PROFESSIONAL PORTFOLIO
writing
My writing style focuses on clarity and relatability. I'm all about character-driven prose, and like to experiment with interactive systems that try to blur the lines between author and audience!
DISCIPLINES
Traditional prose
Most of my prose tends to focus on parody or spoof of some kind, where I try to play on popular genres, tropes and conventions. I like to keep my writing playful and lighthearted, while experimenting with worlds and characters that are inspired by other media.
To date, my largest and most extensive project is the Half-Museum Adventure Series, an illustrated middle-grade children's novel that takes the form of an Indiana Jones spoof.
Interactive Storytelling
Interactive storytelling focuses on direct audience engagement with a story, its world and its characters. This turns traditionally passive storytelling into a playful experience, and is implemented through techniques like choice-based narrative design; immersive storytelling applications; and collaborative storytelling systems. The results aim to create a unique relationship between story and reader - either as an interesting play experience; or as a collaboration between reader and writer.
traditional prose
delta x scene 1
(sci-fi parody sample)
(2021)
delta x scene 2
(sci-fi parody sample)
(2021)
half-museum adventure series chapter 4
(Middle-grade novel)
(2021)
RUSH
(sci-fi Adventure also published as an Afromanga)
(2020)
MESSENGER
(SHORT STORY)
(2021)
Hypertext fiction
projects
Here are some of my more complex projects:
Project Abeona
Project Abeona is a collaborative storytelling experience in which participants engaged with various digital and online media to 'explore' Proxima b, an Earth-like exoplanet. This media combined factual and speculative elements to create a fictitious world nourished by the project's participants.
This all took place over two weeks on a private Facebook group curated specifically for the project. Here, members interacted with several 'missions' and 'announcements' that drove the story forward. Members had to work both as individuals and as a team by communicating through comments sections and posts, in order to resolve the presented challenges. These resolutions largely impacted the story's narrative direction - which followed a variety of story branches that I designed according to their engagement. Thus, participants had just as much a hand in the story's development as I did.
Essentially, this project is something akin to an online Dungeons & Dragons campaign run entirely through Facebook. Ironically, Facebook 'values' the privacy of private group members, so I can only include an invite link for others to join the group and view the project's development as a group member. Alternatively, here is a downloadable PDF report of the project's development, which includes all the finer details behind designing the narrative as well as various screenshots from the group itself.
Responsibilities: project management, project co-ordination, narrative design, group administration, story master.
the Half-Museum Adventure Series
Laura and her friends have the best after school hangout: her grandmother's International Half-Museum. Filled to the brim with half-trinkets and artefacts, the whole place oozes with adventure.
When Laura discovers that her grandmother has been kidnapped, she and her friends find themselves sucked into an epic tale of their own. With nothing but their wits and a trail of sticky notes, our band of heroes must traverse through one of history's greatest mysteries to find their own way home.
The HMAS is a middle-grade children's novel that I both wrote and illustrated for my final Honours project. Overall, the whole project took three months to complete from early concepts, outlines and planning to a final 'dummy manuscript' formatted and typeset with Scribus. Although it's still very much a first draft, and in need of lots of revision, its near-30K words contribute to the longest piece of creative prose that I have ever written.
The novel consists of 130 pages of original prose and a glossary; three fully rendered illustrations; two maps; two front covers; and various black and white diagrams - all fully formatted into a 6-inchx9-inch manuscript. You can have a look at the full manuscript here!