Storytelling: Fiction and Screenwriting

I consider myself a storyteller in everything I do. I draw on my background in fiction writing and story development in my communications work, creating unique tone and point of view and striving to always tell a great story.

My fiction focuses on literary short stories. In addition, like every Los Angeleno, I am working on a screenplay, an animated property called Bird Brain. I hold an MFA from Warren Wilson College, where I studied with Antonya Nelson and Jim Shepard, as well as a BA in English Literature from University of California at Berkeley, where I studied with Maxine Hong Kingston.

Sample “short-short” story:

Chicken

by Michele Carroll

The blue car and the red car hurtled toward each other down the two-lane highway, straight and unswerving, the dashed line bisecting the cars, each driver’s face soft and determined. The road between them contracted like rubber and their feet were like fallen trees against the gas pedals. Just before they hit, there might have been a small sigh from each vehicle, from fear or regret or the simple boredom of teenagers, but their feet remained heavy.

When the distance between the cars was as long as a year, the girl in the blue car muttered to herself, “She thinks I’ll feel sorry for her. She thinks I’ll swerve.” Strands of hair flew across her face and into her mouth, sharp against her tongue. When the cars were as far apart as people playing tug-of-war, the girl in the red car squinted into the light, peering over the top of dark sunglasses and trying to see the expression in the other girl’s eyes. She imagined they were scared, that any moment the blue car would duck back into its own lane and she would sail by, quick and confident, and as she passed the other car, only a whisper apart, she would give a little wave.

When the road between them was as long as a shared bedroom, the girl in the blue car thought of the time that she and the girl in the red car had played chicken on the bars at school, their legs wrapped so tight around each other that they almost couldn’t breathe, how they’d hung on until their legs had cramped and their muscles were as hard as wishbones, and all the other kids had gone in from recess. And how, afterwards, when they were waiting outside the principal’s office as he’d called their mother, they’d stuck their tongues out at each other with their fingers twined tightly together.

When their cars were as close as sisters, the girl in the red car ran her fingers through her cropped hair and thought about the time when she had cut off all of the older girl’s hair while she was asleep in the top bunk. She had been upset that her hair was always longer. Afterwards, the girl in the blue car had tried to make it look better by putting it in little colorful barrettes, but nothing had helped. For years after that she had screamed when their mother tried to cut her hair and now her hair was halfway down her back and the girl in the red car could see it flying around like electricity behind her windshield.

When the distance between them was less than an arm’s length, the girl in the blue car remembered how she had found her hair lying on the pillow like an animal when she woke and she’d screamed before she realized it was her own. She’d jumped off the top bunk and pulled the younger girl out of the lower bunk by her hair and they’d rolled around on the floor, spitting and screaming at each other. And when the younger girl dragged her nails down her sister’s cheek, the girl in the blue car opened her mouth and bit her on the chest as hard as she could, her teeth like scissors, just as their mother had run into the room in her nightgown, clutching her heart as though it might break in two.

When the cars were like mirror images on the road, separated by a distance as brittle as panes of glass, the girl in the red car thought about the scar, like two jagged half moons around her left breast, and how she would only let her boyfriend go to second base in the darkness of his car. Sometimes when they were rolling around in the back seat, mouths everywhere, she’d remember that time and sink her teeth into him, thinking how her sister’s mouth had only ever touched her. Once, she’d broken his skin, little teeth marks of blood dotting his upper arm. It’d tasted salty and familiar. She’d made sure her sister heard her when she climbed in the window after curfew that night. The next morning she’d made her sister’s favorite banana pancakes and her sister hadn’t enjoyed them at all.

And in the instant when the road became like a bond between them, the girl in the blue car thought about her own skin, scarless and untouched, and wondered how people could ever think they were twins. “I was an only child once,” she said over the roar of the strained engine. “A year is a long time.” Her mother had once pulled them apart as they’d wrestled over one of two identical dolls, and had shouted at them, “I only ever wanted one.”

As their bumpers touched and the fenders leaned into each other and began to plow into the hoods like fists, the girl in the red car thought, It could have been me.

As the blue and red cars merged into one, the older girl remembered the day her sister had been brought home and she’d wondered what the grown-ups were doing crowded around her old crib. She’d pulled herself up by the bars, her eyes barely over the mattress, and seen her mother’s hand stroking something pink and soft and vulnerable-looking and she’d wanted to hit it. And her sister had turned her head and their eyes had met with recognition as they’d reached their plump hands for one another through the bars.