An Exercise in Storytelling – Anna & Hanna

An Exercise in Storytelling

Anna's Artist's Statement

We agreed to take on the challenge of collaboration and cooperation, in order to bring our Senior Project idea to life. Throughout the duration of our project, Hanna was at home in New York City, and Anna was at her house in Palm Springs, CA. This geographical difference played a significant role in shaping our project.

Our initial hope for the project was to do an exploration of the way stories are changed as a result of variables. The primary variable we wanted to examine was the setting. With the events of Covid-19, we were forced to abandon our original project plan and create a new one. We decided to embrace our current circumstances by creating two characters and telling their stories, as well as the story of their correspondence. We were still completing a project with a similar goal as our first plan, but there were also some differences. The first plan was really focused on the idea of telling the same story twice, so that the variables and their effect would be apparent to the reader. We were able to achieve this in the sense that both characters were living through a global pandemic, but beyond that, both characters were unique. 

We both read some works by authors who were also playing with things like unconventional formats (epistolary) to give us some inspiration. It was mainly to see what writing in letter and journal entry form would look like, so in terms of writing style and language, we weren’t taking it from the texts.

We spent a lot of the first week of the Senior Project Experience completing character exercises and learning how to write in our characters’ voices. We then created a rough outline for the writing we intended to produce which guided us through the remaining weeks. Our gallery is composed of each character’s journal entries, as well as forms of communication between them (including letters, emails, texts, and Snapchats). 

Hanna's Artist's Statement

Working as a pair for Senior Project was both a challenge and an advantage. Being that this project was largely driven by us (without someone giving us deadlines) it was valuable to have each other as a source of motivation. Especially when it came down to the letters and emails where we needed to wait for one response in order to write the next one. 

Working as a pair also had a strong impact on the character aspect of our project. It would have been a much greater challenge if we were writing these two perspectives individually, but being able to each write for one character really allowed us to learn who those characters are and how to write in their voice. Writing these alone would have created the problem of either not enough distinction between the two characters, or too much to the point where it’s unnatural. 

Even so, we did have some problems regarding the language used in our characters’s journals and letters. Since Anna and Hanna share some life circumstances and background (both attended LREI, both lived in New York City, we’re both the same age, etc.) there were moments where the language we were using sounded too similar between the two characters. In order to combat this issue early on, we made some substantial changes to our characters, the most significant being their conflicts. This actually ended up dramatically altering the course of our story from one purely about a good correspondence during a difficult time, to a suspenseful mystery with a silver lining.

This piece features correspondence between two characters in the form of letters, emails, text messages, and snapchats, as well as both characters’ diaries. Just as the year is beginning to wrap up and both characters are excited for graduation and college starting in the fall, a mysterious virus begins to spread and the world goes into quarantine. Astrid Kane lives in New York with her parents but gets stuck alone in a family friend’s home when the danger of the virus escalates. Natalie Smith lives in the brownstone next door to the one Astrid is house sitting, but Natalie has fled New York with her family to her home in Palm Springs, California. They are faced with the challenges brought by the virus as well as their own personal struggles relating to college, relationships, family, and more. Follow along to learn about Astrid, Natalie, and their friendship as they navigate through this turbulent time in their lives. 

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