Zack Schwartz
When it comes to writing, I've been doing it since I could hold a pen (or more accurately, a crayon). From traditional projects to interactive narratives, check some of my work out below!
Traditional Writing
My Monsters (2016)
I wrote My Monsters as a thank you for those who supported me after my high school graduation. I was inspired by The Witcher series of books by Andrzej Sapkowski and The Witcher games developed by CD Projekt Red. It follows a nameless monster hunter as he hunts down a fiendish creature, only to deal with the ideas of life and death, and whether or not the power of either should be held by any one person.
Then He Shot (2014)
Then He Shot was written for an open mic at the first annual Ithaca Writer's Institute, a summer camp for writer's looking to hone their craft hosted by Ithaca College in NY. I was fortunate enough to be a part of the inaugural group, and wrote this story to read to Ithaca staff and families of fellow writers. It takes a look at war, and the things that it makes people do.
Chosen (2013)
Chosen was a passion project from a much younger me. It was my first real attempt at making a long, coherent, multi-chapter story. It was started sometime in 2013 and was worked on for around a year before I let it go. As it stands now, it's incomplete, sitting at seven chapters. I have no plans at the time to complete it, but I do enjoy using it as an anchor piece to see how far I've come.
Spillway (2015)
Spillway was a short story created for submission to Writer's Digest while I was still in high school. Initially intended to be a part of a series of stories examining the idea of the afterlife and how one gets there, it follows one man as he commits heinous acts before ending up dead himself.
Noncompliant (2018)
Noncompliant is a single-player Twine adventure/narrative game I created for my Writing for Games II course in Fall 2018. I approached it as an experiment to test out a few new things that I haven't really tried before when writing fiction, namely experimenting with a second person perspective and the sci-fi/dystopian genres.
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The game is choice based, with four unique endings that the player can find by experimenting with different playstyles and taking different game-altering items.
(Hopefully) An Alternate Future (2019)
(Hopefully) An Alternate Future is a self-directed, experimental narrative created in Twine to bring awareness to climate change and its related issues.
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As a reader progresses, more and more of the story is lost and erased until nothing remains.
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I urge you to give it a try!
