A Creative Journey for Crafting Stories
Everywhere you go there are people, and among them are a handful of people who enjoy creative writing. At Fishers High School, there is a variety of students who enjoy writing creatively on their own. Junior Maddie Miller, a story writer, is one of the few students who enjoys this activity.
“I almost always write fiction because I’ve always been into fantasy story writing,” Miller said.
Miller mentions that the storybooks she read as a child inspired her to write her stories. While she took inspiration from her childhood storybooks, she develops her stories in a way that’s “more geared towards teens.” Before Miller develops her stories, she writes out a plan for the story.
“I take a notebook, and I list out all the key plot points and then any little side stories I’d like to include in between,” Miller said. “Then after I’ve done a whole planning process, I start developing the actual story.”
Miller says that she writes everything out at the beginning of her process so that she can remember the direction she wanted her story to go in. Miller also states that even if her story changes throughout the process, she can revisit her plan to see exactly how she had “imagined it in the first place”.
“I tend to usually write more for myself, but if I can get people to read them, then that’s fine,” Miller said. “Often times I feel my stories are too long for people to sit down and read.”
Exploring Perspectives with Character Creation
A different form of creative writing, that quite a few students take interest in, is creating characters. While this form of creative writing has several aspects writers find appealing, Senior Kate Armey finds exploring different perspectives the most appealing.
“I explore how different events affect how someone acts, or how someone behaves, or how do different personality traits interact with each other,” Armey said. “If someone super happy meets with someone who’s super sad, how would that work out without actually having to try and find a happy person and a sad person in real life?”
Armey writes down the aspects of the people she meets in real life so that she can explore those aspects at a later time. Exploring those aspects later on helps her to understand the what and why of her characters, which in turn helps her to create a decent fictional person.
“I probably won’t publish a lot of my characters because of the therapeutic aspect of them,” Armey said. “ And I don’t want to be like, ‘yes, this is obviously this person that I’ve met in real life,’ but I do write novels, and I do want to publish books so I will use some of those characters that I observe in real life, and expand onto them into a fictional realm, so they can become a fictional character in my book thought experiments on a page.”
A Short Exploration of Expression Through Poetry
Writing poetry is a form of creative writing that can be an outlet for expressing emotions as well as thoughts. For Sophomore Shae Pullen, writing poetry is just that.
“It helps me write down my words when I’m struggling with my mental health,” Pullen said. “That’s how I express myself when I’m feeling that way.”
Pullen mentions that writing poems is a form of getting her thoughts out of her head. It’s also a form of relaxation and a “fun past time” for her.
“I think my mom was a big inspiration,” Pullen said. “And also, my past writing teachers.”
