Young Writers Society

project the first: friends breakup short

NA contemporary

Casey spirals when her ex-best friend appears at a bar where she's out with new friends.

the goal: submit to wis

By July 30, this story needs to be complete and ready for submission to Wizards in Space Literary Magazine at 3,500 words or less. So a goal for camp is to 1000% FINISH this story. It's so short that! surely! that is doable! S u r e l y.

project the second: merfolk short

YA contemporary fantasy with vague horror elements
THE MOORCHILD x DAUGHTER OF SMOKE & BONE but short & merfolk

Jane doesn't know why she loves the ocean—or why her mom tries to keep her away from it—until she meets a sea-wight who reminds her of a forgotten past life.

the goal: completed second draft

This bad boy needs to be ready for submission to a YA anthology of ace stories by ace creators by the end of August. In its final form, it needs to be 10,000 words or less and definitively YA, which might be a struggle for me lolsob.

Look at you MISS AMBITIOUS trying to write two short stories and 50k worth of revisions in July and make the rest of us look bad!!
But I love how different each of these sound and I HOPE BOTH SUBMISSIONS HAPPEN AND LEAD TO FABULOUS THINGS 💜💜

@Carlito we will SEE WHAT HAPPENS bc wow in April I absolutely failed to write any poetry while also drafting a novel XD But THANK YOU HOPEFULLY I CAN DO IT THIS TIME since, you know, these are actually time sensitive

journal challenge 1: world-building

What world do your characters live in? A fantasy world? A sci-fi world? The real world? If in the real world - what place? What makes the world your characters live in unique? Describe in your thread what your world looks like.

FriendsBreakupShort

This story takes place entirely inside a bar in the real world, although where in the world world is both unimportant and entirely unclear. Shhhh it's only allowed to be 3,500 words.

MerfolkShort

This story takes place in Savannah, Georgia, and on Tybee Island, with one very important difference: merfolk, known as sea-wights, are a major tourist attraction. There's no other magic in the story and no other mythical creatures. There are just wights, who are mostly the subject of rumor and very rarely seen - which doesn't stop the Tybee Island gift shops from selling knick-knacks and t-shirts that say "I saw the wights of Tybee Island and lived."

journal challenge 2: the beginning

Have a think about your opening scene. Write about what plot points will be hit and what information will be shared in your first scene, or first scene that you consider to be important.

FriendsBreakupShort

The whole story is one continuous scene, with some memories nested in the middle, but it starts with Casey leaning against the bar, having a panic attack and trying not to because her ex-bestie just walked in.

MerfolkShort

I haven't written this bit yet, because I'm not sure how to go about it, but this one starts with the wights. The opening sentence is "Savannah is known for three things: Leopold's Ice Cream, Forsyth Park, and sea-wights."

I'd love to go from there into a quick skim over the two mundane items on this list and then get into the wights, but I'm not sure yet. I'm also not quite sure what I want to say about the wights, the tourists coming to see them, etc. I do know I'd like this section to end with our protagonist, Jane.

journal challenge 3: the villain

Don't neglect your villain. We may spend less time with this character, but it is crucial to the existence of the plot that your character's opposition be as believable and interesting as possible. For this challenge, either write about your antagonist's aims, characteristics, flaws, fears etc or, if you're feeling musical, write a lament-style song for them.

FriendsBreakupShort

Casey's ex-best friend, Madison Eleanor Leigh aka Mads. Casey and Mads grew up together, but in college Mads started pulling away, and one day they weren't friends anymore. Casey doesn't know why.

In the story, Mads unexpectedly shows up at the club or bar where Casey has come out with work friends and all but ignores Casey when they run into each other. Casey wants to know what happened, but Mads just wants to be left alone.

MerfolkShort

No villain per se? Jane's mom has a vaguely antagonisty role due to the secrets she keeps, but actually declaring her a villain is a bit much. Secrets from various quarters play a much more antagonisty role as Jane tries to discover a past she can't remember.

There's also going to be a man vs. nature kind of antagonism toward the end of the story.

journal challenge 4: supporting characters

Lol I'm not doing this one because short stories. This questionnaire could literally get longer than FriendsBreakupShort.

journal challenge 5: the PLOT

Two alternatives for outlining your plot: 1. Draw them as a graph, 2. Write a list of everything important that happens and in the margins make note of what happens in between.

Okay these are both short stories, and FriendsBreakup in particular is really short, so I'm just gonna summarize.

FriendsBreakupShort

Casey's at a club with some coworkers who invited her out to meet new people. Enter Casey's ex-best friend, Madison, who has come to the club with some new friends.

Casey panics at the unexpected meeting. She excuses herself to calm down, but she runs into Mads in the bathroom. When Casey asks why they're not friends anymore, Mads refuses to tell her. Casey insists, growing more and more desperate. At last Mads snaps, but Casey learns nothing more: sometimes people just aren't friends anymore.

Casey sits alone with her feelings and memories and then rejoins her coworkers, but she can't stop watching Mads, wondering what went wrong. One of her coworkers asks if Mads is an ex-girlfriend, launching a conversation about breakups both romantic and platonic and the way societal expectations prepare people for romantic breakups but not platonic breakups. Asa helps Casey see that these breakups are more comparable than we're generally led to believe, and that you have to be willing to move on from either kind of breakup and put yourself out there again, no matter the danger of rejection.

In the end, Casey walks up to a young woman sitting alone in the club and introduces herself.

MerfolkShort

...okay this one I might actually need to do like a scene list or something, because this one's a little less solid in my head.

Savannah, Georgia is known for three things: Leopold's ice cream, Forsyth Park, and merfolk. The tourists have a morbid fascination with sea-wights; the locals know better. They tell stories of the dangers of merfolk: The wights will lead you astray. Run you aground.

Trick you and drag you beneath the waves, drown you before you've even begun to realize the danger.

Jane grew up on different stories. Her father told her fairy tales about the Sea King, legends of wights rescuing sailors, stories of how a wight's kiss can save someone from drowning.

What's more, Jane has always felt at home on the ocean.

But her father is gone now, and her mother refuses to talk about the ocean, or wights, or Jane's asexuality, or why her father left. As time wears on, Jane shares less and less with her mother until the house is silent and their relationship strained.

Luckily, there is someone Jane can talk to - a sea-wight named Muirenn.

[something something her relationship with Muirenn makes her start to have flashes of memories of another life
something something Jane isn't the only one in the house with secrets
something something Mom has a bunch of secret sea-wight research
something something Dad didn't leave he was really a wight and went back to the ocean
something something Jane is a wight too basically a changeling but merfolk instead of fairy
something something somehow she learns this but it kinda freaks her out bc okay yes the ocean and merfolk have always felt right to her but how can she have a whole life she doesn't remember?
oh something something Muirenn was part of her old life too something something
something something somehow Jane ends up out on the ocean in a small boat alone, and there's a storm coming in
can you tell there's a whole big middle section I know only the vaguest details about
this still counts as an outline right lol]

For the first time in her life, Jane is scared of the ocean. She begs Muirenn for help, but with Jane's boat sinking too fast to make it back to shore, there's only one thing to do: Muirenn kisses her.

They're still kissing as Muirenn drags her beneath the waves.

journal challenge 6: the STRUCTURE

Think of at least one way in which the structure of your story could be interesting. You don't necessarily have to use this in your story, but it can be useful to have a think about if it's something that just hadn't occurred to you.

FriendsBreakupShort

So I had plans for this to have like a nested structure where it would be like

- present day: Casey's at the club with her friends, sees her ex-bestie, freaks out
- vignettes: all the years they were besties, possibly with ending vignettes of the friendship breakup
- present day: Casey's at the club with her friends and she works toward moving on from the friendship breakup

Only guess what, that absolutely didn't even happen at all lolololol. Like instead of vignettes of the memories there's just Casey locked in a bathroom stall remembering, and it's like three or four sentences and it's literally just memories, not vignettes dramatizing a moment in each memory.

Which I guess is FINE, since the word count limit is 3,500, which is LAUGHABLY LOW given my track record. And I did actually come in a good 700 words under the limit, so I have some wiggle room.

Anyway, the actual structure is one continuous scene, starting with Casey panicking when her ex-bestie walks into the bar and ending with Casey introducing herself to a potential new friend.

MerfolkShort

This one is actually already kind of funky structurally, for me and not just because it's a short story lol It's made up of a bunch of short vignettes that will hopefully coalesce more or less into a cohesive plot-like thing by the end lololol.

journal challenge 7: plot holes & feedback

Post a brief outline of your plot. Then go around other people's threads or club posts to look at their outlines, asking questions and suggesting plot holes that the author might want to correct.

FriendsBreakupShort

I think this one is okay plot-wise except I gotta figure out whether and how to bring up the romance in the end. I definitely think I need to dial it back from how it is in the first draft to let the friendship shine, but I'm not quite willing to let it go completely lol.

MerfolkShort

Lolsob this is obviously the one that needs work because of all the "something something" in the big middle section of the synopsis rip me

Like okay some questions

• DOES Jane even NEED to actually REMEMBER her past life as a wight?
• like could she simply find Mom's research & then she's freaking out like what? W H A T ??? and Muirenn's like *hesitation* "actually yes"
• and then Jane is freaking out MORE bc seriously how can she have a WHOLE LIFE she doesn't remember
• but then when she's on the ocean alone & she's scared, she calls for Muirenn anyway bc she doesn't know what else to do
• that might actually make the ending MORE ambiguous bc all Jane has to go on is her dreams & Mom's research & Muirenn's story, not any actual memories so like is any of it even true? WHO KNOWS

Plus I was thinking Jane finds Mom's research after like they have a fight or something, like the fight would probably have to do with their secrets and how much they keep from each other? And Jane would get so angry that she'd just break into Mom's office - maybe it's even Dad's old office? and Jane's never supposed to go in there, but she's just ANGRY etc & breaks in and finds the research and then is like "oh heck what oh god" and maybe she demands answers but her mom STILL won't say anything, so she runs off to see Muirenn and Muirenn DOES tell her but it b o t h e r s her and she runs off AGAIN and something something she ends up going out on the ocean alone but I have to figure that out more.

journal challenge 8: key scenes

Give a rough outline of the key moment in your story so far. What is that one scene you're really, really excited to write?

FriendsBreakupShort

Lol I've written a draft of the whole story and it's all one scene, so.

MerfolkShort

SUPER EXCITED to write the very end, but a l a s I gotta get all this middle stuff written first.

Anyway the basic idea is: Jane is freaked out by the stuff she's learned about herself and like hops in a boat and boats out into the ocean alone because the ocean is the one thing that's always made her feel better. Only once she's out there, she doesn't feel better, and OH NO a storm's rolling in! Things are getting real scary and now she's not even sure of her way back to shore.

Frightened, Jane calls on Muirenn for help. But now her boat's taking on water, and there's no hope of getting back to shore. Muirenn asks if Jane trusts her. Jane says yes, even though when last we left them she was actually freaked out by Muirenn, too, because Muirenn confirmed the things Jane had learned about her unremembered past life as a sea-wight.

Muirenn kisses Jane and drags her down into the depths, and you're left not knowing if Jane's just been saved or killed. Because! On one hand, there's lore that says the kiss of a sea-wight can save a sailor from drowning. But on the other hand, there's lore that says that sea-wights will trick you, lure you, get you to trust them and then drown you before you've even realized you're in danger.

So who knows what's really happening here

BluesClues writing a story with horror elements and a potentially really dark ending? It's more likely than you think!

journal challenge 9: the protagonist

Really dig into your main character. Write their motives and what is holding them back. What is the conflict in their way from reaching their desired goal?

FriendsBreakupShort

Motives: Casey is here to make new friends, although kind of under duress lol. Her coworkers insisted.

But! after her lifelong friend tossed her aside, Casey's afraid that any attempt at friendship will end in rejection.

MerfolkShort

Motives: Jane just wants to be near the ocean, but her mother tries to keep her away from it for Unknown Reasons.

journal prompt 10: questions

Questions! Post some questions in your entry, then, since is the end of the journal, go round other finished journals answering questions with your thoughts. This month is likely to lead to different realisations for different people, or maybe some people are more experienced with NaNo than others. Either way, we are sure that if you ask a question of the YWS hivemind, the YWS hivemind will answer.

FriendsBreakupShort

I actually don't think I have any questions about this one? Honestly it's so short I just need to sit down and rewrite it in one fell swoop.

MerfolkShort

LOLSOB THAT WHOLE MIDDLE SECTION

• DOES Jane even NEED to actually REMEMBER her past life as a wight?
• how does Jane learn about her past as a sea-wight/learn that she's a changeling?
• when should this happen???

FriendsBreakupShort

I actually don't think I have any questions about this one? Honestly it's so short I just need to sit down and rewrite it in one fell swoop.

Good luck! You can do it!

Muirenn kisses Jane and drags her down into the depths, and you're left not knowing if Jane's just been saved or killed. Because! On one hand, there's lore that says the kiss of a sea-wight can save a sailor from drowning. But on the other hand, there's lore that says that sea-wights will trick you, lure you, get you to trust them and then drown you before you've even realized you're in danger.

Ohh I love that ending and how it works in the lore!

DOES Jane even NEED to actually REMEMBER her past life as a wight?
how does Jane learn about her past as a sea-wight/learn that she's a changeling?
when should this happen???

I mean . . . I guess it depends on how mysterious~ you want to make the ending? I would imagine that if Jane DOESN'T remember her past life and this ending happens anyway, it would be mysterious in the sense of 'oh no? what's happening?'. Whereas if she DOES remember her past life somewhere in the story it would be more like the ambiguity between whether she's been saved or deceived. Eep I skimmed through really fast because I've got to go do some stuff, but this sounds like a really cool story, Blues! <3

@Liminality I think you're gonna KNOW about Jane's past, but I'm thinking more - do I want Jane to remember it herself at all, or do I ONLY want her to learn about it from a) notes in her mom's research and b) what Muirenn tells her, but she doesn't remember it at all herself?

Of course my other issue is figuring out how to fit it all together and bring it all in *sweats*