Video Game
In 2023 I took a step in a new direction to broaden my story telling chops by enrolling in Susan O’Connor’s (BioShock, Far Cry 2, Tomb Raider) The Narrative Department class, a master class on video game writing. Here I honed my narrative skills in a new medium, by completing a Twine game (which you can find in my portfolio), working on writing samples and completing various writing exercises linked below!
Build Your Story Stack
Popularized at the 2019 GDC, I built a story stack (a narrative tool for organizing elements in a video game from least flexible to most flexible) based off a game that I loved and was familiar with, Nier: Automata.
After building the story stack for the game, I was tasked with creating three unique narrative concepts.
Motivation
In this exercise, I took a closer look at the difference between player motivation and character motivation, using those two magic words: SO THAT.
Status
In this exercise, you’ll explore a powerful scriptwriting tool: status.
Imitating Another Voice
For this exercise, you'll look at how a particular character speaks. This analysis will make you a stronger writer and help you write in other voices.
Game characters rarely talk at length, so we are borrowing scripts from film & TV for this exercise.
Stuck in an Elevator
In this exercise we honed our ability to imitate the voices of multiple characters.
Help a designer out
In this exercise, you’ll develop - and revise - story ideas with gameplay in mind.
Come up with a story concept that incorporates those design mechanics, and that creative pillar.
Think through how a crouch mechanic would affect your story concept. Does it make the story better? Worse? A little of both?
Brainstorm modifications to your original story concept, incorporating the mechanic of crouching.
Twine Game
In this exercise we started planning our Twine game. We built a story stack off of a fairytale and started laying out our ideas and objectives.
Theatre
In my studies at Northeastern University I took a class called Creative Storytelling for Social Engagement. This class deepened my love for social change and using narrative as a tool to change the world and the hearts of people. As a part of my class we worked on a performative art piece that had interactive elements that an audience would interact with to understand the story and the purpose of the piece.
I created Caravan! This project was rooted in a lot of different aspects of my identity. I created a piece about immigration reform, that takes the audience through several different ways of immigration that the United States have seen and juxtaposing them.
Below are a written proposal for executing the project, along with a visual presentation about inspirations and execution for the project.