LAURA LAI: BIO AND WRITING RESUME
Laura combines learning with practicing writing. In the last years, she successfully completed several writing courses and wrote in English and other languages over ten plays, children’s books, etc. Open to new technologies, Laura learned to use screenwriting tools and photo editing software to design book covers and edit pictures for her self-made author website. Currently, Laura Lai pioneers a particular genre of drama writing called ‘single issue drama’ that puts more emphasis on the topic and on the dialogue than on the characters because it fits her political science background and passion for dialogue writing like a glove. She also writes multi-genre blog content for her Writing Blog and multi-genre books. She completed a series of courses that led to the professional certificate in Writing for Video Games taught by the School of Creative Writing of the University of British Columbia on the edX international educational platform.
WRITING SAMPLES1. ENCYCLOPEDIA-STYLE Entry (200-250 words) photo edited by Laura Lai 2. SCRIPT WRITING (Opening Scene, 1 Page) (CREATIVE WRITING PROMPTS: In a library (setting), a bookseller (protagonist), smb. was murdered (plot), 'it's light' (special element). 3. SPEECH WRITING (250-300 Words) Assignment for the course Writing for Video Games - Working as a Game Writer (UBCx): Write a hero speech. The player character is addressing the remaining fighters. The situation is dire. It looks like all is lost, but they have one chance. The player character delivers this speech hoping to rally the troops or their supporters to get into the battle or attempt one last time to try again.
Although they won many battles, they must not—I repeat, they must not—win the war. We must! They aren’t going to win this war. And you know why? Because they aren’t descendants of the Dragon—we are! Because they had five generals in five years—while I’m trained by my father, and my father was trained by his father to bring glory to this nation! Because they lost more people than we did! This point of no return is the best, not the worst of times. It’s the best of times to terminate with our enemy before the enemy terminates with us. It’s the best of times to revenge our brothers murdered by our enemy run by the most murderous intentions in this war. It’s the best of times to make out of our big enemy a small country. They look strong to you? Remember that we’re stronger! They look courageous to you? Remember, that we’re more courageous! They look unbeatable to you? We are! Because we’re Dragonites – descendants of Dragon the Father. Brothers, our ancestors need us to defend their legacy! Friends, it’s now or never! Comrades, as the glory was always on our ancestors’ side, so for us! Let’s fight with bravery, with courage, with heart! (cut to game) 4. MONOLOGUE WRITING (Standard, 20-30 Lines) Assignment for the course Writing for Video Games - Working as a Game Writer (UBCx): Write a Villain Monologue. The Villain has captured the player character. Write the monologue the villain delivers to the player character. It can reveal its plan or why they captured it. It must end with the villain leaving the player character dead. Inspired by the ‘Prologue’ of the game The Last of Us which was previously analyzed in one of the courses of this game writing series, I thought of an epilogue of the Far Cry game series and of the villain character, Vaas. MONOLOGUE: WHAT IS INSANITY? 5. OBJECT DESCRIPTION (2-3 Paragraphs)
6. TEXT TONE Assignment for the course Academic and Business Writing (BerkeleyX): Think about the place you live (house, apartment, room, etc.) and write about it in three different tones (objective, optimistic, humorous, sentimental, angry, frustrated or excited). THE SAME PEN STORY. ON THREE TONESA. SENTIMENTAL This pen that doesn’t mean much to anybody means a lot to me. It means so much that now I save it as a priceless museum piece. I look at it, I hold it, and I put it back next to the other several pens and pencils I have now—but not then. Back then, I was only having this one. And several others like this. It’s enough for me to watch it or to hold it to see again the little girl, to hear her joyful smile when writing, to remember her dreams in her eyes. No, she didn’t have many dreams. It was dark, and she was writing at the candlelight—she wanted light. It was cold—she wanted heat. It was hunger—she was hungry, too. Sometimes I wonder what this pen would say if it had a mouth to speak with. It would probably speak in an angry tone about the other pen siblings that it lost because they fell on the floor and they broke. However, it would speak with a strangled voice—strangled by the force of my love when I hold it. I love this pen because my father made it for me with his hands and with his heart.
I never know when I might need an extra pen. But when I will, I know I have a wonderful one, a priceless one, a handmade one that my father did for me!
C. HUMOROUS This pen is the only one of its pen siblings that survived. When I look at it or when I hold it, it feels like I’m watching or holding the survivor of all pens that my father made for me when I was a child and had no pens. I had some pencils, some bunted ones and sharpened so many times that I could barely hold them properly in my hands. This pen is the survivor pen and it should stay like this. What I mean is that I hope it will never become a surviving pen. It had its struggles, too. It was made for the smallest and, of course, the cheapest plastic refill. But after a couple of years, the small plastic refills weren’t so easily found on the market as things were getting more and more scarce, and this included pencils’ refills, too. At some point, I could only find bigger ones that we all cut to the right size of our pens. What a joy was when the cut was to the right size of the pen! What a nightmare when I cut too much! When this happened, and it was happening quite often at the beginning, I had to improvise: I was cutting another small piece of the leftover refill and stuff it inside the pen so that the refill to fit in properly. Another struggle this pen’s siblings went through was at the impact with the hard floor. Then the flower at the top was falling down. I used the pen without the flower at the top – it looked like a man without a hat. I tried to stick it back, but the glue wasn’t good enough to hold it. I kept several such flowers for a long time. They looked helpless. And I was hopeless about being able to ever fix the flowers back. A short while after I threw away all of the broken siblings of this pen, superglue appeared on the market. 7. MY FIRST REN'PY GAME: THE TANKER AND SPEEDBOATS is a political sketch recommended only to those with the sense of humor. It has 500 words and it served me to learn to use Ren'Py during my study for completing the professional certificate in Writing for Video Games. Its action takes place during the COVID pandemic. It has a prologue, music, and a short narrative branch just for the sake of practice. Encoding in Python was a fascinating challenge to me - actually, I've never thought that I would ever encode in Python and that I would like it! I didn't know from where to take images for the Ren'Py games. I still don't know. Therefore, I used my photo editing skills to help the story with images. And these while I was learning to write for video games. But far more challenging was the save, the exporting, and the uploading on this website - it took the longest and it was solved today, 1st July 2023.
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