I See the Lights
If you ask me to be completely honest, I’m still riding high on this week’s Scarlet Quill meeting. Our panel delivered almost an hour of analysis of the tropes of Hallmark Christmas Movies, and then they turned around and gave us the plot for a movie?!?!?!? Hallmark, if you’re listening, make this movie! It has everything from a disaster proposal to a family vacation to an opportunity for original songs. While I’m waiting, I’ll get back to trying to find a string of lights for my porch that both matches the lights I have and is the correct length. It’s harder than you might think!
~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 (Hallmark Holiday Movie Edition): Accidental Proposal
We’re taking a cue from this year’s Scarlet Quill Society and getting some practice incorporating – or subverting – popular tropes. In December, Rowan and Christine are tackling the tropes of Hallmark holiday movies, and this week, we’re going to focus on something tangential to our panel discussion: the accidental proposal. While the proposal in our hypothetical movie is deliberate and public, let’s look at something that flows the other way: an innocent remark that one character assumes is Popping the Question. If you need more information on the prompt, click the link and check out the description. What will your take be on this trope?
Play with the prompt, and when you’ve got your story down, share your response in the Coffeehouse, located both on Facebook and Discord, by linking your blog post, Google Doc, or other file. Bonus points if you do it on WIP Wednesday! Stuck? Check out last year’s — no, year before last! — series on responding to prompts. While you’re at it, make sure to 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
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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 December’s post, where we finally get around to ruining your childhood ourselves, after months of claiming we weren’t going to do that. That’s right, we’re coming for that charming outrider of white supremacy and heteronormativity, the Hallmark Christmas Movie. Is it the end of heartwarming winter specials, or can we replace this with something just as cheery but more inclusive? Find out in our post, and then come see what our experts have to say for the low low price of $5 (or free with your YW membership).
Did you miss this month’s live discussion? Don’t fret! The video will be up on our YouTube channel once Arden returns from a much-needed vacation at the end of the month. In the meantime, you can check out our older videos on a pay-what-you-can basis! If you have a good time, leave a tip and we’ll love you forever.
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.
2023 Anthology? WATCH THIS SPACE!
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.
