Young Writers Society

Ellie Schultz has one goal for the summer after her sophomore year of college: find something big on her summer abroad at an archeological dig site in England. She never expected that big find would be a living skeleton buried in the ground. Skel is a feres, a supernatural person gifted with incredible magical abilities. Now that Ellie's woken him up, Skel's enemies are after her, too. If Skel and Ellie want to survive to the end of the month, they'll have to work together to find Skel's vinicula—even though Ellie just wants to go home to be with Dorian Eldridge, her childhood best friend and longtime crush.

Hi there! I finished the first draft of this story back in July before I went on my trip to Arizona, which is a very wild timeline of events to think about now, but I haven't really made any progress with actually revising the draft. I keep putting it off with the promise of revising it when my friends finish reading this first draft.

But something tells me that's not going to be enough to get me in the revising zone, so here's a thread to get that inspiration going! Not only that: this thread is where I'm going to do my majority of writing updates, since that'll hold me accountable. If I do any work on the novel, no matter how large or small, it's going here!

(Even if said work is just posting about it over on Twitter, or gushing about a character to a friend. Progress is progress!)

To start things off, here's a fun summary of the main three!




The protagonist! Originally a shy college student, Ellie's morphed into someone with a little more spunk. She's also been nerfed and has become a girl who just graduated from high school instead. Her big thing is finding her role in life, whether that's by testing out her adulthood independence, or by chasing after other people's histories because she desperately wants to understand her own family's history better. The people she's closest to at the start of the novel are her Aunt Diana, her best friend Dorian, Dorian's dad, and her grandma. She really wants to be an archeologist, and is biromantic.


The man, the myth, the legend! In a perfect world, Skel wouldn't be relying on a teenager to help him do...something, but Ellie's his best shot right now. In an even more perfect world, this Picrew would have had the classy leather jacket Skel becomes obsessed with once Ellie literally digs him out of a hill. Skel's physically a teenager but technically far, far older, and that shows in his personality. He's been inspired by a weird mix of the skull in the jar in Lockwood & Co and Laz in Brimstone & Roses. He's aroace, but Ellie still goes to him for romance advice.


Speaking of Ellie's love life, let's get into Dorian! Meet Dorian Eldridge, Ellie's love interest who's overseas in the good old US of A at the very start of the story. Ellie and Dorian are childhood best friends and hopelessly in love with each other, but both are convinced it's completely one-sided. This isn't really a spoiler; the moment you see them talking to each other on the phone, it's pretty obvious. They're just oblivious. Ellie's loved Dorian for years because he's so nice. Which seems pretty basic, but Dorian is the type of guy who just cares deeply about others. He's got a strong sense of justice and is very skilled with the mechanics. Physically, he's inspired by Gansey in The Raven Cycle, but personality-wise he's inspired by the male love interests I wanted to see in books growing up. It's never outright said, but I'm a hopeless asexual who keeps projecting, so Dorian's probably ace by default, too.

Good question! If you ask Skel, the conflict is that he needs his vinicula, and some people out there don't want him to get them. I would say more, but that brings us to another fun source of conflict: Ellie obviously wants all of the answers, but Skel's very picky with what information about himself he actually shares. It's less that he doesn't want Ellie to be prepared, and more that he doesn't want her to see how he's not nearly as strong as he comes across.

Thankfully for Skel, Ellie's in a coming-of-age novel. She's got a lot more on her plate than just that. Besides, you know, going on the run and dealing with Skel's angst, Ellie's got her own troubles. She's trying to strike it out on her own after finishing up high school, but she's also terrified that going to college means leaving her best friend Dorian behind. Dorian's not going to college—he's learning how to work on cars with his dad, and then he's going to take over the family's mechanic business. And Ellie's terrified that now that they're no longer going to school together, they'll lose touch and stop being as close as they've always been.

So finding out that magic exists and deciding not to tell her best friend about it doesn't really help with that growing divide between their lives.

Ellie also wants to know more about her family. Her parents died in a car accident when she was too young to really remember them, so she's been raised by Diana instead. She's close to her aunt and her grandma, but doesn't know much about her parents besides the stories they've told her and some old scrapbooks in the attic. That's why she wants to be an archeologist. She likes the idea of learning more about other people's histories in the hopes that it'll somehow fill in the gaps in her own.

The big goal for Draft #2 is fixing all of the plot points so they make sense. Ellie & Dorian are both getting aged down, and their backstories are getting brought up more earlier on in canon so any twists and connections between them and other characters don't come across as thrown in last minute. Plus, I want more shipping material.

Skel's background is also getting more fleshed out, since his main antagonist in life didn't even really exist until I was about midway through writing Draft #1.

Speaking of which, that guy is going to get fleshed out more! His profession is going to change, which means I sneak in some mentions of him from the very start. I really want to emphasize how obsessed he is with his Big Bad Evil Goal, which is also something I, uh, never really outright said in canon?

...He also needs a name to go with his title, since right now he's just got a title.

The bulk of the revisions, then, are going to be some sprinkled in scenes or comments at the beginning, and a complete overhaul of everything towards the end because it no longer really works. I really want to emphasize this story's themes and give Ellie more of a tie to the big bad.

I'm also really tempted to throw a prologue in, since this novel is told through Ellie's POV. It would be really fun to set the scene with Skel getting the spell he uses before the start of the novel. As an added bonus, I could even hint at details about the Big Bad just through Skel's interactions with other characters.

...And as a silly little side note, it would be really fun to lean into my originally joke idea of Thalia and Beth being exes. Because it just works.

Today's novel work was, you know, making this thread.

It was also listening to some songs that I'm now associating with this novel as of yesterday. I'll have to make a formal list of songs at some point, but LeeandLie's covers of SAO's Startear and Fruits Basket's Again have some serious Skel vibes! Startear is more from Skel's perspective, while Again is a song from someone he loved very deeply. It's also incredibly angsty when you realize how hopeful it is and how the hope didn't amount to much in the end for them.

Today's novel work was starting up the prologue! I don't know if it'll make it to the final draft, but it's good writing the scene just so I get what led up to Ellie discovering Skel a bit more. I'm already loving the random witch character I threw into this story just for this one bit.

After a lull in writing, finally made some progress with this draft! I spent yesterday night finishing up the prologue I started last Tuesday, as well as editing the first chapter. I even name-dropped Chester Barnaby, who didn't have a regular old name prior to this point, so yay for that!

I'm hoping to keep chipping away at the first chapter with the revision ideas my irl friends and the awesome @Carlito gave me today, but we'll see if I actually feel like doing that after knocking out some essays and before D&D.