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. GREEN ROOM GALLERY
2. WRITER'S WORLD
3. TWO CENTS: ROMANCE
4. NEW ARRIVALS
5. SHAMELESS PLUGS
6. SUBSCRIBERS

GREEN ROOM GALLERYwritten by Holysocks < PM: >


With RevMo kicking off, the Green Room is getting a lot of much needed love!  Works seem to be flying right out of there!  I can hardly wait to see what it will be like in a few weeks!  But if you’re looking for something to quench your review cravings, there are still plenty of stories awaiting your mad typing skills!  Here’s ten works from the hearth of the Green Room:

Thrallmagic: Chapter 32 by @TheCrimsonLady
Thrallmagic is a fantasy novel!  To check out the first chapter, click here

My Life in a Bizarre Town: Chapter 9 by @kman134
My Life in a Bizarre Town is a teen fiction and supernatural novel! To check out the prologue, click here
Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for language and mature content.

The Pilgrim- Chapter Five by @Catalyst
The Pilgrim is a fantasy novel!  To check out the first chapter, click
here


War of Dawn - Chapter 21 by @Costa
War of Dawn is a fantasy novel! To check out the first chapter, click here
 

Words Written in Lightning: Chapter 5 [Final Draft] by @BlueJayWalker10
Words Written in Lightning is a fantasy novel! To check out the first chapter, click here
 Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for language and violence.

LYGHT-Chapter 2 by @mmbmio
LYGHT is a fantasy novel (starting to see a trend here)! There was no first chapter that I could find. Warning: This work has been rated 16+.

Tryal’s Curse 23.1 by @Pompadour
Tryal’s Curse is a fantasy novel! To check out the first chapter, click here

Einar (First Draft)- Chapter 5 by @haredrier
Einar is a action/adventure, fantasy novel! To check out the first chapter, click here

For What It’s Worth: Part two by @Joelsweet
For What It’s Worth is a fantasy short story!  To check out the first part, click here

Castellum Chapter 2 by @Oswin1800
Castellum is a fantasy novel! To check out the first chapter, click here

And that is all for this weeks edition of the Green Room Gallery.  Keep working on shining up that Green Room, everyone!  Remember, Green Room reviews get you 25 extra points!  Chow!

WRITER’S WORLD: Downpour of Cultural Informationwritten by Lightsong  < PM: >
 
YWS members come from different places, so it is only logical to find some of them are not native English speakers. They might come from Europe or Asia, but the fact remains that they provide different cultural information. What does that have to do with their role as a writer in this site? A writing advice says, ‘Write what you know.’ If the previous article talked about putting down our fantastical ideas, here I am going to talk about the importance of inserting cultural information in our writings.
 
What is so important that we should weave cultural information into our writing? Firstly, it would provide a better understanding about cultures around the world. Take Malaysia for an example; the country is multiracial, multicultural, and multireligious. It is located at the Southeast Asia, surrounded by neighboring countries such as Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, and Philippines. As a Malaysian, I find it shocking to discover that few people know about the country.
 
Writing about culture also gives us readers a firsthand experience of viewing things in the author’s perspective. This is different from knowing these cultural tidbits from secondhand resources such as those that have been established in the Internet. Depending on the author, he would expose a non-biased perspective about his country, one that is foreign in the world of English novels. A novel would be a reliable source to explore more about the cultures of other countries, and we would rely less on the information given by the media that has reputation of selecting the news that would attract the most readership.
 
The one major difficulty of knowing foreign cultures comes from the different languages between the readers and the people involved in said cultures. We as authors are given a responsibility to overcome the problem by demonstrating the use of English language to translate non-English cultures. Our effort would show that English can be used to inform others about non-English cultures; at the same time, it shows that said cultures were not constricted to their own languages. Readers that rely on English language can now learn about other languages by reading novels that use English language to describe foreign cultures.
 
Lastly, it is just fun to give information about foreign cultures through the medium of fictional pieces. We have those attraction factors such as interesting characters, engaging plots, and rich settings to glue the readers into following the novel until the end. It proves that learning about cultures is not boring after all, as it can be presented in an entertaining, refreshing way. It is also a challenge for the authors to blend the cultural elements into their stories, presenting characters that are affected by their surrounding, and plots that must have been driven by what is happening in their places.
 
To sum it up, there is great importance in exposing foreign cultures to the world of English fictions. The time has passed when focus was brought more to the English-speaking countries with their cultures, and a wider scope is needed to bring a realization to the readers about the world around them. English language is a tool for authors who use it as their second language to bring their cultures into the view of international people and unite all of us through a language.

TWO CENTS: ROMANCEwritten by Aley  < PM: >

Romance is the topic this week thanks to a challenge, so here are my thoughts on romance, or at least, what I know.

The best way to write a romance is with a love that stays apart. Now, this isn't just empirical evidence, but I'm getting it second hand from my mother, who read an article about it, and thinking back over the romances I've read, it seems to hold true. Think about it.

Pride and Prejudice, they don't get together until the very end of the book. First, they have to hate each other, then be okay, then have some external thing keep them apart, then secretly tease one another, then finally, finally, after everything has happened, they get together.

Even a horror story like Tess of the d'Urbervilles is like that, and it doesn't even stay the same girl, but by the time the righteous good one gets the girl, they've been through hell together and it's the end of the book! How do writers keep their lovers apart so long?

Even modern stories, like Twilight [I read the first one], they keep getting tugged away from one another by either happenstance stupidity, or the stupidity of either one of the main characters. So why is this a thing? Why don't lovers just get together and go through stuff together?

That's not stressful enough! That's the answer. You might have some cases where people get together and stay together, where they love and are free to do it, but in those cases, often there's not enough of a romantic build up to make the romance the main focus of the story, or, they have to go through so much, they don't have time to actually be together.

The latter seems to be the case more and more in newer fiction, and I think that's because a lot of writers tend to be impatient. They don't torture their romantic characters enough before giving them a reward. You really have to drive in some development of feeling, and I'm not saying kill everyone they know, or kill everyone that loves them, I'm saying, develop the characters in a romance so that they can be in a relationship.

In the romances that I write, which are [okay, I'll admit it, 100% fanfictions you will never see], I have some criteria for two characters before they get into a relationship.

A) They have to have first-hand knowledge of the other individual's character.
- That is, they have to know their good side, and see their bad side.
B) They have to support one another through something.
- Oftentimes this is whatever the primary plot is handling.
- Each person must be at the disadvantage and need the other person for something.

The reason I do this is because it builds a relationship, but it doesn't build character. Character building takes place as the character [usually my author's creation] deals with whatever threw them into the plot in the first place.

A story is about something that's changed from the norm, so the plot deals with the character's development, and if romance is the main goal, they develop into something that can finally solve the problem which keeps them apart from their crush.

The reason this works is because this development takes time to make the sappy romance actually take place. If you have everything up front, and the two people love each other to begin with, then you don't have a change from the norm when you want them to love each other in the end.

Now again, I'm not saying that you can't have a romantic relationship in a story that is not a romance, you can, but in a romance story, the primary drive has to be the romance, or what's the point of putting it in that genre?

Still, it's frustrating when people get together in chapter 7, and the author just goes on and on about wedding plans and family for the next 20 years without any problems. A story is driven by conflict, and if it's a romance, I expect that conflict to keep the lovers apart, otherwise end of story, and start the next one, "The Adventures of the X Family". It's not a romance if there's not romantic tension.

Still, there is such a thing as too much, and such a thing as built up romantic tension which never should be released. Great examples of that are murder mystery shoes on TV where they have a male and female protagonist, and the two of them fall in love, god, that's so cliché now it's annoying. It is hard to watch a cop show that has male and female leads because you know it's coming. The reason is they don't have an ending. TV shows, literally, are not scripted to end. They're scripted to go on for season after season, and if it's a romantic twist, then how are you supposed to end our frustration? Romances need that satisfying ending! Yes, they need to wait for it, yes they need to build it up, but they need it! You can't do that in a show that never ends!

The song that never ends can't have a chorus because the whole thing is the hook. A TV show can't have a romance between the main protagonists because the whole thing would be the same thing, there's no resolution to it, and when it does happen, then you have to find new and interesting ways to keep the lovers apart in order to continue the romance, but it doesn't work. You can't come up with that many things to keep lovers apart. Viewers get frustrated, I get frustrated, so when I start seeing that happen, I lose interest in a show. Just, focus on what you want to be, a cop show, a murder mystery, and don't play around with all of that nonsense with romance just because you have two people of the opposite sex.

Oftentimes the same goes for action stories, especially ones that are series, because having a romance in there is sort of like a TV show, there will always be a new disaster, so if you fold romance into that, then you've got to give it up after they're together, or the character isn't allowed to mature and change.

So, my main two cents on romances, give your characters obstacles they need to overcome before getting together. Outline what it is they want in a romance, what they want in a romantic partner, and then gradually show that to each character through trials and tribulations. It sets up a nice series of events that can all cascade together if you're creative, and allow you a well-crafted ending which sums up all of the romantic tension you've built.

Also, don't ignore the other aspects of a story. A story needs change, something to happen, and it needs character development, setting, and other characters. The world isn't two lovers locked in an endless struggle to get together, build the world, build the society, and then use that to manipulate the story as you need.

A romance story is one of the places where you can let your darker anger fuel a plot, and it doesn't come off weird or creepy. At some point, pretty much all of us writers have written a plot like it, however, so you've got to write it better, and that means more critiques, more focus, and more plotting than for anything else.

Everyone can write a love poem, but which ones are remembered the best?

NEW ARRIVALS
written by Lavvie < PM: >

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

@XxPheonixKittenxX really likes YouTube stars. Maybe you have something in common?

@TheOneNamedZoe writes great reviews and has already earned her first star! Feel free to leave a congratulatory and welcoming message on her wall.

Do you like historical-sci-fi-crime fiction? If so, @Whitlinger might have something just for you? Click here to read their first work posted on the site and leave a review.

SHAMELESS PLUGS

written by SquillsBot  < PM:  >

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SUBSCRIBERS

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