Saving the day
As a parent, I often feel like I’m not quite living up to the standards society has set for parenting. Do I pack a healthy three-course lunch for my kid every day? No. Do I shuttle my kids to seventeen different activities every week? Nope; just one extracurricular is enough to keep me on my toes. Do I insist on family dinners every evening or game nights every weekend? Please – we all need a break from each other sometimes.
I like to be a behind-the-scenes hero. Making sure my kiddo’s school computer is charged every night. Keeping track of homework assignments and upcoming quizzes. Remembering before a birthday party that one friend is vegan and another is gluten-free. Driving the kids to school when it’s pouring down rain and the sidewalk between our house and the bus stop is six inches deep in water so that they don’t have to spend the day in wet shoes. We can’t all be Big Damn Heroes, but we can save the day for the people we love in small, personal ways.
That being said, check out this week’s trope prompt – I’d love to see stories and essays that feature some big heroic moments!
~Christine
This Week’s Writing Prompt is:
This week, your job, should you choose to accept it, is to write a story, essay, or poem incorporating the following prompt:
Trope: Big Damn Heroes
We’re taking a cue from this year’s Scarlet Quill Society and getting some practice incorporating – or subverting – popular tropes. The Big Damn Hero trope is just what it sounds like: your hero (or heroes) swoops in to save the day in the most spectacular way possible. (Or not – BDH moments can fail spectacularly, too.) You can read more about this trope on the TV Tropes website, and then share snippets of or links to your best Big Damn Hero story in Discord or on Facebook!
Stuck? Check out last year’s — no, year before last! — series on responding to prompts!
Share your response in the Coffeehouse, located both on Facebook or Discord, by linking your blog post, Google Doc, or other file. Check out your fellow YeahWriters’ responses, and don’t forget to leave them some love in the comments!
Looking for our weekly grids? After nearly ten years, they’ve been retired. Read more about the latest changes to YeahWrite in the #500 Weekly Writing Challenge Kickoff Post.
The Schedule
We will release a new prompt on our blog every Friday at 12pm Eastern. Then it’s up to you! Write your response to the prompt on your own blog or website and share the link in the Coffeehouse, located both on Facebook or Discord. If you prefer to keep your work under wraps (and away from the eyes of potential publishers), you can still ask for beta readers in the Coffeehouse and share your work privately! Every Monday, we’ll check in to see how you’re doing and what your writing goals are for the week. Wednesdays are “Work-in-Progress Wednesdays.” Share a few sentences or even a paragraph or two in the Coffeehouse (no more than 250 words, please). Even if you’re not done writing, this could be the boost you need to stay motivated. Did you publish a book? Do you have a story in a magazine? The First Friday of every month is for self-promotion, where you can share commercial links to your work for purchase. (You can always share the news that you’ve been accepted for publication, though!) And of course, the entire community is here 24-7 to share your victories and setbacks, challenges and accomplishments. So come on in, pull up a chair, and say hello. We’re all writers here.
Upcoming and Ongoing
Sign up for our email blast so you don’t miss out on any upcoming classes, workshops, or competitions.
Scarlet Quill Society (Free Workshop w/ Optional Paid Benefits)
Welcome to the secret back room where the Scarlet Quill Society meets. In this year-long workshop, we’ll be focusing on tropes! Love ’em or hate ’em, you can’t avoid ’em. For the purpose of this year’s workshop, we’re defining a trope as a building block of storytelling. It’s a device or pattern of events that is used to solve plot or character problems or communicate meaning efficiently and effectively. Read the March post, and then join YeahWrite’s Managing Editor Rowan Beckett Grigsby as she explores how tropes can bring us together… or keep us apart.
March’s meeting took place on Tuesday, March 7. The video will be up on our YouTube page shortly! And if you want to join in next month, membership info is right. down. there. VVVVVVVV
Scarlet Quill Society workshop posts are always free. In addition, we are offering a couple add-ons that we think you’ll find exciting and worth a few bucks a month: face-to-face (okay, virtual) monthly meetings to delve into the topics and answer your questions, and an editorial backroom on Discord!
Sign up for a membership today to join the Scarlet Quill Society and automatically receive the Zoom link and password for every meeting. One-off monthly meeting tickets can also be purchased on Kofi. At YeahWrite we believe information wants to be shared. If you can’t afford to join us for society meetings, we post the recording about a week later, and you’re welcome to leave the tip you can afford (even if that’s just a nice thank you comment). Check out our YouTube channel for more.
Super Challenge #27 (Nonfiction)
The Final Round of Super Challenge #27 is officially over! Good luck to all our shortlisted participants as they eagerly await the final results. Miss out on registration? Be sure to sign up for our mailing list so you don’t miss out on any future Super Challenge updates.
Super Challenge #28 (Fiction)
WIP Write-Ins, AKA Co-Working Hours
Spontaneous Writing Challenges
About the author:
Christine Hanolsy is a (primarily) science fiction and fantasy writer who simply cannot resist a love story. She joined the YeahWrite team in 2014 as the microstory editor and stepped into the role of Editor-In-Chief in 2020. Christine was a 2015 BlogHer Voices of the Year award recipient and Community Keynote speaker for her YeahWrite essay, “Rights and Privileges.” Her short fiction has been published in a number of anthologies and periodicals and her creative nonfiction at Dead Housekeeping and in the Timberline Review. Outside of YeahWrite, Christine’s past roles have included Russian language scholar, composer, interpreter, and general cat herder. Find her online at christinehanolsy.com.
