Margaret - Fantasy Writing

Margaret’s project was improving and expanding her writing capabilities.  She identified two aspects of her writing that she wanted to improve: world-building and character development. Throughout the semester, Margaret developed two lists to follow during her writing exploration. The first was "10 characteristics of well-written characters," and the second was "10 characteristics of well-established worlds/settings." To do this, she took inspiration from popular fantasy novels such as Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and the Throne of Glass series.  She also discovered a blog known as the "Terrible Minds Blog," which provided her with many helpful techniques in her world-building and character development. The blogger, Chuck Wendig, quickly became an author Margaret felt inspired by and looked up to.

To showcase her newfound understanding of these concepts, Margaret wrote three short stories. Each short story is told from a third-person perspective, and explores the origins of three characters: Niamh Aermon, Roan Kellar, and Taro Nathaire. These stories each have specific, defined meanings that can be identified by the reader, and take place within the fictional world Margaret created. Margaret also made a visual world map. She used an online map generator to create the continents, countries, cities, and other important landmarks, and (taking inspiration from novels such as A Darker Shade of Magic, and A Court of Thorns and Roses), named all of them.

In the beginning of the semester, Margaret knew she wanted her future career to be in the field of writing, she just wasn’t sure she had what it took. Over the course of the semester, however, Margaret overcame one of the greatest challenges that hindered her writing before Propel: having other people read her work. Soliciting feedback from others in Propel, her mentor Thea Wortley (who wrote a novel in the previous years of Propel), and teachers around the school was essential to the success of Margaret’s project. Her writing would not have improved so drastically had she not obtained so much feedback on her work.

Links

Link to stories on their way!