Self Portrait Planning Document

‘SELF PORTRAIT’ IDEAS

BRAINSTORMING

• Keep in mind what I’m skilled at – Photography/Writing
o Considering that I’m more focused on landscape and nature photography rather
than self-portraits or photography of people in general, it feels suitable that I should
make this project based around my ability to write, especially seeing as I feel writing
would be easier to translate my own feelings.

• WRITING – Creating a short story based around my interests and what I enjoy doing,
although not in an overly serious or ‘deep-meaning’ way. I’m tired of constantly
writing/creating things with underlying deep meanings, and just want to write something
to enjoy it and relax. Therefore, this won’t be some abstract thing.
o IDEA 1 – A simple telling of myself walking through nature and enjoying myself,
maybe on one of my photography walks in an attempt to relax and document some
nice nature. Stuff along the lines of “As they walked along the concrete path, trees
stretching along either side of them, they felt a feeling of peace and relaxation
washing over them. This was exactly what they needed.”
o IDEA 2 – Along with the idea above, including more subtle notes about myself that
people would pick up on. For example, having a moment where I accidentally bump
into someone/inconvenience someone within the story and rapidly/repeatedly
apologising to them, along with a little brief moment of social panicking.
o IDEA 3 – Have the story ending with me no longer on the walk, but instead at home
(not too much specific detail into describing my house, as I don’t feel comfortable
relaying that sort of information).
o IDEA 4 – Include something about animals, maybe, seeing as I love them quite a lot.
Maybe someone is walking their dog on the park I’m walking through and I pet them
or something, anything to show that I adore animals.

• This wouldn’t have to be too long, nor would it have to be too ridiculously deep. This can
just be a nice way for me to write about something that I enjoy doing in a creative and fun
way.

• Maybe I could link in a tiny bit of my photography skills by attaching a sort of picture of
where I’d be walking? I’ve got plenty of pictures that could facilitate that.

VALUES

• 1 – I’m an extremely ‘inoffensive’ person; I attempt to satisfy everyone I meet (lots of
apologies from me).

• 2 – I absolutely love animals of any sort, ranging from dogs and cats to more exotic things
like panthers and parrots.

• 3 – I love nature and wish that it wouldn’t get destroyed so much by climate change,
deforestation and so on.

• 4 – I’m an introvert and need some time to myself to recharge every now and then, although
this doesn’t mean I hate hanging around people (it just drains me). Alongside this, I’m also
socially awkward and have some trouble starting conversations with people.

• 5 – I’m very set on a feeling of equality and open-mindedness. If something isn’t hurting
anybody, then I see no issue with it.

RESOURCES REQUIRED

• In general, I’m not going to need that many resources for this project, seeing as it’s just a simple
writing project. Ideally, all I’ll need is a space to do the writing with a computer and some headphones
so that I can listen to music whilst I’m writing, as I find that to help my concentration. Other than that,
I can’t imagine myself needing much else (other than MAYBE some other pieces of literature to give
some inspiration, but that’s unlikely).
o COMPUTER – Along with keyboard, mouse and internet connection. This could be in any
room, as I don’t particularly mind as long as it isn’t too noisy. Skills, A34, anything like that
works for me.
o HEADPHONES – Not picky about the kind, as long as it’ll allow me to listen to music whilst
working.

PLANNING

In terms of how I’ll be planning this story, there isn’t much to say. I intend to write in the style of
creative writing rather than something more informative and ‘non-fictional’ like an autobiography.
I’ll almost be writing a portion of my life as if it were a story. Whilst I’m not going to be writing about
any specific event that I’ve actually come across in my life (I’m not going to just recount a day I’ve
already had!), I will instead be writing a story from my perspective as I’m going on a small walk to
get some pictures in a nice local park. I have a visualisation of the park I’ll be setting the story in, and
have plenty of prior inspiration to use for this story, as I’ve gone shooting in that location countless
times in the past for both my photography course and for personal pleasure.

In terms of what I plan to include within the story about myself, a few things come to mind:

• My love of animals is going to be included, primarily through some kind of interaction with
an animal during the story. I feel the easiest and most natural way to go about this would be
having myself in the story encounter someone walking their dog, and petting the dog.

• I want to include how peaceful I feel when I’m just walking through a quiet park, and will
therefore ensure to try and focus on all the senses I feel when I’m just walking.

• Ideally, I’m going to write in my photography into the story, including having my camera
with me within the piece and perhaps taking some pictures of whatever catches my eye
within the narrative. Usually, this’ll be something like an interesting pattern of trees or a nice
winding path through the park.

• I also want to include something about how I don’t like to upset people. This is harder for me
to include, but I feel it can be easily done through having myself in the story bump into
somebody and apologising profusely when I don’t really need to (something I have done in
the past!)

In order to get some further inspiration for how to write the narrative, I’ll be looking up some
creative writing prompts from the internet and taking a look at how other people have answered
them, observing a variety of writing styles and potential plots that will give me a range of inspiration
for how to begin writing the story.

INSPIRATION

Generally, when looking for inspiration for my work (as mentioned earlier), I decided to look up
creative writing prompts that showed answers from other people, allowing me to read some short
stories people had written and therefore read from a variety of different styles, genres and narrative
structures. In order to find this inspiration, I googled some creative writing prompts, and found the
website at the following link; https://blog.reedsy.com/creative-writing-prompts/

The first story that I read was a short story about someone encountering a painting within a museum
that seemed to move occasionally when she looked at it (the story can be read here:
https://blog.reedsy.com/short-story/fzfm29/). Whilst the narrative and idea for the story was quite
nice, I felt that the author had a few issues with pacing and segueing from one section of the story to
the other; for instance, I felt that they transitioned too quickly from looking at the painting to
mopping the floor again. Additionally, a lot of the dialogue felt rather unnatural and artificial, not
flowing properly from word to word. Apart from these issues, however, I felt that the story had
quite a nice style to it and has definitely given me some inspiration.

The second story I read was yet another short story, although this one was more focused on a story
of a man riding on a train (the story can be read here: https://blog.reedsy.com/short-story/c1tl5f/).
In my opinion, this story was a massive improvement compared to the first one. I absolutely loved
the writing style, and saw my own writing within it. The little inclusions of humour mixed within the
detailed and immersive writing and the descriptions of the setting really captivated me as I read.
This story felt like a great piece of inspiration, and is definitely something that I’ll be remembering
when I begin writing my own story. With this all in mind, however, I do feel that I’ll avoid going as
deep and thoughtful as this story went – at one point near the end, the protagonist spoke a
monologue that seemed very much like a speech rather than natural conversation, and so is
something I’d rather avoid within my story.

During a lot of my time planning this story, we had some internet problems during the pre-
production. Therefore, I had to improvise as to how I could get further inspiration without reading
short stories from the internet. In order to combat this, I would read a book on my phone (using
mobile data) that I quite liked the writing style of when there was no internet. This book is called
“The Ranger’s Apprentice: The Ruins of Gorlan” and is a very typical fantasy novel. Whilst it’s not
exactly the style I’m aiming for in terms of my short story, it’s still something that I can use to take
inspiration from when the internet isn’t working properly.

STORY PLANNING

1. Open with the protagonist, myself, arriving at the area that they’ll be walking through. In
this case, it’ll be a local park that I’ve walked down countless times for walks or to get some
nice photos. Include some thoughts about the senses around me as I enter, including what I
see and what I hear (or more accurately, what I don’t hear).

2. The protagonist will begin walking through the park at a very casual pace with their camera
around their neck, looking around at the nature around them as they stroll. Occasionally
during the walk, they may notice some interesting pieces of nature that jump out at them,
leading to them taking out their camera and taking some pictures. Focus on the peace that
I’m feeling during this time, and the feeling of relaxation.

3. The protagonist gets a little too focused in their photography of the winding path through
the park, and accidentally bumps into someone walking by (the person specifically doesn’t
matter; could be an old woman, a mother with their child, a jogger, etc. as long as it isn’t
somebody with a dog). The protagonist apologises rather quickly for bumping into them,
before having a minor inner dialogue about feeling nervous talking to the person.

4. Continuing through the park with the feeling of awkwardness slowly passing as they
progress through the park, spotting a seagull landing in the middle of the park. The
protagonist will begin to slowly walk over to the seagull, trying to get a good picture.
Unfortunately, the seagull will fly away before they get a chance to, leading to them sighing
but continuing.

5. Further down the path, the protagonist encounters a person walking their dog. The type of
dog doesn’t matter, but preferably something friendly like a Labrador for the purpose of the
story. The dog will come up to the protagonist, leading to them petting the dog and
complimenting them to the owner. The moment passes and the two continue on their
separate paths, with the protagonist feeling relieved that they didn’t mess up the
conversation.

6. The path is slightly narrower now as trees line the pathway, curving through the park with
houses on the left and a light layer of trees on the right. Some more pictures will be taken,
especially of some of the trash that people will have left behind. The protagonist will show
some distaste for the trash that’s been left behind but will be quick with the photographs to
not seem weird.

7. After a bit more walking, the protagonist reaches the end of the park, which leads to a large
unused railway bridge. The protagonist takes a few pictures of the bridge with different and
unique compositions, before feeling satisfied with their shoot for the day and heading back
home.

8. POSSIBLY – A little ending scene where the protagonist has arrived back home and is now
relaxing after their walk. Whatever the protagonist is doing can vary from watching YouTube
on their computer to reading a fantasy book, if it’s something I’d do. Ending on a relaxing
scene further adds to the personal aspect of the story, especially if it’s set in my own home.

REFLECTION

Whilst I feel that I’m nearly ready to begin writing the story now, I wanted to do one last thing
before I began the process of writing – a small bit of reflection. To accomplish this, I decided to look
at some of my past writing that I have done in the past, examining it and comparing it to my current
style of writing to see what I feel I could improve in this story compared to my previous stories. So
far, the only past piece of writing I’ve been able to easily find is an unfinished story for an older
subject I had done.

This story wasn’t written with a lot of love, as it was based on a topic that I had no real interest in,
but had basically forced myself into writing. Therefore, I feel that it was fairly obvious I wasn’t
enjoying writing the story. Some of the dialogue wasn’t as natural as I felt it had been at the time, a
lot of my writing seemed uncertain as if I wasn’t entirely sure of the setting and I tended to repeat
words rather often. Furthermore, in a scene that was intended to be tense and nerve-wracking
(involving the protagonist attempting to evade a rage-fueled zombie), I had managed to fail at

writing the tension properly and instead ended with a scene that was accidentally funny as the
zombie punched through a glass windshield for no real reason.

With all this in mind, I’ll have to consider several things when I write this story. Firstly, I want to
make sure that I’m only writing something that I actually want to write rather than something I feel
obligated to complete. Furthermore, I’m going to want to double-check my writing to ensure that I
don’t end up writing something that feels inconsistent in tone. This shouldn’t be too much of an
issue as I’m not attempting to write any tense scenes during this story, but I’ll want to ensure I don’t
end up making the supposed ‘relaxation’ and ‘calm’ feelings during the story appear diluted and
awkward.

1ST DRAFT

Towards the beginning of the project, after having finished all
the planning, I began to write the first draft of the story. It
took me quite a while to even decide on a beginning for the
story, and I had quite a few mini road-blocks throughout the
process of writing the story, leading to the story not being the
best thing I had ever written. I was a little tired while writing
it, and therefore felt it was alright as I left it for the day. Upon
returning to see it, however, I felt that it wasn’t up to
standard and decided to abandon it to re-write the entire
thing. I kept the first sentence as I felt that it fit the setting
and narrative of the story well, but decided to completely re-
write the rest of the story from scratch.

EXAMPLE WALK

After abandoning the first draft, I decided that I needed some more inspiration to make the story
seem a little more believable and to give myself some more fuel for the narrative itself. This time,
rather than looking up some stories that had been written by other people on the internet or in
printed form, I decided to re-create the story myself by going on a walk. The setting of the story was
based on a real park nearby to the college, and I therefore decided to go on a walk through the park,
taking some pictures as I did to recreate the emotions I’d be feeling and to get some visual aids
whilst I was writing.

I found this to be incredibly helpful, as I now had the ability to recall exactly how I had felt during the
walk to a tea as well as having a variety of pictures to aid my descriptions of the park within the
story. Below are a few examples of the pictures I took of the park.