#DiscoverSotaLA with Penelope Chua!
The 2025 SOTA Primary 6 Creative Writing Competition is underway! Hear from our students and learn about the SOTA Literary Arts experience in this #DiscoverSotaLA series, and even pick up some tips on writing a good short story! Here, we speak with Year 1 (2024) LA student Penelope Chua!
Hi Penelope! How did you begin pursuing writing / Literary Arts?
My passion for writing was sparked by my childhood love for reading. When I read, I live the life of someone else, someone caught up in a situation I might never experience. This was a reason why I started to write, so I could let others live a thousand lives too. My favourite genres to read and write are science-fiction and fantasy. Such speculative fiction is particularly precious to me because it allows me to creatively mix-and-match my own experiences, the past, my hopes for the future, and fictional events.
Furthermore, I find writing as an idea extremely compelling. Nothing gives me a more powerful feeling than being able to create my own stories, and having the freedom to choose what I wish to write about. These can be invigorating thrillers, fairy tales, childhood bedtime stories, romance stories, and they can have both happy and sad endings. This makes writing even more enjoyable for me, as a daydreamer. From a young age, I learnt to try new ways of writing, and some of my earliest stories from when I was still in preschool carry the deepest meanings. As I grew older, the captivating idea of writing stayed with me and I continued to write to the best of my ability both in and out of school. It soon became clear that writing was definitely my passion.
I decided to pursue Literary Arts in SOTA in order to grow my passion for writing. Creating characters and worlds are a way for me to escape and experiment with different ways of expressing myself. Writing, to me, is an amalgamation of many different things, much more than just a representation of language on paper. In SOTA, I am able to learn from the greats and my peers, both of which have a certain thrill to it.
Your first year in SOTA is coming to a close. Can you reflect on some of your experiences as a Literary Arts student?
Literary Arts lessons are unlike any that I’ve ever experienced. The lessons range from people-watching to writing quietly in a classroom to learning journeys out of school.
This year, the Literary Arts cohort was given the opportunity to watch the play “Perfecting Pratas”. This thrilling experience has helped me grow as a writer, especially in the playwriting aspect, because I was able to better understand how my works would come to life on the stage. Apart from that, Literary Arts lessons in the SOTA building are equally pivotal. Workshopping, a key aspect of a SOTA LA student’s experience, has been – albeit terrifying – essential in improving my writing. By commenting on the work of my peers and receiving honest feedback in return, I learnt to write better and bring my works to life, as well as a much more valuable skill: being able to help others improve their writing too.
I think that the Literary Arts curriculum has helped my works to become the best versions of themselves as well. For the Short Story component, I wrote a dystopian story about a pair of siblings in a broken and twisted world. I am immensely proud of how this work turned out, starting out from a character I created years ago and a moodboard to a fully crafted story. My play, “Blurred Vision”, was another one of my works this year, a historical fiction set on 6th June 1944 – D-day of the Second World War. As someone who found it terribly difficult to write on a foundation of dialogue before this year, being able to complete this piece with a standard that met my expectations gave me a welcome sense of accomplishment.
Literary Arts has certainly been an enriching and fulfilling experience. In my coming years in SOTA, I hope that I will be able to grow both as a writer and as a person, with my peers and my teachers alike.
Say hi to our young budding writers!
Hello, my friends! I think it is safe to say that if you’re reading this, you have a profound interest in writing.
Writing is a long journey, and I don’t think that it ever ends. It certainly hasn’t for me. I understand that in today’s fast-paced world, you may feel like there isn’t enough time to do what you wish to, and truthfully, there isn’t. Still, it’s important to hold on to that passion and interest, because that is what will take you further. Hold on to what keeps you happy and makes you feel alive – and make your life extraordinary in your own way.
Some of you may be writing a short story for the P6 Creative Writing Competition. Writing a good story may seem impossible at times, and I assure you that every writer feels this way. What’s important is that you continue to build your characters and your worlds, to make your readers feel for them, and to make them real. If writing is your passion, then the end result shouldn’t matter to you. We are all born poets and storytellers, so keep writing and don’t let the beautiful feeling of it fade because of the result. Show your readers who you are through your story, do the best that you can, and you’ll be fine.
The SOTA Primary 6 Creative Writing Competition 2025 is now open. Submissions close on 17 January 2025 at 5pm. If you will be in Primary 6 in 2025 (and are based in Singapore), we invite you to participate!