"If you are a writer at heart, you will always gravitate towards writing. The passion stays alive even when it feels tiring or hard," said our 2025 People's Choice Award Winner, Susanna Lam, in her exclusive Q&A. Read on to hear what our Winner and Best Peer Reviewer had to say about the writing/reviewing process behind their top-voted entries!
WINNER:
Susanna Lam (Australia) age 13
Writing is daunting and many creators face writer's block. What propelled you to turn a blank page into this beautiful piece?
I think many writers often face a period of time where writing feels like a daunting task, but we must reframe it as a temporary break. Usually, I find myself discovering new, latent ideas and coming back to writing with much more enthusiasm. My advice would be not to be hard on yourself. Personally, if you are a writer at heart, you will always gravitate towards writing. The passion stays alive even when it feels tiring or hard.
This piece came to me almost instinctively. The core idea first came to me as an image of a grocery store where writers got a receipt for their journey in Write the World. The first draft came, but I wasn’t quite satisfied with it yet, so I made a few adjustments as well as added more of my own experience. I feel like a piece is most complete when we pour a part of us into it, and I think that’s the beauty of writing— how our own experience resonates with others through this platform.
What's your favorite part about writing?
At first, writing was simply a form of escapism. It allowed me to enter this world that I created and take control over the narrative, which was cathartic. Now, though, I love how it provides a glimpse into who I am. Oftentimes, I write stories with complex characters to find bits of myself layered within them, and to think that they were only a part of me really brought on that sense of awe for how deep our personality goes.
Through writing, I also learn to know myself better. I can reflect on my way of life through an outside perspective, which helps me observe experiences with greater clarity. It’s truly refreshing—the process of finding my own writing style to seeing pieces of life within the lines I write.
BEST PEER REVIEW WINNER:
Catherine Wang (Australia) age 15
Your kind, thoughtful, and clever review made you the winner of this award. Why do you think writing feedback is important at Write the World and beyond?
I believe that writing feedback for other aspiring young writers is one of the best ways to help each other grow. For the reviewer, taking a deep dive into other people’s work can help them learn about the strengths of a piece— perhaps the author utilised particularly striking imagery in describing a scene, or a unique structure/genre that enhances the text’s overall meaning. Deeply understanding these aspects can help the reviewer build on their own writing skills in future pieces, in addition to enhancing their skill of critical analysis. Meanwhile, understanding how to give others meaningful, genuine feedback can help one flourish as more empathetic, kind and caring individuals— and for that alone, it makes reviewing such a meaningful act!
On the flip side, receiving detailed feedback can also be incredibly beneficial for the author of the piece. Recognising that someone out there—a fellow writer—enjoyed their piece and dedicated time and energy to reviewing it can be a beautiful validation of the efforts they have inevitably poured into writing. And of course, beyond serving as encouragement, it can help the author reflect on certain areas that could be refined in their piece. Oftentimes, while writing, we tend to miss certain flaws or awkward phrasing in our own work, and having a second perspective would benefit immensely in that respect.
Finally, I would like to say that the opportunity to write feedback is, in fact, one of the major factors that drew me into Write the World, and which differentiates it from other platforms that host writing competitions. Young people don’t simply use the platform to demonstrate their current writing prowess, but it’s a place where anyone can actively improve, help each other improve, and form meaningful, lovely friendships along the way, within this encouraging community.
One nominator mentioned that you used "a variety of different reviewing techniques to help the writer see all the strengths of their writing." How do you balance out different reviewing techniques when providing feedback?
While providing feedback, I like to put myself into the shoes of the writer, and try to intuitively understand why they wrote the piece the way they did. That is a bit broad — but I believe that every aspect of a piece is chosen deliberately by the writer, like the structure, the genre, the first line they picked, the percentage of speech to description, the way a certain metaphor is crafted, etc. I ask myself while reading their piece and providing feedback, how do all of these choices accentuate the piece holistically? And then I hone in on the strengths of the piece, and make sure to let the writer know why certain choices work really well.
Indeed, it is just as important to let a writer know what they already did well as what they could improve on, and not just for the reason of encouragement. Writers, especially young people like us, love to experiment, and to know that a certain construction works well in the current piece is incredibly beneficial for their future experiments in other pieces, on which they can build. For instance, the writer of the piece I reviewed did a fantastic job of crafting atmosphere and extended metaphors, and in my review, I carefully unpacked the strengths of each of their choices and why specifically they served such powerful purposes. With this taken into consideration, I would generally also pick up on certain phrasing that sounds awkward or out-of-place and try to fine-tune it for the writer, with the aim of helping them become more confident in their expressions.
At the end of the day, I think many reviewing methods would work very well, as long as you, as the reviewer, put effort into the review and genuinely want to help the writer as much as possible. And I wholeheartedly believe that all young writers who exerted hard work into crafting their piece, followed by the courage to post it onto an online platform for other people to dissect— absolutely deserve the effort on our part :)) Happy writing and reviewing! I wish everyone reading this the best of luck and joy this year!