South Windsor High School sophomores expressed their creative side, creating tales of creatures and villainous antagonists in published mini sagas.

Established in 1991, Young Writers allows students from kindergarten through twelfth grade to stretch their imagination and put down their thoughts into writing. With their writing, Young Writers incorporate separate stories into a cohesive anthology of work. The company encourages students to enter book contests of various genres and themes to be featured in their books.

South Windsor High School students entered the contest ‘Twisted Tales,’ which challenged them to “think outside the box and consider the baddies in the world around them…” according to the website for Young Writers. 

Mrs. Quinn and Mrs. Dahms-Lodge challenged their sophomore classes to use characterization, narration, and perspective to put a twisted spin on a classic fairytale. The challenge was to write a 100-word mini-saga of a villainous subject, pushing them to think creatively and to really think of what a villain is. The subject did not have to be a character but could also be natural disasters, viruses, or even technology.

“The villain in my mini saga is a boy who refuses to love the girl of his fantasies for anything but her dazzling delicate impression. He fails to accept her for her flaws and inner beauty that he is obliged to kill her solely so he could admire her beauty without dissatisfaction. He resembles her as a rose and writes her a note justifying his harmful actions of why he chose to kill her,” said sophomore Florentina Sahaya.

The challenge gave students the opportunity to push the boundaries of story-telling and–quite literally–make the story up as they go.

Sophomore Janani Shanmugam weighs in on the unique experience and what she learned from this process: “I found the prompt for this year really interesting because I personally have never thought from the villain’s perspective. I just know they are the villains and they do bad things, but I never stopped to consider why. So, it was just really cool to put myself in that point of view and ‘rewrite’ the classic tale I know,” explained Shanmugam.

Rewriting a classic story was not the only aspect of the assignment that made it exciting.

“Not only did my story getting published bring me excitement, but just writing a small idea into 100 words successfully was a challenge,” said sophomore Saumy Shekar.

“It’s an incredible honor to have been recognized for a passion of mine,” said Isabella Correnti.