Brielle Donoghue

Mr. Green
February 27th, 2023
Capstone Project Proposal Draft

Project Strand

Title:

(one of these titles will be chosen when I begin writing, I think of titles
when the process is underway.)
Sun and Scar
Prince of Sun and Scar
Song of Sun and Scar

Inquiry Question:

How can I write a fantasy novel with diverse characters while including elements of
mental illnesses, LGBTQ+ characters, and characters with many different backgrounds
and intersectionality all while in tandem with fantasy concepts and lore?

Rationale/Context:

I love writing and I am very invested in diversity and change; we see more diversity in
novels now-a-days than ever before, which is fantastic. I want to produce a book with
diverse characters and mental illness representation while also having a plot outside of
these characteristics. I find that when LGBTQ+ characters are represented in novels
their only plot surrounds their struggle of being LGBTQ+, or their whole personality is
just that.

Background:

I have been invested in social and political issues for years, I have done social justice
courses in school as well. I have done a lot of writing of writing over the years in English
classes as well as writing and studying film plots in film production. I have read a lot of
books in my life; I have been reading for a long time. When I was young, I used to read
the Narnia books, one of the most popular fantasy series. I got back into reading around
14 years old, I had stopped for a long time. I have many friends that identify as members
of the LGBTQ+ community and I have done a lot of research into aspects of being a part
of the community, so I am choosing to incorporate characters with diverse sexualities
and gender identities.

Career Connections:

I want to be an author or film writer. If I can write and produce a good book, I already
have one foot in the door. I may even be able to get my book produced by a company.
Interdisciplinary and Core Competencies:

Creative writing, English, Literacy Studies, Visual Arts, and Film Production are the
interdisciplinary courses that relate to my project.

Creative Writing, English, and Literary Studies

-Writing a novel takes a lot of writing and English skill, these subjects are incredibly
important.

Visual Arts
-I am drawing the world map, the covers, and the part dividers within the book!

Film Production
-Although not immediately obvious, Film Production has seriously helped the creative
process of writing a plot. You learn how to write a successful plot and what to avoid in
your writing.

Personal Awareness and Responsibility

1. “I can set goals, regulate my emotions, and persevere in difficult situations.”

I will be setting a goal to write five pages a day when I begin writing the book.
This whole situation of writing a novel in a few months will me taxing so keeping
a level head will be a top priority.

Social Responsibility

1. “I value diversity, defend human rights, advocate for others, and act ethically in
all my interactions, including online.”

Since I am having characters with many different backgrounds, races, sexualities,

etc., I will be doing my best to portray them respectfully.

2. “I can identify and appreciate different perspectives on issues and use and
evaluate strategies to resolve problems.”

I don’t want my book’s conflicts to be shallow and meaningless. I have a

responsibility to show real conflict that occurs in reality and respectfully deal
with it. I want my conflicts to be deeper than just moving the plot forward; I want
them to provide some insight into the different perspectives of the characters and
their values and why the conflict occurred in the first place.

Critical Thinking

1. “I can explore and create new ways to represent my learning around a variety of
problems, events, issues, and needs”
 Since I will be incorporating social problems and injustices in my book, I need to
have an understanding on repercussions and criteria for these issues to occur and
how to deal with them properly. I do not want issues that occur in my book to be
unrealistic if applied to the real world. For example, one species in my book will
be discriminated against and I need to be careful about this.

2. “I can analyze and make defensible judgements, draw conclusions, and consider a
variety of perspectives.”

I want to be able to make my book digestible for many people. People of different
views and beliefs are easily turned against “woke” books like the one I am writing
because they believe that since our ideas and perspectives are different that they
will get nothing out of reading it, or they feel ostracized and villainized. I want the
book to enlighten people, not target and belittle others. It should be a learning
experience in itself.

Creative Thinking

1. “I can create new and unique ideas that may provide new perspectives and
influence how people think about topics.”

I am creating a fantasy novel, but I do not want to be like every other young adult
fantasy following the same trope. I want to use my creativity to expand on these
fantasy tropes while also incorporating LGBTQ+ characters. If I can write a good
novel that has nonbinary and trans characters as well as characters with different
sexualities I can open the minds of more people towards LGBTQ+ people. The
world around us considers heterosexuality the norm, but I want my book to be
inclusive for all people to enjoy instead of following the narrative that LGBTQ+
people are unordinary.

2. “I can use the environment around me, including others, and my unconscious
mind to generate new ideas.”

I find that late at night I have the best and most well-thought-out ideas, as well as
when I isolate myself or people watch. Observing other people around me and
other media influences a lot of my creative process.

3. “I can take my ideas, evaluate, develop, and refine them and make something
productive out of them.”

I have always had these ideas float around in my head, so I am attempting to put
them to use finally. I usually let all my ideas fall flat because I never attempt to
act on them.

4. “I can persevere and understand that failure can be productive.”

 I am going to be doing a lot of work and I can experience work block often;
writers block is hard to overcome but I feel like I can persevere through this. I
have the passion to overcome this.

Communication

1. “I can listen, learn to contribute meaningfully to discussion and debate, consider

different perspectives, and build consensus.”

My book has many left-leaning ideas and perspectives that have been thoroughly
researched and developed. I do not want my book to attack people of other
perspectives, so when these other perspectives arise in the book they will be dealt
with delicately and with respect to everyone. The book itself is to add to the
discussion around many left-leaning “woke” ideas that maybe someone that is
“anti-woke” has not considered before.

Personal and Cultural Identity

1. “I understand that culture is a broad concept that includes things like my

geographic region, nationality, sex, gender, age, ethnicity, sexuality, language and
religion.”

My characters will be of many different backgrounds and identities. This is

something I need to be careful with and consider my identity as well because I
have my own idea of my world due to my culture, but someone of another culture
has a totally different idea of the world. Since my characters will be from many
different places that are similar and a reflection of real-world places, cultures,
and people I need to do my research and properly address these cultures with
respect.

Capstone Presentation Medium:

My final product will be a softcover book, but I will be presenting through a website as
well.

Description of my Capstone project:

My capstone project will be to create a fantasy novel for young adults that incorporates
diversity in many ways. I will be having darker and less talked about aspects of the novel
such as mental illness considering it is not talked enough about. I want my characters to
be fully developed with realistic qualities; too much in fantasy we see characters with
mental illnesses portrayed as only a fraction of what comes with the illness, and other
times we see them as cartoonish, unrealistic representations. Research on the symptoms
and characteristics of someone with the mental illness is super important to not mock or
misconstrued the community. I also will have my characters be very diverse; I want to
have a novel that properly represents many communities, including LGBTQ+ characters
and characters of different races. Since this is a fantasy book, I will be researching
monster lore; a lot of monsters come from cultures that are under-represented and
misconstrued in fantasy. The plot firstly needs to be solidified on a plot diagram at the
least, that way I can write in symbolism and not write on a whim. I plan to draw the
covers myself, the world map as well, and the act separators (part I, part II, part III). I
am going to attempt to writ five pages a day at least. I haven’t developed the story yet, I
know that I want to have one main character be surrounded by (eventually, not at first)
a group of people with different backgrounds. The male lead will be a love interest, but
that won’t take up the whole story. A trope I will loosely follow is enemies to friends to
lovers, but I don’t want the male lead to be toxic and excuse it, so it will be a loose
following of that trope. I have a lot of respect for strong female leads, so I want the main
character to be strong, not just physically but also mentally and emotionally. People
forget that “being strong” is not always about physical strength.

Resources/Technology/Skills:

I need my laptop for typing, I will also need a photo copier for the covers as well since I
will be drawing them. Skill-wise, I need to use foreshadowing and symbolism in my
book, something that does take skill considering it needs to be subtle as to not insult the
readers intelligence. A level of mystery, suspense, and a good use of symbolism elevates
a book a lot, so I need to find proper resources to make good mystery or symbolism.

Mentors/Community Connections:

I will need to find an English teacher or someone who has written a book or novel to be
my mentor. I don’t know if I need a mentor right now to be honest, I prefer to work on
my own. Having a mentor or connection to someone to review my work and tweak it is
all I would need.

Project Limitations:

I may get busy outside of school and this project takes up a lot of my time. I will attempt
to type out five pages a day, buy I often get sidetracked and get writing block so this
could be an obstacle.

Other Considerations:

I know someone who had printed out her capstone in poetry book form, I will ask her
for advice on how to go about this.

References:

Amir, M., Kaplan, Z., Efroni, R., & Kotler, M. (1999). Suicide Risk and Coping Styles in
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Patients. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 68(2), 76–
81. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48510512
 ^Suicide relation to PTSD. Patients experiencing PTSD were more likely to have suicidal
thought compared to any other anxiety or stress disorder. 30% of the 115,000 soldiers to die after
coming back from Vietnam after the Vietnam war had been from suicide.

Carter, R. (2015). How to stop making a crisis out of a drama: towards better portrayal of mental
ill health in television and film. BMJ: British Medical Journal, 350.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26519701

^A journal going in depth about the characterization of people with mental health issues
and how they are portrayed in television and film. They are often portrayed with violence,
lunacy, incompetence, and an inability to be treated.

Mayer, L. S., & McHugh, P. R. (2016). Sexuality and Gender: Findings from the Biological,
Psychological, and Social Sciences. The New Atlantis, 50, 10–143.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/43893424

^Research paper on sexuality and gender, it goes over mental health in the LGBTQ+
community, and especially in the transgender community.

Medrano, J., Malo, P., Uriarte, J. J., & López, A.-P. (2009). Stigma and prejudice in Tintin.
BMJ: British Medical Journal, 339(7735), 1406–1407.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25673519

^A journal on the stereotyping and prejudice of mental illness in Tintin. Tintin comics
were made in the 1930’s, so they are very likely to be prejudice. Even if Tintin is outdates, the
ideas around mental illness remain in literature and writing today.

Mukerjee, M. (1995). Hidden Scars. Scientific American, 273(4), 14–15.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/24981888

^Scientific review of abuse on PTSD. Goes over childhood abuse linking to PTSD in life,
the effects of it, etc.

LavenderTowne. (2022). Making your oc not suck (this title is a joke do not panic). YouTube.
Retrieved April 3, 2023, from https://youtu.be/Mck3A4Wthew.

Traynham, S., Kelley, A. M., Long, C. P., & Britt, T. W. (2019). Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Symptoms and Criminal Behavior in U.S. Army Populations: The Mediating Role of
Psychopathy and Suicidal Ideation. The American Journal of Psychology, 132(1), 85–95.
https://doi.org/10.5406/amerjpsyc.132.1.0085

^Psychology journal on PTSD and criminal behaviour. This journal will give me some
insight into how PTSD develops, the symptoms, the possible criminal activity due to the illness,
and how it can be treated. I won’t use a lot of this journal because it seems to focus a lot on
criminal activity, and I don’t want my character to be a criminal BECAUSE of their illness, I
find that would be the opposite of what I’m trying to portray with my character.

Vaid-Menon, A., & Vaid-Menon, A. (2020). Beyond the gender binary. Penguin Workshop.

^Pocket book written by nonbinary person detailing their experiences as a nonbinary

person of colour and how they wished people would have treated them.