These Books Among Us

  We have all been there. One second, you’re reading a series and loving it. The next, for some reason, you hate it. But why does this happen? What should you do when you run into this problem? Is there an appropriate amount of time you should give the books after you make this discovery? Can anyone help you make your decision? Let’s find out! Okay, so we must start at the beginning with this one. Let’s say it’s a long book series and the first two (out of six) were so good, you finished them both in the span of a single day. You were even given all six (the entirety of the series) as a Christmas present. You were loving them. But then you get to the third one and you have been stuck on it for six years only being half way, but you don’t know if you should continue. This is completely hypothetical, no personal experience at all… Ahem. So what do you do? Obviously in this situation, you have not continued the series, but you have hope you may. So you keep the books, bu

If you're a writer , you have probably heard the phrase, "sometimes you have to kill your darlings." I know the first time I heard that, I was confused to all kinds of new levels. In my head, I was asking, so I have to kill off my main characters in order to have a good book?  i can assure you, that is not necessarily what is meant by this phrase. Most commonly, this can refer to one of two things: killing a beloved character of having to if one of your favorite words, sentences, paragraphs, scenes, orchards from what you are writing. The main question here is how do you know when it is the right time to "kill your darlings" and to that there is no one answer, but I will try to explore when you may be seeing the signs throughout this post. Let's start with killing a character off. Many authors use this as a plot device to either move the story along or to see how their main characters will react to said death. It's a form of test, if you

It seems that nowadays, there is a lack of the “Happily Ever After” ending in many narratives throughout media. From television, to film, to literature, there is no shortage of the dystopian narrative, but going further than that, there seems to be a general lack of the happily ever after trope in the current media. But why is that? Is the generation of creators so scarred from the societal pressures and issues that have arisen in the past thirty years? Have the wars, terrorism, and economic downfalls hit the new creators so hard? Is the future so bleak one cannot imagine there being a way for it to end happily? Is there a way to get these happily ever afters back? And if so, do we really want them? Throughout this post, I am going to be exploring these very questions, to varying degrees, and hopefully adding to ideas you may already foster. Okay, so let’s start with the actual trope. Everyone knows the classic Disney-like ending that a lot of the chick-flick type of me

Hello everyone! I am back with a new post! Woo! So this week, I want to focus on the horror novel. This is one of my favorite genres, when done right, but it is also one of the most difficult to pull off. I am going to be attempting to answer why that is. What makes a horror novel truly frightening? Is there a standard to which these novels must be held to to remain scary? Is there a reason reading some older novels are more frightening than the ones written today? Is this true for the opposite as well? What kinds of societal issues are drawn from for the authors? All of these questions are valid and quite complex, so I may not be able to get to each one as fully as I would like to, but I will definitely make an attempt. (I will also be looking at other media as well, namely film, television, and possibly video games, though I do not have as much exposure to that as the other media outlets.) Okay, so why is this genre so difficult to pull off? I have attempted (and failed)