annies-bookshelf

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“She was fire, and light, and ash, and embers. She was Aelin Fireheart, and she bowed for no one and nothing, save the crown that was hers by blood and survival and triumph.” ❤

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🩵 You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World edited by Ada Limón

🧡 The Art of Libromancy: Selling Books and Reading Books in the Twenty-First Century by Josh Cook

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Starborn, Fireheart & Lady Death - CC, TOG & ACOTAR

Artist: renata_watsonn

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Nesta truly deserves the best kind of self-care to celebrate @nestaarcheronweek aka a stack of romance novels and no one bothering her!

Cannot thank @/brunagarretart enough for bringing this gorgeous art to life! Obsessed with all the details including Nesta's soft expression, the book titles, and, of course, her shoulder freckles. 😍

Please do not repost without credit and don't feed into AI programs.

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Are your characters too “perfect”? Struggling to give them negative traits?

I’ve definitely fallen into the trap of making my protagonists and side characters too “perfect” before. It’s an easy mistake to make, but it can lead to your characters feeling one-dimensional if you’re too afraid to make them seem morally grey.

Here’s a very simple method:

1. Take a character’s main positive trait. Let’s take Hermione Granger, for example - her intelligence is a defining aspect of her character.

2. Exaggerate it into a negative trait. In the instance of Hermione Granger, she can come across to the other characters as a know-it-all. She’s not always portrayed as perfect for her intelligence, which is what makes her character more interesting.

Using this method, we have a number of options for negative traits for an intelligent character - patronising, arrogant, smug - to name a few.

I use the Fatal Attraction theory for this, which suggests that we fall out of love with someone for the same reason we were initially attracted to them. So, if you grew to like someone because you liked how strong and dominant they are, you may become tired of that down the line when their behaviour is controlling.

I’ve illustrated a few examples for how to exaggerate common positive traits into negative ones in the image above, but I have a few more examples to share so you really get the idea:

Keep reading

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ronda slater, what I need is: a contemplation of bisexuality, from bi any other name: bisexual people speak out, edited by Lorraine Hutchins and Lani Kaahumanu, 1991

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—Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

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Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey #BreakupBookReviews

I know countless other women have been in my shoes before. There's nothing earth-shattering about a girl navigating her first heartbreak and looking to literature for help figuring out WTF comes next, or to feel less alone.

My partner of five years leaving me was not on my 2023 bingo card, especially considering just a week before, she was promising me that we were going to be together forever (but I'm 99% sure there is somebody else). Ouch. I truly thought she was the one for me.

How does someone who loved you for so long walk away so easily? How do you accept that someone you trusted so completely lied to you and broke that trust? How do you cope when you're the one left behind to pick up the shattered pieces of your heart, while they get to be happy and move on like nothing happened?

All questions I'm sure every girl has asked herself after being dumped.

In an effort to answer these questions for myself, and to return to something I love and that is wholly mine, untainted by my relationship, I turned back to my true first love: books.

Narratively, Really Good, Actually isn't for everyone. Many Goodreads users dislike our protagonist, Maggie, but I reveled in the messiness Heisey portrayed. Let's be real; not every woman walks out of her breakup with her head held high and is able to drink her matcha lattes while writing in her manifestation journal and hitting the gym to "find herself" again.

Maggie's kind of a mess. She sleeps with her ex's best friend, is trying to figure out her sexuality through a series of disastrous dates and a disappointing almost-threesome, refuses to go to therapy, and arguably is a bad friend. And while it's frustrating to read, it was also liberating for me. It made me feel less alone. I might not be in full-on self-sabotage mode like Maggie, but I was able to relate to some of her faults.

Her anxiety. Her need to feel loved. Her not being strong and begging to be given another change.

Yet, we do see Maggie grow. After her ex refuses to show up to a couple's counseling appointment Maggie schedules to aid in the process of divorce, she strikes a relationship with the therapist and becomes a regular patient. After being a bad friend, she works on changing her actions and behaviors and makes apologies to those she's hurt. When she sees her ex with Janet - their beloved cat - on the bus, she gets off at the next stop and waits for a new bus.

She's not perfect. She doesn't deal with the breakup in the healthiest of ways. But she's human.

That's what I loved about Heisey's novel. Maggie felt real. I felt validated in some of the spiraling thoughts I'm having. It felt like having a - albeit, much messier - friend going through this breakup with me. And it gave me hope that one day, I'll heal too.

If you're going through a breakup, pick up Really Good, Actually for a read. The way I see it, you'll either relate to Maggie and feel seen, be so relieved you don't relate to Maggie that you can congratulate yourself on handling your breakup better, or be so pissed off at her that you'll forget about your own worries for a while. Any way, a win's a win, right?