May the Fourth be with you
Except you, Poe Dameron. But hey, you get to be the subject of my narrative rant this week. Mild TLJ spoilers to follow: If you have a character who relentlessly refuses to participate in the plot except to actively work against what your protagonists are trying to do, they’re not the hero. No matter how pure they think their motives are. And if they relentlessly refuse to participate in character growth, they’re not a useful tool for the reader, either. So when you’re building your story and characters, look at each one, and say “what does this person want? Can they get it? What’s preventing them?” Some of those answers will help you sort your heroes and villains, so that you’re not telling the reader one thing and showing them another. (Another example of this is Fifty Shades, where the narration consistently says things like “this character is smart” or “this character is good at business” when there are no examples of them being either thing in the story. It’s not enough for the author to insist that a reader perceive a character a certain way, and in fact it’s kind of insulting.) Nonfictioneers, this applies to you, too. Have you ever written a mostly-true story you thought you were the hero of, only to have someone say “um, what you did there was kind of crappy to the girl in Starbucks though?” Reminder: it’s ok to screw up and think you’re the hero even while you’re hurting someone, but 1) learn from the experience; and 2) write the essay through the lens of that learning process so other people can learn from your mistakes. Don’t be Poe! Be a winner!
You’re not really here to listen to me rant. You’re here to find out who won the popular vote. But it’s not all about the popular vote at YeahWrite, folks. We also have our editorial staff picks to hand out. See, while there’s a popular vote winner every week, we don’t always give out a staff pick. Our editors comb the grids to find, not just the best writing on our 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. If you got a staff pick this week, grab your badge from the sidebar and wear it with pride! 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.
The other benefit of the editors’ pick, of course, is that unlike the popular vote we’ll tell you why we liked that post. So don’t just skip reading the blurb if it’s not about your post; you’ll pick up some handy pointers about what makes good writing great that you can apply to your own work. For more of that critical feedback, keep an eye on our Roundup for a quick rundown of trends we see each 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 Editorial Staff Picks and Roundup (and congratulating the winners in the comments), 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!
YeahWrite #368 Weekly Writing Challenge Staff Picks:
Microprose
This month’s purple prose prompt really showed the difference between florid writing and strong work, and how to balance the two. Maintaining a clear structure, authentic characters, and keeping an eye on plot are often the most difficult parts of writing purple prose, because the nature of the beast is for those things to be lost in a sea of adjectives and trite phrasing. In A Grave Offense, Michael maintains a strong internal structure where characters behave in ways that are consistent to the narrative, he delivers a clear, complete story, and brings us some delightful purple prose that embellishes, rather than obscures, the story. Michael cleverly draws us first into the internal fantastic narrative of Captain Midnight as he surveys his kingdom, and then through clever pacing, emphasis, and repetition Michael gives us the utterly banal, if wayward, young Thomas Corcoran and his overdue library book.
Misadventures Past Bedtime by Aishma
Aishma proved that she fully understood the task at hand, telling a very mundane story with disproportionately grandiose vocabulary (“forbidden repository of confections” and “nefarious beldam” stood out for me, although Rowan says she misses “bursary” from the original version) and wandering clauses. An important note is that while the clauses wandered, they weren’t awkwardly shoved together with comma splices; the story flowed freely from beginning to end. As I said in the kickoff, using a brobdingnagian vocabulary is no excuse for ignoring punctuation. The juxtaposition of more colloquial terms – which she set off in quotes – was perfectly in keeping with the overbearing tone we come to expect from “good” purple prose. It absolutely tickled me.
Rowan’s Roundup: YeahWrite Weekly Writing Challenge #368
Photo prompts, amirite? They’re not just popping up on the Super Challenge, they’re here to stay for May.
But how do you integrate a photo prompt? How close do you have to stay to the picture? The general rule is make it recognizable and change what you need to. That is, colors, general time of day, number of people, all those should stay about the same. But if you want to make the temple in the background Mayan, Incan, or alien, go ahead. Don’t change a character’s race (although you can make them a non-obvious race and acknowledge that race and presentation are not the same thing) but if you need to change their clothes, go ahead – it wouldn’t make sense for your explorer to be wearing jorts, but they might be a person of the same general appearance wearing a comfy coverall. Remember to describe the character, not just their clothes, if you do this! And that ambiguous sun touching the mountains? That could be morning or evening. Make the gentle massaging changes you need to get the photo and your story to work together so that you don’t end up writing “Aditya walked past the wall of photos in his mother’s house, including the one of her as a teen, standing in her bedroom, in front of the sparkly wallpaper and the poster of the boy band.”
(Poets, I see all y’all out there being intimidated by odes. Relax. You don’t have to do the hardest one.)
With the conciseness requirement out the window and cliche encouraged, punctuation errors stood out more this week. Don’t worry if this is you – everyone struggles with punctuation in long sentences. Do read through the grid again and see if you can spot the errors. (The most common was a comma splice). Critical reading and finding errors in other works can be the best ways to learn to spot issues with your own writing. And… if this week’s grid resembled your regular writing, dial it back a little next month so we know you did it on purpose here. 🙂
That’s it for this week! Remember, we don’t always give out a pick on both grids; if we were impressed by several posts on one grid we’ll give them all picks, and if nothing really stood out for us we’ll hold off. If you didn’t get a pick this week, read back through the Roundup to see if you can use some of this week’s tips and tricks.
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!
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 #368
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
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Loading InLinkz ... 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.
Who wants to start a comma splice club with me? *guilty*