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Cailen Young

Mr. Pierce

Composition 1

11 September 2022

My Literacy Narrative

Writing has always been an interest of mine, however my skills and passion were

increased when provided an opportunity to express myself through my imagination. Conjuring

tales from my mind stretched my creative abilities and allowed me to sharpen my skills as a

writer. Math was a subject I could never make sense of. It was harsh and critical. If your answer

is off by even a point, the whole equation is thrown off and the problem is incorrect. Writing

however was the opposite. Writing is subjective. How could there be a wrong answer to

something so interpretive. I excelled in creative writing in particular. It was easy for me. All I

had to do was spill the ideas that I spent all day dreaming about instead of paying attention in

class onto a piece of paper and presenting it in an orderly way. Whenever given an assignment

solely dedicated to creating a narrative, I would go a mile and surpass the minimum to flesh out

an idea. While of course my academic history was a fair contributor to my narrative history,

another more familiar source influenced my personal narrative style.

Like most, I grew up finding my entertainment through cartoons and films. Filmmaking

in all its forms is a unique way to present a narrative, however there was one form of film that

stuck out to me the most. Animation. As an artist, I enjoy presenting my thoughts through visual
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imagery. While I enjoy writing and thinking up stories, I often find myself tripping over my

words and constantly struggling to express myself verbally. It’s much easier to express these

feelings through a paintbrush and canvas than it is words. I would never consider that a bad thing

though, afterall, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, right? This discovery led to me

indulging and beginning to take pieces of literature I previously wrote in the past and turn it into

a visual presentation which occurred in the form of comics and storyboards. Just last year, I took

a story I wrote for a creative writing class involving two gangsters in a bar and put together a

quick board of it. It was nothing very fancy but the way I chose to approach drawing it combined

with the literacy dialogue of the characters is enough to get the idea of what these characters'

motives are and the kind of people they are. It’s an approach I have only learned through the

world of film, how to form and present a narrative in a way that is engaging and visually

stimulating for the audience.

My writing style is formed in the way it's never intended to be so overtop with gritty

details and unnecessarily large vocabulary words, it is meant to be casual, a more laid back

approach to literacy. This is not due to laziness or to a lack of intellectual understanding of basic

english rules, but to instead create a memorable style and feeling when reading the writing. Since

storytelling is my most fond relationship with writing, I want my literature to feel as though

you’re listening to a friend you’ve known for a lifetime tell a tale, like a conversation. I know I

have had teachers in my lifetime come down on me harshly for this form of writing and

expression, claiming that it is ‘incorrect’. However, how can you deem something intended to be

subjective as right or wrong? There is no wrong way to express yourself through the complicated

workings of writing. Understanding and self expression are possible through a multitude of
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forms, and while they may not seem to have much connection to writing at all, it still all comes

back to creating a narrative. To giving an audience a story to react to.