The Weekend Writing Showcase is open!
TGIF, YeahWriters! Let’s make this place your home for all the stories that didn’t make it to the YeahWrite competitive grids this week. As a refresher, here’s what we had going on!
Technique Toolbox
New year, new look: we’ve revamped the old Nonfiction Know-how to include our fictioneers. We’re kicking the year off with a bang, too! We know you’ve sworn to write more this year, and that you’re combing the ‘net for inspiration. But how do you acknowledge those linkups, prompts, and accountability buddies without losing your reader’s interest? Rowan has some ideas for you right here.
Fiction|Poetry Prompt Up:
The first prompt is: your story must include a character whose occupation is a clerk at a gas station.
The second prompt, the sentence that your story must contain, from YeahWrite #351 fiction|poetry winner Lisa, is: “Something’s always missing.”
Poets: write a poem that includes a clerk at a gas station, a poem that includes the prompt sentence, or an erasure poem.
January Poetry Slam: Erasure
Out with the old, in with the new. Or rather, let’s make something old into something new this month, as Rowan teaches us to experiment with erasure poems. These no-meter no-rhyme poems are made by deleting words from an existing text. Rowan’s even got some fun ideas for how to show the difference between the original text and your poem. Won’t you join us?
January Microprose:
This month we’re asking you for a brand new story in a very old genre: a fable in exactly 51 words. A fable is a short story that features animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature as the main characters (with human traits, but not human), and that leads to a particular moral or object lesson, such as”a friend in need is a friend indeed,” “the early bird catches the worm,” etc. Many of us are familiar with the fables of Aesop, but the form exists in many different cultures, both ancient and modern. See, for example, the Japanese folktale The Two Frogs, numerous Australian Aboriginal stories, or the Indian Tales of Panchatantra. Franz Kafka’s A Little Fable is more modern example, and George Orwell’s Animal Farm could be considered a fable in novel form.
For the purposes of the microprose challenge, your fable:
- Must feature anthropomorphized animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature as the main characters.
- Must illustrate a particular moral.
- Must be completed in exactly 51 words, excluding the moral, which should be no longer than one sentence and may be added on (optionally) at the end with no word count penalty.
You know the drill, YeahWriters. Bring us your best writing this weekend!
You got rules, right?
What?! It’s the weekend. There are no rules during the weekend. You can share a post that’s as many words as you like, a piece of fiction, a poem of your choosing, or a persuasive essay. Whatever you want, you can share. Well, except commercial or sponsored posts. That’s the one rule that never changes.
While you’re hanging out with us, please remember to visit other posts on the grid, comment, and take part in the community here! That’s what makes YeahWrite the place to be.
How to submit and fully participate in the Weekend Writing Showcase:
Basic YeahWrite guidelines: no word limit; no date restriction; no commercial/advertising posts (product reviews, sponsored posts, etc.); three post maximum per writer.
1. In the sidebar of this week’s post, please grab the code beneath the Weekend Showcase badge and paste it into the HTML view of your entry;
2. Follow the Inlinkz instructions after clicking “add your link” to upload your entry to this week’s grid;
3. Your entry should appear immediately on the grid if you don’t receive an error message;
4. Please make the rounds to read all the entries; and
5. Consider turning off moderated comments and CAPTCHA on your own blog.
Have fun!
Loading InLinkz ...About the author:
Arden joined YeahWrite in early 2014 to operate as its Social Media Manager. She also heads up YeahWrite’s Who’s on Fourth feature, as well as the Weekend Writing Showcase. Working day-to-day as a paralegal, she spends most of her free time writing short stories and the occasional nonfiction essay at her website. She is currently working on the first novel of her Hybrid trilogy as well as a fantasy anthology with three other writers.
