Aspiring author

Some people hated when their teachers gave them a creative writing assignment , but for Carter McLaughlin ’23, it sparked his love for writing.

McLaughlin’s first memorable thing he wrote was in 6th grade it was a story that took place in a fantasy universe but he tried to add some sci-fi elements. He worked really hard on it, he had three pages that were just about his characters and seven pages that were the actual story. His characters were on quests and used older types of weapons, no lazer guns. Like most writers McLaughlin looks back on his older writing with slight embarrassment but he one day hopes to rewrite this original story of his.

“Even as a seventh-grader, Carter was uniquely passionate about writing fiction. I often have imaginative students who generate lots of ideas but never execute them. Carter wasn’t just fascinated by the idea of writing, he actually put in the work to improve.” Amari Nasafi, McLaughlin’s 7th grade English teacher, said about McLaughlin’s writing.

McLaughlin currently has concepts for stories but those concepts are quite fleshed out with pages upon pages sitting in Google Docs, being tweaked for perfection. His current project involves a school setting where everyone is organized by the colors of the rainbow which dictate their school life and what kind of magic they have. 

“I feel like different personalities are magic based on their personality so fire will be a red eye color with like, energetic and kinda shows like what people like, stereotypical stuff,” McLaughlin said about his current main project.

Like most writers McLaughlin has a certain genre he loves to write. Most of the concepts he has take place in worlds of fantasy, sci-fi and realism. A place where people both have magical abilities but can also text their friends. When it comes to creating the characters to fit into these universes, the characters usually come first before being fixed to properly fit in with the rest of the story’s universe.

“I always appreciated the attention to detail that Carter demonstrated in crafting his stories. As a reader, I’m most interested in realistic fiction, but one thing I’ve always admired about the more fantastic genres is the world-building that’s necessary on the part of the writer. Carter spent a lot of time making connections between motif, setting, and character in order to make his stories more cohesive.” Nasafi said about McLauglin’s writing.

McLaughlin hopes to one day be a published author with a wide variety of novels, but for now he keeps his writing to himself. He mostly writes because it’s what he enjoys, it lets him express himself and the stuff he likes, and the more he writes the more fun he has doing so.