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. LETTER FROM THE EDITORS
2. FM INTERVIEW
3. QUIBBLES: DABBLING IN DIALECTS
4. TWO CENTS: CANTOS
5. WRITER'S WORLD: WRITING A NOVEL
6. NEW ARRIVALS
7. WEEKLY ROUNDUP
7. SUBSCRIBERS

Dear Squillsies,

This week's edition of Squills was not posted until Wednesday due to a mishap with final articles. We apologize for the delay and wanted to take this opportunity to thank all our readers for being so active and supportive in the Squills community. Truly, we would not have Squills without you all. Thank you all for being wonderful readers and for supporting the newsletter we work so hard to put together each week.

Sincerely,

megsug, Gravity and Lavvie

FEATURED MEMBER INTERVIEW: ELLSTAR



written by megsug < PM: >


Ellstar joined six months ago and already has 212 reviews. They were made featured member, so Squills talked to them about that.





Ellstar: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH







E: If I remember correctly, I was just logging onto YWS like a normal person and I came across the featured member bar. See the above question for my reaction.







E: Because of my shining charisma and personality.


Actually, no, I think it had to do a lot with reviews. I haven't been doing a lot of those lately, with exams and all, but I hope to do some more of that during the holiday if my father doesn't force me to family vacation. I still feel bad for the green room, and everyday it grows I have an inevitable urge to jump off a cliff. But that's for another time. I have finals to think about, now.





E: BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH





E: I think I've said it once at some point, but I do genuinely feel bad for the people in the green room who are still waiting for 2 reviews. I'm often one of those people (if I'm not wrong, I still have at least one work in there), but I don't mind if nobody reviews my stuff. I can handle myself well enough. But some people really do need help, and I've been in some unrelated situations where I've felt helpless and alone, and it's not a particularly good feeling. If I can help, I probably will, even if that help is unsolicited. It's one of my more annoying and self-destructive traits, unfortunately.







E: Honestly, I didn't want to be featured member at first. Some people mentioned it (I'm looking at you, @Ithaca ), but it wasn't really my sort of thing. YWS has a lot of facilities that helped me become a more social human being and sort of developed who I am, to some extent, and what I believe in. So really, the only advice I can give is sort of cheesy and really isn't particularly helpful: if you want to be featured member, that's great, but if you haven't already appreciate YWS for what it is. If you want to be loved by something, to some extent you do have to genuinely love it in return. Once you do, everything else follows naturally. You might start reviewing more, or you may join tournaments, or just mess around in the forums, or something of that form, but how you feel will show. And if it doesn't, you have to be braver about it. Share your passion. People won't bite.




E: I'm sorry if I sounded like a walrus with Tourette's reading a particularly ridiculous Lewis Carroll poem. Also, I might be dead for the next week. Not genuinely dead, but online dead. Take care, folks.

QUIBBLES
DABBLING IN DIALECTS
written by Lavvie < PM: >

When it comes to focussing on characterization, dialogue has proved time and time again to be effective in rounding out the finer points of our favourite literary babies. Not only does dialogue possess the power to explicitly express the thoughts and feelings of a character who might not be under the spell of an omniscient narrator, but it allows us, as writers, to detail a character’s speech, be it through an accent, dialect, or even a foreign language. Yes, despite the title of this week’s Quibbles, I will also address the use of accents and foreign languages as well as dialect in dialogue.

First what are the differences? A foreign language is simple: it is a language that is different from the principal one being spoken or written in a certain region or piece of literature. Because YWS is an English website, French or Swahili or Arabic are considered foreign languages here. Almost every language has its own accents and dialects, but for my purposes I will only be talking about English language accents and dialects within dialogue. An accent refers to how someone pronounces words. For example, someone from the East Coast of Canada might pronounce the word “about” as “aboot”, while their Western counterpart is likely to say “about” as if it rhymes with “out”. These two people both speak the language standard Canadian English, except with different accents. A dialect, on the other hand, is what words are used, how they’re pronounced, and then how they are used to form sentences. In the Southern states, it is not uncommon to hear the word “y’all” (a contraction of you and all) although someone from the North might not employ the contraction at all. “Y’all” is a word that belongs to the Southern dialect. People in more rural parts of Canada often say “I seen” as in “I seen that dog cross the street”, while their more educated city-slicker counterparts will say “I saw that dog cross the street”. In some places “bag” sounds the same as “beg”. Although there may be some grammatical inconsistencies in certain dialects, they are generally not inherently wrong because they contribute to the culture and personality of the people and the area in which they love. To an extent, these dialects and accents come to define the people, their way of life, and their home.

Lots of famous authors have employed an accent or dialect (and sometimes both) in their works to tap into the unique atmosphere and personality created by said language structures. For example, Margaret Mitchell uses both in Gone With the Wind and Kathryn Stockett uses them in her book The Help. It is important to know the risks of employing an accent, a dialect, or both in dialogue, because people can find them offensive and discriminatory. In both of the books I mentioned above, the two authors, as they were both white, did receive criticism for changing the dialogue of their dominant black characters, while not doing so for the white characters. Arguably, the accent and dialogue was representative of the black characters’ backgrounds and remained true to reality, yet both Mitchell and Stockett didn’t do so with their white characters, whose speech in reality remains relatively phonetically similar to their black counterparts. Using accent and dialect is fine and dandy, but you should also be sensitive to any social and political issues that surround them and in what context.

Another issue with using accent and dialect is that it can make the dialogue difficult to read. For example, accents are written phonetically using nonstandard spellings. This can lead to the dialogue being very much a guessing game for the reading who might not be versed in the accents from whence the character comes. People generally read word by word and to force them to read letter by letter can be irritating and ultimately detract from the actual story being told. If you insist on a character’s accent, an alternative is by stating it, thus making it clear to the reader how the character speaks but not insisting on writing their dialogue phonetically each and every time they open their mouth. For example, you could write, “Caitriona's Scottish roots were evident in the way she spoke, with a thick, heavy brogue.” Here, we are communicating that Caitriona that has a strong Scottish accent and yet we avoid the pressure of phonetically writing it as such in her dialogue. Not only is it easier for the reader in the long-term, but the author manages to avoid any sort of discrimination that might go along with the accent.

Writing in dialects can be a lot easier, because it doesn’t demand a total upheaval of standard spelling. Canadian English is one dialect, American English another, British English a third. The only thing with dialects is that the author is expected to be well-versed in the particular vocabulary and sentence formations of the dialect being used. Usually, that’s not terribly difficult if one is writing in their own dialect, has read a lot of books, and/or listened to a variety of films and radio shows. One of the hardest things about dialect in the nonstandard grammar. As we have stricter rules of grammar when it comes to standard English, every dialect has their own unwritten grammar rules. For the very reason that they are unwritten, writing a dialect that you are unfamiliar with can be a little challenging. It’s all about what sounds right and this knowing what sounds right is developed unconsciously at a young age through linguistic patterns. So when an author is trying to write dialect authentically, if they are not in tune with the nonstandard grammar, they risk sounding fake or, again, the author might be blamed for stereotyping.

Foreign language is a little easier, unless you actually don’t know the language. In that case, I would suggest you refrain from using the language (because Google Translate is definitely not accurate) or consult a native speaker of the language. The biggest thing about writing some parts of dialogue in a foreign language is the integration of the language. My advice is that the foreign language is featured for only the first few instances and then the dialogue switches into English. What is assumed then is that the person might still be talking in their foreign language but for reading comprehension the author is writing in English. But first, the integration! Avoid parentheses, as this insinuates the content between them is not so important. Avoid having the character repeat what they said in English, as this detracts from authenticity. Your best bet is to include the translation in italics almost immediately after. For example:

”Je vous en prie,” Sophie said to the Olivier, as he thanked her for opening the door. You’re welcome.

The integration is pretty much seamless with italics and does not disrupt the flow of the story, like brackets or em-dashes might.

In essence, accent, dialect, and foreign language add a welcome flavour to the creative piece. They definitely can be used to highlight a character’s background, heritage, and history, and make things feel more authentic if you’re writing in a setting that is known for its language. However, you must always employ such things with caution, as there is always the underlying risk of coming off as discriminatory and insensitive as these aspects of languages could stereotype certain social minorities. When in doubt, consult an expert. You know, someone who is from that area, from that background, or speaks in such a way.

TWO CENTS: CANTOSwritten by Aley < PM: >

There used to be chapters in poetry just like there are chapters in books. As stories have paragraphs, poems have stanzas. As poems have lines, stories have sentences. These things are remembered, and, in some way, stretched.

The canto is a lost word of poetry lore which used to be commonplace until about the time that Walt Whitman took over around the time of the civil war. This article is going to be about the dying word and what it used to stand for.

The first thing to understand is that back when poetry was at it's prime, it was the main story telling device because most people were illiterate. You could share a poem you remembered, and read a poem easier than the Latin they required for prose. Back in that day, nobles would hire writers to write for them. They would commission them, pay them, house them, and feed them just to keep writing. The way writers earned these wealthy lives was by writing things the nobles wanted to hear. Mostly, this was stories. Sometimes, they would write love poems and things like that as well, but the most popular were plays, epics, and poems. So, when you wrote a story for the Queen of England, it was bound to be masterfully crafted, beautiful to read, and that, was poetry.

At the time, tradition had brought forth Cantos as a method to break up books of poetry. Like our novels today, epics were written in long, flowing verse, often rhymed, and broken into stanzas. Those stanzas were clumped together in cantos, sort of like the act in a play, or a chapter in a book. The Canto was a placeholder, and often changed scenes, characters, or subjects.

The Canto is a necessary part of an epic poem because epics are stories. Just like The Odyssey couldn't be consumed in a single sitting now, neither can these epics. To really make an epic, therefore, you have to have a way to break it up into parts. Today, this is usually done by roman numerals, and these, regretfully, are considered stanzas.

That's right, today, a section of poetry that is distinguished from another section of poetry by a roman numeral, is a stanza. That means you have stanzas in the stanza. So if you look at a poem that has I, II, III, and IV in different parts, from the stanza right after I to the stanza right before II is one stanza. That used to be cantos. The stanza collective marked by a roman numeral would be considered a canto.

This changed around the time Walt Whitman was writing, and it might have even been because of him. When he wrote, he changed the ideas in poetry to such an extent that his poem "Song of Myself" helped create a change away from it being considered cantos and to stanzas. At the time it came out, it wasn't really taken as a serious thing, but the poem grew, and grew with every edition of "Leaves of Grass" and he added stanzas under new headers. In total it has 52 headers, and each section is a different unique length.

Because of the variation of subject, the style of the writing, and the way the poem was put together, this couldn't be considered a canto. A canto was a chapter, it was a part of the story, a conclusion of something and an open to something else. These breaks were not that.

After Whitman became popular, which took a while, this change from cantos to stanzas also became popular as a way of talking about poetry. Now, we don't say Canto 4 when we're referring to the area marked 4, we say Stanza 4 despite it being anywhere from stanza 4 to 28 or more. This can be confusing because there is also a stanza 4 that is the fourth group of text offset by an empty line.

So, if you're writing an epic, and you don't want to confuse people, you can, by all rights, say Canto 4, or, you can just go with the tried and true 4 and leave them to figure it out for themselves.

Now you know.

WRITER'S WORLD: WRITING A NOVELwritten by Lightsong < PM: >

I wrote my first novel, The Thirteen Zodiac, four years ago. I was an excited lad, convinced that my writing was good enough to accept this challenge. My mind was cramped with fantasy ideas, and I thought I could finish it. This was the surge of adrenaline writers often got when they started their first novel with the unwavering belief they could finish it, knowing they had finished many short stories. Some would share my optimism that being a good writer was enough to finish a novel.

Unfortunately, it was wishful thinking; short stories weren’t novel. I stopped at Chapter 12, unable to fit my ideas into the story I made. There was a lot of things need to be filled, and the issues I had were beginner writer’s issue: I made a conflict at the start of each chapter and resolved it at the end of each chapter. Not to mention, there was only a reader that consistently criticized my story, and though she liked it, I could sense she was going easy on me.

That didn’t mean I stopped writing entirely. I still made short stories and poems, but I couldn’t continue my novel. There were many characters I had introduced, and I couldn’t figure out what to do with them. Then, I stumbled onto Young Writers Society (YWS). I made an account, posted my poem, and got positive feedbacks. It wasn’t only the compliments that made me stay in YWS. It was also because of the numerous reviews I got. I felt I could improve right then.

After a while, I found out about Last Man Standing (LMS). It was about writing a novel chapter per week and finding out who would be the last person to maintain that activity. There was a few subchapters I had made, and I stopped writing novel for a while because of the lack of interest and all. LMS became my motivation, and I continued writing again, free of worry that people might not review my novel. I got reviews, and they became the fuel I needed to progress.

I’m still writing that novel now, which is titled Bad Lights, Good Lights. It’s still a fantasy novel, but upon reviews, I’ve fixed the issues I had in my previous attempt of writing a novel. I have reviewers following my novel, and I’m very grateful of that because not only they help me write better, they also support me to keep writing.

All of this shows that while you can motivate yourself to keep writing, there will be a need in the writer self of yours to have your novel reviewed. Because of this, you have to prepare yourself some reviewers, because the reviews they give you will help you to improve your novel--be it in terms of plot, character, or settings.

The easiest way to get reviewers is by asking help to those close to you. You can ask your friends, siblings, or parents to review it for you. You can even ask your English teacher if you want his or her informed review about grammar, plot or world-building. If you’re uncomfortable to ask them, you can ask people online. YWS for example is an excellent site to get reviews; Will Review For Food is definitely the place you want to check out for this.

After that, when you know you need to fix this, or you can improve that, the determination to do so would motivate you to keep going. Writing a novel is a teaching experience; it requires a lot of efforts and dedications, and through it, you exercise your patience and observation skills to notice details you can fix. At the end, you would find out writing a novel is worth the time--the sense of satisfaction you feel after finishing a chapter makes you want more.

NEW ARRIVALS
written by Lavvie < PM: >

THIS WEEK'S ROUND UP 5/22 written by megsug < PM: >

Hate is fought with art, books, and GIFS in this week's round up.


@AlexSushiDog introduced a thread of hate a few weeks ago. It's basically a great place for ranting and emotional release. Things can be silly, but some comments hit pretty close to home like @ChocolateCello's:





Want to make your own secret hatred known? All you have to do is start the sentence with "I HATE..." And type in all-caps.


@soundofmind took commissions for character art last month and is starting to post the pictures now. The profile she did of @DrThomas' character Astrid Race is lovely:



Currently, soundofmind isn't taking commissions, but when the six she has are done, she'll accept more. She asks for points with totals between 100 and 450 depending on how complex the piece is. She also won't do anything 18+, babies, gore, backgrounds, or anthro. Check out her thread just for the art though!


@AllisontheWriter reviewed Adela's Curse favorably. It's a YA fantasy novel about a fairy captured by mortals they read in exchange for a review on their own novel. I think the last part of her review is the most telling:







Check out the rest of the review to see if Adela's Curse is a book for you!


@Iggy started a war in 2014. It was horrifying but entertaining, consisting purely of the best GIFs the internet has to offer. A few weeks ago @KeepWriting reignited the violence that had known peace for over a year with this GIF:



Add to the chaos with your own GIF! Or steal the ones being posted for use elsewhere.

SUBSCRIBERS

written by SquillsBot < PM: >

Find enspoiler-ed a list of our subscribers!



Do you, too, want to be enspoiler-ed and receive a personal weekly notification when the Squills newsletter is posted? Shoot a PM over to SquillsBot to let him know, and you'll be pinged along with the next issue!