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Item Visual storytelling : character illustration for Chinese Mohist culture and technology : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a Master in Design at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand(Massey University, 2024) Wang, HanIn the modern era of rapid information development, visual storytelling presented through graphic novels has become an engaging form of cultural communication. Visual stories have the capacity to convey profound meanings in Chinese moral vision and life wisdom. This design project develops new character illustrations to convey a story that promotes greater understanding of the Mohist culture and technology in the worlds of historical and future China. Illustration work for a proposed graphic novel aims to create visually engaging characters for a story that represents the history, culture, and technology of the Mohist School in a way that is easily understood by younger people and reflects on boundaries between modern technology and humanity.Item Lie down with dogs : practice-based development in crime fiction writing : an exegesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Creative Enterprise at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand(Massey University, 2023) Knight, Mathew SydneyThis project examines the development of the crime fiction novel, Lie Down with Dogs. The novel tells the story of a New Zealand police detective, returning to work after a traumatizing undercover investigation. It uses a non-linear narrative structure, which interweaves three stories from different time periods. Writing this novel within a research context allowed a scholarly analysis from inside the creative development process. The research focussed on two primary aspects. Development structure, examining the methods used to create a full-length novel, and narrative structure, examining the development of the story itself. This project uses practice-based research methodologies which examine the entire creative journey from ideation through to commercialization of the project. The creative practice guided and informed the research, while the research, in turn, informed and contributed to the creative work. The results of these methods are manifest in the creative work and this exegesis. As part of my practice, the commercialization of the creative work is addressed in a separate business pitch deck document looking at the viability of self-publishing the novel utilising digital distribution platforms enabling a direct-to-market pathway for authors.Item One with the waters : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Creative Writing (MCW) at Massey University, New Zealand(Massey University, 2024) Campbell, Patricia FernAlice Oswald’s book-length poem Dart is a work of ecopoetry that layers the voices of the Dart River’s humans with the voice of the river itself. By using notions of duality and place from a Western perspective, Oswald’s poetry weaves a connection with the river and the surrounding Devon landscape that could be used as a spur to ecological responsibility. This metaphorical “river speaking as a human” analogy connects the reader with the river, while simultaneously drawing attention to the ecological concerns present within the human-river connection. Oswald’s perspective uses the voices of people and stories that have been told along the river to show the strong connection of people to the river, while keeping the stream as an object separate to the people. From a Te Ao Māori perspective, the connection to a river is implicit, due to its differing relational ontology, where the river is the person and vice-versa. The conflict between stream-as-object and stream-as-being is visible in the treatment of Wharemauku Stream, the waterway that stretches through Paraparaumu, a town in the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand. This stream has been modified throughout the length of Pākehā occupation of Paraparaumu - carved and straightened to run down property boundaries and routed under roads, rather than allowed to spread where its waters naturally would, in the interests of keeping the land and roads nearby financially viable. This has impacted on the wairua and mana of both the stream and the mana whenua of this rohe. A Kaupapa Māori approach that incorporates poetry for educating and connecting local people with the stream could help to spur ecological responsibility while also increasing the wairua and mana of the stream and its people. A hybrid method, using Oswald’s method of speaking for the river using a human voice, but giving the river personhood and agency using a Te Ao Māori approach of whakapapa and kaitiakitanga, is the work of this thesis.Item Navigating meandering threads : a critical and creative thesis delivered in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Creative Writing at Massey University, Distance, New Zealand(Massey University, 2024) Pryor (Drummond), Robyn JoyThis Master of Creative Writing thesis consists of two sections: a critical essay which analyses features of the braided form in ‘Time and Distance Overcome’ by Eula Biss and ‘The Fourth State of Matter’ by Jo Ann Beard, and a collection of personal essays recording my experience of living with motor neurone disease. Being diagnosed with motor neurone disease fractured my world and has raised many unanswerable questions. I knew that I needed to tell my story, but parts of it seemed too painful to tell. I was interested to see how other writers attempt to make meaning of a world that becomes fractured for them, and after reading a selection of lyric essays, I discovered the fragmented form of the braided essay. Made up of several seemingly unrelated topics or narrative threads, the braided essay provides space for the writer to approach painful or complex material indirectly, blending it with other material to draw the focus away from what Brenda Miller refers to as the “emotional center” (69) of the piece. Eula Biss and Jo Ann Beard are two essayists who use features of the braided form in their essays in an attempt to make sense of a complex world, Biss to explore racial violence in the United States and Beard to confront her own grief after a workplace shooting that killed six of her colleagues. With its use of fragmentation and white space, and the repetition of details that unite each strand, the form of the braided essay seems to reflect its content, making it well suited to writing about a broken self and a broken world. In approaching my own personal essays, I drew on the features of style and structure employed by Biss and Beard, and in doing so I was able to navigate around my grief and fear and frustration and see that woven through it all was the importance of family and friends, the importance of love. I have been able to confront my own mortality by taking refuge in the braided form, while hopefully leading my reader in leaps and sidesteps towards an understanding of motor neurone disease and living while dying.Item Poetry, place and transition : a critical and creative thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Master of Creative Writing at Massey University, New Zealand(Massey University, 2023) Sullivan, TraceyThis thesis uses two methods of investigation — a critical essay and a collection of poetry — to explore ideas of transition in contemporary poetry through the lens of place. The critical essay examines Lynn Davidson’s 2019 collection, Islander, in terms of both theme and technique. It considers themes of family, belonging, ancestry and home and techniques of repetition and echo. It argues that notions of transience and impermanence are manifested in the collection through Davidson’s use of non-places and liminality; places of belonging; change and continuity; and flight and migration, leaving and return. The creative component of the thesis is a collection of my own poems, how we come home, which has been shaped both by lived experience and by the investigation of the critical essay. This collection is also concerned with notions of movement; transience, impermanence and continuity through the lens of place. It is thematically similar to Davidson’s Islander in its consideration of family, belonging and home.Item Actor-kind : a feminist-theory informed, critical and creative approach to developing empowering theatre for Aotearoa young people : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Creative Writing at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa(Massey University, 2023) Ramage, JessicaThis thesis critically and creatively addresses issues of gender and empowerment for young people by and through playwriting that is informed by intersectional feminist theory. With initial motivations for the research arising out of the researcher’s own mixed experiences of high school drama, which included both distressing and empowering moments, it triangulates this autoethnographic material with semi-structured interviews with 17 respondents. These interviewees likewise reported a range of experiences in high school drama classes, including praise for the potential of theatre to build confidence, disappointment at lack of gender diverse roles, and discomfort or distress with unrelatable characters or harrowing adult situations they were asked to portray. The interview findings are then combined with feminist criteria for creative work including the Bechdel and Kent tests to develop an original set of criteria for writing inspiring, egalitarian theatre for young people, in which characters are well rounded and gender diverse, and plots offer hope for a future beyond patriarchy. These criteria are applied to analyse two case study plays taken from National Certificate in Educational Achievement (NCEA) recommended plays. The clear differences between these works provide a stark illustration of the need for diverse playwrights to be represented on NCEA curricula and for plays for high school study to be considered in terms of their impact on young actors. Unfortunately, however, the thesis’ analysis shows that as of 2021, the NCEA theatre standards landscape was still profoundly dominated by white, male writers, and many of the topics were bleak. The thesis then sets about offering creative material to fill this gap, via a collection of five original plays of various lengths that were written with the critical feminist criteria in mind, but also with an intent to provide young actors with a pleasurable, often humorous experience during high school drama. The creative works are set in a fictional world (the ‘New Dawns Leadership Camp for Young Boys and Girls’) in which patriarchal binaries are exaggerated to the point of absurdity. This functions both to make gender stereotypes inescapably obvious to audiences and cast members, and to render them ridiculous, positioning misogyny as an outdated cliché (represented through the ‘rusted closed’ character of camp director Irene Steele and her tightly knotted husband Tyson Knots). The camp’s highly theatricalised parody of patriarchy presents it as a silly system that demands - and is subject to - critique, scrutiny, and change, thereby offering young people hope that the future can be different. At the same time, each of the young characters carries an absurdly comic oversized item that represents in some way their inner world, whether personal challenges they face or strengths they have yet to discover. The exaggerated setting and the outsized items interact to show how young people are positioned as objects within and by patriarchy as a social system, yet also function as autonomous individuals with lifeworld trials and inner resources that they can use to navigate their own path. The plays show characters experiencing many of the common situations of high school including friendships, identity, and resistance to parental authority, but doing so with humour and resilience, with the aim to give young actors an experience on stage that is both kind and empowering.Item Line of flight : a journey into memoir : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Creative Writing, Massey University, New Zealand. PARTIALLY EMBARGOED until 21 November 2027.(Massey University, 2023) Carey, PetaThis Master of Creative Writing thesis presents a memoir, Line of Flight (85%), and goes on to examine the issue of ethics in memoir in an accompanying critical component, A Line to Cross (15%). Line of Flight consists of 19 essays covering distinct episodes from my early childhood through to the recent past. Flight provides a tangible thread to the collection, from an early fascination with becoming airborne, but also from pursuing the many and varied directions in life. These stories range from challenges as a young woman in male dominated pursuits and workplaces, to extreme ‘near death experiences’ in various corners of the globe, and touches on relationships with those I was inspired by, loved, and lost. The collection is not consistently chronological, nor comprehensive, but instead follows a line of an evolving understanding of humanity and all that surrounds us; the cumulative result of experiences and relationships across 50 years of life. A Line to Cross is an exegesis which focuses on ethics. I compare two principal texts, The Mirror Book, by Charlotte Grimshaw, and Educated, by Tara Westover. This essay explores ‘the why’ or justification for writing these and other memoir, and ‘the how’, the tools or craft each memoirist employs to minimise or mitigate harm, particularly when writing about family. A Line to Cross refers to the metaphor of a line in the sand, the decision to cross into ethically challenging territory by revealing experiences that involve family or friends, episodes or commentary that they might prefer to remain buried. The critical accompaniment was a necessary and valued adjunct to the creative work. Ethics was a major consideration when justifying then crafting Line of Flight. The research and consideration greatly assisted in the approach and revision of some of the more confronting essays in my own work. It is important to note that the critical component, A Line to Cross, is simply an exploration. Ethics in memoir is a personal and subjective area of investigation. Just as any line in the sand can shift with the wind, there are more questions than answers.Item Bumpletrunk : a suite of children's songs : exegesis submitted for Master of Creative Enterprise degree, Massey University(Massey University, 2023) Aldridge, NeilThis exegesis follows my journey writing and producing a suite of children’s songs in order to maximise potential commercial success. It explores the theoretical and creative considerations addressing my target audience, and how I developed and produced a suite of children’s songs ready to take to market alongside an accompanying book proposal.Item Humour beckons : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in Creative Writing at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand(Massey University, 2023) Sutherland, Jack Robin AthertonWhat is humour? At its worst it might be the drunk person down the pub annoying everyone in the vicinity as they attempt to crack wise. At its best it is one of humanity's greatest unifiers and sources of comfort. The critical component of this MCW thesis explores what brought me to humour, what I discovered during my exploration of some of its performative and literary manifestations, and how this exploration came to affect my own creative output. The creative section of this thesis is a collection of short stories in some of the styles that I have found to be more effective in attaining a higher level of meaning during my exploration of humour in literature and beyond. These include black humour, absurdist fiction, and slapstick short stories.Item Critical and creative explorations of the role of environment in ecological fiction : comprised of "The frailty of everything revealed at last" : environment as antagonist and the warnings of Cormac McCarthy’s The road ; and, In the distance, smoke, a novella : a thesis submitted to the Department of Humanities, Media and Creative Communication in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Creative Writing at Massey University, New Zealand(Massey University, 2023) Hollis-Locke, Niamh VictoriaThe critical portion of this thesis aims to examine the use and depiction of the natural world in Cormac McCarthy's 2006 novel The Road, as well as the impacts that the state of the environment has upon the novel's characters. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which the environment is positioned as the primary antagonist, and the role of memory and dreams within the text for adding nuance to the novel's exploration of our species' reliance upon nature. Unfortunately, in the course of my research I have been unable to identify any critics who argue that the environment is positioned as the antagonist of The Road. Due to this gap in current scholarship this analysis is mainly supported by the ideas of ecocritical academics, as their ideas are the most relevant to the ideas I am exploring because McCarthy's text is primarily concerned with the impact of the state of the environment upon its characters' lives and well-being. By proving that the environment occupies the narrative niche of antagonist, as well as examining the mechanisms by which this is achieved, this analysis looks to make up for a gap in existing academic discourse around McCarthy's novel. The creative portion of this thesis is a post-environmental-collapse novella, which aims to expand upon McCarthy's innovative use of environment. By foregrounding the threat posed by the natural world, and ensuring that moments of significant tension are at least partially driven by need or threat generated by the environment, I hope to emulate the way The Road positions its environment as antagonist. However, where McCarthy creates an environment so utterly hostile that the only thing the characters are able to care about is their basic needs for survival, I have tried to craft a slightly less harsh one, in order to explore other facets of the characters' experiences and the human psyche. This has enabled me to explore some tensions between survival and emotional needs, and examine the way characters interact in situations where their basic needs are not guaranteed, yet are still striving to have their emotional needs met as well.