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!

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1. Green Room Gallery
2. Two Cents
3. Plot Cliches
4. Summer Plans
5. Subscribers

Green Room Gallerywritten by EternalRain < PM: >

Luckily, this week the green room hasn’t been packed (review day has helped!) but the number of works are slowly increasing. Hopefully some of these works will sound interesting for someone to review. Currently, there are about 17 works with no reviews and 16 works with 1 review. There are two works that are from June. Remember that reviewing works in the green room can earn you an extra 25 points!

Mosquitos, Trees, and Hidden Places by @LeopardTails
Hannah Bloom is from a place where lies are essential to survival - but she likes speaking her mind.
Warning: This work has been rated 18+.

Frost Lark News 7/9/17 by @Sheyren
A continued piece of the Frost Lark News paper. In this issue, some of Frost Lark’s history is explained.

i’d tell you i’m not afraid but by @herbgirl
A poem about author’s brother.
Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for violence.

I. The Young Man by @JoeBookman
A young man finds himself among mysterious company in prison.

Soulful by @Notyou21
A poem of someone thinking in solitude.

The Chosen Grandma, Chapter 11.1 by @BlueAfrica
A grandma, Edna, who was chosen to go on a quest. Read from the beginning: The Chosen Grandma, Prologuish Thing

Sonnet 1 by @DragonNoir
A poem on music.

Hell or High Water [Chapter II] by @scribbleinks
Two characters are attacked by a band of pirates. Read from the beginning: Hell or High Water [Prologue]

Coming Home to You by @screamingsloth
A song written about love and returning to a loved one.

Review day isn’t for quite a while, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t review! If any of these pieces pique your interest, go review! Green room reviews not only earn you more points but are helpful to writers that haven’t gotten much advice on their work yet.

TWO CENTS: AN INFORMED CHARACTERwritten by Aley < PM: >

Think of your favorite addition to a character. Think about the way it affects them, the way the character may have grown from wanting that one trait included into an individual, the way the trait wraps around with the story, and how things have progressed from just something little, to something major.

How many characters have that trait? How many in the same story? Have you formed a habit of all of your characters being stoic? Certain genders or positions in the story having certain ways of speech? What have you done to create identity in your characters?

One of the points I fear people overlooking is creating that trait not to be awesome, but fatal. I want to talk about a character none of you will openly see, but I want to talk about her because, while she's sort of a novice character, I think she's exemplary at showing what I want to say.

An original character I wrote for fanfiction, yes, I write fanfiction, was created specifically for her fatal flaw. I've remade, and remade her trying to explore all of the different ways this fatal flaw could play out. I think it makes her stories not only more realistic, but more interesting.

To start with, I had an idea. It was a stupid idea, but I had this idea that I wanted a character who was hiding in plain sight. Someone who couldn't admit who she was without ending up alone and destitute. In the original story, that was easy. She was lying about her species. She wasn't human and her partner rejected non-humans.

As the story changed, that got harder. She became an introvert. She became a victim. She became a spy. All of these things satisfied some demand I had on her character to create the original premise of the plot, and it became the reason I wrote her.

I like this style of writing because I feel like if you start with an idea about what someone's conflict is going to be, whether that's internal or external, between themselves and society, or just within themselves, you create a story based around experiences rather than plot.

The difference can be convoluted if you think about it too much, but what I mean is that this character's reactions, her experiences, were more important to me than what caused them. Kane's story, in the end, became simplistic. It became internal, and her fatal flaw changed from needing to hide, to needing company as my writing evolved and changed with her. I began to realize that the more I wrote her reactions, the more her need to have other people around became a requirement for who she was.

I would change that, and she would stop being the character I was drawn to. I would begin to lose interest. The art of creating a character isn't just in deciding what they are going to be, and what flaws they're going to have, but in interpretations of what you've written.

As we all write, we mentally explore the worlds in which we write, we develop theories, we consider ideas, we create lands, and gods, and plants, and furniture. In the end, the book we've written is more informed than the book we started with, and all of what we write informs the book we end with. To get that information early, we have to read as we write.

We have to search for context clues in our characters' speech to give us new ideas for future plots, or past histories. That helps inform us on the types of characters we want to make, and help present a growing character.

In the end, that thing we thought of at the beginning wasn't necessarily the fatal flaw, or even their saving grace, it was that which makes us explore, and potentially the last thing we explored before coming here and reading Squills.

So, I am going to sign off today asking you to investigate who your characters are not from the perspective of their writer, but as your reader, and see if you can find something new. Hopefully it will help develop your characters' realities as they grow and discover themselves.

Plot Clichés

Written by DragonNoir
< PM: >

A plot, by definition, is “the plan, storyline or main story of a literary or dramatic work.” Creating one sounds easy, doesn’t it? But is it that easy when you take out the things which really kill a story’s plot? I didn’t think so. Either way, here are four things I personally think prevent a plot from going further:

(Please note: these are not in any particular order and are my personal opinion.)

1. Deus Ex Machina
This is a phrase you probably hear a lot online. It’s meaning? “A God or godly intervention introduced into a literary or dramatic work to resolve the entanglements of the plot.” You have not the slightest idea of how bad this reflects on the writer’s ability to create a plot and/or how badly a plot is tangled up.
How to avoid this? Simply through planning your plot in detail. Look at where the plot seems to tangle a bit and make sure you don’t end up using last resort information to change a plot’s direction. In short: plan your plot in detail.

2. Character Wipes
How do you make a character investigation of any sort get back to the ‘not knowing a lot’ stage in the easiest way? Why, either kill them off or wipe their memories. I like to call it a Character Wipe, because it refers to one of two things: killing a character for the sake of the plot, or wiping a character’s memory for plot convience. You have a good example of this in Death Note (WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD), where L dies and the Kira Investigation is set back - to a certain extent - because of that. It works in some fragments, as long as what precedes is in some way intelligent or creative, but sometimes it can just ruin a story.
In short: make sure you come up with an intelligent way or reason behind wiping a character or their memories from a story.

3. Angsty Teenagers
Not really a universal bad thing about a plot, but nothing really kills a story for me than cringy, angsty teens. I mean, I get they make up about 70% of all teenagers, but have some variety? For all the stories with teenagers I read from others, at least 50% of them included angsty teenagers and I think it’s becoming a recurring thing - to a certain extent. I think it might be because a lot of people know/understand how they function, but try having some creativity with personality and characteristics. This is all really comes from a good imagination, but I’m not generalising that all angsty teens in stories are bad. As long as they have a) a good reason for it or b) have an interesting personality alongside the angst, I’m fine with them.

4. Simplicity
A one-sided plot is really boring. It’s essentially a character getting from A to B. For a plot to be interesting, it has to have some depth and some reasonable complications. Although I understand it’s like comparing a professional novel to Little Red Riding Hood, but you have to consider three things: purpose, audience and genre. What are you writing this story for? What kind of people are you aiming the story at? What kind of story is this? Either way, to avoid simplicity: make sure you think realistically about a character’s choices and what fate might throw their way. Use probability if you want to be even more precise, but that’s your choice.

To summarise: although some things can work to help a plot’s effectiveness, those things can turn on the author if used incorrectly or without any in-depth thinking. Just think, are the events logical, or have a good reason behind them, which you will introduce (implicitly or explicitly) in the story. Keep writing and be awesome!

SUMMER PLANS!

written by Iridescence < PM: >


Hello everyone! Iridescence here with an article about summer plans. We asked some members of YWS on what their summer plans and other things they want to do over the summer are and here are their responses.



RubyRed: Amusement parks, pool fun, writing my novel, painting, having friends over, ect.


beccalicious94: The biggest thing happening for me this summer is my sister's wedding. I'm flying out to Israel for it and will be spending time with my immediate and extended family.


Sheyren: I intend to spend a lot of time on YWS, writing for SBs, and, uh, more SBs. I'm a part of a lot of SBs. I also will be practicing my clarinet and saxophone in preparation for All State auditions in December. Besides that, I'll likely do nothing but play video games and draw, as I always do.


Falconer: I'm planning on visiting Iceland, and also going out to Utah for my cousin's wedding. At the end of the summer, I'm going to see the total solar eclipse!



R:Summer school

b:I wouldn't say I've done a whole lot this summer so far, but since June is Pride month, I definitely went to my fair share of Pride festivities.

S:What have you done so far this summer?
I've been learning professional 3D animation, which is a difficult but fun process. I've been taking it slow, and now know the basics. I've also gotten through a quarter of so of my summer reading book, which is the long and mostly boring Great Expectations. I haven't accomplished much else yet.

F:I've done summer school, which gets me a free semester the year after next. I've gotten to do some fun writing, and work on art, which I haven't done in a little while. It's great to relax.



R: Going to Gwynn's Island every year for a week

b: Traditions...hmmm. Definitely going swimming whether at the beach or the pool.

S: Every year, or mostly every year, my family goes upstate to a camping property on a lake that my grandfather owns. We went last week, actually, and for the first time we were able to bring up our newly purchased pop-up trailer. It made setting up a lot easier than pitching a tent, especially since it rained.

F: Every 4th of July, we watch 1776, which is a musical. It's super fun, and is always something I look forward to in the summer!



R: I don't really have one. I'd like to go everywhere

b: Thailand! I've always wanted to visit because of its beautiful natural landscapes, waterfalls, and laid-back culture. I'd really like to go hiking there. I hear the food is pretty good, too.

S: I've always wanted to go to Australia, and see the outback. Just the idea of such a massive desert, and yet urbanization so nearby, interest me. But, the distance is too great, and so I highly doubt that I'll ever satisfy my desire to visit.

F: Iceland is actually my dream vacation, so it's fantastic that I can finally go. I've wanted to go because it's so gorgeous, and the cool weather is something I'm a big fan of. Also, there are puffins.

That’s all for this article! Thanks for reading and be sure to come back and read the next edition of Squills.

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