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.

Well, that’s all I have for now. So, what are you waiting for? Enjoy!

1. ANOTHER DRIVE FOR SQUILLS WRITERS
2. WHO’S READY FOR REVMO?
3. LMS COVERAGE: WEEKLY WRITING PROCESS
4. NEW MEMBER INTERVIEW
5. ASK BIRU
6. DIXIE KITCHEN: PUMPKIN SPICE
7. A POETRY PERSPECTIVE: LINE BREAKS
8. WILL REVIEW FOR FOOD
9. YWS CLUBS: THE ROLE-PLAY GEEKS
10. SOME SUPER SERIOUS BUSINESS
11. NOVEL NOTES: WAYS OF STARTING A PLOT
12. NEW ARRIVALS
13. SHAMELESS PLUGS
14. SUBSCRIBERS

ANOTHER DRIVE FOR SQUILLS WRITERS

Written by LadyBird < PM: >



Have you ever dreamed about what it would be like to be a journalist? Long, grueling hours of leaning over a computer, drinking stale coffee from a cardboard cup.

Well that might be how pop culture has presented it to us but at Squills, we're much more relaxed. Of course if you want to drink stale coffee from a cardboard cup just for the full experience, that decision is up to you.

Remember this drive for writers back in 2016?
As recruiter, I've tried to raise our numbers some but we are always looking for new writers to bring their own unique perspective to the paper.

The three base requirements are:
- Are you excited about YWS?
- Are you interested in participating in the official YWS newsletter?
- Can you and are you willing to write at least one article every other week?

How Do I Apply?
Easy! PM Squillsbot and tell them what you're interested in applying for.

If you would like to be a columnist, you can claim a column that is no longer running or pitch your own. Either way, summarize the column you plan to be writing in the future in your PM.

You will be asked to write an article. If you're applying as a columnist, your sample article should apply to the column. If you're applying as a general reporter, your article can be any type you've seen in Squills before. You can interview members, cover an event or trend, or spotlight a thread or work.

Your article will be submitted to the current Squills staff for a voting period.

Not Sure About an Idea?
If you have a column or article idea but aren't sure if its the right fit for Squills, just < PM: > me.

I hope to be seeing all of your articles soon.
- Lizz

WHO’S READY FOR REVMO?written by WritingPrincess< PM: >


In September, YWS will come together to fight the ferocious beasts of the Green Room, as it will be RevMo! Every year, RevMo, standing for Review Month, takes place on YWS, and every year it is a lot of fun!


What is RevMo?

RevMo is a month on YWS where all YWSers come together to review as much as they possibly can, all month long!

How can I join?

You don’t have to join! There is, of course, the club , but the lovely staff will keep track of your reviews using the YWS leaderboards.

What can I expect during RevMo?

- There will be a month-long rally for YWS to reach 1250 reviews overall in September
- There will be a Team Tortoise event held through the month with a badge reward
- Review Jams, Write-ins and Review Workshops are coming
- Those who write 50 non-spam personal reviews by the end of September will recieve a badge, as well as an event prize that ranks up as you progress
- Squills will write a weekly update throughout September
- There will be plently of graphics and memes shared by members and staff alike to rally the RevMo spirit
- And don’t forget, there will be refreshments served by the Knights of the Green Room


There is more information here , and of course in the club here .

LMS COVERAGE: WEEKLY WRITING PROCESSwritten by BiscuitsLeGuin < PM: >

This is going to sound ridiculous, but I felt that there was a lack of buzz around Last Man Standing. I know, it sounds impossible, but I just feel like it's slipping a little bit into the background and I, absolutely loving LMS, have decided to try and bring it back out into the spotlight. To do this, I've decided to focus on what I think is an interesting pattern, which is the different speeds at which people write their entries within the week.

Personally, for most of LMS I've been getting my thousand words out as early as possible so I can get back to working on my other project, but recently I've got to a more exciting point in my LMS, so there's a more even balance. I'm now taking more time to make sure I do it right, which I think is probably for the best.

I also spoke to @DarkPandemonium, who is often one of the first posters, on occasion actually posting the thread for that week's entries. Pan said:













I for one am glad that Pan has tended to post so early; it means I get to read her chapters even sooner!

On the other end of the scale is @fortis, a true LMS veteran. I for one adored her novel from LMS III which is totally not me trying to indirect fortis into writing it again, so I was curious to know how she had settled into the rhythm of posting so late each week. Fortis said:













I genuinely love it when doing one of these articles corrects my view of something. I was picturing people either taking their time and doing a few hundred words a day, or a mad dash at the end. So fear not, if any of the novels you follow are taking a while to post. There is a decent chance they are completely on top of things and you are stressing for nothing. Totally not just talking to myself here...

And I think that's one of my favourite things about LMS: there are so many different ways to do it. A thousand words in a week isn't that difficult, when you consider that if you sat down for two hours you could probably do it in one shot. So it allows for flexibility, leniency, there's not just one way to do it. It gives you the space to make it your own and write in a way that works for you. And if, unlike me, you are a productive member of society and actually have a job, rather than reading about random medieval literature for your upcoming dissertation, it enables you to fit it around particularly long shifts or late finishes.

Long live LMS!

NEW MEMBER INTERVIEWwritten by WritingPrincess< PM:


Hello Squills readers,
I personally think that the opinions of new members of YWS are actually very important. I think this because they are the ones that can tell us what their first impressions and thoughts of YWS. @Ophetheos completed their first review very soon after joining the site, and that’s why I decided to interview them about their experience in the Green Room.


Ophetheos: I needed to write a review.


O: I needed to improve my writing skills and I also needed some points.


O: I guess. I think pending reviews would be a nice feature so that you don’t have to sit down and grind out a good review.


O: I guess. But does that tell the author that there is a review in progress?


O: Not sure yet but hopefully a critique partner. I’m still hunting for one.

Thank you so much Ophetheos for your time. I hope you enjoy your journey on YWS.

ASK BIRU

written by BiruKun < PM: >


Dear Great Magnificent,
Have you EVER watched How to Train your Dragon?

~ Biru the Dragon Trainer


Dear Where for Art Thou,
There was this one time I was painting and I squeezed the acrylic paint tube too hard and it burst at the bottom onto my shirt and I laughed for like 5 minutes. I would’ve screamed “by Jove!” if this wasn’t the 21st century.

~ Biru van Gogh


Dear Hm,
Neither, it’s tamota.

~ Biru the Dictionary

In order to ask a question, click this link. Thanks!

DIXIE KITCHEN: PUMPKIN SPICE

Written by LadyBird < PM: >

Originally I had a snazzy little title for this article about a food item I have a hatred for.

If you're not familiar with pumpkin spice, you either weren't a villager in the 1700s or you haven't been on the internet in the past 10 years. I choose those two specific out there statistics, because I've never met someone who wasn't acquainted with pumpkin spice.

Maybe you do legitimately like it with coffee or cocoa or pie or ham sandwiches. But unluckily for you, the internet has made it so that no one can ever enjoy anything ever. All cooks are familiar with the long standing issue of:
Paula Deen = butter
butter = racism

No matter how creatively a recipe is shaped in every other form, the addition of pumpkin spice will ruin it. Which does ruin the major food market of pies.
Do you know how many brands there are of pumpkin pie (national brands, international brands, and assorted supermarkets)?
I for one don't but I know it must be hundreds or even thousands. Maybe we don't need thousands but it's just a very big market that produces a lot of goods on the basis of tradition.

And so speaking of tradition because almost every modern brand either functions on it or being non-traditional, let's look at how the recipe for the spice has changed across the centuries and the continents.

The modern American recipe is:

• 18 parts ground cinnamon
• 4 parts ground nutmeg
• 4 parts ground ginger
• 3 parts ground cloves
• 3 parts ground allspice

Now if we jump back to slightly colonial USA, there's a similar spice mix that would go something like this:

• mace
• nutmeg
• ginger

Then there's a European general recipe that's from the same time period as the above:

• cinnamon
• nutmeg
• allspice
• cayenne pepper

A good thing about this spice mix is that it then in turn leaves a lot of avenues for a la carte choices. Cloves, ginger, coriander, and caraway are among those.

Another necessity from all of these different spice combinations is so much sugar. Just dump it all in there.
Pumpkin spice flavored sugar? Add more sugar to it.

So pumpkin spice has a lot going for it but I've almost always hated it. It's kind of hard to think about drinking coffee, when I'm constantly reminded of these products that I'd like to share with the Squills community.

A POETRY PERSPECTIVE: LINE BREAKS

written by alliyah < PM: >

One skill in poetry that sometimes gets overlooked is.... knowing how to utilize effective line breaks! Think about it, every poem has line breaks (except maybe paragraph poetry, but that's a discussion for another day) and line breaks are a pretty direct way to effect how a reader understands your poem. Recently, I did a workshop with @TheBlueCat that covered a few different ways line breaks can be used in poems and we'll review a few in this article.

If you want to check out the workshop this article is partly based on, you can take a look here: Line Break Workshop .

One way to use line breaks, is to control what parts of the line the reader's attention goes to.

I like to think of it this way: every time you have a line break or punctuation mark imagine that the speaker is slamming their fist on a table. The reader stops (even if just for a moment) they refocus on what's been said and then they move on. Now going with the "slamming on the table" illustration - if you do this after every word it might make the poem dynamic, powerful, or it might make it silly and junvenile. It all depends on the content!

The next time you write a poem I'd challenge you to test out the line breaks, by reading your poem out loud and clapping every time you come to line break. This is a good way to see if your line breaks come at natural pauses, or if they're distracting.

My last tip for line breaks is to be consistent, unless there's an instrumental reason for why you're being inconistent. This might seem like a no-brainer. But it really does make a huge difference if all of your lines have 10 syllables, and then suddenly you have 2 lines that are teeny tiny. Be attentive to those differences in consistency! Not just with length, but also in placement. If all of your line breaks follow end punctuation, and then suddenly you're breaking mid-phrase, it's going to be jarring. Which is okay if it's supposed to be a jarring moment in the poem, but not the best if you're going for a smooth transition.

Good luck in your poetry writing, and don't forget the power of that "enter" key on the keyboard!

WILL REVIEW FOR FOODwritten by Aley < PM: >

Hello everyone!

Will Review For Food is a forum on YWS where you can go to ask for reviews, give reviews, and check out different styles of reviews. If there is a green icon saying "Accepting!" next to the title of a WRFF thread, then you can deposit something to review in that forum and it will be reviewed by the creator of the forum. If you don't care who reviews it, but you want more reviews, you can stick it in the General Request Repository .

In general, WRFF has some basic rules. First and foremost, you can only request 4 reviews at any one time and each of those requests will remain "open" for 3 days. Once the request is closed, you can request again. Check out the thread guidelines here .

Today, let's look at a few WRFF threads that could use some love!

First up, a WRFF reviewer who I interviewed asking about some general knowledge and feel things. Here's the interview with none other than @Danni88 who screams I'm hungry!


Danni88: My favourite thing about WRFF is the way that you can get requests from a wide range of users and discover really amazing stories you wouldn't have seen if not for WRFF. This also works the other way round; you can ask a wide range of users to review your work and get their opinions.


D: It usually depends on the length and genre of the work. If it's a poem, it takes maybe seven to eight minutes. If it is a short story/chapter etc, it takes about thirteen minutes to do it.


D: I have seen a lot of review styles! Some people prefer to focus on grammar and punctuation, some prefer to focus on the more in-depth things.


D: I actually have two review styles.
Style one: if the work is short and I feel there are a lot of mistakes, I will copy/paste it into my review and rewrite it, for example correcting a spelling error, explaining how to improve a sentence or pointing out something that doesn't make sense. I usually use this for poems, but sometimes for short chapters. I think this is a more beneficial style to the writer, as I am able to go through the entire work in more detail.
Style two: If there aren't many mistakes, I will just pick out things I liked and didn't like and suggest how to correct them. This style means I am able to give more detail on specific things, but I can't cover the whole work as much.

As you can see, each user has their own flavor and style that they use for WRFF. Danni's style might not appeal to you immediately, so you can also check out other users who have WRFF threads, or go right to the source and look at some of the reviews they've already done.

Another user who needs some love in their WRFF thread is user @fukase who has finished all of the reviews in his thread Just Give Me Your Poems . His reviews are long, well thought out, and he pays attention to the reviews around him to determine what to talk about.

@Thundahguy is also looking for some of his first submissions to his WRFF thread Hi! I'm reviewing things! where he asks for short stories, chapters, and things with deep metaphors, but not poetry, scripts lyrics, essays, or drama. @Eros is currently waiting in queue!

Of course there are some people without limitations like the lovely @Laurenh6 who has asked for literally anything in Will review anything!! as she wants people to follow her blog in return! We're still playing the waiting game to really see what Lauren will do as a review for her WRFF threads, so you could be the first!

Overall, the WRFF reviews are often treated differently than a when a reviewer chooses to do the review on their own. Most of the time, they spend longer on the review, get more in detail, and try to cater to the writer more specifically because it is something that's been asked of them by the other person rather than no conversation at all.

WRFF is also very good for getting people to follow chapter by chapter as you can request the next chapter in their WRFF pad and they'll often continue along with the book.

Also WRFF is perfect if you've already gotten your work out of the Green Room, but you want some more specifics about what you're doing wrong or right. Many of the people who have old WRFF threads are great at giving feedback, and have specialized in what they like to review, so trying multiple threads is a good idea. It also gives you a different perspective on your writing!

So if you have a piece you want to dust off and polish, check out the threads in WRFF and see if anyone is the right fit for reviewing you!

YWS CLUBS: THE ROLE-PLAY GEEKSwritten by WritingPrincess< PM: >


This week, I decided to have a look at the well-known Role-Play Geeks , created and run by @FalconerGal9086. This club is a simpler, more relaxing version of the Role-play Realm. I asked FalconerGal a couple of questions about their club.



FalconerGal9086: Honestly, it's a bit hard to remember, but I think it went something like "oh, look, all these rp clubs are dead. Too bad, I really like rping like this, but there's only @RavenLord who's still doing things there...hey, what if I make my own club? Maybe then there will be more people to rp with!" and so I did. Then Raven joined up and more and more people hopped on board and now we've got a whole party going on down there!

F: You know, I don't know if I'd say I do! When I first began, I definitely did have a preference for the Geeks, however, and here's why: Storybooks are much more formal, and to be honest, they intimidated me! Having to play as other peoples' characters and a lack of spontaneity were unfamiliar and I wasn't quite sure how to handle it. Soon enough I stepped out of my comfort zone and learned it was just about practice and collaboration, and now I SB and rp in both the club and in the Realm, and I love them all for different reasons!

Thank you so much for speaking to me FalconerGal. Make sure to check out The Role-Play Geeks club here.

SOME SUPER SERIOUS BUSINESS

Written by LadyBird < PM: >

If you have a clean meme that you'd like to be featured in this column, PM me.

NOVEL NOTES: WAYS OF STARTING A PLOTwritten by concord< PM: >

Hello there Squillians and welcome to yet another column! I’m here to give a little overview on possible steps one may go on when starting off in the creation of a plot.

One way to start creating a plot is to go into your characters’ minds. If say, the main goal of someone was to rid their world of an evil being, there are plenty of ways of doing so, based on the current circumstances. The Lord of the Rings involved countless armies and the destruction of a certain ring, while the Winchester brothers went through dozens of weapons to kill demons, including a gun called the Colt.

Knowing what (possible) weapons your character has at their disposal can aid a writer in weaving a story around their protagonists, such as going through a fairy-tale like environment with only their wits and their bare hands.

In this aspect, the underlying story of reaching their goal can take many different shapes, even if it seems similar to other novels, especially of that genre. Fantasy books can be very different if the main character is magical or isn’t magical and loses her friends in a very anti-human world.

A good place to start thinking about what goes into your characters is the Character Interviews club that can be found here This club created by the ever-amazing @Blues offers a great resource to use as developing your characters in whatever way you deem necessary!

Another method of creating a plot is by developing the novel’s world first. This not only can give the writer a huge space for inspired ideas and creative outlet, but it also gives the option of leaving hints that can pop up later in the story.

For example, if a novel takes place in the mid-19th century mid-Western United States, then there is already a huge culture to perhaps base the story on. Take it a step further to pick 1864 as an example, as two years before The Homestead Act granted 160-acre plots of land almost free to settlers.

Hm, what else could be happening in 1864? The Civil War would end in another year, but there is so much to be written about African-American oppression. Let alone oppression of women and Native Americans and immigrants that flood the United States in a handful of years.

What to do with this information? Well, placing the story in Alabama would be a lot different than Illinois. Including whether or not there would be resentment for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 on June 28, 1864.

To sum this very long tangent, with this type of information, a writer can formulate how certain types of characters would be viewed and treated by their peers and society overall. And do the past, in this example, justice. Illogical events and treatments can do fine in a satirical or feel-good, fluffy novels, but not in more serious ones. Or at least that’s what I believe.

A good resource to develop an overall story is Story Interviews that can be found here Made by the marvelous @Saen as a companion to the previously mentioned Character Interviews, this club is designed to help writers think about, for example, what their story is based on, or how to write a stable relationship.

As a summation of this article that got away from me, there are plenty of ways to start plotting a novel. Characters and world-building are only two of them, so if those didn’t strike your fancy, there are plenty more where that came from. Good luck with any future plotting, and that’s it for now!

NEW ARRIVALS
written by EternalRain < PM: >

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

@jamalkadiorovna, who has contributed 3 reviews to the site so far is a fellow writer who’s been writing for 5 years, and writing is something she is incredibly passionate about!

@Psychotic joined the site in order to improve their writing, and has posted an excerpt already. If you’d like to read it and give them some feedback, it’s simply called Excerpt 1 .

@H11mA1ex, who’s from Narnia, has completed 1 review and has also posted a short story, White Lily, Lily White .

SHAMELESS PLUGS

written by SquillsBot < PM: >

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