The Narrative Project asks Seniors,
“How well can you tell a dialogue-driven story?”
By exploring various narrative points of view and experimenting with dialogue in their story writing, I learned to develop more advanced storytelling techniques through screenplays, films, lyrical essays, trailers, and websites. For this project I used Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe After Effects.
Lyrical Essay
You scroll through your instagram feed. Another post: “Bored of school, I want to quit”. Lucky, you say as you forget the feeling of walking those bustling hallways and listening to music as piles of homework sit on standby. You long for little things kicked to the dust by your friends. The sighs that previously described pain now become emulate a distant adrenaline.
What is pride without something to be prideful of?
Your mismatched colors become a bad sense of fashion rather than a spirited assembly.
No rivalry games or school dances.
Instead, you lie alone in the hospital bed,
Gasping for a strength that’s accessible now only through prescriptions.
Your jean skirts and graphic tees regulated to the rag pile.
But did you forget? Along with school and field hockey team, you’ve been stripped of hair. You never fully realized the beauty in combing through each strand of your own,
until it’s gone, and not to charity, for it has slowly fallen away as if detaching from your existence.
Your hair is not meant for you, you say.
But if yours is not meant for you, who’s is?
Piles of wigs tangle in the corner, while the blonde locks in the window flow in the summer breeze. But the worst part is that the privilege of returning to school after months of chemo-caused weakness disintegrated as you were then faced with the curious eyes that all seemed to point at
You,
Your naked head,
Your naked face,
You.
The falsely insecure always remain invisible, but not you.
You wonder if the drugs rearranged your brain to make you think no one is on your side.
You start wearing hoodies to school, wondering if you’ll feel like you again.
And what is it you want to be? They ask.
Like everybody else. You say.
Before the diagnosis, you were close. But never as close as you were once you were admitted to the hospital.
Can I come back again next week to see you? She says.
You thought she was a true friend, until one day, it stopped. Like the hair off your body she dropped you. I guess she reached her participation requirements.
You walk into class and the teacher asks for your assignment.
The student in front of you receives a scolding, two questions, and an F.
But then he walks up to your face, looks into your eyes and says,
“Don’t worry, you don’t have to do this assignment.”
He smiles and walks away.
You wonder if this was an attempt at empathy or just protocol.
Yet you still long, are longing for, normality, even mediocrity.
You think it’s all over until it’s not. Back to the hospital bed, Round 2. The doctors say it shouldn’t be as bad this time around, but that doesn’t matter.
You are still being visited by a past that you thought you’d slaughtered entirely.
You’re still tired,
You’re still hurting,
But one thing makes up for it.
After losing so much of yourself there’s nowhere else to go except to those around you.
You spend most of your time with those who make you forget you’re sick,
But make you remember that you’re more than normal.
Late nights out running around in the rain,
Laughter blossoms with the change in seasons.
But who are you to dismiss your invincible strength?
You moved mountains.
You’re not normal.
You’re strong and brave and that will always be your identity over everything else.
So you keep fighting, but you still cry. But this time, it’s not about being sick, it’s about schoolwork, and boys, and drama.
This is who you are.
You breathe out old worries and breathe in a new you.