Daniel Hur
Dr. Foss
ENGL 384
24 April 2020
For the process of my story, it took some time for me to come up with an idea for a story. Part of the reason that I came up with the hockey story had a lot to do with the fact that I knew someone that I grew up with that also had a head trauma similar to that. Because of the head-trauma he received while he was playing football, he had trouble with aspects of his life such as focus and concentration. Thinking of him, that was how I came up with the character of Penelo, in which the sports that she took part of caused her to have a serious head trauma. I also tried to have Penelo struggle with other disabilities like PTSD. Usually most people seem to think of PTSD as an ailment that affects people like war soldiers; however, the truth of the matter is that people with PTSD can live very ordinary lives. Sometimes it can be an every day aspect that causes a person to suffer from PTSD. Ultimately this is how I came up with the inspiration of Penelo and the problems that she suffered from.
Some of the issues with depression that Penelo struggled with also applied to me. Growing up, I was also taken to a lot of therapists for social anxiety. This allowed me to find closure for some of the problems that I had. One of the ways that the therapists helped me was through the usage of medication. My parents had a lot of mixed feelings when it came to medication, which is how I came up with the inspiration for the fact that Penelo’s parents had some problems with it. I wanted to make both Penelo and Dr. Brushae be really close because I wanted the tragedy that occurred towards the end to have a great weight. It was like Dr. Brushae’s presence was no longer needed in the healing process for Penelo.
After drawing from all of these experiences, I started to make a draft of the story. In the story, I found that the memories that I had of being tested for depression naturally started to manifest itself across the pages of the first draft. Of course, I felt like the story needed a lot of polishing, so I wrote another draft. In the second draft I tried to clear up some of the character interactions, and I did my best to make each of the characters sound like they are talking like human beings. This is how I managed to come up with all the human characters because most of them are based off of people from my own experiences.
All in all, that is how I came up with the story for Penelo. I managed to find that it was not difficult pulling from my own experiences and incorporating it into a narrative style. However, actually polishing the draft was the main struggle that I had. Through the character of Penelo, I was able to write about some of my experiences.
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