Creative Writing
The inevitable blinking cursor will always be overcome by the invaluable imagination. The power of words, the power of storytelling, the power of personifying personas and predicaments of pretend people to push for empathetic empowerment and profound, practical action in our own very real, very personal lives— it’s the greatest gift we have in this world and our greatest weapon. It has the capacity to bind us or to tear us apart. I choose connection, every time. That’s why I tell stories. To empathize, destigmatize, and revitalize.
The Scripts
“Write what you know,” or so says the amalgam of teachers, authors, playwrights, and otherwise bright individuals who may have had a piece actually work in the past— or otherwise heard that from a movie they saw when they were in their 20s and pulling mulligans left, right, and center.
So, I, too, write what I “know.” And what I know is people. What I know is pain. What I know is my own myopic human experience that I can attempt to make as relatable as possible. And I do. I attempt. I don’t always succeed, but I get better each time.
And so, my scripts. My dialogue. My words that I imagine the people I imagine would say in the situation I’ve imagined. I hope that they combine into something that is different, that is adding to the canon of human connectivity and life experience. I hope that someone can relate, even just one other person, and that it sparks in them a new thought, a new question, a new emotion that they would have otherwise missed out on. Because that spark, that immensely important yet entirely pedestrian moment in someone’s life, that changes their life. Your words, your ideas have created something new inside that person. If they had not read that sentence or seen that scene, if they had not heard that monologue, the spark would never have existed at all. And that is why I want to do this every day for the rest of my life. For the opportunity to somehow, in some way, add to the myriad of moments in someone else’s life— and to make that moment spark.
L-8
A not-so-dystopian trajectory of our reproductive rights.
SYNOPSIS.
Set in a not-so-distant future where period tracking is state-mandated, abortion is now punishable by death, and reporting abortion suspicions is a lucrative way to earn cash, a young woman follows the cascade of coverage on Texas' first death-penalty case from the solitude of her bathroom. After falling in love, our girl's cyclical life is abruptly jeopardized as she tries to outsmart the system using an unwilling and potentially deadly source: her own mother.
ACCOLADES.
WINNER of BEST SCREENPLAY: WIFTA Short Film Showcase
WINNER: Chicago Script Awards
WINNER of BEST SCREENPLAY: Hollywood Just4Shorts
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT: WILLiFEST Screenplay Competition
OFFICIAL SELECTION: WIFTA Short Film Showcase
QUARTERFINALIST: ScreenCraft's Short Film Screenplay Competition
QUARTERFINALIST: BlueCat Short Film Screenplay Competition
“To Be Determined”: A Perspective
This play served as the creative portion of my Undergraduate Honors Thesis. By conducting interviews, focus groups, and pre-and-post-show surveys, I was able to quantitatively and qualitatively answer my initial question: how effective is art’s affectations on the public to engage in activism and, specifically, in reconsidering relationships with mental health and eating disorders to include the simultaneity of multiple perspectives, thereby achieving an empathetic and active audience engagement with the subject matter conveyed?
Pretentious, academic jargon aside: could I cause empathetic engagement to such a degree that I actually change people’s minds and create effective & affective action in the audience?
The simple answer: yes.
-
Bachelor of the Arts
A pilot outline.
-
Dung and Drag
The first episode of a new media series.
-
Here, Here, & Here
An excerpt from the screenplay.
Marketing, Copywriting, & Blogging
With over six years of marketing, copywriting, & blogging experience, I’ve learned the value of voice. Every brand has their own voice. Some are loud, some are subtle. Some require a great deal of descriptors, others employ the “big picture.” Each voice is important and deserves someone who can tell their story.
Manda Lee Smith
The Odyssey Online
Byron Langley
Matilda Djerf
Lurell Mouske
Social posting examples from Pegasus Creative, OU Communications.
Sarah Wayne Callies
Ezinma
Website copy & marketing.
Acler
Alan Bersten, pg. 20
Limited series blog.
Creator’s Mag
Olivia Deeble, pg. 110
Elysia Rotaru
Lizzy Greene
Article for newspaper, The Stormy Petrel.
