Creative Writing Commons^™

The Survivors, Abigale Ralston

Honors Theses

Set over 100 years in the future, this story follows the lives of teenagers Alex, Leon, and Paige. The world has been destroyed. In order to survive, humanity has had to learn how to survive in space, in a vehicle called simply The Ship. Lately, however, Alex and his friends have noticed problems occurring on The Ship, indicating a disaster may be imminent. Alex, Leon, and Paige are now tasked with finding the causes of the problems and saving the last of humanity from extinction.

Lady Winters, Madeline Ice

Student Research Submissions

Lady Winters is a young adult fantasy novella based in a world of royalty and assassins. The line between good and evil should be clear but recent events have blurred them. In the shadows, lurks a darkness that seeks to change the course of history.

In a futuristic kingdom, Lady Celestia Winters inherits debt and a kill list following the death of her parents. She takes over her mother’s position as an Academy Assassin and uses her training to work towards paying off the family debt. In charge of her assignments is the infamous Headmistress and Celestia’s newest target is …

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.

The Dazzled Rope Of Lightning Against The Cloud Is Not The Downward Bolt But The Compelled Upstroke Through The Heated Ether: Stories, Jack S. Muth

Senior Projects Fall 2023

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

By The Rivers Of Babylon We Sat Down And Wept, Sarah Ann Hudes

Senior Projects Spring 2023

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

One Last Month, Or Clancy's Time-Box, Safiyya Bintali

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

One Last Month is a young adult (YA) novella of roughly forty-three thousand words aimed at readers in middle school and in early high school grades. Structurally, it is an “ensemble Bildungsroman”, wherein all the main characters—rather than just one—embark on journeys of emotional growth and are given significant plot focus. Through the characters, One Last Month focuses on the importance and influence of non-romantic love, specifically through homosocial relationships between the novella’s male characters. It also touches on the process of grief beyond the Kübler-Ross structure and, though more subtly, emotional expression in young men. Through one of the …

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 …

In The Flowers: A Novella In Progress, Rachel Seick

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This is a refined and edited first section of the rough, novella-length draft. The project as a whole was very focused on generative writing and pushing myself to finish a longer project. Brief synopsis: Rebekah Houlihan recounts the events leading up her boss murdering her former friend. She explores changing friendships and feelings of guilt and resentment.

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 …

Fair Folk, Jamie M. Good

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This is the outline for an upcoming novel centering retold Celtic fairy tales. The project includes research about fairy lore and Celtic mythology, as well as modern Irish customs surrounding cultural beliefs surrounding fairies. This story prioritizes the Pagan versions of folklore, rather than the more modern Victorian and Christian depictions of Celtic traditions and fairies.

The outline includes an introduction, short synopsis, short summaries and goals for fifty-four chapters (the full length of the novel), a list of characters, and a short reflection.

Synopsis:

Three children, Molly, Cal, and Jack, are abducted into the fairy realm. Molly and Cal …

Miracle, Gabrielle Sullivan

Honors College Theses

This original, speculative fiction novella follows Miracle Beckett, a young woman raised on a dying, climate-change ravaged Earth in an isolated religious cult. While she eventually escapes, she finds herself trapped in another deathtrap, abandoned by her crewmates on a spaceship that is rapidly running out of air. Struggling to reconcile her past with her present and her imminent death, Mira cannot avoid remembering everything she has tried to leave behind.

Engaging with sexual identity, religious trauma, and the difficulty found in reconciling the complexities of a left-behind existence, Miracle highlights the power of memory, friendship, and knowledge in guiding …

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.

A Mile And More: A Novella And A Reflection On Body-Swapping, De'avion Reid

Undergraduate Theses

The story takes place in a quiet town and follows two high school juniors, Jerome-Tyler Hodges and McKenna McKinley. Having no prior affiliation with one another, Jerome and McKenna find themselves caught in the predicament of having switched bodies after an unforeseen comet crashes on the roof of their high school. Not wanting to attract the wrong kind of attention, the two decide to weather the storm and spend some time in each other’s shoes, in hopes of the issue resolving itself. Despite living in the same town and going to the same school, Jerome and McKenna have lived different …

Hello, Olive, Bec Braly

Honors Theses

Mia Bailey is forced to live as someone she’s not. Fighting her way back to her own life, she unearths some dark secrets about her family.

Only With Thine Eyes, Morgan Mcivor Bowser

Masters Essays

No abstract provided.

That Belongs To Me, Ellie Anne Greenberger

Honors Theses

A collection of fictional short stories and a novella that explores family relationships, specifically female family relationships that span across generational lines and what we inherit from our families whether intentional or unintentional. (Under the direction of Tom Franklin)

Asteraceae, Rachel G. Lyons

Senior Projects Fall 2020

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

Thawra, Olivia Snow Smith

Senior Projects Spring 2019

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

Stories From Elsewhere: A Novella, Andrew Crook

Honors Theses

It's certainly rare to see people with animal heads while walking down the street, but it has been known to happen. On the occasions when a person does see someone with an animal head, they think something along the lines of, "Oh, what a quaint performer!" or something equally as posh and oblivious. Peter, however, was a man who didn't trust his own reasoning. Not if he could help it. So, when he happened to see a person with an animal head while walking down the street one fine Saturday, he paid attention. There it was, down the alley: a …

The Place Where All Ends Meet, Benjamin Long

Student Theses and Dissertations

A novella.

Dear Me, Hannah Patricia Farley

MSU Graduate Theses

This collection of fiction includes short stories and a partial novella. A critical introduction provides background on the author’s writing and a theoretical framework as it pertains to the fiction highlighted in this thesis. The works presented explore aspects of genre fiction including magical realism, absurdism, and the bildungsroman. The partial novella relies heavily on epistolary form, confessional style entries, and continuous stream of action. The main characters of the included works serve as focal points which address themes of family life, addiction, mental illness, minority languages, and voice.

Anxiously Awaiting: A Novella, Alexander Bartlow

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Throughout my childhood and secondary education growing up in rural Indiana, I found that, in a town of less than 2,000 people, mental illness and teenage suicide were all too common. Upon researching the sad state of mental healthcare in rural America, I felt obliged to bring light in my Honors thesis to the overlooked and under-treated thoughts that plague the minds of adolescents experiencing depression, anxiety, and suicidal contemplation. In this fiction novella, I follow the life of Lincoln Phillips, a 14-year-old boy who lives with anxiety in an unchanging, inescapable town that stigmatizes mental illness. He experiences the …

The View From The House By The Ocean, Chloe Maxine Scala

Senior Projects Spring 2018

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

Racing Fire To The River, Alexandra Itzi

MFA Program for Poets & Writers Masters Theses Collection

Racing Fire to the River is a novella about a poverty-stricken community in the Southwest navigating hardship, violence, and the tantalizing mania of an unclaimed lottery ticket jackpot.

The Damsel Can Rescue Herself: Subverting Common Literary Tropes Of The Fantasy Genre, Melissa N. Hurlburt

Honors Theses and Capstones

This thesis consists of a fantasy novella. A character-driven work, it focuses on internal conflicts rather than the external conflicts and grand, sweeping plotlines that are typical of fantasy novels. Taye is an aerial performer with the king’s circus troupe, Corracha. She is also the vigilante Saorsa, a figure who fights against the injustices the king of Monadh inflicts upon the kingdom’s immigrants. A young woman haunted by her past and struggling to make something of herself in a male-dominated society, she must confront her inner demons when she is injured during a performance. She relies on her best friend …

A Mixtape For Your Minivan: Writing The Line Between Fiction And Non, Emily Lohr

Honors Program Projects

The following paper is an overview of the creation of the novella, A Mixtape for your Minivan, a coming-of-age story set in Cleveland during the Great Recession. This paper features an overview on novellas as a genre, an in-depth look at the drafting and editing process the author undertook while writing this novella, and a summary of all historical research done in relation to the novella. The paper also features excerpts from the first draft of the work, and author reflections on the various drafts. The following paper was written to partially fulfill the requirements of Olivet Nazarene’s Honors …

The Year Two Thousand, Emily Cahill

Senior Theses and Projects

A senior thesis exploring the confluence of the Columbine Massacre, Y2K, and terrorism in the lives of three young adults.

Snake Eyes, Abigail Rose Freaney

Senior Projects Spring 2017

A novella about a family roadtrip that takes a detour through one of the Mojave's darker dimensions.

The Cliff, Beatrice Ann Wedd

Senior Projects Spring 2017

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

This Sleep Of Reason., Brit Thompson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This creative thesis encompasses two features: 1) a critical component that contextualizes and supports the second component, 2) a short Southern Gothic novella. Critical analyses of Flannery O’Connor’s fiction and discourse about the genre illustrate where inspiration was drawn, and how the project’s creative component contributes to this genre. The project explores anxieties of displacement, isolation, and a stuck-in-the-past-temporality, as shown through the vessel of characters’ houses. The novella is decentralized in form and point-of-view—fragmentary excerpts of technological communications are utilized to illustrate how the protagonist’s problems are literally always on hand. The project argues that because the south remains …