On Mar. 17, author Katerina Speers visited OH to present to Erin Holtz’s fifth-period Creative Writing English course about different elements of writing and publishing a book. In her presentation, she discussed writer’s block, building more emotion and depth into characters, as well as finding one’s way to writing.
Speers opened up her speech with an icebreaker, Two Truths and a Lie, except all her statements were true.
“The point of the exercise is, you don’t know me until you get to know me. What you see here is just one persona,” said Speers.
The ice breaker helped Speers segue into her topic of adding more emotion and depth into your characters.
“If you write about [just] this your characters are going to be flat. They [will] have one dimension and no depth. So what do you do then? You add depth and complexity. How do you do that? You give them a backstory,” said Speers.
Building a character with a strong personality and backstory can be viewed as something learned through trial and error, finding what works and what doesn’t. Personal experiences can help a writer build upon something based on what one knows already.
Credit: Katerina Speers
“The worst thing you [can] do…is diminish yourself and diminish your experience, then you start to say ‘I don’t have a lot of experience with XYZ, so I don’t know how to write about that,” said Speers.
When asked what the goal was of bringing Speers in, Holtz spoke on the benefits for her students.
“I think there’s value in speaking to people that write,” Holtz said.
“Right now we’re in our fiction unit, so it’s nice to have the perspective of an author,“ she added.
Speers loved writing in high school, but it wasn’t until she had already worked in the sales business for 40 years that she finally got the chance to write and publish a book.
She recently published “From the Ashes of Gods,” a fiction/fantasy novel about a Greek god who was raised by mortals. This book was a dream of hers for quite some time before it became reality.
“Something keeps you going, like that dream in the back of your mind. That was me. That was my experience,” said Speers. “It took me ten completed books, which I did not publish because they were all trash, on my own with this dream of mine before I published a book.”
Speers even acknowledged that writing is not going to pay your bills and realistically it’s not going to support a lifestyle. Though this could be true, her point was to not get discouraged when the process is slower or you get stuck.
Early writers can depend on plots, characters, and settings that already exist. Throughout the presentation, Speers highly stressed the importance of digging deeper to pull out the creativity and experiences you already have had.
“One of the reasons I’m here today is [to show you] you’re not them. You are you. You have your own unique voice, right? So no one is ever going to write like you,” said Speers.
My name is Katelyn Clemons and I am currently a senior at Oswego High School. This is my first year being on the 42Fifty staff but will be my second year on yearbook. I hold an editor in chief position there.
You can contact me by emailing 42Fifty@sd308.org and putting my name in the subject line. We welcome comments on our articles and feedback on our publication!
I am a 1st year Staff editor for 42Fifty, a senior at Oswego High School. I know plenty that I wish to share with all, but most will remain as is for the meanwhile. You can contact me by emailing 42Fifty@sd308.org and putting my name in the subject line. We welcome comments on our articles and feedback on our publication!
