Happy birthday to me!
Wow, it was great to see y’all filling up the grids again (and welcome back, to a few old faces! I missed you!). I have no idea if you just felt sorry for me or if it had nothing at all to do with my birthday and everyone was just feeling inspired this week, but what the heck, I’ll take credit for it. But then, give me half a chance and I’ll take credit for everything from chicken soup to handwarmers.
Now let’s see how that all played out in the popular vote, shall we?
Besides the popular vote, we also have the option of handing out an editorial staff pick to any post on our grids. Our editors comb the grids to find, not just the best writing on this grid this week, but what we think is pretty darn great writing anywhere anytime. Picks are based on writing quality, how successful the author is in conveying information, and just plain style. The great part is that we don’t have a finite number of picks to hand out. That means that if two, three, five, or even all the works on one grid are fantastic, we can give them all kudos- and we’d love to, so keep that great work coming!
On weeks when we don’t award a staff pick, keep an extra close eye on the Roundup. That’s our rundown of trends we see from week to week. We try to highlight the good stuff and point out problems that more than one writer is struggling with. There’s probably a handy tip in there for you right now, so check it out!
Once you’re done reading through the Roundup, keep scrolling down to check out who won the popular vote on both grids. If you earned the highest number of votes in any challenge, you are this week’s Crowd Favorite! If you came in first, second or third, you get “Top Three” honors. Grab your badge from our sidebar!
Looking for your badge? Both grids have the same Winner, Editorial Staff Pick, and Top Three badges. It doesn’t clutter up our sidebar, and they’ll still look pretty on yours!
Rowan’s Roundup: YeahWrite Weekly Writing Challenge #344
This week I’d like to single out Danielle’s prose poem for a second. We talk a lot about stretching yourself on the grids, and this is a fine example of an unconventional nonfiction piece. There’s always a strategic decision to be made with a post like this, which walks the fine line between fiction and nonfiction. If you have a true story, but it’s packaged in a way that a reader expects fiction to be packaged, the surprise of that contrast can play out a little unpredictably in the popular vote – which doesn’t mean it’s not a good piece of writing or that it won’t go home with an editor’s pick instead. One of our favorite pieces ever is also one of the shortest pieces to show up on the nonfiction grid. Danielle was kind enough to volunteer for a deeper unpacking of her piece (in public! y’all, that’s brave!) so I’m going to take that dive and talk about how to make a post like this really work for you.
One of the things that is working well in this piece is the heavy use of imagery. Drowning a longer post in images often weighs the reader down, but 56 words plus a title isn’t (usually, although I can think of one micro…) long enough to make a reader ask why this style is still happening to them and where’s the narrative. The parallel structure of each fragment also sets up a songlike rhythm for the piece, broken only at the end. That is, most of the internal fragments are [noun] [description starting with verb]. Finally, the double meaning of the title is fantastic, especially with the tight final sentence unpacking the second meaning for the reader without overexplaining it. You can spend the entire piece thinking of “gold” as a literal description until you’re reminded that it’s also a metaphorical one. And although I don’t often talk about choosing a featured photo, the photo here does a great job reinforcing the structure and imagery of the piece while staying out of the reader’s way.
A couple things that aren’t working as well kept this piece out of editor’s pick territory for us, so it would be unfair not to share those as well. Although the fragments mostly have a parallel structure, “to eat, we have a roasted duck” misses that structure. The first few fragments have a near-rhyme set up, which creates an expectation that the rest of the piece will follow suit; when it doesn’t there’s a bit of a letdown. The same thing happens in the middle, where there are a couple fragments in perfect trochaic tetrameter that don’t match the rhythm of the others. Personally I would have split up those near-rhymes and metered phrases to avoid setting expectations, but you could go either way as a writer. Finally, a few of the fragments feel more awkwardly constructed (especially the duck one) than others. Awkward construction does happen in poetry, but it happens so that the writer can hit a rhyme or meter requirement. Both of those things are absent here, so the awkwardness could have been edited out in favor of a read as smooth as “borrowed cufflinks on his wrists.”
Overall, this is a pretty little piece that just needed to commit a little harder to its structure one way or the other in the middle. The title does a great job setting the piece up and the last line knocks everything down, so the only thing that needs work is cleaning up the little matrix of words in between.
Voice. It’s what we have as writers (in fact, I teach that “voice is the way in which a writer deliberately breaks grammatical rules to sound more like themself”) but it’s also what our characters have. When you’ve written a story, try to hear the voices of your characters in your head (if that’s your thing; if not, just hold up the sentences side by side). Do all your characters use similar sentence structure and phrasing? Is a child’s grammar and word choice similar to an adult’s? Remember to give all your characters unique voices, including your narrator if you’re writing in first person!
That’s it for this week! If you’re lost in the middle of the grid and wondering how you can get a little more feedback on your posts, check out our membership perks! If you’re more the self-help type, remember to scroll through our writing help section for tips and tricks. Even if a post isn’t directed at your favorite grid, there’s probably a handy hint for you in there anyway!
Everybody: before you go, please take some time to leave your favorites a little love in the comments, and don’t forget, the Weekend Writing Showcase opens tonight at 6pm Eastern US Time!
Congratulations to the Crowd Favorites at YeahWrite #344
The thumbnails are now sorted in order of most votes to fewest. Ties in the overall number of votes are broken by number of editor votes.
Congratulations if you’re at or near the top! Writing well is hard work, and we’re honored you’ve chosen us this week to showcase your entry.
If you’re at or near the bottom, don’t be discouraged. You’re in the right community for learning and growing as a writer, and we are always available with resources for those who ask nicely.
To our readers and voters: thank you! See you next week.
Nonfiction Challenge
Loading InLinkz ...Fiction|Poetry Challenge
Loading InLinkz ...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.
