Fiction

Fiction

For this fiction essay, I wanted to begin with the aesthetic of a story -- how the aesthetic appeals to our emotions and our intelligence and leaves us with an experience. This short film introduces us to storytelling: Paperman. There are no words here, so after viewing the film and doing the Visual Thinking Strategy, students realize that when they tell this story that they are responsible for capturing the aesthetic in words. What point of view will we select? What language will we use? What thoughts and feelings? What observations can we make? What images will our readers depend on us to create? Do we want to tell any back story or add a flashback?

Student then, write their story (and the room is silent with creativity).

Still working with imagery, we look at a picture:
Visual Thinking Strategy to Prompt Writing

Student Example #1

February 20, 2013

                                                                                Hope Returns

                Snap. Snap. Snap. These are the sounds I heard while I drifted off to unconsciousness. The constant sound of snapping invades my mind as my curled up form sleeps in my bed in my bedroom late at night. As the sound grows quieter, my unconscious mind tries to drift back into its sleep-filled state, until thunder makes me open my eyes in surprise. I sit up slowly as I let my heartbeat slowdown from the shock. I turn to look at my clock on my bedside table, and saw that it was two AM. I let myself wonder if I should go to sleep or stay awake and wait for the storm to pass. I decide on the former, since I couldn’t be sure when the storm would pass. I then remember the constant snapping sound that invaded my sleeping state and decide to try to figure out what it was.

            I swing my feet over my bed and start to walk to the door across the room. But right before I reach it, lightning flashed, and something caught my eye in the window by my bed; a flower. An orange sunflower was delicately placed on the sill of my window. I looked at it and felt my breathe go still. My heart started pounding in my ears and it felt like I was frozen still. Opening the door was now forgotten as I ever so slowly inched my way over to the window. All the emotions that I’ve been pushing down for the last two years came bubbling up my throat. I feel tears starting to prick my eyes as I stood right by the window, where now only its thin glass separated me and the sunflower.                       

            I looked at it again and see that it’s almost glowing, completely dry from the rain. The sudden urge to touch it, to make sure that its real hits me, and I start to open my window. But before I could even open it a crack, lightning flashed again and I saw something I never thought I would see again.

            A girl with flowing brown hair and sharp blue eyes stood among the trees in my backyard. She wore a simple white dress and her face remained emotionless as she started at me through the glass of my window. Her body was glowing, just like the orange sunflower that still remained untouched on my window still. She just simply stared at me as my body started trembling while the tears flowed freely down my face. My mind didn’t want to believe what my eyes clearly saw. It was my sister Melissa. My sister who dies two years ago. My sister who, at the time, was a year younger than me. My sister who was killed in a car crash after driving home from school one day. My sister who was only sixteen when she died. My Sister who offered me a ride home on that same day, but I decided to take the bus instead.

            The sun shined brightly down on the bushes that were planted against the high school I went to at the time. I sat on the lawn, my legs crossed, working on my math homework when I heard a car pull up by the curb. I glanced up and saw that it was Melissa, my younger sister. She smiled as she pushed her sunglasses up onto her head.

            “Hey, sis,” she said, “Want a ride?” Her blue eyes looked at mine questioningly. I looked at her red convertible with the top down and remembered that it was only April and the wind would feel too cold on my skin. Plus, I wanted to finish my homework.

            “No,” I said, “I’ll take the bus instead.”

            Melissa rolled her eyes. “Ok.” She said. She pushed her sunglasses down her face and drove off. I went back to doing my homework, thinking that the next time I’ll see her is at home. But in reality the next time I would see her is when she would be taken out of her totaled car, and placed in a body bag.

            But now, here she was, staring at me as if she was alive, when I knew for a fact that she was buried six-feet under the ground. I didn’t blink or move because I was afraid if I did she would be gone. The tears kept flowing down my face as I swallowed down the feeling of vomiting that swept over my body. I kept staring at Melissa when ever so slowly, her almost white lips curved up into a smile as she nodded to the flower.

            I looked down at it, remembering that when we were little we would plant these in the spring in our mom’s garden and when they were fully bloomed, we would put one in our hair; pretending that we were princesses. But when Melissa died I didn’t plant them when the spring came. I tried to push down my feelings of grief all together after her funeral. No crying, no showing any real emotion to anyone; I completely shut down.

            I looked up from the flower back to where my sister stood, but she was gone. A sob emitted from my throat as I put my face against the window frantically looking around my backyard for her, hoping that she didn’t leave me again. When, I saw that she was really gone I started to lift my window open, and when it was I grabbed the sunflower with trembling hands, as the rain from the storm hit my hand. The flower still remained untouched from rain and still glowing just like the ghost of my sister was. I closed the window and I stared at the object in my hand. My sobbing had stopped as I gently touched the petals on the flower. I gripped the stem as I walked over to my desk by the door and I gently placed the flower on it.  The next day when I woke up the storm had passed and the chirping of birds filled the air. I could hear drops of water dripping from the gutter on the roof. It almost seemed like the sun shined more brightly the any other day. Total calmness spread all through the backyard and even the house.

            I saw that the sunflower was still there, that what I saw wasn’t a dream. I took the flower and put it in a vase with water and set it back on my desk. I realized that the flower was a sign. A sign that my sister will always be with me. That it’s okay to be sad that she’s gone, and it’s okay to move on and be happy. It was a sign of hope. I didn’t believe it at first, but after fifty years, the flower still hasn’t died.

               

           

Student Example #2

 2/20/13

Period 8/9

The Aftermath

           My name is Ryan. The Apocalypse kinda killed everything, and mutated others. How do I survive out here? Easy. You grab a gun, and shoot at anything that moves. God only knows what it is, and it’s probably for the best that you don’t find out. Being the only one alive out here, it can get pretty bad. But I still get along, somehow. Yesterday, I saw one of the last humans die. He told me to get away, to someplace far away from here called “The Haven”. I don’t know if that was him going insane or if he actually did mean it. He pointed west and said to keep moving ‘that way’. His corpse is still probably pointing towards me. That is, if the rats haven’t gotten to him yet. Did I mention that was my dad? Yeah, things could definitely be better out here. Why am I listening to him? It beats being eaten alive.

          I should explain. “The Apocalypse” was caused by a world-wide nuclear war that had started over the assassination of the king of England, and launched the world into WWIV. It was so bad, we skipped right past three and went straight to four. Anyways, when about eighty nuclear missiles collide and combine, there is going to be a big explosion. That explosion is what destroyed essentially all human life as we know it. Lucky for me, bomb shelters work. For three months its been like this, a desolate, dry wasteland, with nothing to look forward to, and I still have no place to go. This Haven place though, if it exists, I might not be the last human left in this nightmare. If it doesn’t however…well, the human race had a nice run.

         It’s been another week and it’s only gone downhill. You can’t walk ten feet without something trying to gnaw at you. Rats, bats, hawks, they all want to live a little longer, and they’ll eat anything that they can get. The rats are all giant, larger than gorillas, and a lot deadlier than them too. They’ll catch sent of you and trick you into thinking that they are these big but defenseless things, then they strike harder than a house flying into your head. Hawks are also substantially smaller, but that doesn’t make them any less of a predator. As soon as the gentle flapping is heard, you have to take cover behind anything you can find. If you can’t find cover, you’re going to become cover for your friend. The razor sharp talons can cut through diamonds with ease. Probably, if diamonds were even around anymore. People care more about their lives now than they do jewelry. The bats are ferocious. They are hiding inside of caves that are dyer than the wasteland whatever is left of us know and hate. They have giant fangs ready to kill without a moment’s notice. They pick you off silently, until you notice your friends are dead and the bats are surrounding you. The only good thing about them is that they kill you quickly, or so I’ve heard. I’m still alive so I wouldn’t know. I suppose some other good news is that I’ve found more humans. The bad news is that they all want me dead.

        Things started to take a turn for the worst. It was probably not my best idea to try to take some of their food they hunted inside one of the local bandit camps. They lived in oddly shaped tents that I didn’t even dare think about what was inside. These bandits were savages, and I just wanted some food. It just so happened that at that exact moment, I ran out of bullets and I was outnumbered, six to one. Not to mention the fact that all of them had cornered me and I had a very slim chance of getting out of there. Sometimes though, even when the odds aren’t in your favor, you still get lucky. The bandits hid themselves behind heavy hoods and jackets, blocking off any distinct features that kept you from recognizing one of them, should they get into a fight and live. They were deep red hoods, camouflage jackets and black gloves with a pistol in their pockets and assault rifles on their backs. The leader had the same weaponry, except that he had a white mask and an even whiter mohawk. He slowly approached me, as if he knew that I wasn’t getting away.

           “Well, well, well. Who do we have here?” the leader asked. The bandits then shrugged in response to their leader. “It was a rhetorical question you idiots, not that you have enough BRAIN CELLS TO FIGURE THAT OUT YOURSELVES!” he replied to the bandits’ gesture while waving his arms furiously. Because of his outbursts of anger, he was oblivious to the gentle but deadly flapping of wings in the distance. “Now if you IDIOTS are done, I’m going to get back to tending to our… WHAT THE—“ those were his last words.

          “SKREEE!” The hawk wailed as it swooped down, slashing at all the bandits while I hid in the shadows.

          “OH GOD IT HURTS!”

          “STUPID HAWK!”

          “DON’T GET ME GET HIM! I’M SICK AND I TASTE BAD!”  They ran in circles, screaming and hopelessly trying to escape with what little of their lives they had left. I’m sure it didn’t notice me though, for it landed when the screams stopped and the wasteland returned to its quiet emptiness. I stole a gun from a nearby corpse and took some of the food I had originally intended to sneak away with. Considering how the crazy thing saved me, I was in no mood to shoot it. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t though if it came to that. I tried to escape unnoticed, until his beady little red eyes met mine.