Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Black Garden, Madalene Klocke

Theses

“The Black Garden” is a novel-length fantasy fiction work. It follows the narrative of Ryan, an 18-year-old girl, who has great expectations for what her first year at university will hold. Her entire world view is tilted when she attends a party with her new roommate, Blair, and wakes up in an unfamiliar place. Ryan must fight to keep her sanity as she is thrust into the world of faeries, witches, and far worse creatures than she could have ever imagined: including her parents.

The Exile's War, Stephen Edwards Arnold

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

In Gaelwyn, the village of a thousand stories, Katchan receives a powerful ruby and an ancient technique called writing hidden by his grandmother, Maggaline. Jealous of the power Katchan has, the village Elder seeks to destroy him. After escaping the Elder, Katchan must leave his home and traverse a dangerous and mysterious wasteland that will lead him directly into an ancient conflict that lost a powerful empire to the sands of time.

Hattie: A Twin Territories Matriarch, Madison P. Brown

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

“Hattie: A Twin Territories Matriarch” is a creative novel of vignettes in the vein of historical fiction set at the turn of the 20th century in Oklahoma/Indian Territory exploring the complexities of love and betrayal through generations of one Muscogee family as they battle the legal and personal implications of white-settler encroachment. With societal criticisms and Indigenous methodologies, this thesis aims to explore land ownership, resource allocation, and the complex governance of Oklahoma tribal reservations. The research of this novel focuses on primary documents from National Archive probate records, Dawes Commission enrollments, newspapers, and a familial collection of photographs, letters, …

Rethinking Length And Form In Fiction: Workshopping Short Stories, Novels, Novellas, Flash, And Hybrid, Kevin Clouther

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

This essay challenges dominant workshop practices and details efforts to diversify workshops with particular attention to what is workshopped and how workshops can become inclusive of not only short stories but also various lengths and forms of fiction: novels, novellas, flash, and hybrid. This essay addresses face-to-face as well as online workshops.

A New Atticus Is Afoot: The Portrayal Of Lawyers In Popular Culture, Anna Thrush

Senior Theses

This project analyzes the stereotypical image of lawyers in popular culture, focusing on either overly demonic or unrealistically heroic. Both stereotypes that are common portrayals of attorneys in popular culture are unrealistic and deny society a true comprehension of the profession. Popular culture has molded the image of lawyers to the characteristics that sell, rather than focusing on a realistic portrayal. Therefore, popular culture creates a falsely dramatized image of attorneys to generate revenue, putting the reputation and future of the profession as risk. These stereotypes are exemplified in this project through a close literary analysis of lawyer characters from …

Naruto And Naruto: Shippuden Through The Lens Of Campbell’S Monomyth, Victor Ayon

Literary and Intercultural Studies | Senior Theses

“Naruto and Naruto: Shippuden through the lens of Campbell’s Monomyth” is a comparative analysis of the anime television series Naruto (2002-2007 Japan, 2005-2009 USA) and its sequel Naruto: Shippuden (2007-2017 Japan, 2009-2019 USA) with Joseph Campbell’s monomyth as delineated in his The Hero with the Thousand Faces. These Japanese anime television series that are considered one of the most popular worldwide, and yet the hero’s quest in each series is often overlooked. This study both compares and contrasts how the Campbellian stages of monomyth intersect with Naruto and Naruto: Shippuden animation narratives.

Untitled Novel On Indoctrination And Mentorship, Jacquelyn Ferris

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

A young man is alone in the company of his people. He searches and finds council from a stranger in a long red coat and his own search for a beaten rabbit; a deserter to his distant cause.

This is the first chapter to that much larger work in progress. We see our main character in a more peaceful headspace than what will soon come to him.

The Vicissitudes, Lara Young

Graduate Thesis Collection

On the surface, Julia's life at middle age seems calm and settled. Her children are grown; she's got plenty of friends and family; and her marriage has survived a betrayal. But when she unexpectedly receives a text from an old flame, one by one the certitudes she's come to rely on start to unravel and Julia's is forced to reckon anew with the meaning of her life and her place in the world.

King Of Swords, Hannah Kimble

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

King of Swords follows five teenage friends on the precipice of beginning their adult lives who find themselves transported to a fantasy world inhabited by orcs and dinosaurs. Each major character reacts differently to this world, making their own allies and enemies, and come into conflict with one another, engaging in combat with magic swords and gay subtext. Some of them want to return to Earth, while others seek to find a place in this new world. In the end, they mature, learning to talk through their differences like functional adults, and accept the responsibilities that come with that.

Dust, Asher Didier

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Dust is a dystopian novel centered on the effects of inaction in our combat with climate change. Set in the future (around the year 2150), the world is a much different place. The Earth has turned into a hot and overused world which is devoid of most of the plants and animals that exist today. Desertification has occurred on much of the Earth and sand and dust have become prominent in place of grasslands and forests. One of the common motifs of the book is, as the title suggests, this dust. Dust is looked at in many different ways throughout …

The Author's Gauntlets: The Writing, Editing, And Publishing Process Of A Novel, Robert Clifton

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This project details the actions I took in writing my first novel, editing it, and starting the pre-publication process for it. It describes everything from the origins of my idea for the novel all the way to where I am now (June 2022), at my second editing pass and having written the first draft of my query letter for an agent. My premise is that people often assume that authors just write a book and that's it, but there's actually a lot more steps in editing and publishing they have to take before their book is released to the world. …

Wave By Wave: A Fantasy Author's Guide For Refining A Creative Writing Style, Michael Bose

Senior Honors Theses

Writing a novel is a great undertaking. Many would-be writers have set out to create a novel and give up halfway through, uncertain where or how they failed. This project aims to help prospective authors get past that barrier. By analyzing one’s own writing style, a writer can ascertain greater insight into the strengths and weaknesses of one’s own work and therefore help rectify mistakes one might make otherwise, or learn to see a chapter from a new angle. The author will demonstrate this method on himself first by way of focused revisions. A sample chapter of a fantasy novel, …

Electric Snake, David Y. Liang

Senior Projects Spring 2022

A blend of fantastic, noir, and cyberpunk elements. Prose.

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College

The Curiosociety, Luke G. Smith

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Human Error, Avery Werther

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

HUMAN ERROR is a science-fiction novel set in a future in which, to save the planet from environmental degradation, humans have been eradicated and replaced by “Syntho-sapiens.” These synthetic humans are engineered in labs to be not only physically superior to their evolutionary predecessors, but also equal in every way to each other. However, from the moment Cal-12 opens his eyes, he is different. He not only has heterochromia, a mutation of the eye color, but also a strong need for connection that his emotionless peers seem to lack. This need intensifies when he discovers a human woman named Thalia, …

Fog Town: Exploring The Novel-Writing Process, Spencer De Vries

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This project consisted of drafting a portion of a novel and working closely with an advisor to revise and polish two chapters, as well as creating a synopsis. The novel is about F.O., a reporter from Chicago who goes to stay with her mom when her father dies in a shipwreck. Once there, she starts noticing some inconsistencies around his death, as well as hearing about some other strange disappearances. Slowly, she is drawn into the mystery that connects them all. The attached portion is the presentation that reflected on the process, including a small sample of the revised chapter …

Forgotten Things: A Historian's Tale, Mary Jackson

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

Forgotten Things: A Historian’s Tale is a story of a post-human world where magic and creatures of lore have taken sovereignty over the land, following the adventures of Aster, a small flower elf whose job is to travel and document the residual traces of humanity. Every crumbling building, decaying record, and seemingly useless bauble of humanity tells a story, one that Aster is trying to find the conclusion to. One day, rumors start to circulate. Whispers that there might still be humans hidden away somewhere. Aster is thrilled about this, hoping that she might be able to talk with a …

Gift For Burning, Di Bei

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Growing up amid one-child policy in Beijing, Zhi-Nan is pursuing her PhD in Houston while living at a birth tourism house. She receives a text from her adopted cousin who has joined a monastery in Idaho. Convinced that her cousin is in a cult, Zhi-Nan starts a road trip with a white colleague to rescue her cousin from God.

Todd In Eternity, E. J. Pettinger

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This work represents the first significant portion of a novel in progress. It is a first-person narration following a teenage boy’s involvement with a modern-day prophet. The story examines the nature of visionary belief systems and the ways in which they can degrade a person’s connection to the everyday world. The bulk of the narrative is concerned with the protagonist’s struggle to escape the dark dream of the prophet and reconnect to the plain givenness of the world. The narrative explores the religious use of horror and glory as visionary elements, and the role of humor and affection in the …

The Portal Of Orion, Lauren Elizabeth Owens

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Portal of Orionis a science fiction novel that centers on Rigel Barnard, a novice inventor who has been in self-isolation for years after a failed college presentation caused his friend and work partner, Jericho Slate, to be transported into another universe. Rigel is currently trying to bring his friend back by recreating the device that went awry and sent Jericho into an unknown dimension. Along the way, Rigel teams up with Archer, a mysterious stranger he finds floating in space, and Lyra, a teenage girl with an interest in magical studies.They aim to help him as much as …

Sundered: A Novel-In-Progress, Erik Renner

Honors Scholar Theses

Sundered: A Novel-in-Progress is a creative thesis that discusses the creative process involved in preparing for and writing a fiction novel. It is a thesis of four parts: a critical preface documenting the history of the project and breaking down the creative process involved; the prologue to the eponymous novel-in-progress; an annotated example of an in-progress first chapter; and an annotated transcript of a character sketch made of the book's protagonist. The novel itself is a post-apocalyptic western, with some additional steam-punk and historical influences. The core theme of the project revolves around finding a peaceful way to fix a …

Artificial Magic, Tawny Ventura

Senior Theses

This novella by Tawny Ventury emerged from a short story written for a creative writing course on speculative fiction.

Who Is Neil Wells?, Colin Anderson

Senior Theses

This creative writing thesis takes the form of a mystery novel by Colin Anderson.

Rocky Waters: Exploring The Intersections Of Romance And Travel, Jessica Bragg

Honors Projects

The genres of romance and travel have been explored by several authors, but this 60,000-word novel provides a unique combination of the two by exploiting a younger demographic of characters and placing the setting of the story in a fascinating realm of this world: the Mediterranean islands. Despite possessing an extensive business background, this creative project has encouraged versatility, adaptability, and enhanced time management skills that will transfer into all other aspects of my life. Research regarding the history of the romance and travel genres took place during the Fall 2020 semester, and the weekly process of writing and revising …

20 Things, Reann Parker

Honors Theses

20 Things is a short young adult novel that explores a variety of topics and themes, from mental health, recovery, and self discovery to race, love, and friendship. Beginning with a high school girl named Halle waking up in a hospital after a suicide attempt, the novel is a coming of age story about the help Halle receives and what she goes through in trying to find reasons to keep living. The novel is divided into ten chapters: “Waking Up,” “Going Home,” “Arriving,” “Being Honest,” “Keeping the Faith,” “Soul Searching,” “Willingness,” “Maintaining,” “Checking In,” and “Living.” Each chapter represents the …

The Mango Snores, Michael S. Garcia

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS

THE MANGO SNORES

by

Michael S. Garcia

Florida International University, 2021

Miami, Florida

Professor John Dufresne, Major Professor

Set in Miami at the start of the twenty-first century, THE MANGO SNORES is a seriocomic crime novel chronicling a week in the life of Sam Espada, Cuban-American writing professor and author of the Mango series of detective fiction. Reeling from the sudden dissolution of his marriage and the abject failure of his latest book, Sam finds himself embroiled in a plot right out of one of his novels when his newest pupil, private investigator Leonard Cobb, is …

The Minx, Amirah B. Miller

Senior Projects Fall 2021

This story follows a reference to the biblical Jezebel with a modern twist using a fictional character called Trinity, an 18-year-old college student with a dark past.

Lady Disdain, Hunter Lucian Lustberg

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Mary Of The Yellow Sea, Nicole Rose Gomez

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Maria del Mar is the third of five children born to a poor seventh-generation Hispanic-Indigenous family in rural southern Colorado. Maria’s grandmother is a highly regarded midwife, and she herself is born with the healing gift. When she is twelve years old a gypsy reads her palm and predicts that she will soon receive a letter from the man that she will marry. Soon after the prophecy is made, Maria’s beloved father, Don Antonio suffers a heart attack and is left unable to work the family ranch, part of a land grant by the Spanish crown to their ancestors. Responsibility …

We Are Also Home, Mustafa Abubaker

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

In the opening scenes of “We Are Also Home,” the novel’s symbolic character Farishtay Mahdi allows a man by the name of Syed Janmohamed into her house. He pays her for sex and counseling. She does not love him. Instead, she loves what he gives her. Syed is not only after Farishtay for sex. He is also driven mad by the commanality found in both Farishtay and his daughter: invisibility. He has heard of Farishtay’s hushed-up condition through the grapevine. His performance, initially informed by societal norms, is almost instantly seen for what it really is by Farishtay. Irony plays …