Young Writers Society

This thread is for questions and discussions regarding Secret Santa - post here and @Liminality and I will endeavour to answer! Don't post your signup here, do that in the Secret Santa thread.

Please remember that there should be no discussing anything revealing, such as who your recipient is! Santas will stay a secret until the event is over

Here’s a question because others may have it: if you cannot do anything like drawing just because you are not good at that but the person you get specifically says no to something like writing, what’re some good general ideas of things you could do?

@winterwolf0100 Hmm . . . If you don't want to do a drawing, maybe something like a collage would be good? You could make an aesthetic of things they like using Pexels pictures, for instance. If they're not opposed to music, maybe a custom playlist?

@winterwolf0100 I also am not good at drawing XD but as Lim said, a collage is a cool idea, and you can always try your hand at image/gif editing. Canva is a wonderful place to start and experiment with!

I've seen people do - custom book recommendation, playlists, or collections of quotes, compliments, avvie / banner edits, profile designs, songs, bookmark designs, collage or picture edits. a poem or quote of their own with some fancy formatting, or a favorite author / character quote on top of an aesthetic picture. Also even if you're not good at drawing, doodles are sometimes still fun to receive, I think it's the thought that counts! Lots of ideas! Also I second Omni in saying Canva is a great program!

Hey! I'm D and new here. I enjoyed reading about the Secret Santa and would love to participate! But I didn't quite get how we're going to give the gifts? I was exploring the YWS site and came across a Gifts section with stickers (?) but I also saw other writers mentioning written works and art as gifts. I think I get how to gift the stickers(?) but how would I go about giving a poem I wrote as a gift? I did think of the Private Messages but I'm not sure if everyone is okay with that?
I'm sorry if this was all over the place, haha!
-D

Hey there @D! I think I can answer this question but I’m sure others will chime in as well. The actual gift section is through stickers and points, but those aren’t typically included in secret Santa! Secret Santa is about creating something specifically based on the person’s information they submit. That can be a collage, a short story, a poem, a drawing, a song playlist, a book recommendation list— anything you can think of, really! Most people will appreciate it as long as they can tell that you put time and effort into it.

Since it’s an online platform, real gifts aren’t going to be exchanged, so no asking/giving out an address or personal information (and if someone asks for that, tell one of the moderators.) When you’re finished, I believe you’ll end up using Private Messages but you won’t send it directly to them. You’ll send it to the person running the event. (I can’t remember who that is off the top of my head, but they’re the person who made the original post in that thread explaining all the rules.)

Hope this helps! : D

Thanks so much @winterwolf0100 ! That does clear things up!
Just to be clear, say I get a person A and decide to draw something. I would send that as a private message to the coordinator mentioning it's for A?

Yes, I believe so @D! @IcyFlame is the person who is running this and will definitely know the answer when she’s able to look!

@D I am not IcyFlame but yes, winter is correct. Either IcyFlame or Liminality will send you a Private Message (PM) to tell you who your secret santa is. You'll then complete your gift and send it as a reply back to that PM. So if you were to draw something, you'd save it as a picture and send it as a picture in the PM, with a message of your choice for Icy/Lim to send off to your secret santa. After everything is over (when Icy/Lim says it's okay to do so) you can contact your secret santa if you so wish to let them know you made the gift.

Please let me know if this answers your question ^^

@D yep, winter and Omni are right! After the 15th of December, Icy and I will match up everyone who registered on the thread. Then, you'll be tasked to PM the organisers (aka Icy and myself) with the gift, which we will then PM to the recipient. Please don't send it to the recipient yourself, as that would ruin the 'secret' in secret santa! You can tell your recipient you were their secret santa after the whole event is over if you so choose.

If you need further help in figuring out how to send things like drawings and poems:

1. drawings can be uploaded to an image hosting website such as imgbb.com. YWS runs on BBcode, so select that option when copying and pasting the code into your PM.

2. poems, short stories or anything textual can just be popped into the PM directly.

3. if you're say, recording a song for your recipient, vocaroo.com is a really easy way to record anonymously, and the vocaroo link given can be copied into the PM.

Does that make sense? c:

Thanks so much at @winterwolf0100 ! No worries! I think I get how it works now!

@Omni
That makes it so much clearer - thank you! It answers my question very well, indeed!

@Liminality
Definitely! That makes so much sense - I was a bit confused about the formats earlier.
Thank you for clarifying!