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Writing a Short Story |
For my personal project, I decided to write a short story because I have always loved creative writing. When deciding what to write about, I wanted to connect my writing to a global context that was important to me. My cousin Konnor has Down syndrome and autism, so I began to research those disabilities. Throughout my research, I found a definitive underrepresentation of intellectually disabled characters in books and in media. In the story, I wrote from the perspective of a character with Down syndrome and autism as he views the world around him. I hope that the story raised awareness of this underrepresentation as well as demonstrated that the intelligence of mentally disabled people should not be assumed based on communication ability or their behavior.
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Video
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Question Section
Challenges
My biggest challenge throughout the project was coming up with the plot. I went back and forth between making it an adventure story or something with a simpler synopsis. With an adventure story, you need to have lots of plot and character development, which I wouldn’t have been able to do in such a short word limit, so I decided on a day-in-the-life type plot, with each section heading being a different time of the day.
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Achievements
My favorite part of the project was planning out my characters. I created a big table with each of my characters in headings and I had tabs for their appearances, as well as a lot of different aspects of their personality. For example, attitudes and moral beliefs, physical behaviors,
interests, and fears are all things that I planned out for each of my characters. I am most proud that I finished my story. I have begun multiple stories in the past, but I had never finished one before this product. I am also proud of having a circle ending, which is when the ending circles back to the beginning of the story which I always enjoy reading. |
Advice
Don’t say that you’re going to work on your personal project in your free time or if you have free time. You need to set out time specifically for Personal Project work just like you set out
time to do homework. Otherwise, you’ll end up wasting your Christmas break just working on your Personal Project. One thing that helped me with this was creating a table with planned tasks and due dates so I completed the project gradually. |