Sinking feelings
Oh yeah, folks, if you’ve been following the Great Remodel saga, I have some good news for you: I can do the dishes.
Well, my spouse can.
Well, the dishwasher we bought because life is too short to fight over the dishes can.
I’m so excited to stop eating take-out off paper plates. ALMOST as excited as I am about registration for Super Challenge #14 opening TODAY. Keep an eye out! And in the meanwhile, scroll down to see who won the popular vote on this week’s grids.
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 all three 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? All our 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 #438 Weekly Writing Challenge Staff Picks:
Microprose
Jen’s story is a complex and satisfying bit of microfiction. She used just enough skateboarding jargon to anchor us in the setting, while not requiring the reader to know exactly what each term meant. She set up the relationship and conflict between two challengers, and then added a layer by establishing the power differential with the honorific—Mr. Garcia—before she revealing the student-teacher relationship. This kind of shorthand works extremely well in micros, although it does require the reader to be familiar with certain—in this case, fairly ubiquitous—cultural norms in order to fill in some blanks.
Micro narratives require engaging the reader in a few short words and telling a complete story in a tight word count. Melony engages our attention by presenting a ubiquitous and familiar scene – the morning routine – and an exhausted parent. Most of us have experienced a similar level of tiredness that the coffee just couldn’t shake, and we’re immediately empathetic to the narrator. She keeps a steady pace as the narrator completes morning tasks, dropping children off at school, and we fall into the well-worn tracks of routine. Just as we expect the narrator’s day to go a certain way, Melony gives us a twist that was best described by one of the editors as every (harried) mother’s daydream. In the final four words, she utilises a stark contrast in voice to emphasise the shift from the narrator’s life of predictability and routine, to a life of possibilities and uncertainties.
Rowan’s Roundup: YeahWrite Weekly Writing Challenge #438
A word about one-vote weeks: They’re hard, right? Until there are five posts on a grid, we hold the number of votes down, because frankly we think it’s mean to make you effectively downvote yourself by forcing you to vote for everyone else. That’s the nice part of one-vote. The hard part is that, well, folks only get one vote. Which means that sometimes pieces which would easily have made the top three by picking up those second- and third-favorite votes languish at the bottom of the grid with very few (or even no) votes. Remember, the total number of votes doesn’t have a precise correlation to the intrinsic worth of your piece: it depends entirely on how many people showed up to vote that week, and how many votes they got. Or at least that’s what I tell myself when I land at the bottom of the grid. Again.
As you can see from the grid this week, it takes more to tell a story than just throwing words at a page and hoping some of them stick. But when you’ve only got 750 words, how do you pack a whole story in there? How do you explain and signal POV shifts, time jumps, and setting, without cramping your plot (or editing it out entirely)? Creative phrasing and formatting can help a lot. Using slang specific to a time period or a place, using clothing to set the scene by saying “I lifted my hoop skirt” rather than detailing the entire 1860’s outfit, and similar techniques will all help anchor your story without a long, rambling explanation. And formatting like line breaks, italics, etc., (if not so overused as to make it hard for a reader to follow; check out Trapped for an example and think about how if the sections had been any shorter, or the story longer, or if they hadn’t flowed in the same order each time it might have made your eyes hurt) can signal time, place, and POV jumps without having to engage in lengthy explanations.
There’s a threshold below which it’s almost impossible to work in a full plot. But plot is largely – in micros – about transformation. About a character changing, or learning, or doing a thing that changes the world around them. This week we saw several stories using emotional transformation to develop a sense of plot. Why not try it out?
That’s it for this week! Remember, we don’t always give out a pick on every grid; 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, next week’s challenge grids will be kicking off right here at midnight!
Congratulations to the Crowd Favorites at YeahWrite #438
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 ... 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.
