April's Spring into a Story is Approaching
What tracker are you using for Spring Into a Story, How to motivate writers to start a new challenge, Writing Tips on how to write in short form, Upcoming Events, Call out for volunteers and more.
By Gertrude Daly
We listened to your feedback after Novel Quest last November, and have updated our Google Sheets Progress Tracker. “Version 2025.1” has been released. Feel free to use this for solo use or during April’s Spring into a Story.
The tracker and instructions can be found here.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zsjBv1wG4HquO-azqirvdHXDLQRak067?usp=sharing
The tracker helps users log their word count and/or hours spent over a 30-day period. The tracker has multiple tabs, with the most important being:
Your Quest
The “Your Quest” tab is used at the beginning of the month to enter information about your project. You can name your project, pick a genre, enter your monthly goals, etc.
Daily Word/Hour Count
The “Daily Word/Hour Count” tab is where you will fill in your daily word/hour count and set daily goals. You can also leave a status message, which will allow you to share a message with others in your region (If you link to your region’s aggregator.) For ease of use, everything the user enters on a daily basis is on this tab.
Progress
The “Progress” tab shows your progress across the month. This tab has various charts and tables to break down your progress in different ways. Everything on this tab will be filled in automatically using some fancy formulas.
--
Easter Eggs
What I had the most fun with was updating the hidden easter eggs. There are still 7 Easter Eggs (at least one on every tab, except for the “Your Region.”)
Some are completely new. While others remain the same in spirit but have been updated. (Hidden Easter Egg #5 is still a haiku and in the same location, but we have re-written the Haiku, which will change based on what you selected on the “Your Quest” page.)
How to motivate writers to join a new writing challenge
By Katie Lazicki
Spring has sprung, which means Spring Into A Story is almost here!
Spring Into A Story is a monthly writing challenge in April where writers can set their own goals and share their progress among friends. It includes daily prompts and challenges to accomplish as you like. While you can choose any project length, Spring Into A Story is popular among writers working on multiple short stories.
Now that you’re hooked, how do you convince other writers to join you on April 1st?
A Creative Spring Break. Writers fall in love with the stories they create, but they also feel frustration, resentment, and boredom when a long-term project gets difficult. Sometimes, writers just need to take a break from a project to gain perspective. Spring Into A Story can be a great opportunity for the uninspired to productively procrastinate on your Novel Quest draft and come back to their project at the end of the month, fresh and energized.
Lowering the Bar. Many writers balk at the idea of writing 1,667 words every day for a month. When they can choose to write as few as 50-100 words a day, success is closer within reach.
No Mid-way Slumps. One of the benefits of writing short fiction is it really can never be too short. Annoyed by a character? Wrote yourself into a corner? Distracted by a newer, shinier idea? These are all problems you’d have to solve when working on a single longer fiction piece to get to the end. With short stories, you can add “The End” on the current story and immediately move onto greener pastures.
Lastly, don’t forget to send them this newsletter about Spring Into A Story!
Writing Short Fiction
By Ansley Ashe
Short stories come in many different forms, but generally speaking, they are stories of less than 10,000 words.
For the experienced novel writer, it can be challenging to fit a beginning, middle, and end into something so short. Sometimes, no matter how hard I try, I seem to keep going over the word count.
What is a writer to do?
The first thing is to know how long your short story should be. Writing for 10K words is very different from writing a 6-word story. Nevertheless, there are a few things a writer can keep in mind.
The lower the target word count, the simpler the theme needs to be. There isn’t space for subplots and side quests in a short story. Make sure the theme is crystal clear, and stick to it.
Limit the number of characters. Six-word stories barely have room for one character. I don’t know how to fit two characters into a story that short. Even in a 10k story, more than three or four characters is pushing the limit. There just isn’t room.
Limit the number of locations where your story takes place. Again, depending on the length, one good setting may be all you need. And exploring the richness of that space opens up a world of storytelling that racing between settings can’t do.
Limit the number or scenes. The shorter the story, the fewer the scenes. But a great artist can take one theme and one tense point and spin it into an eternity. Because the story is shorter, the scenes can be longer. Don’t be afraid to lengthen a scene to get more detail, more tension.
And lastly, consider word choices. I like to play a game where I take a scene and cut it down by at least a third. No, I’ve never gotten 1 in every three words I’ve written out of a scene. But by giving myself a high goal and making it a game, I can cut out a lot of unnecessary words. When that happens, my prose sings.
Short stories are a fun way to expand an author’s skill set. A great space to make a tighter narrative, focus on theme, and use settings to their greatest effect.
Happy writing!
How to volunteer/contribute
We have three different ways to get involved:
Quest Guides- The people who host the Writing Quests are called Quest Guides. They help creatives through the process of setting goals, prepping for the quests, and providing encouragement during the event. Click on Get Involved> The Framework to get started.
Participants- Anyone can participate, even if you are not a writer. Visit our website to find a participating group near you.
Volunteers- Writing Quests is an all-volunteer organization. If you want to volunteer, please email info@writingquests.org and let us know your experience and if applicable, what you want to help with.
Call out for Volunteers
By Tim Yao
Writing Quests is an open project to create and share the necessary software (via Apache Software License) or other assets/designs/write-ups (via Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share-Alike 4.0 License) needed to host motivational writing challenges. We are seeking volunteers to help with the Questy development. In particular, it would be helpful to find individuals with skills/experience/interest in
php/Symphony dev
React
web UI and UX
We are on a journey to create a flexible writing progress tracker (Questy that will have some nice features, including:
supporting common Quests (defined writing challenges)
supporting individual projects of different formats (novels, series, plays, short stories, etc)
supporting some community communication capabilities, beginning with buddies
supporting community/buddy progress tracking graphs (similar to what NaNo Faces provided when it was active).
You can read more about the project at GitHub (especially see our plans on our wiki). If interested, please fill out this form.
Upcoming Events
We have two major events this year.
In April, we will be doing Spring Into A Story, which is a choose-your-own-adventure style challenge. You get to set your own goals. This is the perfect opportunity to work on shorter works, edit a work in progress, or even start a new project. Join one of our Regions and get support from other writers.
Our second event is Novel Quest, which occurs in November. This is our big event where writers around the world attempt to write 50,000 words in only a month. That being said, you can also set your own goals, but this challenge is all about pushing yourself.
Subscribe
Visit our website: www.writingquests.org
Find us on the social medias:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WritingQuests
Twitter www.x.com/writingquests
Pinterest www.pinterest.com/WritingQuests/
Instagram www.instagram.com/writingquests
Facebook Group www.facebook.com/groups/writingquests