Young Writers Society

Welcome to Squills, the official news bulletin of the Young Writers Society!

What will you find here? Tons of interesting news about YWS, including but not limited to: articles about writing, art, and the world of humanities; interviews with YWS members; shameless plugs; link round-ups; and opinionated columns.

And where will all of this come from? Take a look at our fantastic creative staff!






Of course, our content can’t come only from our staff. We also depend on you to help keep Squills successful. You’re all a part of a writing community, after all. If you’re interested in submitting to Squills, pop on over to the Reader’s Corner to find out how you can get involved by contributing an article or participating in other Squills activities. You can also subscribe to the Squills Fan Club , or PM SquillsBot to receive a notification each time a new issue is published!

Well, that’s all I have for now. So, what are you waiting for? Enjoy!

1. FEATURED MEMBER INTERVIEW
2. WRITER'S WORLD
3. TWO CENTS
4. THIS WEEK'S ROUND UP
5. SHAMELESS PLUGS
6. SUBSCRIBERS

FEATURED MEMBER INTERVIEW: REIKANNwritten by Holysocks < PM: >

Today I got to have a lovely conversation with our Featured Member, @reikann! Not surprisingly, I soon discovered that Reikann is quite a charismatic gal, and just a super fun person to talk to! I would definitely recommend having a chat with her! If you don’t believe me, here’s the cold-hard truth:



Reikann: Expect it? How could I possibly? As far as I know, all I did was dink around, talk to people, and leave a few comments on some stories that no one else had left opinions on to clog up my own! But I am used to being fabulous, so maybe it shouldn't have been *that* much of a surprise.



R: Yeah, it's on the front page every day. I'd always assumed they were local celebrities of some sort.



R: DARN STRAIGHT. I'm famous and loving it.
I wish I had a way to leverage my fame into something useful, but instead, I seem to be content just to own it.




R: Please, Reikann is my father. Call me Rei. ...er, wait.




R: I love love fantasy in all forms - urban, low, high, sci-fi - anything with the flavor of the fantastic, and that tends to be what I write about.
I'm also an active member of the local LGBT+ community and hat-wearing feminist, so it would be remiss to pretend that ideology doesn't sneak into my writing.
In such a way, ideally, that it never gets brought up - I just write a lot of queers and women with no comment on it.




R: I've also had a long-standing fascination with what morality 'is' and an equally in-depth interest into how complex and utterly *confusing* humans are, and so as a result, I've found myself writing a lot of protagonists in the standard villainous role.

You're welcome to - if I ever get around to posting anything on my own! My biggest weakness as a writer is how self-conscious I am - my stories are intimate to me. However, I've been dipping my toes into Storybooks recently, so if you're looking, I'd recommend there.





R: Talk to them? No, but they're not afraid to argue with me! Such is the pain of a rounded character: sometimes, they don't want to listen. But, hey, villains often have interesting things to say, so we work it out.

Yeah! I have a history starting with the Warrior cats fandom (anyone remember those days?) of roleplaying online, and I'm pretty sure that's where my interest in understanding character started.





R: In fact, me and a friend are planning on starting up a Storybook of our own now, as a tie-in to an older one (crossovers! shared universes! intertwined plots!), and I can't wait for that.
I don't roleplay anymore like I did in my guileless youth, alas, though I did run an independent group where we all played magical girls for a summer. I, of course, played the villain.





R: Are you familiar with Sailor Moon? Winx? WITCH?



R: It's a specific literary/tv genre aimed at younger girls starring a diverse, often color-coded all-girl cast with magic powers who take on alternate, superhero style forms to fight evil and save the day.
I loved it as a young girl for being identifiable and totally ~awesome~ and I love it now as an adult (oh no, I'm an *adult*) for being a space where girls get to kick butt and save the day. Oh, and also there's superpowers. Did I mention that?





R: There's a 2011 anime (aimed at older audiences) called Madoka Magica that is a special baby of mine, and which I recommend whole-heartedly to anyone who doesn't mind the plot going dark.
Right, the storybook! The 12th of September would be an optimistic, but realistic projection. I keep a busy life offline as well!




R: Don't tell anyone, but they're these alternate existences that can only be found off the internet. It's only rumors, though. Don't let *them* know I told you, or we're both in trouble....

The tentative name is God Save the Queen, and it's set in the remarkably exciting 1860s.




R: I should hope so! Maybe it's time for the world to know. It's a dangerous idea, but nothing less ever changed the world.
/drama/
And about the storybook? I don't mind if that much gets out.




R: Likewise! Good luck with yours newsletter! It was an honor to be interviewed. Sure thing, I love answering questions.





R: Yeah, sure! I think that the most important aspect is visibility. One can spend a thousand hours stalking this website and processing every modicum of information they come across, but that's nothing compared to what ten hours of commenting will do for you. Talk to people! Play in the chatroom. Leave reviews. Leave *thoughtful* reviews. You can't be famous if you don't have friends.
Well... you can. But that's ill-advised.





R: Yesss. Thanks for electing me the temporary queen of the site, Ms. Socks!




And that was this month’s FM interview! I quite enjoyed that discussion, and I hope you all did as well! I hope we see a lot more of Reikann around!

Writer's World: The Eraser and Glitters in Editingwritten by Lightsong < PM: >

For me, editing is changing details or parts in your work as an effort to improve it. Each individual has his own meaning for the verb editing, but in the sense of YWS, editing often is made based on the reviews given. Of course, reviews are not the sole requirement for it, and there are many ways you can edit a piece without using their aids.

When do we edit our works? Let us say I am working on a short story. Should I edit it when I am in the middle of finishing it, or should I do the job once it is finished? For me, the best time to edit a work is after it is complete. Editing would only be an unnecessary distraction if we do it halfway through the story, as we are going to focus more on improving a part that is already there rather than focusing on the part that is to come. It would only ruin our rhythm of writing, and the story we want to tell might not be as good as we have first planned.

When we have a complete story saved in our computer, it is our job to reread and review it ourselves. Not only it would help us improve our work, it would also remind us that our work is not perfect and there would be flaws needed to be corrected. In my experience, it is difficult to edit our work when we are reading it through the screen, so a printed version of it is better for the job. It would feel like we are analyzing a story as a school’s assignment, and that is what we want when we are editing a piece. We remove our bias by treating it as nothing more than a test, designed for us to notice its flaws and how to overcome them.

This is the perfect time to make full use of the knowledge you got from the school. From where I am from, I were thought that a story needs to have four phases: introduction, rising action, climax, and resolution. I can measure my story whether it meets the requirement of a good story. I know the importance of main and side characters, therefore I can check whether I utilizes the characters fully. However, I am not a grammar buff, so I cannot trust myself in that department. That is okay to me; I can start my education on that particular branch of English language as soon as possible. There is not a phrase of ‘too late’ when you are learning to be a better editor (and by extension, a writer). Information is now at my fingertip, so you cannot say it is difficult to study.

Now that we have done our job in editing, let us focus on YWS. It is a place for us to post our works and receive reviews about them. The reviews would be our second aid in editing, and we must take them seriously no matter how short or long they are, or whether what is being reviewed fits with our desire or not. We cannot be picky about this, so all reviews are considered equally important. However, that does not mean we need to accept whatever that is thrown at us. Find the reviewed parts that are agreed by all or most reviewers (for example, most of them agrees the chapter has to be slowed down) and focus on those first. After they are handled, focus on the parts that can easily be fixed. This is to ensure the process of editing does not take too much of our energy, resulting a burnout situation.

An advice about editing a story based on reviews is to take your time to fix it. You have a short story, and they barely escaped the Green Room by having two reviews. Do not edit your story based on those two yet. Request for more by finding reviewers that you think are reliable in the area. Sometimes, the two reviews can be short, and they can be from those who are new to reviewing. In that case, you need more input before making a full edit on the piece. Also, do not feel bad if the review points our more of your weakness than your strength. Keep in mind that the reviewer is trying to help you, and that you can be better than you are now.

And that is all for this edition! Granted, I was sort of lacking ideas on what to write for the article, but editing came to mind, and while it was a boring idea to talk about, and even required effort when put into practice, it was very important if you want to be a better writer. It does not take away the fun of writing as it is done after you write, and it would keep you humble as well as polishing your skill as a writer.

TWO CENTS: UNRELIABLE CHARACTERSwritten by Aley < PM: >

People don't remember everything exactly as it should be. One of the things people often do in books which they don't do in reality is misinterpret situations, remember things differently, and develop an understanding of someone which isn't accurate.

Fleshing out a person's thoughts is sort of like fleshing out the world in which they live. It makes them act in unique and unpredictable ways to the main character. For instance, if someone walks up to the main character and assumes they're a jerk from how they're dressed, or maybe an assassin, a druggy, or scum, they're going to react to the character differently than someone who assumes that they're a good Samaritan who's just out for a stroll.

Having people respond to characters in unique ways makes a book feel more vibrant. Even having a character mishear someone say something like "I lost my waffle" to something like "I lost my wallet" can be comic relief, or a point of tension in a story.

But how do you write that? It depends on point of view. If you're in the head of someone who mishears, you write what they mishear and have the other character eventually explain that it isn't what they really said. This is called an unreliable narrator. Edgar Allan Poe is famous for doing this type of stunt.

The other option is if you're in the characters point of view that actually said whatever was misheard. Then, it's a matter of putting in the strange actions by the other character, and adding enough internal thought to point out to the reader that the other character is acting strange as they try to mentally figure out why.

In the continuum of third person omniscient, all seeing, all hearing, to first person, this is somewhere in the middle. It can be done first person, all the way up to just before you would actually hear the thoughts of the other character who hears things wrong. If they do hear things wrong, and you're an all-hearing narrator, then you've got your work cut out for you. You have to write in ["I lost my waffle," said Name, but Nome heard "I lost my wallet"] and that can get really long winded. That's why it's not suggested.

However, you can add a lot of humor to a story by having things like the following conversation from an omniscient point of view.


What makes this work is the internal thoughts bouncing between the two. We, the reader, know that what Nome has said isn't true, but having that explained, along with the internal thoughts of both characters, creates an impending doom of when Name finds out the truth.

It's not suggested that you write that way, I'm just giving you an example of how it could work. That style of writing could get old really fast, and keeping up that internal dialogue is tiresome to read, and if you add too much stress, the reader may become disinterested in all of the tangled lies.

What I like to see is when facts are forgotten or misunderstood. For instance, the anime Trigun starts out with three different rumors about what Vash the Stampede looks like. Now, all of them have a few accuracies and a few inaccuracies, but what's consistent between all of them are the accurate parts. This is one way in which the author creates a universe which expands beyond a book and into a reality because this really happens. It's not always true that everything that lines up is true, but in a novel, that convenience is the artists' license or the writer's ability to only include things which are relevant to the story.

Including things like false rumors helps spread out a reality and widen the perspective of the reader showing that these are relatable people. Not everyone's memory is perfect. Another way is when people retell something, have them get some points skewed. Make them remember things differently than how they really happened. Again, this is something that really occurs. For instance, one person might remember that they were in support of x when at the time, we know as the reader, they were in support of y. This is an overused example, but a simple one. The reality is going to be more complicated to craft, like having the person telling the story believing that something did or did not happen at the time which is wrong.

All in all, unreliable narrators can be taken to a miniscule level and forged into a story to show the inconsistencies of the grape vine, and the imagination of people. Perspectives change how we perceive the world, and our perspectives are built through our experiences. The more we flesh out our perspective, the more our world varies from the world of other people. Building this into the way our characters see situations, other characters, events, and memories makes unreliable narrators, but also builds our world. It's a hard tool to use, but very useful when used in an obvious light.

This Week’s Link Round Up 9/19 written by megsug < PM: >




@AllisontheWriter has created a thread where users try to follow Shatner’s legendary overreacting and scream SHATNER at each other. Confused? Watch an episode of the original Star Trek series. @Wolifcal has the best reaction so far if you ask me:







Mm… I’m just not sure if that’s dramatic enough.


@Justlittleoleme2 has great questions that’ve gone unanswered for two weeks!







The questions are daunting ones because there are so many different stories, not to mention when you finish answering, you may find that your own story is… lacking.


@Eimear wrote an article in 2008 about having no time to write… or that convenient excuse. Her beginning definitely resonates with me:





She doesn’t stop there though. She calls us on it. If we really want to write, we’d make time for it. However, she doesn’t leave us feeling bad about ourselves. She gives us four tips for making time to write. Read it now, and maybe your writing habits will change!


@ Mage wanted to know what languages people were learning on YWS, having noticed several users studying Latin. So far, users have named a number of languages from Irish or Gaelic to Mandarin to Choctaw. @Kazeybear has some ambitious goals:





What language have you studied or are studying?

SHAMELESS PLUGS

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