A Desperate Assignment

Do not underestimate the power of a school assignment. When I was a sophomore in high school, my English teacher wanted to dip into everyone’s creative side. The assignment was to write a story of your own creation. It only had to be at least one handwritten page. That may seem like nothing to some, but the teacher was having trouble getting assignments submitted by a portion of the class. With this assignment, he just wanted "something". Anything!

I took this opportunity to start asking my friends if they wanted to be in my story! I even asked several other students with whom I shared classes if they wanted to be a character. The main premise of the story was inspired by “Army of Darkness”, about a castle defense against an army of undead. Each character was also represented by a non-pawn piece of a chess game being played in the story that flowed with the combat going on all around them.

As characters would enter fights, their respective chess pieces would move and maybe take another on the board, depending on what happened on the battlefield. I was sure that concept was used somewhere but this was only for an assignment, and I liked playing chess. I sprinkled in other pop culture allusions such as lyrics to songs we liked, the Nemesis from Resident Evil 3 and more “Army of Darkness” lines.

The final product ended up being about seven and a half pages typed, single-spaced, so I outdid the requirement, and the teacher was pleased with it. I am by no means bragging however because when I looked at the original story much later, it was rife with misspellings, grammar mistakes, verb tenses that do not stay consistent… It was something else. But it was entertaining, I think.

My friends really enjoyed it and a couple urged me to write more and make a full novel out of it, with the original lining up as the final battle. I thought it could be fun and started writing random scenes that could occur somewhere in the timeline of the plot that I pieced together based on interactions I wanted to see and write. By the time I was in my senior year and about to graduate, I had several dozen pages across about ten chapters. I bound them together using supplies in the office back room and gazed upon my work.

Entering college, I realized some plot points did not quite work out or ran aground somewhere so I tweaked the story. Then I tweaked more. Then I realized I needed to revamp larger story arcs. So, I started new version files to maintain my previous ideas and writings in a digital folder. As new ideas came to mind, I would text myself, write in a dedicated folder or leave notes on whatever was nearby. That was when I started making multiple documents in my laptop to organize my thoughts and to keep my characters’ motivations in line. I made basic storyboards and timelines, anything to keep my thoughts together.

Before I knew it, I was on my fourth version. If I came to a scene that was open for input, I asked my friends what they would want to do in that given situation (if their character was there). Sometimes someone would ask how “the story” was coming along. Forty-five minutes later I would realize they let me ramble on and on about the lore I had created and what direction I was headed with it.

Somewhere along the lines of about fourteen years later of dabbling in it, tweaking, connecting dots, a fifth version, hundreds of pages and English major friends reviewing it, I am the closest I have been to a finished product. How much longer until it is done? I have no idea. However, writing this story has been my most invested-in project and I get excited when writing scenes or exploring my characters’ purposes and abilities.

I would not call myself an avid reader, but I would say I have an active imagination and writing is a great outlet for such a trait. My friends enjoy hearing about their characters’ exploits and their supportive comments help drive the project. Anyone who has tried to create anything, whether it be art, music, a written piece, or something in-between, knows that we are our own greatest critic and that can certainly cause us to not see what we have brought to life.

While over the years I have generated a few other ideas and worlds I would like to dive into, I keep my focus on the task at hand. Every so often I think back to my teacher standing behind his podium with his hands outstretched asking for “anything” to be turned in. I know some of the crumpled pieces of paper he received had something alone the lines of “I couldn’t think of anything…”. So, I hope that those of us that tried were able to make up for it because due to his simple, pleading assignment my imagination was spurred for years to come. I hope my writing ability, grammatically speaking, improved at least some as well otherwise I will be in trouble!

Writing is in an outlet. Diaries, articles, stories, poems and more can help people get their ideas to the masses or help them deal with something inside themselves. I will finish my story at some point, I am sure, but expanding support for writing in schools (as well as other creative arts) can help unlock something inside countless students. Even if these individuals do not extend their passions to others, the wonders such a hobby or pastime can provide should not be underestimated.