Creative Writing Commons^™

Emergent Narrative In Tabletop Role-Playing Games: An Application Of Concepts, Padraig Mumper

Honors Projects

This project examines tabletop role-playing games using concepts from narratology and ludology including emergent narrative and Roger Caillois’ categories of games by applying these concepts in the creation of an adventure zine for the game MÖRK BORG. The existing literature on emergent narrative primarily focuses on video games and Avant Garde texts but tabletop role-playing games provide a novel opportunity to explore emergent narrative in new ways. The dynamic of a collaborative game with multiple players and a gamemaster provides additional challenges for designers due to variance in interpretation of the game events and the lack of a digital program …

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, …

Desert Body, Lauren Mckinnon

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis is a collection of poems examining certain paradoxes of my body. As a survivor of sexual violence, my body relives trauma which makes it feel uninhabitable. I compare my experiences with the Southern Utah desert. The physical beauty, destruction and inhabitability of the desert teaches me to accept my body as both beautiful and full of grief. The poems move chronologically through my life, beginning with an abusive relationship at the age of sixteen, a move to Moab at nineteen, and becoming a mother at twenty-five. Ultimately, with the desert as my guide, I learn to accept my …

Visual Development For Wellspring, Jane Frances Anderson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The primary focus of this thesis is the study of visual development for worldbuilding, starting with creative writing and documentation and translating the written content into visual concepts in both 2D and 3D. This project includes an original narrative, setting, and characters and explores aspects of the visual development pipeline. The content below contains work in visual research, 2D character design, 3D character sculpting, 3D printing and assembly, hard-surface modeling, matte-painting, illustration, compositing, and heavy creative writing.

Music Lessons, Cecilia-Rose Louise Bender

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

music lessons is a digital chapbook that explores the relationships between James Baldwin’s writing and Beauford Delaney’s paintings through music. From Delaney’s “Composition 16” (1954-56) to Baldwin’s “The Uses of the Blues” (1964), their collaboration with the core elements of jazz music gives their work rhythm and melodic contour that any/body can vibe with. Absorbing the influences of artists Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Ray Charles, and putting them to paint and text, music lessons demonstrates how music not only transforms the ways we experience and move our bodies but also the ways that we perceive space, relationships, and time. What’s …

Ferment, Casey Carpenter

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

The fermentation process – an act of breaking down, letting go, and moving forward – is used by the author as poetic lens and as a narrative tool for self-reflection, self-transformation, cultural reflection, and cultural transformation. Akin to our own adolescent maturation, plants, fruits, and vegetables develop protective barriers around their most vulnerable parts in reaction to the health and condition of their lived environment. While serving a purpose of survival in the moment, these barriers will later cause the food to rot and spoil if left unchecked. The act of fermentation is thus explored as a managed process of …

The Wellington Affair: A Detective Story, Anakin Weston

Masters Theses

The week the heiress to the Wellington Family fortune returns to England, a series of strange events sweeps through the streets. The Wellington Diamond, unsurpassed by all of its kind, becomes the envy of more criminally-minded eyes and a plan is put into motion to steal it. Caught in the cross-fire, prospective writer Mark Verner is framed for the theft of the diamond but is saved from arrest by none other than the heiress herself. When the conspiracy to steal the jewel turns murderous, the only hope of the duo lies in the hands of the reluctant yet limitless detective …

Wilde Bühne: An Exploration Into The Revolutionary Potential Of Art, Antonia Salathe

Senior Projects Spring 2023

You will often hear it said that art does not belong in the space of the political.

Politics is practical, and yet we cry over legislative losses and march in the streets when we are seared by flames of indignation. We paint murals over boarded-up windows, film history as it happens, and go to the club after a long day at work. We sketch lovingly the faces of those lost senselessly, we sing to the rooftops when all hope seems lost, and we speak poems like pounding hammers when no one is willing to listen. We scratch verses into foam …

Picture Me Like This: A Short Story Collection, Anna Jones

Scripps Senior Theses

Picture Me Like This is a short story collection that explores our racialized imaginations surrounding Blackness and whiteness, and the implications those have for our intimacies with each other.

Invisible Ailments: A Collection, Jane L. Godiner

Honors Projects

"Invisible Ailments" is a collection of short stories that trace the depth, breath, and sweeping range of lived experiences of people struggling with mental illness. While it is a work of fiction, the people in these stories might feel eerily familiar — to your friends, your family members, your loved ones, or, if you're brave enough to admit it, yourself.

Novella, Sydney German

Student Research Submissions

This paper was written for ENGL 470B:1 – Seminar: Creative Writing Fiction under the instruction of Dr. Ray Levy, and the project is titled Novella while the story is called Unforeseeable. It is an 11,000-word sensational, suspenseful psychological fiction about Ava Reed, a 22-year-old woman, who is on a search for independence and freedom from her small town. The story begins by immediately diving into the scene of a murder with Ava holding the weapon. From there, the story works backward to slowly reveal the motive and the true account of what took place that night. It focuses primarily …

The Advancement Of Surrealism: Navigating The Logical Implications Of Surrealism In Poetry Through Time, Brandon Hemsworth

Honors Projects

Surrealism is a complex medium of artistic expression that has persisted through the modern and postmodern time periods and into the contemporary. This project attempts to shine light on the importance of Surrealism by researching the rational implications of its irrational nature. I approached this question in two separate manners: One in a research perspective and one in a creative perspective. This project includes my research on the advancement of Surrealism and 15 poems that I have composed in reflection of Surrealism, Modernism, Postmodernism, the contemporary, and Anti-Realism. The conclusions of this project have important implications that have a common …

Fallen Kingdom, Sarah E. Black

Honors College Theses

Fallen Kingdom is a novella situated in the genre of urban fantasy. Fast-paced with beautifully woven descriptions, this project aims to depict the experience of PTSD as readers follow Scarlett in her attempts to navigate lost memories, magic, and a new world. With danger lurking around every corner, her only hope is to realize her own strengths and motivations to save the person she loves most.

Workers Of Iniquity: Stories, Isaac Huckaby

Theses and Dissertations

In her essay, “The Grotesque in Southern Fiction,” Flannery O’Connor notes, “Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one” (44). In the introduction to this collection, I investigate the importance of the grotesque, gothic, and surreal elements that tend to make up the depictions of the South in the works of authors such as Flannery O’Connor and Brad Watson and several horror writers, such as Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe, and H.P. Lovecraft, exploring how horror can be used to emphasize the …

Department Of Longing, Anthony Gabriel Coffman

Theses and Dissertations

Many have chosen to divide the world of fiction into literary and genre. I do not believe these have to be mutually exclusive. Writers such as Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, and Benjamin Percy note the importance of literary devices while simultaneously creating plots that elicit emotional responses from readers. It is my goal to accomplish the same, and bridge the gap between literary and genre fiction in my collection of short stories by using symbolism and imagery to create a sense of the foreboding.

Remember When We Tore Each Other Limb From Limb?, Adam Ramsey

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

REMEMBER WHEN WE TORE EACH OTHER LIMB FROM LIMB? is a collection of short stories and surrealist prose poems. Most of these are not connected in terms of character or setting. However, there are two episodic stories that reoccur throughout the book, each of them grounded in real-life situations meant to offset the fantastical settings in which the majority of the other pieces are set. The first of these episodic stories is a series of vignettes about a character named Noah, a young man who is taking care of his elderly mother. The other is a series about a young …

The Dissection Of Twins, Amber Zipfel

Student Research Submissions

The Dissection of Twins

Amber Zipfel

Professor Colin Rafferty

ENGL 470C_01: Creative Writing Seminar: Non-Fiction

This body of work is composed of ten short pieces that dissect several aspects of twins in approximately 7,000 words. The structure of the work, which involves every piece mirroring another one with the same or similar title, is meant to resemble the relationship of twins: two labeled with the same title but possess different content within their bodies. Overall, there are personal stories and informative breakdowns of twin stereotypes utilized to convey this popular subject. Each piece helps strengthen the primary goals of this …

Mosaic: A Lifetime Of Poems, Emma F. Bowen

Honors Projects

In hopes of providing a clearer picture of the aging process and its effects on our personalities, follow this collection of poems through diary-like entries of individuals navigating their lives from daycare, heartbreak, and loneliness. The impact that development can have on our psychological well-being and brains is fascinating and feels familiar. Why do we see the world so differently when we are young? As we grow older, what is so important that makes us shift how we view ourselves and our environment multiple times? It is often seen that each generation shares like-mindedness throughout their lives – why?

Black-Eyed, Abigail Sipe

Honors Theses

Black-Eyed tells the story of Rowan Mae Baker, a ten-year-old girl dealing with too-big-for-a-ten-year-old problems. In the past year, Rowan moved from Jackson to Winona after the unexpected arrest and sudden death of her father. Then, almost a year later, Rowan is sexually assaulted by an older boy from her school. Rowan understands neither of these things. Throughout Black-Eyed, Rowan spends twelve hours running away from home while trying to figure out how to talk to her mom about the assault. Alone for the first time, she begins to observe and question the world around her, to process her …

To Live With, Serina Lund

Honors Thesis

To Live With is a story about an individual, Charlie, living with schizophrenia. The story follows Charlie as he grows up, from a time of no definitive signs of schizophrenia to his first major episode and the consequences that follow. I utilized knowledge and research stemming from my nursing education to create a character meant to connect with readers in a way that broadens their view on mental illness. This story only shows one view of what living with schizophrenia may be like and is in no way intended to encompass all of schizophrenia. I searched for ways to show …

Y Seguimos Volando, Gabriela Sabogal

Senior Projects Spring 2022

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

The Spicy Girls: Writings On The Lived Experiences Of Latinas As The Exotic "Other.", Nina M. Lopez

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The Other in mainstream U.S. society—in this case, the Latino Other—faces oppressive forces in the journey to find belonging. Latinos are marked by stereotypes, regardless of whether such stereotypes have a factual foundation. Latinas specifically are labeled as submissive servants, maids, or nannies. On the other end of the spectrum, Latinas are exotic and enticing sexual beings that must satisfy white men’s fetishes and lechery. Through this thesis, I will explore what Latina women face as an Other that is paradoxically both rejected and desired and evokes aversion as well as awe. In this creative thesis, in creative nonfiction, poetry, …

Legends Of Zamour, Miranda F. Hall

Senior Projects Spring 2022

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

This project is a selection of chapters and excerpts from Part I of a fantastical novel that has existed in my imagination for a few years and is finally being brought to fruition. The novel follows an eighteen year old boy named Ansel Burnett and his contemporaries Michelle Payson and Felix Santos as they enter a prestigious Institute for warriors and attempt to apprehend a powerful emerging criminal before she enacts war.

Blurb: For as long as he could remember, Ansel Burnett dreamt of becoming a Guardian, …

Developing The Facilitative Health And Well-Being Tool: Freeing Writing, William O. Fogarty

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

Research into processes of self, including self-concept clarity, identity, and meaning and purpose in life, has demonstrated that human beings that feel they know themselves tend to experience positive health and well-being outcomes, while people who feel they don’t know themselves tend to experience more negative health and well-being outcomes. These findings indicate that knowing oneself is essential. Thus, the facilitative tool I am creating with this Master’s Project, Freeing Writing, combines the power of self-knowledge and self-discovery with the healing power of expressive writing. In this manuscript, I synthesize the scientific research, Design Thinking process, and real-world experiences which …

Minnesota Nice, Emma Sternberg

Senior Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

(Trans)Form: Spoken Word As Queer And Transgender Testimony, Kaileigh/Wesley Strobel

Undergraduate Distinction Papers

(Trans)form will explore the importance of spoken word poetry in and for the queer and transgender community. Especially underscoring the significance of public voice in a culture that often wants to conceal or minimize the lived lives of LGTBQIAP+ people. (Trans)form will be a collection of self-authored spoken word poems that are influenced by—and in dialogue with—powerful transgender spoken word authors. The project will open with an essay on the importance of spoken word poetry and voice.

The Duality Of Gnome, Koss Klobucher

CMC Senior Theses

Koss Klobucher's senior thesis, The Duality of Gnome, is a six-part collection of short stories written, edited, and compiled under the mentorship of James Morrison. Themes include death, absurdity, the afterlife, and love.

The Hair You Wished To Comb, Sarah Barch

Honors Theses

This thesis is a collection of poems exploring gender and trauma in Greek mythology by retelling classical stories in a female voice.

Exploring Mythology Through Writing, Jayce Rubel

Honors Projects

The following work is a creative adaptation of a series of Greek myths found in Ovid's Metamorphoses. In the project I attempt to replicate the virtual idea of the original author in a retelling of each story. I also make use of stylistic elements known in the epic tradition as well as major themes found commonly found in these myths.