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: What’s in the Box?
Every time you write, there are three groups of people involved: Writers, Readers, and Characters. The quickest way to confuse all three of them is to forget who knows what at which point in your story. Check out our tips and tricks for keeping that straight with a Se7en inspired question in this month’s Technique Toolbox!
Fiction|Poetry Prompt Up:
The first prompt is: incorporate the Seven Seas into your story in some way. The editors had a long, moderately researched, and wide ranging discussion about this prompt! In our research, we discovered that it was the Mesopotamians who made the connection between the Seven Heavens and Earthly bodies of water. The Romans later used the term septem maria to refer to the lagoons around the mouth of the Padus River/Po River that separated it from the open ocean near Venice. Seafaring Arabs, however, considered the seven seas to be the large bodies of water they encountered on their trade journeys. You can see how complicated this is getting and we haven’t even gotten to the Europeans, the Talmudists, the Persians or the East Indians yet. So, let’s simplify it a little.
For our purposes, the Seven Seas are: the Indian Ocean, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Adriatic Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Red Sea. A little reminder: your story doesn’t have to be historical. You can incorporate this prompt into a futurescape, a sci-fi story, a post-apocalyptic story, or any other genre that allows you to use it naturally, integrally and smoothly.
The second prompt, from YeahWrite #364 fiction|poetry winner Laura Duerr is a 7-word line of dialogue that your story must contain unaltered: “Can you get the lights for me?” Note that this is dialogue. A character in your story must say or think it. This is not narration.
Poets: Use the line of dialogue (“Can you get the lights for me?“), write a poem based on one more of the Seven Seas, or write a rime royal poem (or any combination of those three).
April Poetry Slam: Rime Royal
It’s our seventh birthday and we’re celebrating with a seven-line form, the rime royal. This form’s heyday stretched from Chaucer to Shakespeare, but we think it’s time for a revival. With only three rules, what could go wrong? Stretch your poetic muscles and join us this month!
April Microprose:
Seven years is a long time, but it also feels like an instant. So for this month’s microprose challenge, we want you to give us a story in exactly 49 (7×7!) words that begins with the word “seven,” and ends on the word “years.”
A few rules:
- Total wordcount is exactly 49, including the two prompt words. You provide the other 47.
- Words must be used exactly as-is. (“Seven,” not “seventh” or “seventeen; “years,” not “year.”)
- Words may be part of dialogue.
- Words may not be part of a hyphenated word. (No “seven-year-old,” for example.)
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.
Weekend Writing Showcase: Basic YeahWrite Guidelines
Loading InLinkz ...About the author:
In early 2014, Arden joined YeahWrite as a contributing editor and social media manager, and we haven’t been able to get rid of her since. Behind the scenes, Arden is currently working on the first novel of her Hybrid trilogy. She also recently published a fantasy anthology entitled The Seven Sceptres which can be purchased on Amazon. Arden lives in Seattle, Washington with her husband and two fur-babies. To read more of her stories, visit her website.
