Young Writers Society

Nate wrote:Okay everyone, I'm issuing an ultimatum. If there's not more than 20 works in the Chicken Lit section by this time next week, I am striking it out!

Liminality wrote:

Social Month 2023

We all love YWS. It is a special place on the internet where you can find other people with a shared love of writing. We may have all stumbled on to YWS to share our writing, but we often stay for the community.

To celebrate said community, we are delighted to announce that Social Month will be back in February 2023! During the month of February, there will be activities in the People's Tab and forums that will encourage conversation and fun.

Click the image to find out more!

"Can someone get that?" Lockwood called out from the library, where he was currently curled up in an armchair in a t-shirt and pajama pants. "I'm not decent."

"I'm not, either," George shouted. Nate, who was downstairs training, was out of earshot and probably wouldn't have been able to hear them over the smoke jets, anyways.

"Then put on a pair of trousers!" Lockwood shouted back. "It could be a client!"

"At this hour?" George questioned.

Lucy, who had been heading down the stairs anyways to see what Lockwood was up to, sighed.

"The two of you are impossible!" she shouted, joining in on the argument. She made her way down the rest of the stairs and went to the door.

Spearmint wrote:just about 7.5 hours left to…

Mageheart wrote:now that roleplay badges have dropped and there's a challenge to make a new rp, it looks like i'll have to start scheming one up 👀

scatteredscones wrote:

Magical Elements of a Review

#MagicalReviewElements
#ReviewTips

A good thoughtful review usually includes:

- Introduction, where you briefly say hello and talk about what drew you to review the work. (Usually something related to the work that made it stand out such as 'The title of this piece was unique, because xyz.' and not something like 'I am here because I want points.' So the author feels respected instead of patronized! C:)

- The first impressions of the piece along with things that you maybe also notice upon rereading it. 'In my first reading of [book name] I noticed that the main characters would always argue with each other, and I must admit I only noticed their underlying fondness of each other upon rereading it!'

- Politeness counts! This is not to say that you shouldn't give constructive criticism, because you definitely should! However delivery is important!

Think about it like this, if your teacher was giving you criticism and said "Only dumb ugly [genders] don't use semicolons! Are you dumb and ugly? Put a semicolon then!!!" Not only should that teacher be fired but I doubt you would want to listen to them even if a semicolon was appropriate. That was really rude! Always reread your advice and put it through that filter. If someone else said this to me, a person meant to help me, would I be upset? Could this be misunderstood?

On the contrary if a teacher told you, "I love what you are writing, but I do think there are a few missing punctuation marks! You could try a semicolon just here or maybe make a new sentence. C:" you would probably thank them! That is what we want! We are here to make each other strong, and help each other grow!

- Grammar errors such as typos or misspellings are also great to point out! Authors want to make sure they aren't misunderstood as well as possible! Pointing out confusing sentences and explaining why they are confusing is also really helpful!

Capitalization is an interesting thing, because in poetry it's not necessarily necessary! However it is very important in novels and short stories! If you are going to point out line breaks and capitalization in poetry, you must first consider that it might be the authors stylistic choice! Poets have different voices and not every poet writes the same way!

- Always try to use capital letters and nice grammar in a review! Accidents and typos tend to happen, but when giving other writers advice it's best to be a little formal! You don't have to be a robot though, because emoticons and emojis are welcome too! They help the author detect tone and realize you aren't trying to be condescending!

- Tell them how the piece made you feel! Emotional value is very important to a writer! How did the characters make you feel? What was your favorite line of dialogue? Who was your favorite character? What was your favorite non dialogue line? What made you laugh? What upset you? What do you think would happen if there were a second half of this work?

- What do you think could be improved? Always be conscious that the person you are reviewing has feelings and try not to say anything like 'This needs a lot of work, reading it hurt my eyes. I think you should rewrite it entirely it was so awful I'm sick." You would not want such hateful feedback! It's discouraging and we are here to encourage and aid one another! Instead say things like, "This is a great piece, I really liked [insert favorite parts]. I think you could make it a bit more concise in the places where you talk about [thing] because it's slightly redundant. [Word] and [word] are synonyms, so they mean the same thing and it is repeated several times here. C: Also my favorite character would have to be [name]! I noticed you missed a few spaces between the beginning and ending of a few lines, it makes the peice a bit hard to read! It is an easy fix!"

- If you feel like a lot of the persons works are struggling with grammar errors Grammarly is free and a well respected site used by a lot of colleges! You could make a recommendation as it works as a great editor! However it doesn't give constructive reviews so I would also recommend bringing their writing back here for a polish! Sometimes grammarly still fixes sentences wrong and they don't make sense or the meaning changes. It's nothing like having an actual live reviewer, but it helps reviewers be able to see the bigger images in your work and stop warning you about missing commas when they could be warning you about plot holes!

- Be careful about recommending outside sources, however because all of them aren't safe! And don't click links or send other users links that you aren't one hundred percent sure are safe! You may get an awful internet virus that will crash your device! Besides there are a lot of resources in yewis that we know are safe! There is a whole forum!!!

- At the end of your review leave a few encouraging words to the writer and sign off with your penname or nickname so they will remember you next time!

Thank you for reading if you made it this far!