The YWP Journal

Writing can be difficult sometimes, and the journalists of the YWP understand that fully. Thus, every Sunday, a new writing prompt will be uploaded here to provide you with inspiration! Prompt: You're walking to school one day and trip over a giant book laying in the middle of the sidewalk. You reach down to pick it up, it's old and dusty but seems to be in decent condition. Flipping through it, you see it contains the future of anyone in the world. You check the index for your name.... and you're not there.

You are the commander on the first mission to visit a black hole. Specifically, you are visiting A0620-00, the closest known black hole to Earth. This stellar black hole is in an intricate dance with a small, orange-red colored star, and you and your team are in charge of studying it from up close. However, you and your team are beginning to realize the dangers of your task. While you are still thousands of miles away from the edge of the black hole, you can feel your feet growing heavy and your head grow light. If you continue closer to the black hole, you and your team will be spaghettified, but such is the nature of discovery and black holes. You command the pilot to start the descent towards the black hole. This is a brief introduction to some of the more curious results of physics. Hopefully, by the end of this article, you will have a general grasp on spacetime, the star life cycle, neutron stars, and black holes. Spacetime According to Einstein’s Theory of Gen...

Hey, what’s up! It's Nyx, and I'm here today to talk about the Area 51 raid that happened on Friday, September 20. So, most of you reading this are probably humans, that is, members of the homo sapiens species. But there are many theories saying that aliens are real (and in my opinion, they probably are. I mean, there are thousands of planets and universes out there that our human brains can’t possibly even begin to comprehend.) And of course, if you are even slightly interested in aliens (or if you happen to be one living in secret), you probably heard something about the Area 51 raid that happened last Friday on September 20.  Here’s a little bit of background information for those who don’t know much about Area 51. Area 51 is an air force base that’s a little outside Las Vegas, Nevada. One of the many conspiracy theories about that base is that there are aliens. Apparently, there were some people, including a retired Army colonel who worked there, said that they saw U...

The manananggal outside the window hissed. Its needle-like tongue flicked on and out excitedly. The manananggal outside the window hissed. Its needle-like tongue flicked on and out excitedly.  "Barricades!" Maia yelled, because every good tree house had a good defense system... Right? Everyone flew into action. Ashley yeeted down wooden boards over the windows. Jimmy frantically moved things in front of the boards, like shelves. Lukas rolled up the ladder and put a crate over the trapdoor. Is that why it's called a trapdoor?  Maia wondered.  Because it traps people inside? The bumping and screeching noises slowed down to near silence, then stopped altogether.  Don't talk yet.  ​​​​​​ Maia wrote on a piece of paper.  Someone might here. We talk by paper.  She continued. They other kids nodded solemnly and agreed. For a minute, all was quiet. Then Jimmy turned around, felling someone cold pressing against him. "Ashley, you're cold!" He complained....

Although The Jane Austen Book Club is a good film for Austen enthusiasts, the plotline was cliché, and the screenplay was poorly written. Copyright: The Jane Austen Book Club The Jane Austen Book Club paralleled the storylines of six books written by the icon Jane Austen. Meeting due to a common love for her, a group of women created the “Jane Austen Book Club” to discuss the themes relevant in her novels and plot ways to affect each other’s love lives. The main characters suffer from romantic trauma, strongly identifying with the books that Austen wrote. Just like with one of her novels, all six plotlines were resolved within the last ten minutes or, as Austen would have it, the last four pages of the book. Although the movie was engaging for a literary nut, it was crowded with melodramatic romantic scenes and bland dialogue that did not follow in Austen’s example. The visuals were off putting, and the start of the movie, a full scale funeral for a dog, instigated a comi...

By PumpkinSpiceBean (Alex) This short story was absolutely amazing and I loved it when I read it! I loved the detail and the everything! The colors in this story is really cool as well! Our very own Quark wrote this: "Rain, Rain..." "Two cans of spray paint in my hands, one in bubblegum pink, the other in very 80’s teal, eyes up, and dare written on my wrist. This. Is. Stupid. I think to myself. A few feet behind me, Marlowe taps her foot on the blacktop. Impatient as always. I sigh and stuff the spray cans into the drawstring bag at my feet. Hoisting the polyester bag over my shoulder, I step up to the ladder on the side of Jeremy’s Grocery and start climbing. Once I was halfway up the ladder, I look back down at Marlowe’s neon green hair and thumbs up. One step, then the next. Right foot up, then the left. I’m breathing heavily, already hating the height. I step out onto the roof, my knees shaking more than San Francisco in 1906. This is stupid. This...

The (not so) fragile art of painting with words Writing poetry is one of the scariest tasks someone could ever be charged with. It requires one to look into themselves and trace the shadows and the cracks and peer around each unknown corner within their being. It requires vulnerability. To carry the burden of being a poet, one must first recognize the burdens they already carry and note how each one of them has changed their gait. To be a great poet is not to have the most or the heaviest burdens, but to communicate those that you do have in such a manner that it, in essence, lifts them from your shoulders. Poetry is to give your burdens wings: your fears, you anxieties, your worries, your hurt, but also your hope, your love, your relationships, your joy. Your job as a poet is to come as you are. It is not to write in perfect meter, follow a set rhyme scheme, or even to have a structure. If you chose to organize your words in this way, that is your choice, but it isn't a...

Writing can be difficult sometimes, and the journalists of the YWP understand that fully. Thus, every Sunday, a new writing prompt will be uploaded here to provide you with inspiration! Prompt:  When you were 10, you found a crashed spaceship in the woods behind your house. You kept it a secret and have been slowly repairing it for the past 5 years. Finally, it seems all fixed and ready to fly! You flip a switch which you've always assumed would turn it on (everything is labeled in an alien language after all, you don't really know what anything says). But instead of turning on the ship, it turns on what appears to be...a distress signal.  Character Quirk: Someone who only exclaims things from books: "D'avirt!" "Frith up a tree!" "In Starclan's name!" "By the four fallen!" "By Woden's beard!" "Odd upon strange!" "By the great cat's mane!"  Let us know if you used any of these and leave ...