If You Give a Girl a Book

she'll ask for another

[tropiyas]

[funeral]

Dale Bailey, American Nightmares: The Haunted House Formula in American Popular Fiction

[lannegarrett]

Benefits of being a writer:

✓ Story goes how YOU want, nearly 21% of the time

✓ can buy a new book for 'work'

✓ excuse for all those blank notebooks you have

✓ search history doesn't send up any red flags

Downsides:

X You have to actually write a book

[captainofthetidesbreath]

is that piece of media actually bad, or is it just not following the blueprint you projected onto it? is that work actually not good, or are you just demanding something from it that is absolutely antithetical to its themes, genre, tone, and narrative goal? is that story actually poorly written, or do you just dislike that it is not the specific things you wanted from it that it never set out to be, never was, and never is going to become? is it actually bad, or is it actually well-executed and you just dislike the story it chose to be because it isn't catering to your specific desires and expectations?

[bangchansrailway]

as an editor of book reviews this is the main thing i have to constantly remind my writers of. learning the difference between "i didnt like it" and "this did not achieve what it set out to achieve on a craft level" is very important. also important is to learn the difference between "i really like this" and "this is good on a craft level". what happens in those gaps is criticism.

[gravyhoney]

Guys. Guys please. We have to remember that protagonist is not a stand in word for hero and antagonist is not a stand in word for villain. Please. We learned this in middle school. The protagonist is the character the audience follows. The antagonist is the character who is working against the protagonist.

[thehobbitchronicles]

books made of magic, fairytales, poems and love

[etirabys]

Paul Graham yesterday:

Something I taught 12 yo: There's a second component of reading that many people don't realize exists: searching for the good books. There are a huge number of books and only a small percentage of them are really good, so reading means searching. ... You'd think that figuring out which books are the best would be a solved problem by now, but it isn't. I'm almost 60 and have been reading a lot my whole life, and I'm still constantly searching for the good books.

A weird conclusion I've been coming to is that I should consume only

(1) really good stuff that show me the ceiling of human talent and expression (2) random works from AO3 that lower my inhibitions and give me raw id material that fires me up ("oh what if that scenario, but...")

And very little in between.

[thegreatlearning]

Without a doubt

[ironmaidenhead]

"Don't you see that the two of you together are dangerous? I'm not blaming either of you. You can't help it and you couldn't have changed it. You just have to keep away from one another. And in future I'm going to see to it that you do." THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS (1949) Dir. David Lean

[wehadwildflowerfever]

“[I]n horror, people do come back, but they’re never the same. It’s a deep human fantasy. I sometimes want to squeeze my eyes shut and open them again, and find that my mother isn’t dead, though she’s been dead for eight or nine years now. In poetry classes in the 1980s I was taught Lacan’s theory that the separation from your mother marks your entry into the Symbolic Order. Language acts are about this tragic separation. Writing is always equally about loss and gaining. It gives you the world while you’re writing, but you’re writing about things that aren’t there. So it’s always about loss. I’m writing about my childhood now, and it’s like writing about death in the other direction, because that world is so unavailable.” - Dodie Bellamy, The White Review, November 2016

[writing-is-a-martial-art]

The divine right of kings but it's a curse

[writing-is-a-martial-art]

You will wear the crown, you have no choice, the spikes growing on your head have a metal sheen to them and coalesce into a mock halo. You will command, for your voice is a terrible thing, you are a terrible thing. You will be just, and you will be fair, for any grievances you cause to your people scar your body and leave lasting pain and false promises sizzle on your tongue like hot oil. Your god is watching and it won't forget what your ancestor did and it won't let you go

[thethirdromana]

I don't know if this was obvious to everyone else, but I just realised that one of the reasons why the Hobbit is so effective as a children's book is that while Bilbo is an adult, the skills that make him a hero are all those of a child.

By human standards he's child-sized, which makes him unobtrusive and light on his feet. He can slip by unnoticed where bigger people can't.

He's good at playing games, and even cheats (successfully!) in a way that - let's face it - is not so different to how children try to cheat at games. He's polite in a way that's fully comprehensible to children (rather than, say, being able to perform courtly manners). He's quick-witted, but the trick of keeping the trolls talking is also one that would be achievable for a child.

He doesn't have magic powers, he's not a great fighter, and he's not some kind of Chosen One. There's not much that he does that couldn't be done by a ten-year-old, but the story shows just how valuable all those skills and traits are. It's very empowering.

[furupops]

@mori-no-majou why hide this in the tags?

[thefakerachelray]

Things to bring back in books:

Chapter titles

Actually having a synopsis on the back instead of reviews no one will read

[thefakerachelray]

Some excellent additions from the notes:

Maps

Indexes of characters and places with pronunciations

Numbering books in a series on the spine

Tables of contents

[ad-wills]

[zandraz]

A school project: book cover redesign for Heroes of the Olympians.

Basically is just me trying to make fanarts for pjo during classes

[renissance]

percy jackson; son of poseidon

[macrolit]

“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”

— Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Anne Lamott (b. 10 April 1954)