Assignment/Activity Title Short Stories Year Sophomore

Skill Writing, Creative Portfolio Category Social Awareness

The Short Story assignment is a definite milestone for my experience in CAP. For this assignment, we
were to write a creative short story about a subject of our choice. In addition to the obvious lack of guidelines,
apart from the beginning-rising action-climax-falling action-denouement formula, I had never attempted
something like this, so I was apprehensive to say the least.
The process began with several days of brainstorming. I began to get nervous, as I was lacking a solid
idea to write about. The nervousness was expelled one day, when out of nowhere I wrote down three great
concepts for the story. Among them was a noir detective style mystery, and a story about an autistic artist.
With advice from my classmates, I went with the autistic artist.
Besides having a distant cousin with severe autism, who I had never met before, I knew virtually
nothing about the mental disorder. I began by researching the illness, and came across a condition that was
linked with autism, called Chromosthesia. This type of Synethsesia occurs when certain musical sounds trigger
colors in the minds eye. I thought this was a perfect condition to give to my protagonist, an autistic artist who
was going through an exceptionally rough period in his life. My outline was to inflict a series of unfortunate
events on the protagonist, who then uses these emotions to put into his art. And, to give the story a classic
twist, I finally introduce him to a girl that respects and appreciates his mind. The story slowly came together,
and was selected to be turned into a motion picture for CAP Hollywood.
A problem that I encountered while writing was that the main character didnt seem real. I again
resorted to my computer and researched autistic tendencies. I shaped the protagonist as a perfectionist, with
a neatly organized room and desk. I gave him a nervous habit, which was tapping a pencil when he was
stressed out, and I made him socially awkward, by excessively repeating peoples names and generally being
uncomfortable in social situations.
This story was an attempt to magnify the impact of amazing autistic minds on society. Autistic people
are generally discriminated against with the term retarted being thrown around like a baseball. Having
met some very intelligent but slow people, I thought it would be interesting to show the perspective of an
autistic child on the world around him.
This idea was not simply a fantasy story, filled with clichs and happy endings, but instead it was about
a subject with real weight and depth. I am including this in my portfolio since it perfectly captures my growth
in the CAP program, investigating topics that matter to me and to those around me.





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