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I’m so excited
Honestly, it’s been such a rush hosting Scarlet Quill meetings and this month was no exception. If you haven’t been checking out our supplemental content, you’re missing out on a lot. This month our guests discussed the ways that some tropes reverberate in the real world and why you should care. It’s the kind of discussion I love to host, and we’ve got more coming. All year, we’re talking about how what you write matters: how to do it better, who wants to read it, and how you might be @!#$!@ing it up. So before you let your creeping imposter syndrome get the better of you, make sure you’re worried about the right things. We’ve already chatted about how tropes can get you from plot point to point, and how you can use them to develop characters and the relationships between them. Upcoming, we’ve got a solid lineup including “tropes I, a submissions editor, would love to never read again” and, well, an appropriate October theme. But this content is here for you, so if you’re not seeing a topic covered that you wish we were talking about? Drop us a line. We’re listening!
~Rowan
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: Mystical City Planning
We’re taking a cue from this year’s Scarlet Quill Society and getting some practice incorporating – or subverting – popular tropes. Last week, we visited a Town With A Dark Secret. This week it’s up to you to decide what the secret is, and who deliberately structured the city to put it there. Whether it’s Hazeldine or New York, city planning and architecture can affect where the final battle of your protagonist’s quest is fought, or just lead your characters to the right place at the right time to see something amazing. You can read more about this trope on the TV Tropes website, and then share snippets of or links to your best 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. Check out April’s post, and then catch up with our YouTube channel, where YeahWrite’s Managing Editor Rowan Beckett Grigsby hosted a discussion about tropes that readers would be just as happy never to see again–and most writers won’t even miss. While it’s rare for a trope to be unsalvageable, it’s not impossible. Some tropes started in deliberate misconceptions about the humanity of others, and other tropes picked those associations up along the way and are now so inextricably bound with those assumptions that they can’t be untangled for your personal use until society itself advances a little bit. And some of these tropes started with writers genuinely trying to do better… but missing the mark in fundamental and harmful ways. Want to avoid this in your work? We’ve got you covered.
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 gatherings to delve into the topics and answer your questions, and an editorial backroom on Discord! And for a bonus, if you’re a paid SQS member and you can’t make it to a meeting, you can still send us questions beforehand and we’ll make sure to cover them.
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 #28 (Fiction)
Did you hear the news? You asked, we listened. YeahWrite is publishing its first anthology for both fiction AND creative nonfiction, and the top three winners of Super Challenge #27 and #28 will be automatically published! Register now for Super Challenge #28 (flash fiction!) through May 3. Register for Super Challenge #28 (Fiction) Don’t want to miss out on all the fun? Be sure to sign up for our mailing list so you don’t miss out on any future Super Challenge updates.
WIP Write-Ins, AKA Co-Working Hours
Spontaneous Writing Challenges
About the author:
Rowan submitted exactly one piece of microfiction to YeahWrite before being consumed by the editorial darkside. She spent some time working hard as our Submissions Editor before becoming YeahWrite’s Managing Editor in 2016. She was a BlogHer Voice of the Year in 2017 for her work on intersectional feminism, but she suggests you find and follow WOC instead. In real life she’s been at various times an attorney, aerialist, professional knitter, artist, graphic designer (yes, they’re different things), editor, secretary, tailor, and martial artist. It bothers her vaguely that the preceding list isn’t alphabetized, but the Oxford comma makes up for it. She lives in Portlandia with a menagerie which includes at least one other human. She tells lies at textwall and uncomfortable truths at CrossKnit.
