Selling Your Soul for an Audience2/19/2022 As mentioned in my previous article, The Bronte Sisters and the Sad Girl Trend, art careers are one of the only careers that are based heavily on the monetization of your own experiences, your own emotions and struggles. Audiences clamour for authors who are “authentic”. We want to hear about people’s issues, out of a twisted bit of nosiness, but also because we want so badly to know that we aren’t alone in our experiences.
But where does the artist fit in here? Authenticity is all well and good, but when do we cross the line and become a spectacle? When every experience is on sale, where does that leave life?
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Fingers brushing, gazes holding, or inside joking… however it starts, it’s the moment when a romance takes a turn, when the reader feels a little jolt of excitement, like they know exactly where this is going. The reader is able to spot the beginning of a romance even before your characters do. And it’s this feeling, this shift and shared knowledge between writer and reader, that I live for in Romance stories. Because no gaze, hand hold, or joke is ever accidental when a writer is behind it. In this article, I’ll teach you some ways to create that spark and keep readers invested.
Obvious disclaimer for frank discussion of sexual content in the context of literature.
Look, I’m going to go ahead and make a blanket statement that if you're between the ages of 14 and, I don’t know, 25; read mainstream YA; have browsed fanfic at least once — you’ve probably stumbled upon smut in varying degrees while reading. Maybe you like it, maybe you don’t, maybe you think it shouldn’t be in YA at all (or maybe you do!). Whatever it is, the one consensus we get at is: it’s there. And by the looks of it? Sex scenes in your teen lit aren’t going anywhere. Should they be? Here’s what I think, about sex in YA, the spectrum of sex scenes in general, and what we do need more of in YA. In honor of making V-Day as queer as possible, I’m bringing you some of my favorite recent YA reads featuring queer romance! I decided to branch out of the romance genre for this, so you’ll find my favorite queer romances within graphic novels, science fiction, and fantasy.
1. City of Shattered Light by Claire Winn The heiress and the outlaw is always a great trope but turns out it’s even better when it’s gay. Unfortunately, the romance takes a slight backseat here as the main characters stay focused on a) not getting their organs harvested and b) saving a family member, but I suppose those reasons take fair precedence over a love story. Winn’s debut is a fast-paced, plot-driven book with a stunning world, fantastic characters, and plot twists all around. The romance is beautifully built, and Winn is amazing at getting readers to really root for the main characters. As writers, our craft revolves around words. The ones we choose, the ways we place them, and what do they reflect. Communication shapes our perspective and language offer us the opportunity to build the world around us. And, throughout the globe, there are hundreds if not thousands of words that are unique to one language. I believe that it is useful to know new concepts and cultures through words, so here are two of my favorite words in Spanish that do not have a precise English translation.
Sometimes, it feels like there’s a stigma that when you’re a writer, you need to hate what you’re writing. You need to slave over your work, beating yourself up after every word you write because it’s a torturous process. When people ask about what you’re working on, you have to answer along the lines of “I have this work in progress but it’s not very good and I’m struggling with it” and so on and so forth.
This next piece of advice might rock your world, so hold onto something: you’re allowed to be excited about your work in progress. The 14th of February is coming in just a few hours and as people go to flowers & chocolate shops (or order them online ‘cause you know) to celebrate love, here I am single and listening to podcasts, not as alone as the celebration might make me look.
On Valentine's day we get too focused in celebrating just 1 kind of love: heteromantic / sexual that we sort of forget about the others. That’s why you should listen to Love and Luck: The Romantic literary movement was characterized by beautifully dramatic works, coming from places of deep strife and pain. Many of the prominent Romantic authors had incredibly difficult lives, dealing with issues like mental illness, physical illness, and addiction, just to name a few. Often these themes became present in their works, portrayed in a more romanticized way. For example, the symptoms of horrifying illnesses like tuberculosis made their way into the beauty standards of the time and were used for dramatic effect in countless works of fiction.
To many, Romanticism as a movement seems to be a way for writers and readers of the time to process the cruelties of the world around them. By making their suffering into something beautiful, it would give the pain a purpose, beyond the senseless and blind hurt that the universe will randomly bestow. Authors like Charlotte and Emily Bronte portrayed suffering and unstable male protagonists in a way that seemed not only normal, but as something artistic and Romantic. The allure of tragedy has always been present in fiction, from early mythology, to Shakespeare, and through to modern-day dramas that seem like one catastrophe after another. 11 Romance Tropes RANKED2/11/2022 Tropes are ingrained into how we talk about Romance books. Sometimes they don’t even feel like tropes because they feel so normalized. It’s in book marketing too:
“10 Fake Dating Book Recs!” “Your Next Classic Enemies to Lovers Romance” “Rivals to Lovers Must-Reads!” It’s easy to assume the word “trope” is synonymous with “cliché,” but that’s just not true. The best tropes are riffed on and feel fresh in their stories. A book having a trope doesn’t make it unoriginal or repetitive. Writing with a trope is actually great because the audience has some familiarity with what they are getting themselves into. That being said, there are some tropes I’d just rather avoid. Let’s get into the totally objective ranking of 11 popular Romance tropes with some book recs along the way. Worldbuilding Basics: Hard SFF2/9/2022 Note: This is part of the Worldbuilding Basics series. I recommend you check it out before reading this article.
You decide to walk towards a huge, rectangular, metallic door. Engraved on it are the words “Hard SFF”. The gears click for a second, and the door opens slowly. The room is only lit by a candle over an old wooden table. Their molten wax falls over the blank pages of a notebook, which is laying next to a fountain pen. Take them and you will explore a place of constant investigation. Perfect for the insatiably curious and for those willing to break their own rules. Categories
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