Wulf Moon's SUPER SECRETS Workshop & Challenge!

Year four Feb Check-in. 

Wrote a 3600-word story. 

Wrote a KYD. 

Revising my story for submission to WOTF this quarter. 

Submitted a story to an Anthology bringing me up to 2 out of 3 this quarter. 

@physa 

It can be easy to feel that way sometimes, Amy. Hang in there!
Do you have any stories ready to submit? (flash or short story) If so, you just have to lock down a time to submit them. We all have that beautiful thing called life, of course. Do what you can.

Don't be like me either, and try to do everything last minute!

Posted by: @jennyperrycarr

2. Eked out 1 KYD yesterday before month-end (note to self: start this earlier in the month!)

Lol, Jenny. This was me last month.   

For February:

I wrote a KYD then expanded it to my Q2 entry. Letting it rest for a week before final review and submission. 

I submitted to five markets. Got a few higher tier form rejections and one personal.

On to March! 

At the level you are all writing at—and some here also have a tremendous submission rate—we should be hearing of more successes soon. Practice makes perfect, but smart practice makes good results happen faster.

Well done, all! There will be good rewards reaped by adhering to the challenge, even though some months can be tough. Try not to throw in the towel, but instead, examine your daily activities and see if you can lighten other loads so you can dedicate more time to writing without the writing being a burden. This is what all professional writers have to do.

And I already see some doing this very thing, analyzing how they are scheduling their tasks. Good on you!

Happy March! 

Beastmaster Moon

February check-in!

2 KYDs

1 written story

1 submission

I can't believe it's March already!

@wulfmoon

Your challenge members have all reported in. After five months of diligent work and smart practice, these writers remain committed, their names remain etched upon the scroll in blood:

@empressed

@scott_m_sands

@linardos

@jarrodkwilliams

@physa

@scribblesatdusk

@lost_bard

@jennyperrycarr

@cpapa

Posted by: @lost_bard

@wulfmoon

Your challenge members have all reported in. After five months of diligent work and smart practice, these writers remain committed, their names remain etched upon the scroll in blood:

@empressed

@scott_m_sands

@linardos

@jarrodkwilliams

@physa

@scribblesatdusk

@lost_bard

@jennyperrycarr

@cpapa

What? They're still standing? After all the work I gave them?

@wulfmoon 

Posted by: @scott_m_sands

@wulfmoon 

Posted by: @wulfmoon

Posted by: @scott_m_sands

@wulfmoon 

Oh yes it does 

And once again, it's time for your Monday KYD writing prompt!

Mystery aboard the ____________.

This prompt is a play on the Agatha Christie novel MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS. Doesn't mean you have to set your story on a train, in fact, it would be fun to set it on a space station, a generation ship, a Mars habitat, or the like. Or even a castle if you do fantasy. Doesn't have to be about murder, but Agatha Christie knew that murder involved high stakes, escalating tension when fresh murders kept happening in a closed environment until the killer was discovered. What interesting mystery can you think up in a closed environment with the most unlikely candidate until the reveal at the end? And don't say THE BUTLER DID IT WITH THE CANDLESTICK IN THE DRAWING ROOM. Unique twists make readers, editors, and judges say, "Wow! Never saw that coming, but now that I think about it, makes sense." Reverse engineer your story if you have to, coming up with that "killer" ending, then outlining motive and events by backtracking to make it subtle but plausible.

Have at it and happy writing!

Beastmaster Moon

Love this prompt as I've been wanting to learn how to do a mystery-type story. I've read it's great for beginning writers since all the structure elements are known so if you're doing it wrong it's not a mystery (ironically!). And true to my word I am starting on my KYD earlier so I have less to worry about for the end of March.

Posted by: @scribblesatdusk

Love this prompt as I've been wanting to learn how to do a mystery-type story. I've read it's great for beginning writers since all the structure elements are known so if you're doing it wrong it's not a mystery (ironically!). And true to my word I am starting on my KYD earlier so I have less to worry about for the end of March.

May it yield your winner! I'd really like to see a story like this in a volume. Make it so!

Beastmaster Moon

Posted by: @wulfmoon

THE BUTLER DID IT WITH THE CANDLESTICK IN THE DRAWING ROOM.

Gotta love Cluedo. Good times.
But it would've been Colonel Mustard for sure. Weapon of choice: Whatever's on hand.

Like a glove.

Q2 is coming to a close. How are you workshop members doing? Don’t forget to take advantage of your mentor or writing circle! Help one another level up this Q, and may fortune favor the brave!

Beastmaster Moon

Putting the final touches on my Q2. Going to try and finish it this week, so I don't have a mad last-minute rush.
That's the plan.

Hey, KYDers! Here’s your Monday writing prompt!

The sound of hollow souls.

A good one for any genre. “Lay on, Macduff, And damn’d be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’” 

Beastmaster Moon

My Q2 is ready. Got a few critiques, polished it up, now I’m letting it rest while I work on a non-WotF submission. I’ll give it one more out-loud read at the end of the month to make a final check for flow before sending it in. 

I've read through almost all the links from the Table of Contents in the first post, but just haven't found it. I can only assume it stands for Kill Your Darlings, but that doesn't fully explain what a KYD is.

@ease You're correct, it does stand for Kill Your Darlings! It's a writing exercise to learn economy of words and how to find the "beating heart" of a story.

Here's a post by Wulf going into more detail: https://www.writersofthefuture.com/forum/the-contest-quarterly-topics-and-other-items/wulf-moons-super-secrets-workshop-challenge/paged/130/#post-40131

Posted by: @ease

I've read through almost all the links from the Table of Contents in the first post, but just haven't found it. I can only assume it stands for Kill Your Darlings, but that doesn't fully explain what a KYD is.

You must have made that graphic, ease. Nice! May I use it when I teach my KYD master workshop? It would be fun, and I love making attendees chuckle as they learn. 😄

If you’d like to get the gist of what this exercise is all about, may I recommend my article published at DreamForge? It’s part of a series in each of their Anvil issues. This one is “Wulf Moon’s Super Secrets: ‘Kill Your Darlings.’”

@penmark also gave you an excellent link above that helps explain it. The actual Super Secret is detailed out in the upcoming books through Stark Publishing Solutions. Many consider this the most important lesson I teach, and attribute practicing it to helping them get respectably published, and even to winning contests like Writers of the Future. 😊

We do Monday prompts to help writers here to create them, and to learn to write on demand to themed anthology calls. It’s great training.

All the beast!

Beastmaster Moon

@penmark, thank you for the link. I'll check that out when life allows.

@wulfmoon, of course you can use it! You should note that it does have a watermark on it in the corner. If you can wait a day or two I'll remake it without the watermark and send it to you. And thank you for the link: I look forward to reading it!

@wulfmoon Brainstorming on a new twist to this prompt. So far every things been done before. Think my husband will get upset if I put a bunch of stickies on the wall.

@ease 

I enjoy the many layers of the KYD. The 'free-flow' writing at the start (and writing to a prompt), the hardcore edit that helps with being concise, and identifying the most potent element of your story, called the 'beating heart'. 

I'm understating the greatness, but there are lots of things in doing a KYD to practice and improve your writing.

@scott_m_sands 

You’ve got it, Scott. The lessons learned from regularly practicing KYD are multifold. I developed it to win a year-long international flash fiction contest with around 25,000 entries by the end of the contest year. Two of my stories placed in the top ten, one of them taking the grand prize. Zac Brite told me his Resnick Award grand prize winner was crafted from a KYD, written to a prompt I gave the members of this workshop. Brittany Rainsdon’s first published story in Deep Magic was from a challenge I gave her to write five KYDs in one month. Many here have now used it as a tool to create winning stories. It works. 

Best of success to your work with it! I look forward to hearing of your results, as I do with all in the self-directed workshop this year. Cheers!

Beastmaster Moon

Before you workshop members (and onlurkers) send your Q2s off to be judged by the end of the month, I recommend you hold off until you read my upcoming article on dialogue in the issue of DreamForge Anvil magazine coming out this weekend. It will help, trust me on this!

Heres editor Scot Noel’s intro to it:

Dialog can be deadly dull or crisp and engaging. You know it when you see it, but can you write it? Can you bring your characters’ tongues to life? From the Dangers of Saidisms to “As You Know Bobs,” Wulf Moon points out the landmines of bad dialog and gives you the super secret to delightful character conversations.

@wulfmoon 

Will do, Moon.
My Q2 is almost ready to go. I look forward to reading your article. 

Another Super Secrets challenge beastie just achieved their first respectable sale and publication! It’s our own Year 4 Super Secrets Workshop’s Keeper of Records, Lost Bard (David Hankins)! I’m super proud of David—I watched him create the foundation of this story in my KYD master workshop and it was SO GOOD! Congratulations, David! Thank you for your nice words in your story notes. Here they are for the curious:

“Story Notes for About A Properly Spiced Gingerbread

“I wrote “A Properly Spiced Gingerbread” during one of Wulf Moon’s Kill Your Darlings (KYD) Master Workshops (see DreamForge Anvil Issue 5 to learn about KYDs). My first thousand words were rambling nonsense. Barely the framework of a story. Through the KYD process, I compressed that to 250 words, and this story was born. That is the power of the KYD exercise: to find the beating heart of your story. Expanded back up for publication, “A Properly Spiced Gingerbread” is a story about solving your mistakes through grit, faith, and ingenuity.”

Congratulations, David! Well done! You’re now a published writer!

Don’t miss his fun story in the latest issue of DreamForge! Free to read!

DreamForge: A Properly Spiced Gingerbread

Congrats, David!