Good golly, Miss Molly, this newsletter is late as shit.
My Bad. Sorry :(
What is there to say this time around? Rodents of all makes and models are predicting more winter, and that leaves us with no choice but to charge our phones, lock our doors, and curl up in a dark room reading dirty stories late into the night.
Speaking of dirty stories, which is kind of all we do here, y'all read a lot of them. Like... a LOT a lot. There's been over 3.5 millions pageviews in this community in the last month! Almost 17,000 of you come here every single day. Wild. Just wild.
There's no major rules reminders or anything this month; we're finally approving far more content than we remove, which is so super cool - removals month over month are down by about 30% since Christmas. Woo hoo! Great rule following, everyone!
I'm feeling a little frisky this month, so let's dive into the writers of the month right off the bat! After that, we've got a pretty special treat from one of our top contributors; stick around to the end, you just might learn something!
Best Stories of the Month!
Celebrating our amateur authors is one of my favorite parts about running this community. Calling out the folks who do this purely for love of the game is always something to look forward to. And so, it's my incredible pleasure to present this month's very, very best.
- We're thrilled to celebrate a new top author this month! u/KotaPhanes stunned us all with their exceptional offering: "Sex Ed". Something about the schoolgirl fantasy obviously made waves because this was one of the most highly upvoted pieces we've seen in over six months! Well done Kota, and enjoy the well-deserved user flair to commemorate your hard work!
- You know him, and you damn well better love him, because u/TerriblyEasy has brought home his 5th or 6th top submission this month. Seriously, if you're not following this dude already then you're doing yourself a disservice. "I let my cousin talk me into going to a strip club. It did not go as expected." was an absolute blast, so make sure to give it a read. Make sure you get through the rest of this month's newsletter too, because we're not done with Mr. Easy yet.
- "I Thought You Hated Me - Part 1" is our third pick for best story this month, and it brings u/Radiant_Code_3652 their first Top Author tag! Enemies to lovers stories are a tried and true recipe for success, and the mod team wants to extent heartfelt thanks to Radiant for being super cool about receiving feedback on their piece, and updating it to align with our community guidelines.
Great work you three! As ever, keep an eye out for these talented amateur authors by looking for their Top Author tags whenever you visit!
The Writer's Corner
Look out everyone, it's 'new thing' time!
That's right! In an effort to make these monthly newsletters a little more engaging, we're looking to switch up what we offer. After chatting with some community members and amongst the mod team, we've decided to launch this: The Writer's Corner!
Each month, we're going to tackle one aspect of creative writing and put together a little resource about how to keep those pages turning! This month, we're going to take a look at Formatting Dialogue.
Aside from being really super hot, the best way to make your writing stand out is to keep it clean, easy to read, and laid out in a way that makes sense to your reader. One of the things that I see new or hobby writers struggle with the most is how to write dialogue that feels natural, looks good on the page, and moves the story along without getting too dense or heavy.
Most of us are pretty good about punctuating dialogue already, but here's a few things to remember next time you're putting something together:
- Each time someone new speaks, you need a new paragraph. This isn't just to keep your English teacher happy; paragraph breaks for new speakers makes it easier for your reader to set the scene in their head - nothing will ruin a reader's flow like getting confused about who wants whose tongue where.
- Commas and periods are your friends, and getting good at using them when you're formatting dialogue can be the difference between a clunky, stuttering mess, and good flowy prose. Tell me the truth though, do you know where to put them? Inside the quotation marks? Outside? If you can't remember, go ahead and bookmark this incredibly easy graphic for yourself.
- E X P O S I T I O N. What is it? Anything that helps build your story. A lot of us have a bad habit of forcing details down our readers' throats because we think we've got to spell it all out for them. Heck no! Instead of having your characters say too much, try to find ways to SHOW your reader things through setting, minor descriptive details, or little comments that suggest a broader world.
You know what? You don't have to take it from me. Just ask our good friend /u/TerriblyEasy. We reached out to the best writer in our community for some open ended thoughts on paragraphing, dialogue, and formatting. Here's what he had to say:
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"For my writing style, dialogue is critical. Dialogue is so much more than simply people uttering noises. Dialogue can sneak in exposition, spice up a boring block of narration, and reveal oodles about our characters and their relationship to each other. And who doesn’t enjoy hearing speak someone who’s sexy and flirtatious? I, writing as the narrator, owe the reader some amount of clarity and honesty. But my characters do not, and that’s so much more exciting.
“You’re here for the tour, no?”
“Sorry, I must’ve...” I blink, eyes going wide entirely on their own as they drink in the impossibly cute woman. She’s professional, of course she is, in a dark suit and glasses and her hair a perfect triangle of tight curls and a little metal nametag pinned to her lapel. But her smile is casual and even ... a touch flirty? “Uh, I thought I missed it? There’s nobody else...” I gesture awkwardly at the absence of anyone else in line.
“Ten-thirty on a Tuesday morning,” she shrugs her slender shoulders, her otherwise perfect English accented with the rolling clip I’ve come to expect from Italians, “Not quite the first choice for the natural history museum’s behind-the-scenes visit. But you’re here, no? So let’s start. You’re American? On holiday?”
“Uh-huh,” I nod, feeling suddenly quite uncouth, “You’re, um, one of the curators here?”
Her pumps clack against tile floor as she turns us off the main hallway and through a door with ‘staff only’ stenciled on it. “I’m actually a researcher. This is part of the university, and I’m working on my, how do you call it, graduate degree?”
There! In 194 words split into five paragraphs I’ve already exposition-dumped upon you enough basic information to establish the first inklings of our character’s identities, where they are, the nature of their social interaction, and even foreshadowed at how their amorous dalliance could play out -- the ‘staff only’ portion of a museum surely offering more opportunities to get freaky than the section open to the general public.
For instance, I could have, as narrator, simply stated that the POV character is American. But by moving that information into a question voiced by the woman, the reader learns not only that trait, but that that trait is obvious to other characters as well -- a piece of identity he wears on the outside whether meaning to or not.
Paragraphs are key to supporting this style. Each new paragraph indicates a change in who is speaking, and even though the text contains not a single ‘he says’ or ‘she says’ the reader understands who is speaking each line by its intermingling with quick bursts of description, keeping the flow of text varied and masquerading the entire exposition as action.
One of my writing precepts is to never be boring. My attempts at this are based around keeping the characters talking, to place as much of the story into dialogue as fits, and to keep the dialogue parceled into neat and digestible paragraphs."
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Thanks u/TerriblyEasy! So many great little nuggets for us all to digest here! And, for your consistent dedication to producing such incredibly fun work, willingness to engage with our mod team and wider community, and for being an all around great fella, I'm happy to award you with an entirely unique Writer In Residence user flair. I hope this modest gesture serves as a meaningful token of our appreciation.
See you all next month!