My name is Shantel Emile and I am currently a junior at Lehman College majoring in Media Communications with a minor in Creative Writing. My main goal while taking this fiction writing class was to learn how to write a fiction story opposed to writing an essay. Writing a fiction piece and writing an essay are similar because you have to plan where everything goes and how you will organize it. However, writing fiction allows writers to implement their own creativity into the work rather than basing it solely on research. Writers are allowed shape the world in their fiction and create that world based on things completely unrealistic and step from the nonfiction sector we are so used to writing about. This area happens to be one of my downfalls, I find it difficult to write when not given a prompt.

I am so used to making claims and citing sources in MLA format I found it hard to channel those creative ideas. But when I was finally able to get an idea and think of characters I could not stop. Sometimes while writing I felt like I was going overboard and making the whole story too dense and slowly becoming an info dump. My biggest challenge was finding a way to gauge the amount of backstory for my characters and deciding what was necessary and unnecessary. When I think of fiction stories I always think of something entertaining and easy to read and I wanted the stories I created to mimic that. As a novice writer I am not sure if I was 100% able to do that but I did try my hardest and I have a better understanding of how to write fiction after taking this class.

With the feedback from my professor and my peers I tried to add to the places where my writing was lacking and in this portfolio you will be able to see my growth as a writer and get a glimpse into my world of creativity.