Want to get to know your book characters? Tired of filling out useless character worksheets to achieve that? Here are three new ways to meet your protagonists!
To Fix a Rubix Cube (Children’s Story)
In this short story, first-grade Ada decides to steal the Rubix cube from Mr. Joshua’s desk. When things take a turn for the worse, Ada must realize some things can’t be fixed on your own.
Writing Sample: Novel Excerpt
I’ve mentioned that I’ve been writing a book series for basically my entire teenaged life, but I rarely share any of my writing — for multiple different reasons. Recently, though, I’ve found part of a chapter that I enjoy submitting to writing contests on occasion, and I thought I might share here. The excerpt, although not heavily weighted with the story, I imagine to be a piece that represents the spirit and feel of the book fairly well. Character names and events are mine and cannot be used without permission.
New film hobbies amongst young people have creative and educational benefits (Editorial)
For my journalism class this semester, we had to write what our teacher called a “packet project.” A packet is a collection of different news stories on one broad topic. I chose my topic to focus on the impact of online videos, which was both fun and challenging. We had to write a feature story, profile, and an editorial, which took us about half a semester. This is the last of my packet stories. For my editorial I got to interview high school filmmaker Elijah Perry, a founder of Coming in the Clouds Productions, who’s a YouTube friend of mine. Through our common ground of filming, we’ve gotten to know each other a little bit and hope to collaborate with one another in the future. For my feature story, click here. For my profile story, click here. Perry as his lead role in CITC’s short film, Paladin’s Conquest. PENSACOLA. Fla. —In the late ’80s, the average cost of a camcorder was about $1,500, according to Videomaker.com. Modern young people, however, have access to video and multimedia content wherever they turn. If a child or teen doesn’t have a smartphone, tablet, GoPro, or camcorder of his own, his parents or friends probably do. With the … Read More
Teenager creates online presence with YouTube (Profile Story)
This is the second of my packet stories. For my journalism class this semester, we had to write what our teacher called a “packet project.” A packet is a collection of different news stories on one broad topic. I chose my topic to focus on the impact of online videos, which was both fun and challenging. We had to write a feature story, profile, and an editorial, which took us about half a semester. For my profile story, I got to interview Kenneth Knight, a high school teenager who enjoys video editing and spent long hours building an online presence through YouTube. For my feature story, click here. For my editorial story, click here. Knight: “I liked YouTube because I could put up whatever I wanted and I also could get feedback from anyone in the world.” PENSACOLA. Fla. —It’s one in the morning with everything silent in the house save for a single voice coming deep from within a walk-in closet on the second floor. Inside the closet is set up like a studio, complete with cameras, a large desk and computer, and even sound panels mounted to the back wall. At the desk is a teenager known by YouTubers as KnightDukeGaming, … Read More
Organizations turn to online videos to further reach their audience (Feature Story)
For my journalism class this semester, we had to write what our teacher called a “packet project.” A packet is a collection of different news stories on one broad topic. I chose my topic to focus on the impact of online videos, which was both fun and challenging. We had to write a feature story, profile, and an editorial, which took us about half a semester. This is the first of the packet stories. For my feature I had the opportunity to interview Rob Bluey of the Heritage Foundation‘s Daily Signal. Probably the best thing that’s come out of this project isn’t the paper or grade itself, but that I scored an internship with Mr. Bluey for this summer after the interview. At the beginning of the semester, I applied for Heritage’s Young Leaders Program (a highly competitive internship position that selected forty college students out of 470 applicants). After contacting Mr. Bluey for an interview request, I received word that he would be happy to help me with the project, but also wondered if I’d let him interview me. By the end of the interview, he sent me an official request to join the team. For my profile story, click here. For my editorial story, … Read More
Late New Year’s Resolutions
Twenty-sixteen has been a year of intense emotional turmoil, starting from even just the first week of January. Several unexpected changes in friends’ families, drama in my community, the most deaths and permanent accidents on college campus in recent history, a cruelly busy semester of my own design, the build-up to elections that left me in such a panic that I could barely keep from crying as I walked to classes because just thinking about the potential future of our country made me physically sick…. Although I’m not a superstitious person, I was really looking forward to 2017.
Five Steps to Character Interviews and How to Use Them to Write
Learn to create compelling characters that are as life-like as true individuals through the use of Character Interviews.
The Harvey Underground Church (Personal Narrative)
This was a personal narrative for my college creative writing course. I wanted to describe the several nights my cousins, brothers, and I played an intense game of “Underground Church” in my grandma’s yard in Harvey, North Dakota. Lights in the dark void hovered five feet off the ground, rotating in long, haphazard arcs like small, drunken lighthouses that sliced the night as a sharp blade. One of the lights haunted an old shed, the holder of the flashlight tromping around and pivoting his weight, as if he had nothing better to do than to stand alone in the sea of darkness. Our soft thuds of sneakered feet were too quiet to alert our hunters. We weaved in and out of trees, our powers of invisibility only compromised when we broke into an occasional pool of house lights. Dark paths, hidden holes, and dangerous strung clotheslines were determined to slow us down, yet we pushed on in a subdued rush. As my cousins and I tore blindly through the darkness, we knew we were in huge trouble—bigger than we ever had been before. What awaited if the searchlights caught us in its glaring eye was only up to the imagination: … Read More
Freshmen face their first Fine Arts with mixed emotions (News Story)
This was a journalism project for my college’s Introduction to Journalism class. I had to write a story on the school’s Fine Arts production, a formal event that takes place twice a semester where the college invites performers to play incredible music and students put on astounding dramas and operas. Pensacola Christian College freshmen faced their first Fine Arts last week, receiving many mixed opinions and emotions from upper classmen before the night of the performance. “I knew it was going to be better than a normal symphony, and I really like symphonies, but that was about it,” said Christy Piper, freshman. Like Piper, most freshmen at PCC had little knowledge about the campus formal event known as Fine Arts. Freshmen could glean facts from the chapel announcements, such as Fine Arts was a musical performance, that it featured the Harmonious Strings of San Paulo, and that the conductor was known for “getting the audience involved,” as attested by Rachel Moses during one chapel announcement.