrics are about a person who cares for the demon haunting them, and at first I wanted a story where the main character was being haunted and experienced sleep paralysis but cares for the ghost haunting them. I didn’t think I could end that story properly though and instead created Maddie.
Overall I’m very happy with my characters and the story, I truly wanted to write a ghost story because I love stories of hauntings and spirits. I used a little of my own knowledge in the story which was fun to write considering I don’t see a lot of Cuban spiritualism in horror movies or books. I plan to write an prologue of the story which will tie into “Buried Secrets” and give it a full ending even though I did describe how it will all turn out within the story (here’s a hint, grandma Ellie saves the day!)
The second non-workshopped assignment we had to do was even more stressful. I originally wanted to create the prologue for Buried Secrets but it was still so raw and we received a prompt on creating a conclusion without worrying how the characters got there which I rolled with. I wrote a conclusion about a girl, Leah, who had been stuck in her school alone while a zombie outbreak was happening. She died in the end at the hands of the zombies. When I wrote that prompt I didn’t think I could expand it but I was in the middle of catching up in a season of Walking Dead and got inspired.
I wrote Outbreak in a very different style than Buried Secrets. I use third person and past tense rather than first person present tesne which was actually a little harder to write simply because I felt a little more detached from my characters and what was going on around them. To be honest I plan to try re-writing it in a different tense to see if it comes out more detailed but I tried to capture the fear that encompasses such a situation. Again it was hard creating this world, especially switching POVs so much rather than continuing with one POV for the whole story but I felt it was necessary to really tell the story from each character’s POV to understand the sequence of events that was happening. I’m proud of the finished product overall.Fable was a very interesting story to read. As a psychology major I loved how the author tied in aspects of therapy and how the character’s story develops. I found this
The critical lens essay was interesting to write. As a psychology major I usually look at most stories through that sort of lens. I psychoanalyze why characters are motivated to act the way they do and why the author wrote something a specific way. Being asked to specifically look at a story though that lens was a chance to talk about a story in a psychosocially analytical manner. I enjoyed looking at the story through that lens.
Further, I didn’t realize there were so many critical lenses until it was brought up in class, I found it interesting to read about each of them and will be looking for some of them in future short stories and prose as I further my writing and reading in college.
