Fiction Commons^™

A Walmart With No Televisions, Samuel A. Bickford

LSU Master's Theses

A Walmart with No Televisions is a deconstructed novel about the perils and heartbreak of adolescent drug addiction. What begins as a fad, a social affectation, quickly becomes a guiding light. The novel illustrates hope as a potentiality, and escape from oneself as something always in question. Happiness is uncertain, but the experience is not.

A Perfect Escape: Fantasy, Place And Narrative In Adolescence, Cydney Cherepak

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This essay explores the realms of special places, the literary genre of fantasy, narrative, and comics. These topics are traversed alongside subjects of adolescence and the creation of stories for middle-grade readers. Framed with personal stories, as well as peaks into my process, I investigate these subjects through the lens of my own life and work, specifically my thesis project, a comic for middle-grade readers titled Beyond the Castle Walls. Beginning with adolescence in association with special places, I consider the work of developmental psychologists David Sobel and Edith Cobb as they pin-point the role of secret forts, nature, …

Meet Me In The Middle Ages: Engaging With Fantasy, Reality, And Collaborative World-Building, Amanda Greene

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This critical essay accompanies and describes my thesis project, Medievalia Miscellany, a magazine for middle-grade readers which explores the world of medieval fantasy through art, comics, stories, and activities. Throughout the essay, I use my own term “archaeological upcycling” to discuss and explore a variety of relationships between ideas of parts and a whole. I then use it to characterize the way stories are created out of many different parts and how these parts help a reader to relate to both the world of the story and the world in which they live. I describe the genre of medieval fantasy …

Twisting Tales: A Guide To Fairytale Adaptation, Tori Forster

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

“Twisting Tales” is a guidebook examining fairytales and the realm of fairytale adaptation. To begin with, I define fairytales by expanding on Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Stories”. By defining fairytales as abstracted tales set in the realm of Faerie, adaptations of fairytales become an avenue in which to explore world building and narrative, which fairytales naturally lend themselves to. The guidebook also explores more troubling tropes and trends in the fairytale, particularly those regarding women. Marcia K. Lieberman’s essay “Someday My Prince Will Come”critiques heroines in fairytales and serves as a dialogue for the role of the female protagonist in …

Grieve Not, Joy Notoma

The Woodward Review: A Creative and Critical Journal

No abstract provided.

Three Confusing Interactions I Had With Men Today, Megan Cox

The Woodward Review: A Creative and Critical Journal

No abstract provided.

The Shrouded Parent At Midnight, Susan L. Lin

The Woodward Review: A Creative and Critical Journal

No abstract provided.

End Destination, Lucy Zhang

The Woodward Review: A Creative and Critical Journal

No abstract provided.

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 …

Void, Jaycylle Kayne A. Soto

DLSU Senior High School Research Congress

The main driving force of the author to write the collection of flash fictions "Void" is to express people's different representations of feeling void. From the void we feel inside to the one that others make us feel. The goal of this collection is to let the readers know that they are not alone in feeling this kind of void represented in each literary piece. Moreover, this collection also includes unsettled and unsolved personal, family, and societal issues people of different classes and lifestyles may face and that creates a drastic change in an individual’s way of living. Throughout 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.

Batter: A Creative Writing Portfolio, Hannah Newman

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

My capstone project, Batter, is a collection of creative writing pieces, consisting of short stories, flash fiction, and two creative nonfiction essays. I decided to do a portfolio because creative writing is simply what I enjoy the most and have been intrigued by since I took my first fiction writing class at Kennesaw State University. Composing stories, imagining how characters could behave believably, their problems and their solutions, all of it combined gives me a sense of creative determination that I have not found in any other area of work or craft. I believe I’ve been rather lucky because working …

Glass House S1:E1 “Sweet Temptations”, Taylor Middleton

Honors Theses

Sweet Temptations tells the story of the Price family navigating their new lives in Cape Huron. Enticed by the opportunity of a new job with great benefits, the Price family moves to Cape Huron, Maine, a small town with mysterious goings-on. While father, Paul, starts work at the factory in town, twins Seth and Samantha start their senior year of high school. Everything in the town is perfect at surface level, the houses are all the same cookie-cutter design with the exception of the different color palettes and furniture styles. The perfect All-American façade comes crashing down when Seth and …

The Knives I Used, Katelin Carsrud

Master's Theses

The Knives I Used is a collection of short stories written between August 2020 and April 2022, while the author was a student at The University of Southern Mississippi. This thesis contains stories joined by the thematic thread of self-harm and demonstrates the spectrum of ways it presents itself in individuals.

Lessons From The Aisles: A Collection Of Short Stories, Drew Jones

Honors Theses

This thesis is a collection of short stories, each set in a separate aisle of Walmart. By exploring the relationships and conflicts of these characters, I hope to illustrate that life’s complexity can be shown in a place as simple and mundane as Walmart.

Ex Astris - 30 Minute Sketch Comedy Concept, Grayson Mckim

Honors Thesis

"Discovering NASA’s intentions to retire him, an aging scientist attempts to pivot his declining career into film directing, hoping to prove (amongst other things) that aliens exist"

Ex Astris is a 30 minute animated comedy TV series that blends the traditional sit-com structure with aspects of sketch writing. It revolves around the conflict between creative and scientific thought, and is meant to be a wholesome narrative about self-esteem and expression.

Sandstorm Spring 2022, Leslie Malland

Sandstorm: A Journal of Arts and Letters

Full Manuscript

'The Game Is Afoot': An Exploration Of Mystery Novels And The Gentleman Detective, Anna Pietropaolo

Senior Honors Projects

In the mystery genre, The Gentleman Detective has become a kaleidoscopic icon depicted continuously over the past 200 years. The brilliant sleuth’s image has been used to highlight the contemporary culture of thoughts, faiths, and fears. As a longtime fan of the mystery genre, I wanted to explore this iconic figure and see some of the ways it could be used to reflect upon current values. There was no better way to do that than to write a book of my own, featuring a master of deduction but viewing them with an outside perspective, through the eyes of my main …

A Pandemic Of Greed And A Disease Of Poverty In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque Of The Red Death", Benjamin Herrick

Master's Theses

The breakers tripped. Again. The breakers, a mandatory halt to trading on the floor of the stock exchange in response to the S&P falling more than 7% from the previous close. This was instituted after the Crash of 1987 to calm the markets before trading is allowed to resume. They are supposed to mitigate a drastic crash. They have only ever triggered once before, in 1997. Not for the tech bubble. Not even in the crash of 2008. All trading stops for fifteen minutes when the Level One breaker trips. If it drops further in the same day, the Level …

Pride Before The Fall: A Historical Fiction Novel, Brenna Smith

Undergraduate University Honors Capstones

The Mycenaean civilization (1650 BCE-1200 BCE) was the first advanced Greek civilization with many features that characterized Classical Greece such as palace states, art, a writing system, intercultural contact, and more. The focus of this capstone project is the ancient Mycenaean civilization, particularly capturing both the build up to and the actual rise of the Greek Early Iron Age (1200 BCE-800 BCE) period, or the Greek Dark Ages. This project takes the form of a historical fiction novel which seeks to offer a possible explanation for how the collapse came to be, using archaeological evidence in partnership with creative writing. …

Sporkling, Mia Jensen

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

For my thesis, I wrote and illustrated a graphic short story that captures the confusing experiences associated with aging out of childhood. My thesis, titled “Sporkling,” follows a twelve-year-old girl named Moira as she confronts her fears with the help of the recently thawed disembodied head of the quirky nineteenth-century inventor, Samuel W. Francis. The central topics of the project reflect on the unification of the body and mind. Whereas the young, naïve Moira represents the body, the disillusioned, decapitated Samuel represents the mind. As the two spend an afternoon trapped in Moira’s father’s secret laboratory, they must assist each …

Greetings From Eureka!: A Story Quartet And Critical Afterword., Roman Sauls

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

This project details the narrative decisions made within a quarter of my own stories, with special attention paid to cross-story relationships, the dynamics of linked short story collections, and the elements of craft I have honed while at the University of Louisville. The nature of narrative structure and narrative time is discussed in the first story; the crafting of dialogue and the narrative texture conjured from that dialogue in the second; the interaction between a character's psychology and a story's setting in the third; and the relevance of both sensorial and visual motifs in the fourth. This thesis also discusses …

I Used To Weave Crowns: A Novel, Natanya Biskar

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This novel-in-progress explores the nature of memory, grief, and the complexities of coming of age. Through the voice of the narrator, Ada Strunsky, who is by turns both prickly and tender, we are drawn into the world of San Francisco at the end of the 19th century, a time of social and economic upheaval, when monopolists made fortunes and oyster thieves roamed the Bay. Through an associative structure, the novel seeks to capture the feeling of memory, which is often non-linear, more impressionistic than logical. As Ada seeks to untangle her complicity in crimes both literal and emotional, she takes …

Haibun, To Hirozo, Emma Von Werder

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

No abstract provided.

Their City, Eli Gray Nations

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

No abstract provided.

Крушение, Eli Gray Nations

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

No abstract provided.

College Slasher Novel, Jeff Hill

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This project was completed in hopes of creating a new novel that combines the research and craft worlds of composition and creative writing while merging the social worlds of teaching and campus Greek life, as well as making relevant contemporary commentary on the genres of satire and horror. In preparation, beyond necessary course work completion and time to outline, write, workshop, and revise, I read numerous novels and articles and watched dozens of films and television episodes as well as conducted research regarding current campus demographic to compose the best novel I could write in my time within the program. …

Chalk Outline, Marie Gurnon

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

No abstract provided.

The Rain Over Hanoi: A Personal Project About Screenplay Structure, Story, Representation And Intergenerational Struggle, Joan Moua

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

A good screenplay is first and foremost a good story. Elements of a good story include compelling characters, a theoretical structure, and a well-executed premise. The Rain Over Hanoi is an extremely intimate and personal project about an Asian American expat living in Vietnam. Our protagonist’s journey and coming of age is explored via the interactions she has with her old and new family. Communication through food, symbolism, and cultural exchange are also present throughout the screenplay, utilizing a realistic point of view for the benefit of a full story submersion experience to the reader/viewer. Themes of self-exploration, growing up, …

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.