Young Writers Society

The Last Ship Sailing is a weekly round-based elimination competition where three to five sailors come together to write a story -- sailing their ship into the unknown! Join others on a ship and collectively write 2500 words each week. Last the longest to obtain the coveted title of the Last Ship Sailing.

How to Sign Up

1. Sign up in the LSS Tavern as a Crewmate!

2. Join together with other Crewmates in the Tavern to assemble a full Crew. A full Crew consist of Three-Five Crewmates.

3. Elect a Captain. A Captain is agreed upon by all Crewmates. They create the Ship Roleplay and OOC thread for the Crew. They will post in the Ship Log weekly to update the Ship's progress.

4. Your Captain creates a Ship Story Thread in the Storybook Sanctuary and a Ship OOC Thread.

5. Sign your Ship up at the LSS Port.

Before The Competition Starts

Before the competition starts, it is allowed and encouraged to:

• Have a concrete story idea and synopsis that all Crewmates have agreed upon.
• Have a full roster of characters from all Crewmates, including competed Character Profiles.
• Have plotted and outlined to your Crew's content.

Any in-story writing before the competition starts is not allowed.

Once The Competition Starts

Your Ship's Mission: write 2500 words a week as a Crew.

If a Ship fails to complete their Mission, the Ship will have a one-time Lifeboat. The Crew must write 4000 words in the next week to continue in the competition.

If a Ship does not accomplish the Lifeboat Mission or does not accomplish the regular Mission after using the Lifeboat, it will become a Pirate Ship. Pirate Ships are still encouraged to write, but they are out of the competition. A ship may also initially join as a Pirate Ship, meaning that they are participating similarly in the spirit of the event like other Ships, but are not officially competiting for the victory or subject to the word count or participation requirements.

This is a competition about collaboration. If a Crewmate does not write for two weeks in a row, they will become a Ghost. As a Ghost, they may still contribute to the story, but their writing will not count towards the weekly 2500 word goal.

In the event that a crew member becomes a Ghost and your crew seeks to add a new writer to the ship, you may request a Lifeguard in the LSS Tavern. A Lifeguard will be a regular crew member, aside from them joining late, and are subject to the same crewmate participation rules. They cannot be from another crew, however, and since the role is dependent on someone accepting an invitation, getting a Lifeguard is not a guarantee.

More Information

Useful Links

Is there a way we can watch this happen as a bystander if we aren't sure we want to participate but want to see how it works?

@WinnyWriter Yes, there is! You can subscribe to the contest threads such as the Ship Log to get updates on the competition, and you can read along with each ship's roleplay by going to the Storybook Sanctuary and clicking on the roleplays that have "LSS" in their titles. Roleplayers also really appreciate it if you drop encouraging comments in their Out of Character threads!
If you want to try out participating without the pressure of competing, you can also join as a Pirate Ship. ^^ That means you can get weekly reminders to write, but you aren't officially competing for the victory, so you don't need to adhere to specific word count rules.
Hope that helped. :] Let me or another rp mod know if you have more questions! <3

LSS Round III has begun! Don't forget to claim your badges in the LSS Badge Thread as you collect them. Set sail, brave adventurers!

The LSS Word Counter has been updated!

What's new
-> Mobile users: your eyes are saved! No more having to read overlapping lines of text!
-> Ghosts can be inputted now, and their word counts will not be counted in the "Word count this week" section. They'll still be included in the "Total word count" section.

Upcoming
-> A graph to be able to see word count over time (mayyyybe this week, probably not since I'll be traveling soon)
-> A histogram showing the most frequently used words (same timing as above)
-> Automatically outputting whether a ship has met word count or not and whether they successfully used a lifeboat or not (same timing as above)

As always, let me know if you find any bugs! I will squash them forthwith.

Hello Everyone!

RP Crew here to just remind everyone to submit their Ship Logs by 12am today (in your Captain's time zone)! :D

Just a quick explanation on how to submit/access your Ship Logs:

• At the end of every week, your Captain will need to submit a Ship Log in order to stay in the competition!
• The Ship Log thread can be found in the 'Information Desk' (the same forum this topic is in! :D)
• Follow the instructions on the first page, and please remember: do not use any word counters like Word or any other website. @Spearmint and @Carina have graciously created an LSS Word Counter just for us, which can be found on the second post of the Ship Log thread, and even right above my post in this thread.

Thank you all for participating! You are all doing great <3