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. Review Day Recap!
2. Adventures in Writing
3. NaRevWriMo
4. Let It Go, Let It Out!
5. New Arrivals
6. This Week's Roundup - 9/6
7. Shameless Plugs
8. Subscribers

AUGUST 2015 REVIEW DAY RECAP!written by Elysium < PM: >

Hello! Elysium your community reporter here with the August 2015 Review Day Recap!

Before I start, there were a total of 74 reviewers in this review day!

Now, the team rankings.

In 3rd place, Team Gamma Police did 56 reviews, equaling a total of 7993 points!
2nd place, Team Zenith did [/b]12 reviews, and received 19724 points![/b]
Phee Phi Pho Phum, they reviewed until they were numb! Team Phi took the lead with 149 reviews and they earned a whopping total 20384 points! Congrats!

And of course, we sure can't forget our Top 5 Reviewers and Top 5 Typers!










Wait, IronSpark was both the Top Reviewer and Top Typer? Congratulations! To add on to that, she is participating in NaRevWriMo and she recently earned her 4th review star! And, with 88,676 characters typed, she essentially wrote the equivalent of a novella! Congrats!



And finally, who did what review?






Thanks for reading this edition of Squills!

ADVENTURES IN WRITINGwritten by BlueAfrica < PM: >

In real life, antagonists can take form as bullies, abusers, overly critical parents or teachers, or opponents in sports and other competitions. In the world of fiction, they are often even bigger and badder: billionaire megalomaniacs, evil overlords, sadistic governments—although more realistic antagonists can also be found between the pages of our favorite books. As the last article in my series on characters’ relationships, I want to talk about three ways antagonists can affect your characters.

Motivation. Before I get started with this point, I’m sure you’re thinking, “Well, duh. Of course the antagonist motivates my character. Where on earth do you think the plot comes from?”

True, friends. But what I mean is that the antagonist can motivate your character in ways that don’t affect the main plot. Fighting an evil villain might motivate your character to become a better person. Or perhaps she fights the antagonist in trivial ways as well as ways that affect the larger plot. For example, a character trying to stop the environmental destruction of a major corporation might both work as a spy from the inside (main plot) but also pick up litter, plant a tree, or participate in a river clean-up as small acts of changing the world. In this case, the antagonist is always in the back of her mind, pushing her to do these small things in her daily life. They are not large enough to affect the main plot—such an antagonist would never even notice or object to her doing these things—but they are still driven by the character’s fight against the antagonist.

Self-definition. Let’s go back to what I said early on in that last point, about how fighting someone evil could motivate a character to become a better person, i.e. “Here is a bad person. I am not going to be like that person. I am going to be a good person.”

Think of the times you’ve seen an antagonist say something akin to, “We’re more alike than you think.” If the character in question has a strong sense of self and knows himself to be nothing like the antagonist, he’ll cast this comment off without troubling himself about it and return to his attempts to bring the villain down. A character questioning himself—especially a character already questioning whether or not he really is so different from the antagonist—could have his confidence shattered by such a comment. If so, he could spend a lot of time second-guessing his decisions, questioning his worth, and wondering whether it might be better if someone else took over trying to defeat the antagonist, instead. Eventually, through the support of friends, successes against the antagonist, or sheer willpower, this character might come to realize that he is, in fact, very different from the villain. Or he might realize that their different actions outweigh any similarities. Alternatively, his downward spiral could continue until he, too, becomes a villain.

(Of course, in cases where the villain is a main character—as in the Artemis Fowl series—this could be flipped: an upward spiral results in the villain becoming a hero, or at least someone less villainous.)

Trust issues. How much an antagonist affects a character’s trust of other people depends partly on the character’s personality but also on the circumstances of the broken trust. Some situations that might make it difficult for the character to trust other people include:

- the antagonist is a former friend or lover
- the antagonist has many supporters or spies
- the antagonist turns the character’s current friends against her
- the antagonist exercises some sort of mind control

The last point is a weird one because it can affect a character’s trust only temporarily—or not at all, depending on whether the mind control in question is some sort of Imperius Curse/Jedi mind-trick or something more akin to blackmail. If a forcible, unavoidable sort of control like the former is used, the character might not trust anyone, but only until the antagonist is defeated and the mind control is lifted. If the antagonist uses blackmail to gain extra henchpeople, the character might not develop any trust issues at all because she understands why the people who betray her do so. Even if she feels she can no longer trust those particular people, she will probably have no issue trusting others who have given her no reason to lose faith in them. Even though they are indirect, these trust issues are still caused by the antagonist.

NAREVIWRIMOwritten by Gravity < PM: >

All September long, YWS is celebrating National Review Writing Month (NaRevWriMo or RevMo for short). The challenge is to write 50 reviews in 30 days.

The stakes are high, if you manage to win, you get a colored name for the month of October and badges. If not, it's wonderful that you tried!

This September we have over 100 participants, and right now in the lead is @RagingLive with 35 reviews after just a week! Live is followed by @steampowered and @artybirdy with 28 and 23 reviews respectively.

Right now, we have lots of people with just one review, I know personally I've only done 2. Comment #NaRevWriMo2015 with a wall post to show encouragement and support for all of those who are participating.

And for all those who aren't participating... it is not too late to start!

LET IT GO, LET IT OUT!written by Skydreamer < PM: >

It's funny how the Frozen character who racked up millions and millions (and more) for Disney, was so close to being a villian, which may have changed the way kids perceive Elsa. Maybe Ana would've been the main one getting all the praise, and the one kids would be dressing up as. If the writers of the song "Let it Go" hadn't come up with such a riveting, and passionate, and defiant cry of a song, the whole franchise would've been a flop.

Now, I am, like many, a big Disney fan. I know a lot of the Disney songs by heart, and I always smile everytime I come across a picture of Simba or Timon and Pumbaa. However, I've also grown up and learned about some of the issues with Disney's princess genre and we all know that not all girls are as unbelievebly skinny as the Disney princess' are. Nor are most girl's dreams to one day 'marry a prince' (at least, hopefully not the only dream). Times have changed, or rather, times have shifted to the way they were supposed to be in the first place. Women are more than capable of doing just about anything a man can do, and making all women seem like dress-makers and helpless damsels, just doesn't make sense anymore.

Disney recongnizing this, wanted to change their princess genre's message to girls 'being capable enough'. (For a first example, we could go back to the time of Mulan, that movie was great, and for me, my anthem growing up.) Recently though, Brave is a great example of this, however it wasn't as big of a splash, there could be many reasons for this, but I think that Brave was actually more of a movie for older people to see Disney's attempts in changing how princess' are, rather than being an interesting movie for kids. That said, that's just my opinion. My teacher back when the movie came out, said that her daughter loved Brave, so it resonated with some kids for sure. And I thought it was a good movie. But even though it was good, it wasn't good enough, and neither was Tangled's Rapunzel with her frying pan antics, they needed an even more head-strong, independent woman.

Ana, why not? Ana was probably Disney's first hope in breaking the perception that they built that they were backwords in their princess genre, but if Ana was the focus of the film, it would have flopped for sure. She was still quite a, what should I say? Ditz? Obsessed with girly things? Wanted to marry a stranger? And they would have ran with that too if Elsa's role in the movie hadn't drastically changed.

Okay so, they originally wanted Elsa to be the villian, but they changed their mind to make her the hero. What does that have to do with this post? Well, this post is about letting things go, or out rather. Not bottling up our pains or frustrations, but letting them out as they come to us. We should understand that some days our problems will be too heavy to carry, and we might need a little cry, or shout, or a throw of a fist in the air and a scream. Whatever that doesn't cause harm to ourself or anyone else, that we need to do to let it all go.

That song changed the whole movie, and helped Disney out by creating a female hero (other than Mulan) to save someone, and to basically save the entire movie. (Though the movie's overall quality could be debated) Why? Because it was a beautiful song of being tired of holding the pains of ones life in, something I'm sure all of the directors, and creators of the movie could understand. It was a cry, a passionate, cry of hurt that had been hidden deep in, and yet it had a positive undertone of inner strength.

Recongnizing that you have been in a bad situation, or that you have been hurt, allows you to put it away from you, and see the root of the issue, or problem. And the least it could do, is allow you to breathe a little. We're meant to feel feelings for a reason, we need to know what's bothering us. Sometimes it's easier to realize these things than other times, but when we know what it is, that is when we can work on it, and change.

Once they heard that song, they knew that character had the chance to change, she wasn't evil for no reason, she was ill-treated and she needed to heal. She needed to go away for a while, and build her strength. That she loved people and her sister. And that because of her cry, her acknowledgement of herself and who she was, she was able to heal.

So the next time you're going through something horrible or frustrating, or whatever, just let it out. Cry out, express your frustration, then take yourself out of it, or figure out what's the root problem, and try to find a solution. Don't be afraid to recongnize the pain, but just make sure to let it go.

Have a wonderful week! Peace!

NEW ARRIVALS
written by BlueAfrica < PM: >

Take a moment to welcome this week’s newest members to the site!

@VanillaXKnight has received their first review star! Head over to their wall to congratulate her .

@emilycaroleena has posted in the Welcome Mat. Click here to welcome her to the site !

@Sagitta wants to review your works! Click here to leave a request .

THIS WEEK'S ROUNDUP – 9/6written by megsug < PM: >

Necromancy everywhere! This roundup is full of reawakened threads.


@Falconer wants to better her art and is looking for advice, but she’s also looking to show off some really cool concepts. Her first picture was a unicorn girl mutant, and the second was this interesting picture:







She got some great advice on how to draw human figures and how to proportion things with the unicorn girl. Now, she’s looking for advice on how to draw short hair realistically. She plans on posting more pictures soon.


@Ravaien asked what POVs people preferred, first, second, or third. After multiple bouts of forum necromancy, people have a pretty solid consensus that second person is weird. @TriSARAHtops discussed a book that used it well. Otherwise, the opinions are pretty split between whether first or third is better. @comrie prefers third. She says:






So, what POV is the best? Tell us why?


Some more necromancy has had people posting their favorite characters on the anime show Hetalia. @ashtheawesome12401 had no doubts:







What country has claimed all of your affection? Tell your fellow Hetalia fans!


@TheGirlNextDoor wrote an article on outlining with index cards. It’s fairly insightful and full of useful information for anyone who struggles to outline or isn’t familiar with the index card technique. She says it’s useful largely because:







Try out a new outlining process today!

SHAMELESS PLUGS

written by SquillsBot < PM: >

We love to run articles and questions, but we also love to advertise for you. Let people know about your new blog, a poem or story you’re looking for reviews on, or a forum thread you’d like more traffic on through Squills’ Shameless Plugs. PM @SquillsBot with the exact formatting of your advertisement, contained in the following code.

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Lights are seen as the symbol of purity, innocence, and goodness. But what happens when you find a red one able to move things with invisible hands? That's what happens to Merah. After meeting a light named Scarlet, she realizes there are bad lights threatening teenagers everywhere.

Between her new challenge to save humankind and the family issues she’s had for a long time, Merah faces secrets and surprises, betrayal and bravery. Can she solve all her problems and find a happy ending?




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