Have you checked out the lounge communities? The coffeehouse? The summer supergrid?

The first week of the yeah write 2014 summer series started off with a bang last week. You all dove in with a fervor usually reserved for all-you-can-eat ice cream buffets. For anyone that missed the memo and is just now joining us, feel free to wander around and find the best fit (or fits) for you.

The bronze lounge is all about peer-to-peer critique. Introduce yourself to a smaller yeah write audience than usual and upload a piece you’d like to offer for some constructive criticism. Don’t forget to critique a few pieces yourself! It’s all about getting involved. Register here, then dive in. If you are looking for something even more intimate, check out our silver and gold lounges here.

The yeah write coffeehouse is a place to just hang out and get to know your fellow yeah writers a little better. Here’s the link if you care to stop by.

And, lastly, we’ve got the summer supergrid where all our grids come together into one beautifully cramped place. So if you’re looking for the gargleblaster, the challenge grid, and/or the speakeasy, the supergrid is where you want to be. Scroll to the end of this post to add your submission AFTER reading the guidelines posted directly above it.

Cross-genre voting: the how-to guide

With all our grids hunkered down together for the upcoming weeks, it’s foreseeable that all those different genres could cause some stress among our readers. Not only do we have fiction, non-fiction, and the hugely popular gargleblaster in one place, but you also have sub-genres within each of those. How does one choose the best pieces when they are all so different? ::rips hair out in a supergrid voting-fueled rage:: It’s like comparing baboon butts to skyscrapers!

Or is it?

This week, Cindy R is detailing the do’s and don’t’s of storytelling. No matter what genre you’re reading, you’re looking for the same thing in each post: a good story.

Whether it’s parenting woes, an alien takeover, or dino-erotica, the authors are all trying to hook you with a great story. As Cindy explained yesterday, you can’t just recite a timeline or rant and rave for 600 words and expect your readers to clickity-click that little voting icon. You must give your audience a reason to care. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Tomorrow, Cindy will dive into what a story is and I urge you to pay close attention. Once you’ve learned everything you can, move on to the grid and find the story in each post. It’s easy to be fooled by the gut-punch finale sentence or the wine-spewing-out-the-nose punch line. If you had to sludge through 500 words of muck to get there, then it’s not a top row post.

Captain Obvious Alert: Finally, on top of a good story, you want to make sure the author took the time to finalize the piece before posting. Did you stumble over spelling and grammatical errors? Run-on sentences got you cross-eyed? Mistakes happen. We understand that. But a top row worthy post should be as close to perfection as possible. A good story can only go so far.

Each piece on the supergrid deserves your undivided attention

I’ll admit that the hardest posts for me to get through are the gargleblasters, especially those of the poetic variety. Lucky for me, they’re only 42 words because sometimes I have to read one a few times over to really get the author’s meaning. I don’t read it once and yell at my computer, “Me no understand! No vote for you, Mr. Gargleblaster!” Instead, I read it a second and third time. I also read the comments to see what else the author has to say. Finally, I read it again. Why do I do this, you ask?

Because I don’t want to pass on a winning post just because my little brain wasn’t up for some interpretation of the author’s words. We vote the yeah write way which means we expect our readers to take the necessary time on each post. Is it a little time-consuming? You betcha! But it makes that top row shine even brighter when you know those posts were truly the best on the grid.

For the summer series supergrid, it’s even more complicated. What if you don’t like sci-fi or supernatural fiction posts? What if you don’t have kids and find it hard to relate to some of the personal essays on parenting? Just because something is outside of your normal reading habits doesn’t mean you can ignore it when it comes to voting. It’s time to bust out of your comfort zone and dive into those posts you usually avoid. The top row will be better for it and you might just find a new genre to love.

When voting opens tomorrow, read all the posts before casting a single vote. Read them again. Read them a third time if you need to. Ask questions. Make notes of why you liked a piece. Make notes of why you didn’t like a piece. Narrow it down. Discover the best ones and then finally vote.

It’s that simple.

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