Hello

Hey katrina!

You know, I have a friend named Katrina! She's a great girl. I'm sure all Katrinas are. ;]

Welcome welcome welcome to YWS! All of us here are like one big dysfuntional family: we may live all over the world but we are connected by our mutual love of writing (and reviewing.)

Like any organized community, we've got some rules here at YWS. You won't be put in prison if you don't follow them, BUT it is frowned upon. And frowns are pretty bad.

Rule Number 1: For every story/poem/etc you post, please review two other works posted by your fellow users. This makes a 2:1 policy. Doing this ensures that everyone gets a review on their work. Horay! If you follow this rule, not only will you be fair, but also, people really appreciate reviews on their work.

I'm sure that a lot of people will fill you in on the rest, so I'll leave that to them :]

So tell us more about yourself? What kind of genre do you like the best? What's your favorite book? I'm sure that you'll find people with similar likes here.

Again, welcome to YWS.

PM (private message) me anytime! I'm always willing to chat with a fellow writer in need.

-dd9

Welcome to the YWS Academy, Katrina!
I hope you enjoy your stay while you create magic and review magic here! ^^

By the way, I'm Claeren, a.k.a Snow White, but you can just call me Gen. Either that or some whacky name that you come up with, I really don't mind.

So, here's most of the rules. I got these from here, so, no, I did not write this all myself, however, I would advise you to read the rest of the stuff on that page by following the link. There's a lot more than what I put on here! ^^

"“The Eleven Commandments

As with any forum, there has to be some rules:

I. Thou shall not dismiss and/or defy the instructions of authorized personnel while on the Young Writer's Society forum.

II. Thou shall not use sexually explicit, harmful, threatening, abusive, defamatory, obscene, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive language.

III. Thou shall not post or link to any sexually explicit, harmful, threatening, abusive, defamatory, obscene, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive imagery or content.

IV. Thou shall not spam, flood, or make duplicate posts when posting in the Young Writer's Society forums.

V. Thou shall not impersonate any member of Young Writer's Society forum or their affiliates.

VI. Thou shall not violate any local, state, national, or international laws or regulations.

VII. Thou shall not market, promote, advertise, or solicit within the Young Writer's Society forum.

VIII. Thou shall not modify any part of the Young Writer's Society forum unless you possess specific approval from the Administration and/or you bear the title as one of the Moderator.

IX. Thou shall not organize nor be a member of any pledges or groups within the Young Writer's Society forum that are based on or espouse any racist, sexist, anti-religious, anti-ethnic, anti-gay, or other hate mongering philosophies.

X. Thou shall not provide false information or intentionally hide any information when registering for your forum account.

XI. Thou shall not upload or transmit on Young Writer's Society any copyrighted or trademarked content to which you do not own all rights without the express written permission of the author or the copyright or trademark holder.”

Home: The Home page is the location where important news is posted as the main body of the page. Underneath is important information that all members need to know and each has accessability to comments. Along the left hand column of the Home Page begins with your own information with the options to the current poll right below. At the very bottom, members may view who is currently viewing the site. Along the left column the Board Navigation makes it quite easy for you to move about the website. Below that are the recent topics that have been posted upon, and finishing the right hand column are the board affiliates which are websites that wish to be advertised by fellow members.

Community: This is the place where you can find information about the forum, where there is polls and topics members posted about themselves. If you have read a book recently, you can review it; there are contests available to open or participate in; writing activities are enjoyable activites to increase your skill with literature; and writing tips can help you in getting out of a writer's block. The Lounge is a popular place to relax and chat; Debates and Serious Descussions are conversed over; Entertainment and Recent News of current events and Randomness are included as well.

Literary: The Literary Forums are a place where one may post their works of writing; be it poems or fictional stories. They may critique other members' pieces as well as look upon the art of drawers and participate in storybooks. Scripts and lyrics are also included, and if you do think you are looking for something in another category, you may find it in the Other forum. Board Navigation is, again, on your left with the posting of a Random Member beneath it, with information about the people online.

Usergroups: The Usergroups forum advertises usergroups as well as the location where you can sign up to be in a usergroup.

Search: A simple, easy-to-use searching tool to which you may use if you wish to specifically find something that someone else has posted.

Memberlist: The listings of all members that have registered in the Young Writer's Society. There are various filters that you may use to make your search specific to your aim of interest.

Profile: The Profile is where you can edit your information for others to see what you are like, what your interests are, and if you use any instant messanger.

Private Messages: The Private Messange Inbox is yours alone so you can privately communicate to other members that you feel are not necessary on the forums or in a post. The Inbox keeps mail you recieve from others while the Sentbox is where your mail you sent to others is kept. The Outbox is where the mail you send out will stay until the person it is directed to opens up their inbox. And the Savebox is where you may save important letters that you wish to keep.”

The Forum Boards

Community

Welcome
The welcoming forums provides a medium for new members to become aquainted with the Young Writers Society. This very guide is posted within the welcoming forums. There are posts containing information detailing how things work in the forums and as well as major announcements that all should be aware of. Official Polls may also be found here as well as the YWS Columns. Members may post things about themselves at the About the Author forums.

Writing Resources & Contests
Forums about Literature are contained within this group. You may post book reviews and as well as host a writing contest. If you need help with homework, you may post a topic concerning your dilemma, or you can assist others. You may also post what you have found in researching a specific topic that may aid others with their writing. Other helpful writing activities and writing tips are contained within these forums and the YWS Novel Writing Year challenges members to write 40,000 words in 365 days.

General Discussion
The General Discussion Boards allow users to lounge around and post topics on entertainment and things happening in the world. Members are allowed to chat and relieve stress here, post the most random of posts and play around with words along with other members. If you are planning on applying for a given title, there is a forum dedicated to providing the information on how to do so and answering your questions and inquiries.

Literary

Poetry
These groups of forums divide the genres in poetry so you may better define what genre of poetry you are either interested in reading or posting. You may also indulge in the dicussion of poetry and provide your own opinion on the topics posted there.

Fiction
Fiction obviously has multiple genres and this group is divided into thus just like the Poetry forums. From Fantasy to Romance, from Teutonic Knights to a 32 car pile-up, read and review to your hearts content. And just like the Poetry forums, you may discuss them as you see fit.

Miscellaneous Work
The miscellaneous work provides members to post artwork and scripts that are obviously not prose or poetry. Lyrics and Storybooks where you can sing and roleplay all you want are available as well. And... if your piece of wonderful work does not fit under prose, poetry, art, scripts, storybooks, lyrics or even literature itself (crazy, I know...), then post it under the miscellaneous forum in the mescellaneous work group because it is a miscellaneous piece of work. (The forum is cleverly denoted with the letters O-T-H-E-R; I'm still trying to find the darn acronym for it.)

Posting Topics and Replies

Posting is imparitive to forums. Without posting, you basically don't exist to the other members. Obviously, if you are new to a forum, you need to know how to post. It is a rather simple procedure of finding the forum you wish to post at and from there, you may post a new topic or you may read an existing topic and reply to its content.

Refer to the Posting Tutorial (yet to be released)

We advice that you briefly skim over this FAQ to ensure that you are following all the rules. It is also a good resource if you have any problems. The standard forum FAQ that comes with most forums may also provide assitance.

Posting on the Young Writers Society uses BBCode to format your posts. BBCode is an abbreviation for Bulletin Board Code, the markup language used to format posts in many modern message boards. The available tags are usually indicated by rectangular brackets surrounding a keyword, and they are parsed by the message board system before being translated into a markup language the web browsers understands, usually HTML or XHTML.

Refer to the BBCode Guide if you have any problems or questions concerning the formating of your text.

If you have any questions, simply ask here. These question must, of course, relate to any technical difficulties you have with the forum and be sure to check both important information or news on the Home Page or in the Information Desk forum.

Comments and Suggestions may be submitted here. This is strictly your input to the forums and their maintenance. Demands are not tolerated and you are only doing suggesting with your opinion alone.”

Please remember that I did not type this myself, Gannon did, so I give full credit to him. ^^

Besides these rules, there are a few others, but here are the most famous two:

1. Keep the 2:1 review ratio. That means you need to review two works first before you post any of your own. It isn't that hard, so you shouldn't have any problem. Besides, it'll make people more inclined to review your own work. Nobody wants to review the works of someone who won't review others.

2. No chatspeak. That means proper grammar, capitalization, and spelling as often as you can. There are some abbreviations that are aloud, like lol and brb, but don't push it.

And lastly, about the username colors. These are as follows:

Light Blue ---> The Greeters. These are the people who welcome the new people (like you) and tell them the basic rules of the site. They tell you any hints but mainly they will just try to make you feel as welcome as possible. We love to get more people to join the family!
Purple ---> The Instructors. These are the people who give out in depth reviews and are incredibly writers. They give out great tips and would love to help you if you have any issue. They might even give you a class. We are all friendly here so feel free to ask any of us.
Light Green and Dark Green ---> The Junior Moderators and the Moderators. The Junior Moderators are the people who are in training to become a Moderator. They usually have to be nominated for the position. Moderators are the people who roam the posts making sure we are all abiding by the rules. They will give out warnings and are like the YWS Police officers. ^^
Red ---> The Admins. These are the people who created the site (Nate) and keep it running, giving it occasional updates and keeping proper maitenance.
Orange ---> The Distinguished Members. These people usually have been on this site for a long time. They are usually distinguished for a reason like they were a retired Moderator or something like that.

And that's basically it! Well, I hope to see you around Katrina, and I hope to review some of your work soon as well! ^^

Feel free to ask me any questions you may have at anytime, I'm always happy to help! =)

- Claery

Young Writers Society

Sponsors

About / Info

Forums & RPG

Literary

Resources