#novel.
Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere
29K notes
·
View notes
24K notes
·
View notes
obsessed with mass market paperbacks. their pleasing rectangular proportions. how they fit badly in a hoodie pocket so you can drag them around everywhere with you like a temporary little buddy. the way they fit in your hand because they're MADE for human hands and not as bookshelf decoration. the way the pages feel when you riffle them gently with your thumb. How pristine and crisp they look when you get them and how creased and folded they look when you're done, even if you try to be nice to them. how that wear is okay, how that's correct actually, because they're made with the philosophy that books aren't meant to be PRETTY, they're meant to be read. that little ripple new ones get on the left side from where you hold them when you're reading, the way the ripple only goes as far as you've read, because u change stories by reading as they are changing you. how you can find thousands of these creased and folded and loved little dudes in every thrift store and used book shop and neighborhood library and you can instantly see the ones that someone carried around in a backpack for weeks or read to pieces or gave up on halfway through because they wear being read like fresh snow wears footprints. I love these poorly made, subpar little rectangles so much. truly the people's books.
49K notes
·
View notes
Reading Mockingjay as an adult is extra devastating because. Of course the plucky teenager and her ragtag friends aren't going to sneak into a government building to kill the president with a bow and arrow. That's absolutely ridiculous. It's the kind of thing that's only possible in the kind of propaganda that Coin developed. But she's so good at it that in some ways she tricks the reader into thinking that's the kind of story this is, too--even after 3 books reminding us that pretty much everything that Katniss does the second she volunteers is manipulated by adults pulling strings to make propaganda in some form or another.
14K notes
·
View notes
I just think people write out of obligation too often.
"How do I motivate myself to write through the boring part of my story?"
"How do I make this boring scene not boring?"
Don't write it.
Don't write boring things just because you think the structure of the story demands it. I promise it doesn't need to be there.
If your characters need to have gone shopping for a later part of the story to make sense you can just have a sentence about how they went shopping and move on.
You are not obligated to write the boring parts. No matter what those parts are.
You are not obligated to make the parts of your story that you're not excited to write interesting somehow.
You can just write the fun and interesting parts and gloss over and summarize boring things.
Your audience will thank you and you will thank yourself.
10K notes
·
View notes
they are canceling me for the way i deal with grief. also, for the infinite number of destroyed universes
20K notes
·
View notes
Happy September everybody, NaNoWriMo has decided to go "no YOU'RE the baddies" because no one likes their AI-ridden sponsor, lmao. In other news, multiple authors are suing OpenAI for copyright infringement.
8K notes
·
View notes
Carmen Laforet, from Nada
Text ID: My chest was heavy with a thousand daydreams and memories.
9K notes
·
View notes
there really are few emotions i find more compelling in a story than "you should be afraid of me. please don't be afraid of me"
20K notes
·
View notes
23K notes
·
View notes