Welcome to the Circle of Jerks

Jerk Newsletter - Issue # 3

Jerk News

WhiskeyJaneDoe's Breaking Imhullu reached #1 in Ethics and her Breaking Order reached #2! WhiskeyJaneDoe's Breaking Order has been completed, and once Breaking Imhullu reaches 14.5k reads, she will release the final chapter of the Breaking Series: Breaking Death.

Potato_man9001 is now 5 chapters away from finishing his Dead Men Have No Legacies.

Luna_Mermaid's Sea of the Forsaken hit 500 Reads! 

BksbyBkr has become a Wattpad Star and was featured in an article (please see link!). 

After an impromptu vacation, Jerk Reviews will be revving up again with the hope of producing a review every two weeks!

Featured Jerk

GalaxyGal has been part of the circle of Jerks since it was a humble first generation thread in the community forums and has followed us into the Discord chat servers, including participating in the Prompts and supporting fellow jerks on a regular basis. She was also one of the first people to submit her work to the Jerk Reviews and has taken the constructive critiques provided to improve her main story: Strange Life: The Mountains of Our Hearts.

Galaxy writes because she enjoys creating worlds and watching the development of her characters as the storyline progresses. Though she doesn't have a favourite character, she prefers the ones that are speaking to her at that given moment. Her antagonists are her least favourite character to write, seeing them as a necessary evil to advance the storyline. Characterization of the 'baddie' is something she is working on improving in her writing.

Galaxy joined the Circle of Jerks while looking for a place in a community. Initially attracted by the name, she has found a home amongst the group.

She does read on Wattpad but she can't name a specific favourite at this time. Her favourite stories are fantasies and fairytales, as a way to escape the real world.

Check out Galaxy's Profile and story, linked in the comments.

Poetry Corner

Have a poem you would like featured in an issue? Send us a PM and join the Circle!

Writer's Tips

Genres, Tropes, Cliches - Balancing creativity with the comfortable.

I suppose the first question we should ask on this topic is: "Why do genres exist and how closely should you stick to them?" There are some camps that believe that in order for a book to be in a certain genre, we have to stick to a consistent formula and anything that deviates from that shouldn't be considered part of the Genre.

Others take a more liberal approach and use the script of a genre to be a general guide but pull from a variety of them and paint a world that they want their characters to live in. Is there a right and wrong way? I suppose it depends on how the writer delivers it, as well as the willingness of the reader to read the material they are being given. We don't want to be predictable, we want to stand out from the saturation of other stories out there in the world, but to stray too far from the expectations leave readers struggling to come to terms with what, exactly, they are reading.