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. 15 & 16 Challenge
2. FM Interview
3. Quibbles
4. Adventures in Writing
5. New Arrivals
6. Weekly Round Up
7. Shameless Plugs
8. Subscribers

15 & 16 Challengewritten by Pretzelstick < PM: >

Heya Squillsamigos! Today I have a really fun and motivating article that I got to write. It’s basically a wrap up of the 2015 Reading Challenge and encouraging everyone to enter the 2016 Reading Challenge! If you want to learn or know more about what this is all about, this is the perfect article to read or reference. Here is a picture of the new list for the 2016 Challenge, and it’s surely to get you excited in some of the categories:


And this week, I have interviewed the host of these challenges @manisha, along with @Dracula and @Reneia two champion winners (that I am aware of) that have finally won and completed the whole 50 list of books for the 2015 challenge. Here are some different perspectives, but all of them seem like they love to read books!


manisha: When I first saw the challenge, I knew this was the perfect way to discover new genres. And what better place to share the challenge with than YWS? Doing it with people who share the love for books is so much more enjoyable.
Dracula: I wanted to discover some new favourites that I wouldn't have read otherwise. And I did!
Reneia: Well, I had high hopes that I could complete it! I've always been considered the fastest reader in my school... so I thought I could do it in 6 months XD Well, that didn't happen, but I did finish it about a month early, which is an accomplishment!
Also, I joined because I wanted to discover new books and genres and see if I found anything that I really liked! And I did!


m: More great books. 2016 Reading Challenge has some amazing categories. I cannot wait to start tackling the books, I’m really looking forward to reading a political memoir.
D: Discovering more fantastic books.
R: I am doing the next challenge! I'm joining mainly for the same reasons that I did last time, but now that I know what victory feels like... Completing something after almost a year of working on it feels really good. That may sound a little... I don't know... but still. If you completed it, you know what it feels like. I, to be honest, jumped up and danced around in my room for a while before posting that last book XD


m: Just one? I’d have to say To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee It’s a book I should have already read and I’m glad I finally got to it, I loved everything about it.
D: I never even considered reading biographies before the challenge, but Frank McCourt's novel called 'Angela's Ashes' was really interesting. It taught me a lot about the life he came from, and made me laugh hysterically at times.


m: To not read a book that I’ve previously read (unless the challenge demands it of course). The Challenge is about finding epic books, classics to hidden gems, and I want to devour as many as possible.
D: To read all the books in the list, and more.
R: My goal, I guess I would say, would be to beat my time this year. Get it done faster than I did last year. Also, I think I should explore a bit more, and not just re-read the same types of books that I already read.


m: If you love stories, you love books, the Challenge is a great way to make that experience extra fun. You also end up discovering books you would not have otherwise.
D: You'll discover a whole pile of books to love that you would normally skip right past. It's like hide and seek. All the brilliant books are hiding from you in the book store, and you just need this list to help you find them!
R: JOIN IT. Believe me! It's super fun to do a challenge that helps you broaden your horizons and discover that you like things that you didn't even know existed. Also: It's nice to win.


D: Relieved, proud, and eager to start reading the next book in my to-be-read pile.
R: I actually did expect to complete it, to be honest. I'm, like I said, a really fast reader. A speed reader. So I knew, if I put my mind to it, that I could do it! And I'm sure you can do it too!


That a wrap folks. If you would like to join the 2016 Reading Challenge, feel free to sign up and code your entry post with @TriSARAHtops kind offering to code the whole thing for us.

Mini Challenge: manisha was said that there are only 40 categories of books to be read, and we need 10 more so that the list is complete and we have fifty to be read. If you have any creative ideas, PM them to me, and I will not only forward them to @manisha, but also feature them as a follow up for my next article, whatever that may be.

For a follow up of last week’s posts, I asked all of you what you think that the YWSLJ cover looked like, and I sadly only got one response from @Wolfie36. Time to honor and reward them by quoting what this cover image is to them:






Thank you everyone who participated in the 2015 Reading Challenge! We hope to all see you there next year! And that concludes the article edition of Squills! Y’all have an amazing holiday season, and talk to you soon!

FEATURED MEMBER INTERVIEW WITH LIGHTSONGwritten by Elysium < PM: >

Hello! Elysium your community reporter here for an interview with our Featured Member, @Lightsong!



Lightsong: No, I wasn't, but I did want to be Featured Member as it was one of my goals as YWS member. I just didn't expect it to be this fast. :p



L:As the announcement has mentioned, my activity in Resource forum was noted, but it was still a surprise to me. I like to give opinions and advices on writing despite not being terribly good at it, and I guess the staffs appreciate that.




L: It's a difficult thing to decide. I like reviewing, but despite my many reviews, I'm actually picky, so sometimes I review something I don't enjoy. I would say being active in the forum as a poster to be my favourite thing to do as it triggers discussions. Writing and reviewing come second.




L: Hmm, after pondering of the reasons why I'm chosen to be one, the only advice I can give to them are: focus on the thing you like! If you like reviewing, keep doing that while improving your reviewing skills. If you're like me who likes to advise people, keep reading about things so that you gain the information needed to put in your advice. Sooner or later, people will realize what's you been doing and you'll be chosen as FM for that!

Thank you for all of your great answers, and thanks for reading this edition of Squills!

QUIBBLES
Agonizing Over Antecedents
written by Lavvie < PM: >

We’ve all read a sentence where everything seems to be placed correctly and yet, when we arrive at the period, our mind boggles in some sort of strange misunderstanding. Ofttimes, if not due to weirdly placed commas or sabotaging contronyms, this is because we have just experienced the dastardly antecedent disagreement. This is when the pronoun does not agree in number (such as singular or plural) with the thing it is referring to, which is called the antecedent.

In grammar, the antecedent is the word being referred to by the pronoun. For example:

Santa Claus ate his cookie.

Rudolph likes his nose (now).

The children opened their presents.

Rachel lit the menorah. It was a Jewish tradition in her family.

Every underlined word is the antecedent and every word in bold is the pronoun. All of these are simple examples of pronoun-antecedent agreement. Santa Claus is a singular word, therefore the pronoun used is singular. The same goes for lighting the menorah because it is a singular phrase. Children, however, is plural, so the pronoun must be plural. These are all examples of antecedents being referred to with third-person personal pronouns.



Antecedents can also be referred to using demonstrative or relative pronouns. Demonstrative pronouns are these, those, that, and this. Relative pronouns are who, whom, whose, and which.

Demonstrative: Mrs. Claus cooks on an induction stove. This is very efficient.

Relative: Many people celebrate the Winter Solstice, which can be a way to enjoy the holidays secularly.

Demonstrative: When snow falls, people like to go sledding, skiing, and skating. These activities are often paired with a steaming cup of hot chocolate or mulled wine.

Relative: For the holidays, lots of people travel to Bethlehem, which is in the Muslim country of Palestine.

Easy, right? Well, sometimes pronoun-antecedent agreement can be a little tricky, especially when you introduce such horrible grammar things as collective nouns, singular indefinite pronouns, and correlative conjunctions.

Collective nouns are nouns that act as a unit, like family, team, and choir. Because of this, the pronoun used is always dependent on the behaviour of the antecedent. If the members of the collective are all doing the same thing in the same way, then the pronoun must be singular.

The YWS family is cognizant of its diversity.

However, if the members of the collective are acting each in a different way, then the pronoun must be plural.

The members YWS sent lots of chocolate to their favourite Quibbles columnist. (Hint hint...)

Singular indefinite pronouns consist of the following pronouns like everyone, somebody, nobody, anything, either, neither, and it goes on. When these are used as antecedents, people might jump to conclusions and use a plural pronoun for agreement. However, despite the fact that a word like “everyone” implies that there is more than one person, a singular pronoun must be used to make correct agreement. For example:

After the holiday dinner, everyone needed to unbutton his or her pants to make room for dessert.

Notice how I used “his or her” in place of the seemingly logical instinct to write “their”? That is because the antecedent is a singular indefinite pronoun.

Correlative conjunctions can be pesky when it comes to making correct pronoun-antecedent agreement. Some examples of these things are: either...or, neither...nor, not only...but also. So, if the second antecedent of a sentence is plural, then the pronoun must be plural. However, if the second antecedent of a sentence is singular, then the pronoun must be singular. For example:

Plural second antecedent: Neither Donner nor his colleagues were eager to spend their entire night flying a sleigh around the world.
Singular second antecedent: Not only the shoppers but also Kevin the Cashier was grateful for the Boxing Day sales.

Overall, I think it is fairly obvious that antecedent agreements can be pesky little things but it is important to know how to write them properly. When written incorrectly, a sentence might sound strange and awkward. In fact, a lot of people who get reviews saying some of their sentences are, in fact, some of the biggest pronoun-antecedent agreement criminals. This time, both reviewer and reviewee can set out in our wide YWS world with a reason for that awkwardness

ADVENTURES IN WRITINGwritten by BlueAfrica < PM: >

Recently, I read an article titled “You, Dear Author, Are Not the Narrator” . The main point was that while we write our stories, we don’t narrate them.

Wait, what?

Let’s think about this. Sometimes it’s obvious that the writer isn’t the narrator, as in the case of The Book Thief, narrated by Death. Other times, the difference between author and narrator is harder to catch.

A prime example is in creative nonfiction (memoir and personal essays), but there are three great examples from fiction: The Princess Bride by William Goldman, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, and The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. All three use fictionalized versions of the authors as narrators to lend a note of authenticity to the stories. They do such a great job that many readers believe their stories actually happened or actually could have happened, and William Goldman, in particular, even ignited some indignation on GoodReads.



This, of course, is because Narrator Goldman claims to have abridged a novel by one S. Morgenstern, a great Florinese writer. He also spends a lot of time talking about how he was originally introduced to the book by his father and how he introduced his son to the book, which was when he realized it needed some serious abridging.

But Real Goldman doesn’t have a son; he has two daughters. S. Morgenstern is a fictional person, and Florin and Guilder are fictional countries.

Similarly, Yann Martel tells the story of learning the story of Pi. Narrator Martel (the writer in the story is never named, but I have always read him as a version of Yann Martel) leads us from his failed attempt to write a novel about Portugal from a hill station in India to his interviews with grown-up Pi in Canada. In this book, it’s a lot trickier to peel fiction from reality, as Pondicherry, Toronto, and Mexico are all real places. Nonetheless, Life of Pi is a fictional account.

The Little Prince is more fantastical than Life of Pi, but the narrator is known only as “the Pilot,” which was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s occupation first in the French Air Force and then international airmail and commercial flight. Additionally, like the narrator of this novella, Saint-Exupéry crashed in the Sahara Desert in 1935 but ultimately survived.

In all of these cases, the narrator is either a fictionalized version of the author or has an occupation or experiences similar to the author. Even in memoir, the narrator is a fictionalized version of the author, which is why memoir is classified separately from traditional nonfiction.

In memoir or other forms of creative nonfiction, such as personal essays, the narrator-authors may show more of a particular trait than the real-life authors do. For example, an author might play up her stubborn streak to make the story more interesting or the motivation behind her actions clearer.

Next week we’ll talk about why it’s good to develop a narrative voice. Before then, be sure to check out BlueAfrica’s Narrative Voice Contest !

NEW ARRIVALS
written by BlueAfrica < PM: >



@babydollblues had earned their first review star! Go to their wall to congratulate them .

@sammielovestowrite opened a post in the Welcome Mat. Click here to welcome her to the site .

@ceealexx01 has published a literary work called “Heart Failure.” Click here to read it and leave a review .

THIS WEEK'S ROUNDUP – 12/13written by megsug < PM: >

Get into the holiday spirit with a movie or helping someone out with a research project, requesting a Christmas themed drawing or… writing advice?


Six years ago, @Rosendorn gifted the site with an article about beginnings along with examples of how to do it right along with explanations of what makes it right and a few stats. Did you know that you normally have three pages to hook a reader in a novella and three paragraphs in a short story? Did you know that if you want to be published traditionally, you have even less? Rosey explains:







This article gives some great tips for writing the best paragraph you’ve got, and three items to include to snag a reader’s attention. Check it out!


@Hattable is offering MS Paint sketches of anything you ask for, 50 points a pop. His drawings have been pretty impressive even with the questionable platform. One of my favorites was his response to @Reneia’s request of : “Can you draw a fancy eye?”



Leave your request and 50 points at his door, and Hattable will draw something for you too!


@Paracosm is doing research on bullying and is asking for some personal accounts. He asks that users leave out their names, the names of any individuals within the account, and location for internet safety. While he doesn’t want to limit what users discuss, he leaves these questions for users to answer:







A few users have already shared their stories. Add yours.


@Dracula needs a few movie suggests to spice up her holiday season! Several people have already come to answer the call of need, but @Blaspherica suggested:







Which was seconded by @Elysium. Add to Dracula’s list or start a list of your own with the suggestions already there!

SHAMELESS PLUGS

written by SquillsBot < PM: >

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