![]() It’s a device or pattern of events that is used to solve plot or character problems or communicate meaning efficiently and effectively. ![]() For the purpose of this year’s workshop, we’re defining a trope as a building block of storytelling. In this year-long workshop, we’ll be focusing on tropes! Love ’em or hate ’em, you can’t avoid ’em. Welcome to the secret back room where the Scarlet Quill Society meets. So come on in, pull up a chair, and say hello. (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. 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. Even if you’re not done writing, this could be the boost you need to stay motivated. 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). 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. We will release a new prompt on our blog every Friday at 12pm Eastern. Read more about the latest changes to YeahWrite in the #500 Weekly Writing Challenge Kickoff Post. Looking for our weekly grids? After nearly ten years, they’ve been retired. Check out your fellow YeahWriters’ responses, and don’t forget to leave them some love in the comments! Share your response in the Coffeehouse, located both on Facebook or Discord, by linking your blog post, Google Doc, or other file. Stuck? Check out last year’s - no, year before last! - series on responding to prompts! Share snippets of or links to your best story in Discord or on Facebook! What might happen if people are suddenly thrust into vastly different bodies and experiences? How might they react? Would it be a positive or negative experience? Would they want to go back to their old bodies or would they resist? You can read the poem, Mixup by Kate Baer, that motivated this prompt, and you can read more about the ‘Freaky Friday’ Flip on the TV Tropes website. Essentially, two or more characters swap bodies through some magical or “scientific” means (think gamma rays or radioactive goo). It’s a benign form of the Body Snatcher trope and you’ve likely come across it in movies like Freaky Friday or 13 Going On 30, Big, Freaky, Little or even Shrek the Third. Poetry led to this trope, but it’s a common and familiar one. We’re taking a cue from this year’s Scarlet Quill Society and getting some practice incorporating – or subverting – popular tropes. This week, your job, should you choose to accept it, is to write a story, essay, or poem incorporating the following prompt: Want to tell us what poetry you’re reading? Come find us on Facebook or Discord. This poem specifically: Mixup by Kate Baer, so you may want to read that too before you have a go at the prompt. Reading poetry also prompted this week’s… well… prompt. You could start with the poem I poached the title of this introduction from: Words by Kamala Das. Poetry is a great way to get a quick insight into a poet’s life and perspective, and reading perspectives that are different to our own broadens our thinking in untold ways. Instead, I’m challenging you to read more broadly try reading women poets and First Nations poets and trans poets and poets from other excluded communities. I’m not saying you should never read those poets, but I am giving you express permission to skip reading their work - we’ve all read too much of them in high school. You know the ones Keats and Yeats and Byron, Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Whitman, and all the others I’m not going to list. ![]() You don’t have to read Dead White Men Poets™ either. Not exclusively (though I wouldn’t be mad at you if you chose to), but in addition to the other reading you’re doing. You’ve probably heard the advice that all writers should be reading poetry, and yeah I’m going to repeat that: every writer should be reading poetry. I also love cannibalising poetry techniques to use in my fiction and my creative nonfiction. I’ve been reading (and writing) a lot of poetry recently.
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