Written by Rahee, Year 8
On World book day, we had an amazing guest who came to speak to us. The bestselling author Caroline Lawrence, the author of the Roman Mysteries series, gave us some tips on how to write our own stories. The talk was very fun and informative and engaging and I really enjoyed listening to her talk about her works and even read us some of them.
She also talked to us about how her series was turned into a tv show adaptation and it was so interesting hearing about her experiences behind the set of the show. She told us a little bit about each of her books and I thought the plots for all of them were amazing. A lot of her books incorporated Greek or Roman mythology and history in it and she told us about what influenced the choice to write about these times. It was particularly inspiring how she told us about a book that changed her whole life, ‘The last of the wine’ which had influenced so much of her life, leading her to study ancient Greek and Latin and eventually led her to write books about ancient Greece and Rome.
As an aspiring writer myself, I found her tips on writing particularly helpful. She told us a good structure for writing our own stories and walked us through it by using an extract from her book, ‘The thieves of Ostia’. She told us her personal steps for writing in seven steps: problem, desire, opponent, plan (journey), battle, knowledge (prize), new level (ending). I found this so helpful because it was very easy to apply to a story and follow while writing. She also told us about how to create characters, with the guideline of the main character, their faithful sidekick, the funny one, the wild one and the mentor, and gave us several different examples of fictional characters to illustrate this for us.
Her biggest piece of advice to us was that everyone was able to be a writer, but what separates writers from other people is self discipline. She recommended that to be a writer, we need to make writing a part of our everyday life, just as fundamental as brushing our teeth or getting up in the morning. Whether it’s just an hour, ten minutes or 4 hours, she told us writing everyday is a very important skill to maintain if you want to be a writer.
Overall, I really enjoyed the talk and everything she told us was very interesting and inspired me greatly, making it a very special world book day to me.