A persuasive and inspiring essay for successful admission to Harvard - Ievgen Sykalo 2026
The Craft of Storytelling (across mediums): Whether in novels, video games, or theatre, what makes a truly compelling narrative?
Applicant's Vision — Storytelling Across Mediums
The Contradictory Logic of Narratives
- Intermedial Literacy: The applicant's early experience with Journey (Thatgamecompany, 2012, PS3) established a non-textual understanding of narrative, challenging traditional literary hierarchies because it demonstrated profound emotional impact without dialogue.
- Canon Expansion: The essay explicitly questions the exclusion of video games from the literary canon, juxtaposing Shakespeare's plays with God of War (Santa Monica Studio, 2018) to highlight shared thematic concerns like fatherhood and power, reframing "literature" as a broader category of narrative craft.
- Tension as Core: The applicant identifies "tension" and "unraveling" as the fundamental drivers of stories, citing examples like Black Swan (Aronofsky, 2010) and Gone Home (Fullbright, 2013) because this moves beyond plot summary to focus on internal and structural conflict.
How does a story's chosen medium inherently shape the kind of "tension" it can effectively convey, and what does this imply about the medium's role beyond mere delivery?
This essay argues that the applicant's intermedial approach to narrative, rooted in a fascination with contradiction and the medium's active role, positions them to critically engage with and innovate storytelling forms at Harvard.
Applicant's Persona — The Storyteller's Mind
The Architect of Unraveling Narratives
- Empathy through Action: The applicant's experience with Undertale (Toby Fox, 2015), where "Mercy wasn’t theoretical; it was tactile," illustrates a preference for narratives demanding active ethical engagement because it transforms abstract moral choices into concrete, felt consequences.
- Grief as Narrative Catalyst: The play about climate grief, ending with "the ocean speaking," demonstrates a willingness to explore difficult emotions through unconventional narrative voices because it pushes beyond human-centric perspectives to embody broader ecological concerns.
- Cost of Ambition: The game designed around sacrificing memories to move forward directly explores the "cost of ambition" because it externalizes internal conflict into a playable mechanic.
The applicant's creative projects, from a play about climate grief to a game about memory sacrifice, consistently externalize internal psychological conflicts, demonstrating a sophisticated understanding of character motivation and narrative consequence.
Narrative Mechanics — Medium as Accomplice
The Medium's Argument: Shaping Story Through Form
"I remember getting lost in Beloved, where Morrison’s prose blurred past and present into one long, incantatory breath."
Applicant's Essay, "The Craft of Storytelling (Across Mediums)"
- Temporal Distortion (Novel): Toni Morrison's prose in Beloved (1987) "blurred past and present into one long, incantatory breath" because this stylistic choice forces the reader to experience trauma as a continuous, inescapable presence rather than a linear event.
- Witnessing (Theatre): Experiencing Fun Home (Jeanine Tesori & Lisa Kron, Musical, 2006) live, where "hearing someone else’s grief sung aloud in real time" creates a dual role of "trespasser and a confidant" because the immediacy of live performance collapses the distance between audience and character, demanding emotional participation.
- Tactile Morality (Games): In Undertale (Toby Fox, 2015), choices make "Mercy wasn’t theoretical; it was tactile" because the interactive nature of the medium allows players to embody ethical decisions.
How does the specific sensory and temporal experience offered by a medium (e.g., the "incantatory breath" of prose, the "real time" of theatre, the "tactile" choice in games) fundamentally alter the audience's reception of narrative tension?
The essay effectively demonstrates how distinct narrative mediums, from the temporal fluidity of novels to the interactive ethics of video games, actively construct and mediate the audience's experience of core thematic conflicts.
Evolution of Storytelling — A Personal Trajectory
Charting a Personal History of Narrative Engagement
- Digital Immersion: The early encounter with Journey (Thatgamecompany, 2012, PS3) represents a formative moment in the applicant's understanding of narrative, demonstrating the power of non-verbal, interactive storytelling because it established a foundational belief that emotional depth is not exclusive to traditional literary forms.
- Cross-Media Synthesis: The practice of "reading Shakespeare with a controller in my lap" and charting parallels between The Tempest (c. 1610-1611) and God of War (Santa Monica Studio, 2018) signifies a deliberate rejection of medium-specific silos because it reveals a sophisticated analytical approach that identifies universal narrative structures across diverse cultural products.
- Creator as Critic: The transition from consuming stories to actively "writing and directing and coding them" marks a critical shift because it demonstrates a commitment to both understanding and shaping the future of narrative.
The applicant's intellectual trajectory, marked by a deliberate cross-pollination of traditional literature with digital and theatrical narratives, illustrates a dynamic engagement with the evolving landscape of storytelling forms.
Crafting the Admission Narrative — Argument and Impact
The Art of the Persuasive Personal Essay
- Descriptive (weak): This essay describes my interest in stories across different media, like books, games, and theatre.
- Analytical (stronger): This essay demonstrates how my engagement with diverse storytelling forms, from Journey (Thatgamecompany, 2012) to Beloved (Morrison, 1987), has cultivated a critical perspective on narrative tension and the medium's role.
- Counterintuitive (strongest): By embracing the "contradiction" that not all stories should be interactive, this essay argues that my intermedial approach to narrative is not about consumption but about a deeper collision with the craft, positioning me as a creator who questions the very nature of engagement.
- The fatal mistake: Simply listing interests without connecting them to a core, arguable insight about storytelling itself, or failing to show how these interests shape a unique intellectual framework.
Does this essay's opening claim—that narratives gain power from embracing contradiction rather than neat resolutions—function as a mere hook, or does it establish a foundational principle that the entire narrative then rigorously explores and embodies?
This essay, through its self-aware exploration of narrative contradiction and the medium's active role, constructs a persuasive argument for the applicant's distinctive intellectual curiosity and creative ambition, making a compelling case for their place within Harvard's interdisciplinary environment.
Contemporary Relevance — Storytelling in 2025
Algorithmic Narratives and the Future of Human Connection
- Eternal Pattern: The "tension" and "unraveling" identified as core to stories reflect an enduring human need for narratives that grapple with internal and external conflict, a pattern that persists despite shifts in media because it speaks to fundamental psychological processes of meaning-making.
- Technology as New Scenery: The inclusion of "webtoons, even meme formats" as storytelling vehicles illustrates how new technologies provide fresh backdrops for ancient narrative structures because the underlying mechanics of friction and contradiction remain potent.
- Where the Past Sees More Clearly: The applicant's wrestling with "who gets to tell the story? Who gets to change it?" echoes historical debates about artistic authority and censorship, suggesting that older forms of narrative control offer insights into the power dynamics of contemporary user-generated content platforms because they highlight the enduring struggle between creator intent and audience interpretation.
How do the economic incentives embedded within platforms like TikTok or YouTube structurally reinforce the "danger in over-democratizing storytelling" that the applicant identifies, potentially diluting narrative impact for the sake of engagement metrics?
The essay's implicit critique of narratives that merely entertain, coupled with its embrace of "friction" and transformative storytelling, offers a timely commentary on the challenges posed by algorithmic content curation to authentic human engagement in 2025.
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