[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Seven of your ten yeah write editors descended upon the Long Beach Comic Con earlier this month, and boy did we have an awesome time! Some of us had met in person before, others of us met for the first time. No one had previously met everyone so there was a lot of excitement in having so many of us together in one place outside of the internet. It was a bit like being kids in a candy shop.
But we did adult things too. We had a booth at the expo where we got to talk about yeah write all day long. What could be better? I’ll tell you! We also hosted a microstory challenge in response to the ultimate question: what is your origin story? We had a great turnout and picked winners from each day. Keep reading for the winners. You may even recognize one of them as having been on the grids recently! (Keep reading – we put all of the LBCC microstory entries at the end of this post so that you can read them too!) Finally, we hosted a panel on the Future of Digital Storytelling and how communities like yeah write are making space for a new generation of storytellers. Check that out right here:[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSkGsgzU-6w”][vc_column_text]
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LBCC microstory winners
Ultimate Question: What is your origin story?
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justice’s origin:
[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]September 2008.
Justice Ross has just discovered the largest instrument she’s ever seen. Huge, and low, and powerful, the bass towers miles over her own diminutive 4’6″.
The strings hurt to pull, and her arm can’t reach the bridge, but she’ll grow.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
What we loved about Justice’s story is the way it perfectly captures the wonder and terror of the first moment you set yourself against a goal. The joy, the fear, and the determination that this obstacle will be overcome. It doesn’t hurt that the goal, besides being emotionally overwhelming, is physically larger than the seeker. Justice balanced impossibility and insistence in this story to show us the origin not of a completed accomplishment, but of a journey.
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echo’s origin:
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In the shadowed consciousness of humanity, I have waited. Four millenia have passed in silence as my name is unspoken. I am no angel, nor a demon, but simply a thought. An Idea. I waited for your ignorance… and I am free.
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There are two huge things worth noting about Echo’s story. First, that every editor that looked at it said “When I started reading this story, I said ‘well, this is about what I expected to come out of a con… until the last line.'” The second thing worth noting, although of course you can’t see it here, is that the story originally had a different last line. There’s a big scrawly scratchmark on the page where that line used to be. I would be willing to bet that taking the little bit of extra time to change and craft that line is what changed this story from an okay but somewhat pedestrian idea to one with a deeply compelling and surprising hook.
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Thanks to everyone who participated in the LBCC microstory challenge!
[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Looking for your story? Remember to search for the preferred alias or secret identity you gave us at LBCC![/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
jeff
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]I shouldn’t have been born.
I nearly died anyhow, and the fetal position was a permanent sleeping position for me.
Backwards, oxygen cut off by the umbilical cord, a chance to go back to our real origins.
I hope to get back.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
justice
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]A dimly lit office and –
Her mother and –
A scar.
That’s all I’ve got. I can’t tell you when she told me she’d hurt herself, or how, or why.
Maybe that’s the day I decided to spend my life learning to listen.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
charly
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All I wanted was to fly off with them to fight evil. But they don’t find you if you’re good. They only find evil. After what I did, they found me quick. Now I can show them – I can be so much more.
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golden
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Strange though it was, I opened my eyes for the first time ever. I already knew what I’d see, knew everything there was to know. Knowledge was there, if I wanted. This world and I were one… we kept each other’s secrets.
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kaitlyn
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Darkness. Surrounding me. I reach my hand out to grasp something, anything, but nothing is within grasp. I shiver. I’m all alone. When will this come to an end? Something grabs my hand. Another hand. It pulls me towards something warm. Light.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
dave
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Humble pie tastes like protein shake, the ones after working out. It’s terrible but you need it. I ate a lot of humble pie this year. It made me re-think things a lot. That’s why I strive to be a better person everyday.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
golden
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Her brother was such an idiot. It was embarrassing. Her book slipped from her grasp. She got bumped. The other kid didn’t mean it. She fell anyway. She saw her twisted form at the bottom of the school stairs. She felt nothing.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
daniel
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]In the beginning there was nothing. Then two things happened simultaneously. A boy was thought into existence, became bored and thought his best friend into existence (who had also been bored and thought up the first boy). The universe was a byproduct.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
ramiro
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]My origin lies just east of the City of Angeles. In the hills of Geraghty Lomas. Where bullets fly, heroin is rampant, and the sorrows of a lonely boy are forever forgotten. Abandoned by a father, who lost his way, to self-destruction.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
lilith
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Quiet at heart, she is very adventurous. She ignores her mother. Yet she means well. Only days later did that repay her back. In the form of Lupus, which leaves her weak at moments. But can other wise be strong. Girl power.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
golden
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Darkness enveloped him. He ventured further into the unknown. The deeper he went, the more right it felt. Water dripping echoed through the tunnel guiding him. Thirst came suddenly upon him. Almost there. He brought his wet fingers up to his lips.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
carlos
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]My mom saw this guy at church who she, like, fancied, so her familiar turned into a succubus and had sex with him and then he turned into a goat and had sex with my mom and that’s how I was conceived.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
anon
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Most people think of the beginning as a light, illuminating the darkness that is the universe. A parting of the sea, a new age. I am that light. I am the sea. I am a new age. I am it. I’m immortal.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
kasu
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]I would labor 53 hours a day in Siberia. When I would return home, my wife greeted me with a bottle of vodka. In 1992 when the USSR fell, I was no longer a communist. I moved to America. My name? Antidisestablishmentarianism.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
carlo
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]The origin of my life is a lie, as I continue to grow. I constantly see the opportunity to erase my past and rewrite a new origin. Therefore, the “origin” of one is a changing lie.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
tay
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]“John please…” Her voice trembled as it echoed through the hall. “Stop being such a baby. It’s just an abandoned house.”
He walked through a threshold into the library. His body jerked violently and suddenly disappeared.
“J-john?” she called.
“Who is John?”[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
matt
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Slush… splash… glush…
“Ew! What is that?!” my extraterrestrial, Martian, alien father yelled at my mother. “He ain’t magenta like me, he’s like a tan Puerto Rican.”
My mother fainted, not hearing his nonsense.
“I guess he’s got your dominant genes, wife.”[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
grand-
pepper
sphinx
mcgee
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]A hirsute tyrant wedded a young dark-eyed queen and the two journeyed west to a mountainous land. From them I was born. Weaned on tuna fish and rage, I escaped tumult in the solace of books until I could write them myself.
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beth
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]I’m from a dark place. Once a great and glittering land, it’s now overgrown with mold and mildew, and the pungent smell of sweat shed in battle lingers. This is the story of my life growing up in a roller skating rink.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
autumn
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]I sprang forth like a bound Athena, fully formed, from the thigh of discontent. With a pen as my sword and a lust for the battle against The Ordinary Life, I cut a path to higher ground, and there I saw clearly.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
jennifer
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]“I am what I choose to become. I am evolving.”
I don’t know who first said these words, but they resonate with me. My life is a collection of endings and beginnings, connected to the universe’s symphony, where nothing’s left to chance.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
skitzart
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Born of a father whose exceptional abilities to inspire were taken too soon; and a mother with the sole purpose of raising four children in a world full of apathy. I have been brought up to shine. To inspire. I am Skitzart.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
isharaine
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]1980. An accountant at a top-secret government facility goes on an end-of-tax-season bender.
He wakes up the next day with no memory of the night before, completely naked and sore.
In his bedding, he finds an egg. Me.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
sean
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Before there was order, there was madness, before that silence.
The first spoken word of creation, a grand insane symphony.
All things bursting forth from nothing, and there I stood.
Here I stand watching the clock one second before midnight.
Then silence.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
golden
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]The air was musty in this forbidden room, a library of secret wealth. Wyes closed, she ran her fingers along the spines. Ouch! She yanked her finger back eyes wide open targeting her attacker. It slid from its perch into her hand.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
isaiah
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]Nick pulled his knife from her skull. The moans from the other side of the door grew louder. Nick prepared himself, but nothing would stop him. Not the dead, or his wife’s sister. He has to find her. He must know if…[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
luuny
toonz
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]I haven’t always been a circus performer, at one time I must have had a mother and father. But I was abandoned then raised by a gruff group of circus folk on their trading caravan. But then one day I got separated….[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
kendell
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]“They’re so afraid of the dark,” I mused. I understood. Any number of horrors could be hiding before open, unseeing eyes, but that’s what I fell in love with. Impossible things beyond what I could witness, just waiting for me to see.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row]
