u/ytwinsg

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I'm a teenager looking to enter a writing competition.

Some conditions I'd like the competition to fit:

1. starting by October/November 2026
2. Fiction
3. no need to pay to enter/have an account at a site to enter
4. cash prizes are optional
5. permission from parents/guardians not required
6. does not have to be a competition specifically devoted to teens--any age welcome competitions are also good

I realise this is a lot of conditions, lol.

But I would like to enter one.

Seriously?

I just finished ALL and I'm a)shocked b) unimpressed.

This book is severely overrated. It's basically traumatic event after traumatic event until you're just left speechless.

The writing--we're not even talking about plot. The writing itself--yes, there are pretty good moments. There were moments when the writing felt real, tangible, as good writing does. I nearly cried when Jude said that he bought a man-size pillow, put Willem's shirt on it, and hugged it to sleep. I like that the author is fairly knowledgeable about portrayal and emotions. I liked the writing style at times, where it felt lyrical, and beautiful.

Other times...not so much. Author clearly doesn't know how to use pronouns. "He" and "he" and "He" and "he" until I'm so mixed up I don't realise a chapter is from Willem's perspective instead of Jude's until like forty pages in.

The prose is long, and rambling, and at times it serves to improve the story--heck, it represents mental turmoil quite well. Other times it feels like author just wrote whatever came to her and editor didn't bother to read. Plenty of parts were way too fleshed out for unimportant moments to the whole story, while other parts, which I actually wanted more writing on, were rushed over.

Now for the characters; Andy, Harold, Jude, Willem, JB, Malcolm, the rest. It's a lot of people. Mostly I get mixed up and I forget details about each character until I'm like, huh? When did we learn that this person did this action this many years ago? And then I have to flip back to the front and read it again, which is a pain in the ass, because the book is 700 pages long. (and I was reading on Kobo with enlarged font, so it turned out 7138 pages long.)

Then the unnecessary characters. Lucien, whom I've already forgotten most of. What did he do again? And then Citizen and Rhodes and Phaedra and Rhodes' wife(whose name I've forgotten). The characters are introduced fairly late in the story, with minimal backstory and minimal use to the plot--it just seems to serve to give me a massive headache trying to keep up with everything.

Now for plot. Lots of complaints for this one.

We follow Jude from about 20something years old to his fifties. It's alternating-POV. First few chapters, all characters feel equally important--there is JB's perspective, and Malcolm's, and Willem's, and Jude's. Story progresses, and suddenly it's either Harold's POV (written first-person but there were only 3 chapters through the book), Jude's POV, or Willem's. And I do not want to hear another word from Jude after like 4/7 of the book being "oh, don't mind me, I just fcking hate myself so I'm going to cut myself yay!" Then Willem is being such a supportive & nice boyfriend and Jude's just going around self-harming and making everyone feel shitty.

And the litany of terrible things which happen to Jude! He's raped, groomed, assaulted, verbally abused, a prostitute at 9 years old, run over on purpose, kidnapped, held in a basement, and someone nice comes into his life, breaks down his walls, then proceeds to die. (Ana, Willem.) It's irrationally trauma-packed. It feels like Jude is just a series of terrible thing after terrible thing.

Now normally I'd applaud author for being willing to write about such sensitive topics, but with all the manhandling she does! It's unrealistic. No one is that bad off. I told a friend about the book a couple days ago and she literally told me to stop in the middle of me telling her about Jude. I hadn't even finished my list and she already was like, "Yeah, this guy is impossibly traumatized. There's like a one in a million chance anyone is that traumatized."

It's like author decided one day to get a bunch of shitty topics and things and pack them into one character, birthing Jude St. Francis. The handling of the topics is poorly done at best. The prose is largely rambling and unnecessary, and flashbacks cut off important conversations I want to read about. The whole book can be summed up in one sentence: Jude is traumatized as heck. That's an understatement, by the way.

Now I'm no critic. I'm not a literature expert or anything. But I am a big reader, and I've read a lot of books, including supposedly sad ones, and this isn't sad, or tragic. It's just plain irrational.

Edit: thanks for the comments! I'd like to include some other Redditors' ideas in this post.

First: one thing that they said is that the trauma gets to the point where you're desensitized to it.

Second: Jude is apparently perfect & beloved by everyone (I think someone called it a Gary Stu), and he has amazing intellectual abilities for someone who's traumatized, depressed, plus didn't go to school for majority of his life

I think these are really good points

So, the GEPs, right? Gifted Education Programme. It's where 9-year-old kids go through 2 rounds of tests to determine the top 1% kids in P3 Cohort. So like 400 out of them all will pass round 2, and 15% of them all will pass round 1.

It was abolished this year by Lawrence Wong. It's a decision I agree with--I took it myself, at nine, and I remember being so stressed out by it. I had two four-hour tuition classes, one on Saturday, one on Sunday, and as a kid who'd never gone to tuition before, it was a lot.

I am so glad no one else will have to go through that from now on. I passed round 2 (which is nothing to show off about), and I went through GEP programme for 3 years (P4, P5, P6). It's an accelerated course, where they cram a lot in. We learned a lot of math that I ended up re-learning in sec school. And we also start revising for PSLEs late--mainstream starts in January P6 but we only started in July/August.

Now I'm not even talking about the PSLEs, which are taken @ 12yo to determine secondary school (and it matters even more than GEPs). GEPs put an unnecessary amount of pressure on 9-year-old children, even younger kids. I'm lucky. I only started one of my classes in February of 2020, and the other one in June 2020 (the test was in August 2020 for me). A lot of people I know started going to classes for them in P1, maybe younger, and that's so sad. Plus a ton of them don't pass, and I like to say I had a huge amount of luck to pass round 2 (I guessed three-quarters the questions in English and GA).

It takes such a mental toll for kids that age to be under that kind of stress, and some parents also don't make their kids go to all sorts of classes, which is great. Fine by me.

But I do know a ton of people who are complaining, "Oh, now my kids don't have a chance to pass the GEPs and learn more*(people who pass the GEP get to go to a GEP school also, which is a good school which offers the GEP curriculum while also having mainstream classes)*. Oh, now my kid is stuck at _____(school they don't like)____. Now my kid won't have a shot to succeed more."

Thoughts?

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So...

I love *love* love watching edits of Billie, and I've found a few nice ones but not really a lot of them, so which channels are best for Billie edits? I've watched ebncito (love their work), and Billanan is also not bad.

Any other recommendations?

I'm 15, female, and I'm getting a YouTube account as soon as I can decide on a name, because I don't want to get saddled with a crappy name and end up regretting it.

Any suggestions?

Some things to know about me:

-I want like a regular name, something easy to remember, not too long

-I'm a fan of Billie Eilish and figure skating and Lana Del Rey and Olivia Rodrigo, and that'll be the content I post

Otherwise, no other restrictions

I'm a pianist. I learned piano at YAMAHA MUSIC STUDIOS for a year or two from 6yo to 8yo and from 7yo to now I took private one-to-one lessons. My parents expect me to take it super seriously.

So: what irks me the most about this is that people who don't know anything about music, like my mom, just comes over and lectures me about how I should be playing--like okay, you read a book, you watched a video, fine. You're the expert. Totally not me, who's been learning this for 9 years now. (I passed grade 3 with Distinction @ 8 years old and grade 8 with Distinction @ 12 years old, now I play recreatively)

Another thing is when I go to Music class at school and they teach piano but they teach from basics like C major and it drives me mad all the time.

What irks y'all the most?

This is for the Singaporeans, but if you aren't Singaporean and you've heard the NDP songs this year(Sparkle, You'll Be Okay, and Giants) you're also welcome.

I'm a Singaporean, okay? no hate. I was born and bred here.

Every year the government releases a song (e.g. Home, The Road Ahead) for National Day.

I've been noticing that the songs seem to be getting worse and worse in quality.

This year they released an NDP album, three songs, and I am not happy with it.

First song: Sparkle. I'd say this is the best song out of the three. It's not heavily autotuned like the other two, and it's actually marginally catchy. The lyrics are cringe, and there are parts of the music video that make me want to rip my hair out, but otherwise Sparkle is decent.

Second song: Giants. This one has quite a bit of autotune in it. The melody isn't for everybody. The lyrics are also not for everybody. Personally I'd say it's not too bad but I really don't have many very strong opinions for music. The verse lyrics are pretty cringe.

Third song: You'll Be Okay. Okay, there are multiple reasons why I hate this song. Number one is that the chorus totally ripped off Kelly Clarkson's Since You've Been Gone. The melody is the same. (for the first line, anyways). Second thing, the lyrics are truly, truly terrible. Thirdly, this song has so much autotune in it I can't hear anything but the autotune and it pisses me off.

I might be totally unjustified in this--heavens know they've made so many NDP songs they're probably running out of ideas--but wow, that was low quality. I hated the album start to finish and I would really rather the government just not release any songs this year if they were all this shitty.

No offence to the singers--I've never made a song, it's probably hard as heck to even make half-decent ones--but offence to the songs.

This is about the movie recreation of the Bell Jar.

So.

I read the book the other day--amazing prose, superior plot, the author clearly knows what she's talking about. The depression, though...

I know Billie hasn't been depressed for ages and that's amazing! And I also know that she likely knows what the book is about and is okay with it. But I also knew that the book would be about depression and I was unexpectedly super, massively triggered. I have had a lot of experiences with depression and suicidal ideation and self harm. Reading the book and Esther's feelings brought back a lot of urges for me even though I didn't act on it and I spent the whole day feeling super antsy and restless because of the book. 'Cause it gets super intense.

I couldn't even finish the book.

Billie's okay right now, but the last thing I want is for her to get triggered by the events of the book--considering she'll be engaging with the plot and stuff far more than I was, and she'll literally be playing Esther Greenwood. I hope she'll be able to back out if she gets a negative reaction. If she's uncomfortable and the directors make her stay in the movie I might just march to the set and yell at everybody(not literally but still I would want to).

It's her own free will, of course, and I'm sure she'll do a brilliant, amazing job at playing Esther, but if she turns out to get hurt by the events of the movie she should back out. Her mental health is always more important than some movie.

My Kobo Libra 2.0 is abt 1 and a half years old now. It's a colour version.

So recently, my kobo's been shutting down on me, like I'll be reading and it suddenly just stops responding and I have to press the power button for a really long time then it restarts and works again but sometimes I have to restart multiple times just to get it to respond.

Is there advice for this? Has anyone seen this before?

I have to say, she saved my life.

When I discovered Billie... I was in a very awful spot mentally. I was kinda suicidal and depressed, and I was also struggling with anxiety and trust issues. When I discovered her it just helped me take a large step to rediscovering myself as well.

She's so unapologetically herself and it's so inspiring and sweet.

I saw this thing, a video on Vogue, where there was a question they asked to the fans, 'What does Billie mean to you?'

Everything.

She's the person I care about most (she's in second place) out of everybody I know and she's helped me so immensely much. She raises awareness, isn't afraid to speak up about uncomfortable topics, and is overall such a wonderful person.

I'm so grateful that I got to know who she was. Without her I might not be here today, four years later, so thank you so goddamn much, Billie, and I hope she knows how much she's doing for people who may never meet her in their life.

Just wanted to express this, ig.

Requesting Beta readers for this. It's in progress but I'll have more written soon enough, about 1-5 more chapters per week. I'm hoping to find a beta reader that can tell me whether:

1. It flows well

2. Any grammatical/spelling/punctuation errors

3. Whether the pacing/plot development is adequate

If you're interested you can DM me and we can move it to Gmail, or stay at DMing for now, whichever you're more comfortable with:)

It's all completely unpublished, also. And the plot goes like this:

MCs:

1. Mae Winston, 17f, aspiring writer, but her father passed when she was 15 and she can't bring herself to pursue the dream anymore because her father had always been the one to encourage her

2. June O'Connell, 17f, aspiring musician, parents divorced, living with father and stepmother permanently

Mae and June fall in love, and June encourages Mae to write again, all that, except Mae's homophobic mother finds out and threatens to disown Mae if she doesn't break up with June, so she does.

And then the epilogue is 10 years later, Mae(now a published author) and June(a music teacher/musician trying to get her career off the ground) meet in a cafe/bar and it ends ambiguously

This is a lesbian romance/tragedy. If plot needs to be explained, pls tell.

Options:

1. forget-me-not

2. cyan

3. blue daisies

4. we dream of stars beyond our reach

5. the time we had(and will have)

6. remember not to forget

7. southbound

8. if you go

9. blue-eyed thief

10. dream

11. linger

Is context required?

Context

MCs:

1. Mae Winston, 17yo, former writer, father died @ 15yo and she hasn't recovered since

2. June O'Connell, 17yo, aspiring musician, encourages Mae to write again

They eventually break up because Mae's homophobic mom but ambiguous ending set 10yrs after story

I(15F) have been lesbian since I was 9, and I've known for a really long time.

It's been difficult because my mom is homophobic, and my dad isn't prepared to take me seriously if I come out till I'm, like, forty. And I don't know how I'm going to come out to them without being kicked out.

I've dropped hints here and there, they haven't caught them. I've tried. I don't know what to do.

Anyone with experience in similar situations?

Okay, I've read so many books and I've only cried at 2 of them(The Last Letter and Bridge to Terabithia). I've read You've Reached Sam. Didn't have a tear drop. I've also read The Fault in Our Stars. The Poppy War series. A Thousand Boy Kisses. Not a tear.

I want an introspective-ish book that explores a central theme throughout the story(not a cliched one though) and I want to read a book that's going to make me cry.

Any genre as long as it's fiction. I don't read nonfiction.

Okay, I finished The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, VERY MUCH looking forward to the movie lol would LOVE to watch it, but it was kind of triggering(iykyk) and I'm kinda worried that when it does come out I won't watch it because of reasons that I'd rather not divulge.

Anyways it's SO GOOD I'd love to see Billie's take on it.

Also I'm kind of curious how the producers will handle a book that's like 70% Esther Greenwood being in her own head. The bulk of the book is composed of Esther's thoughts. I wonder if it'll be like a Billie-narrating it thing or something else.

But anyways it was SO GOOD and I'd love to watch it and I'm sure that I'll break down into tears upon seeing lol because the BOOK made me emotional and I hardly get emotional while reading, and I ALWAYS get emotional while watching shows so

hooray! Can't wait for it to come out!