In our English class, we Freestyle students all created a flash fiction, which is basically a short story with 500 words or less. First, we all read a graphic novel called "Persepolis", which helped us get a handle on writing stories in a narrative view. Because I am in honors English class, I also had to read another graphic novel and compare their writing and drawing styles. After we finished reading and watching the "Persepolis" movie, we created the flash fiction. The flash fiction later become the base for practically everything we did this Narrative unit. Our main character became our character portrait in design. In English, we created our own graphic novel, which you can view by clicking the thumbnail picture on this page. The graphic novel is basically a comic based off of our flash fiction story, and this later became the basis for our flash animation.

Glass - by Max Evans

(Warning, audio may be loud)

"It was raining harder than it had in several seasons. It was completely downpouring onto the earth, dampening all the plants and animals living outside. However, none of this concerned me while I was inside my rather large, empty house. I could hear the rain of course, however not a single drop fell upon me. Even the occasional thunderous strike could be heard from outside.

So when I heard a knock on my door, I felt an extreme urge to see who would ever be out in such dreadful weather. I stood up from my chair, grabbed my cane, and began a steady pace over to the front door. It felt like quite the long walk, and whether that was because the house was too big or maybe just because these legs aren’t what they used to be. I passed my long wall of paintings, a few doors leading to other rooms, and a purple vase inside a glass box that stood upon a wooden pedestal. My prized possession.

As I opened the door, before stood me a young girl, no older than 14 years. She was soaked to the bone, for obvious reasons. I may be old and bitter, but there was no way my heart would be satisfied with leaving a young girl out there in the rain. And so, she came into my house, and we began our journey to one of the few guest bedrooms without so much as a name. As we walked, the girl’s eyes darted all over the place. Occasionally, she would stop and stare at particular items, but for the longest at the purple vase I kept in the glass box.

The time was late and I was tired, so against my better judgment, I decided I would deal with her tomorrow so we could both get a good few hours of sleep. After leading her to her own temporary bed, I retired to mine after a long walk down the hallway. I was so tired, I fell asleep in a matter of minutes, reflecting upon if it was a wise decision letting a stranger into my house at night. But I did not care - I was too tired.

I woke up to the smashing sound of glass. As I went to investigate, my pace had not increased, as I knew what had happened. When I finally reached my destination, it had seemed that the glass case was broken, and the vase was gone. More interesting than that, however, was that the girl was still there, trying to get through the front door. I had locked it of course. She looked at me and I looked at her, and I did the only reasonable thing to do. I walked over, and opened the door for her. We shared a brief gaze, and she darted.

It’s fine. The vase had more sentimental value than anything. What bothers me more is that I never even learned the girls name."

Overall, the whole narrative story unit was pretty fun. Creating the flash fiction itself was rather challenging, as I didn't know it was that hard to create a full story under 500 words. The graphic novel we created we a lot of fun, however my drawing skills aren't exactly amazing to look at.