Sorcha Whitley
In fourth grade, Sorcha Whitley ‘23 started writing, in the form of short historical fiction pieces for school. Since then, Whitley has taken a few creative writing classes and now writes prose and occasionally poetry. Dancing and singing are also creative outlets Whitley has had since her childhood, which she believes prompted her to look for other ways to express her creativity.
“Dancing and music, they're also about storytelling,” Whitley said. “You're just using a different medium to tell a story. So when I choreograph, or when I perform, I'm still trying to convey emotion — I'm trying to convey setting and character and plot — but instead of words [I] use [my] body.”
In her written storytelling, Whitley likes to write about magic — for her, creating magical worlds is easier for her than creating characters. One of her short stories, “The Library,” was inspired from a book about a magical library called “The Starless Sea.”
“I wanted to write a story about magic, but magic as a representation of the process of growing up,” Whitley said. “It's about two siblings and how they grew apart as they grew up, and then how they came back together.”
While some of the ideas in her writing were inspired from her relationship with her sister, Whitley does not try to take too much inspiration from her life to write her prose pieces. With her poetry, she usually writes about what is going on in her life at the moment as a way to process events. Most often, she creates her worlds when inspired by other worlds she has read about and is more flexible with inspiration for her characters.
“I take pieces of myself or pieces of people I know and that's how I create characters,” Whitley said. “I mix and match qualities that I've seen. I think there are certainly pieces of me in every character I've ever written. I don't think it's possible to completely divorce myself from my creations. But none of my characters are me.”
With “The Library,” Whitley had the most difficulty writing the opening. She says this was due to the specificity of the vision of the world she wanted to create. However, after she found the right words to express her vision, she almost kept the exact first draft of the first two pages of the 25-page story. Whitley is also working on longer projects, one of which is currently a 600-page fantasy epic — whose world Whitley took inspiration from “The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.” In each new project, Whitley tries to invent an entirely new magic system.
“I've written some stories where magic is the entire point of the world, where you can't divorce magic from the world it's in, and I've written some stories where it's small, small things like the ability to heat a tea kettle supernaturally quickly,” Whitley said. “What interests me is just that little bit of extra belief, that little bit of extra wonder, beyond what we have in the real world."
“Dancing and music, they're also about storytelling,” Whitley said. “You're just using a different medium to tell a story. So when I choreograph, or when I perform, I'm still trying to convey emotion — I'm trying to convey setting and character and plot — but instead of words [I] use [my] body.”
In her written storytelling, Whitley likes to write about magic — for her, creating magical worlds is easier for her than creating characters. One of her short stories, “The Library,” was inspired from a book about a magical library called “The Starless Sea.”
“I wanted to write a story about magic, but magic as a representation of the process of growing up,” Whitley said. “It's about two siblings and how they grew apart as they grew up, and then how they came back together.”
While some of the ideas in her writing were inspired from her relationship with her sister, Whitley does not try to take too much inspiration from her life to write her prose pieces. With her poetry, she usually writes about what is going on in her life at the moment as a way to process events. Most often, she creates her worlds when inspired by other worlds she has read about and is more flexible with inspiration for her characters.
“I take pieces of myself or pieces of people I know and that's how I create characters,” Whitley said. “I mix and match qualities that I've seen. I think there are certainly pieces of me in every character I've ever written. I don't think it's possible to completely divorce myself from my creations. But none of my characters are me.”
With “The Library,” Whitley had the most difficulty writing the opening. She says this was due to the specificity of the vision of the world she wanted to create. However, after she found the right words to express her vision, she almost kept the exact first draft of the first two pages of the 25-page story. Whitley is also working on longer projects, one of which is currently a 600-page fantasy epic — whose world Whitley took inspiration from “The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.” In each new project, Whitley tries to invent an entirely new magic system.
“I've written some stories where magic is the entire point of the world, where you can't divorce magic from the world it's in, and I've written some stories where it's small, small things like the ability to heat a tea kettle supernaturally quickly,” Whitley said. “What interests me is just that little bit of extra belief, that little bit of extra wonder, beyond what we have in the real world."
Listen
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to an excerpt of Whitley’s short story, “The Library”:
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The Mallory twins were raised, in order, by magic, their parents, and the library on the second floor of their childhood home. It was the strangest room in a house full of strange rooms, and the books were only half of it. Every time Rionach heaved open the carved doors, she had to take a moment to adjust to the weight of magic. It pooled in between the pages of every book, in every step of the time-worn ladders, dripping from the clouds and constellations painted across the high ceiling. Every breath tasted like magic, like iron and honey. If the library had walls, they were well-hidden. The shelves went on forever, curving into and away from each other in perfect disorganization, an illusion of infinity. Time stretched out in the same way: fragile, unreal, and untouchable.
Rionach sat on the throw rug in front of her mother’s imposing desk as she did every Saturday morning, her brother sprawled beside her on his stomach. Between them sat their assignment, an innocuous sheet of paper cast in shades of rose and lilac from the stained-glass windows. Cillian was humming as he wrote out plans in his notebook, the melody nearly drowning out the low buzz of their father’s bees- little creatures made of bronze and wrapped in enchantments, the protectors of the house and the books within.
One of those bees carried their mother’s favorite pair of earrings in its stomach. On that piece of paper, their father had written retrieve them in his elegant handwriting, all curves and flourishes.
Rionach sat on the throw rug in front of her mother’s imposing desk as she did every Saturday morning, her brother sprawled beside her on his stomach. Between them sat their assignment, an innocuous sheet of paper cast in shades of rose and lilac from the stained-glass windows. Cillian was humming as he wrote out plans in his notebook, the melody nearly drowning out the low buzz of their father’s bees- little creatures made of bronze and wrapped in enchantments, the protectors of the house and the books within.
One of those bees carried their mother’s favorite pair of earrings in its stomach. On that piece of paper, their father had written retrieve them in his elegant handwriting, all curves and flourishes.