CREATIVE FICTION

This paper can be written in the first, second, or third person. Imagine you woke up one morning and suddenly ten years had elapsed (I think this happened to me). What would your life be like? Or perhaps you are recruited by the graphic design secret police to spy on foreign design firms? Maybe you are volunteered by your best friend to be the world’s first brain transplant patient? Or you are abducted by pygmies and taken to a planet in a faraway galaxy where you are forced to punch holes in the tops of those cans that moo like a cow when you turn them upside down. Or maybe you live in a dingy apartment in Fullerton and drink a lot of beer and watch a lot of TVs? (Hopefully, this last one is a stretch of your imagination). Use your imagination. Go wild or mild.
In case you need some help, I have drafted two optional scenarios for you below. You may use one of these scenarios if you wish.
This paper will be best if you work from a central theme (you may also want to develop a few sub-themes or sub-plots). It will be best if this theme is complex (even if the complexity is suggested and not stated directly); if your theme is too simple, your paper will likely be dull or preachy. Details can supply texture and color, but details will be strongest if you consider how they relate to the central theme.

This is examples

Scenario #1—

It is late. The bars have just closed. As you drive down the ally on your way home, you see a group of young men in the distance, huddled in a makeshift circle. They are moving back-and-forth slightly, and they are all looking down at something on the ground. As you get closer you realize there is a person on the ground. It is Jerry. His wheel chair lays askew next to the standing men. They are kicking him. As your headlights illuminate the group, one of the men turns an angry glare toward your car.
As you open your car door, you reach under your seat and grab your 9mm Glock. You step out of the car; they all turn toward you, defiantly. You squeeze a round from the Glock into the air. The shot freezes them for a moment, then they bolt frantically down the ally, scattering in different directions as they turn the corner.
Jerry curses at you and pushes you away as you reach down to help him. Blood drips from his mouth. You think about getting him out of the alley. Someone had to have heard the shoot. The police may be there soon. You think about your show that opens next week. You need to finish your show! You don’t have time to deal with protracted legal stuff. You need to get Jerry out of there.

—Scenario #2—

You are sitting, cross-legged, alone in a little shack on the south face of a remote mountain in the Himalayas. Ramdas Ripoche your llama sent you there four days ago. You are cold and have not eaten or slept for days; you can’t remember how long you have been there. The prayer book you where given to read is now a fire in the middle of the shack.
Suddenly, your llama is there in the hut with you. He is laughing at you.
“Your hair is growing back,” he laughs. “It is time for you to go back to your world.”
As he laughs, he transforms into a cobra. The cobra lashes out and bites you. The next thing you remember you are in the monastery. You are in a bed. Your friend Roche is at your side blotting your forehead with a warm moist towel.
* * *
As the sun rises over the cluster of mountains that protect the isolated valley where the monastery rests, an emerging formation of darkly painted helicopters are silhouetted against the newly bright sky. The elegant steel machines land in near rhythmic secession one after another on the plateau that backs up to the exposed cluster of buildings. Just before landing platoons of neatly-dressed-in-black, spit-shine-booted soldiers leap to the ground and scramble into the buildings through unlocks doors—their rifles searching for inhabitants.
The last man out of the helicopter is also in uniform, but, unlike the other soldiers, he does not were a black cap.
One of the men reports to him as he steps on to the ground, “All secure sir. There is no one here.”
He is silent for a moment, standing, perfect posture, he surveys the area, “He is alive. He was here. I can feel it.”