Fiction Commons^™

All-Consuming Madness, Ainsley Doyle

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

My honors project is a short story, titled All-Consuming Madness, that follows the main character Annie as she struggles to cope with the aftermath of a car accident that changed her life. The story explores the impact grief can have on family relationships and how trauma can close people off from each other. It also explores Annie’s journey towards healing as she struggles to forgive herself for the accident. The accompanying essays detail the creative process I went through while creating this story and the influences that had an important impact on the story.

Constance After Dark, Connor Vanmaele

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Constance After Dark is an episodic screenplay, outlining the beginning, middle and end of a television comedy pilot. Set in Ohio, the story follows Brooks Riegler in his first semester at the fictional “Constance College” as he navigates the ups and downs of university life at the lowest ranked school in the state. Due to a class taught by the eccentric and nefarious Dr. Mars, Brooks learns to open up to hyperactive athletes, obsessive overachievers, and even strange, mysterious men urinating on the side of the road. Brooks, Cassidy, Jenny and Guy form a tight-knit and unlikely bond in a …

What Is The Female Gaze In Literature?, Cadence Dangerfield

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Just as Laura Mulvey defined the male gaze, feminist scholars are constantly working to identify a female gaze in visual arts and literature. Does it exist? This project works to answer the following questions: What is the female gaze? Is it simply the male gaze in reverse, or is it something more, a lens encompassing the desire of intimacy instead of an inherent sexual desire? To find the answer, or at least one possible answer that I can situate myself and my writing into, I plan to read both fiction and scholarship and write utilizing a female character as she …

Rubbertop Review 12, Rachel Roberts, Cristopher Shell

Rubbertop Review

No abstract provided.

Creative Fiction Piece, Grace Maier

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

My proposal for my senior honors project is to produce a completed work of fiction. Specifically, this will be a short story consisting of around twenty double spaced pages, minimum six thousand words, of original writing accompanied by an eight to ten page critical essay exploring my literary influences as well as a five to seven page self analysis of my individual writing process. It is my intention to produce a work within the gothic-thriller genre, deriving inspiration from authors such as Joyce Carol Oates and Flannery O’Connor.

Knots Undone - A Short Story, Kaylie Yaceczko

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Knots Undone is a character-driven short story that highlights different types of one-sided relationships and how they have a negative impact on people closest to us. Through examples of platonic, romantic, familial, and intrapersonal relationships, the story will emphasize how some bonds can become emotionally and mentally draining when people are under a great deal of stress The goal of the story is to reveal why these types of relationships occur, and it is meant to lead the reader recognize these behaviors to be harmful for the characters and to possibly make connections to these kinds of relationships in their …

Ashbelt: Volume Six, Ash Belt

AshBelt

No abstract provided.

Ashbelt: Volume Five, Ash Belt

AshBelt

No abstract provided.

Loose Light, Logan Lane

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

My honors project is a 9,600-word collection of two short stories. The first story, Loose Light, is a character-driven narrative about an astronomer who has spent his life chasing an outer space phenomenon he saw as a graduate student and what he does when he rediscovers the phenomenon. The second story, Lost Light, is another character-driven narrative about a young man who, after an automobile accident, begins losing his memories. Both stories examine the perspective of the lost, the obsessed, the isolated, and the angry. In the accompanying self-analysis, I explore how my time as a reporter for The University …

The Notebook, Pamela V. Flores-Lowry

Proceedings from the Document Academy

"The Notebook" explores the feelings of a young adult who finds, without looking, her lover's journal. This situation triggers a set of questions about past relationships and privacy at an age where privacy is almost non-existent because of the use of social media.

Return To Sender, Katherine Noelle Nypaver

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Return to Sender is a fictional short story that illustrates the potential consequences of neglecting to take others seriously. River Ellison, a high school senior at St. Jude’s Academy struggling with depression and habitual self-harm, receives a note from his peer regarding his thoughts on suicide. His ordinary school day transforms into twenty-four hours of repercussions that force River to see his peer for what she is—an equal. Prefacing the short story, my critical essay explains why I find C.D. Payne, John Green, Jesse Andrews, and J.D. Salinger so inspiring to the young adult literature world. I also analyze how …

"The Mouth Of The Void," "Hum", Hannah L. Comeriato

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project presents two distinct pieces of short fiction, linked through intentional stylized language, grammatical patterns, and a sectionalized narrative structure. Each individual piece of short fiction functions independently – as separate and distinct from the other, with no explicit connection in content (i.e. recurring characters, parallel timelines etc.). However, each narrative also displays a kind of complex interaction with the other, each crafted to produce, when read alongside one another, a shared indistinct aesthetic and emotional experience. This aesthetic and emotional experience is crafted, specifically, by the use of stylized verbs, the em-dash, and alternating dialogue-based and image-based sections. …

Young Adult Fiction Writing In The Classroom: Emily’S Investigation And Insights, Emily Westfall

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project explores the field of young adult literature, while also discovering the creative writing process required to develop a young adult novel. The project is organized into three separate parts. Part One focuses on young adult writers and the literature they create, along with the benefits of using these novels in a high school classroom. To benefit my future career as a future writing teacher, I researched the process required to write a fiction novel, specifically one in the young adult genre. Within this section, sources are cited such as experienced teachers and the scholarship on young adult literature. …

The Call Of The Undertow, Rebekah Bradford

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Artist Statement

Prior to becoming a graphic design student, I was very interested in illustration. I wanted an opportunity to hone my illustration skills, focus on one consistent style of illustration, consistently draw the same characters, and practice writing. Creating a children’s book gave me the opportunity to do all of those things. And, after several semesters of work, it’s great to finally see The Call of the Undertow completed! I hope that you enjoy reading this story and looking at the images because I enjoyed creating it.

Heroes, Past And Future, Benjamin Green

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

A creative work set in a small town in which everyone has a supernatural ability called a "Gift." This work shows the characters, all on different walks of life, as they show that the metaphorical fish cannot outgrow the fish bowl. Those who have lived in this town all their lives seem to have weaker Gifts than those who have lived even one hour away. Heroes, Past and Future explores how one cannot hope to meet their true potential as a person except by allowing themselves to move even slightly away from the familiar.

The Only Dreamer, Katelyn H. Long

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

For my Senior Honors Project, I submitted an excerpt from a novel length story about a family line with the inheritable ability to take objects out of people’s dreams. In this young adult fantasy, Melody is a nineteen year old girl who struggles with the fact that her twin sister has inherited the ability while she has not. The excerpt introduces Melody’s family and shows the tension that exists between them while hinting to the reader that there is something more sinister that drives Melody away from her home.

The novel explores morality and its gray areas, the difficulty that …

Screaming From The Inside, Kelly M. Kunze

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This collection of fiction and nonfiction stories examines the effect of my introversion on the creative work I produce as well as the role my observational nature plays in my writing. My original intention was to write stories about introverted characters and their perspective on the world, but the stories ended up focusing on the theme of family. I was dedicated to the stories being written from an honest, organic place and the result is a manuscript that discusses family from the earnest perspective of an introvert.

The Akron Offering: A Ladies' Literary Magazine, 1849-1850, Jon Miller

University of Akron Press Publications

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From 1849 to 1850, Calista Cummings edited and published Akron's first literary magazine, The Akron Offering. At the time, Akron was a booming canal town on the verge of even greater prosperity. By turns religious, comic, romantic, and political, this extraordinary collection of early midwestern creative literature expresses a wide range of sometimes contradictory opinions on both the important questions of its day and the important questions of today: historical events such as the California Gold Rush of 1849 and the 1848 revolutions in Europe are considered alongside more timeless contemplations on truth, justice, and …