Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Ficitional Romances

It’s Valentine’s Day Week and it’s been awhile since I participated in a Top Ten Tuesday hosted weekly by The Broke and the Bookish, so I thought this week would be a perfect one to jump right back in. This week’s Top 10 list is…

Top Ten Favorite Fictional Romances (see? how fitting)

But before I dive into my list, I wanted to point out an awesome contest going on at my friend Mandy’s new website, The First Reader. Mandy is launching her new website and blog. You might remember her from Headdesk for Writers. All you have to do is go comment on this post and then you can choose to tweet, follow, etc. for more points. Here’s what’s up for grabs:

Prize Pack #1

• Days of Blood & Starlight by Laini Taylor
• The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken
• The Line by Teri Hall (ARC)

Prize Pack #2 (isn’t it so pretty?)

• The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson
• Across the Universe by Beth Revis (original hardcover)
• Wings by Aprilynne Pike (paperback)

Prize Pack #3

• The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
• Five Flavors of Dumb by Antony John
• Perception by Kim Harrington (ARC)

I’ll just go ahead and assume that you’re already thanking me for giving you a heads up. And now…onto the list!!

10. Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark from Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

“Remember, we’re madly in love, so it’s all right to kiss me anytime you feel like it.”

9.  Noah Calhoun and Allie Hamilton from The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

“So it’s not gonna be easy. It’s going to be really hard; we’re gonna have to work at this everyday, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, everyday. You and me… everyday.”

8.  Miles Halter and Alaska Young from Looking for Alaska by John Green

“Sometimes I don’t get you,’ I said.
She didn’t even glance at me. She just smiled toward the television and said, ‘You never get me. That’s the whole point.”

7. Amy and Nick from Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (okay, so they aren’t the loveliest of couples, but…)

“And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don’t have genuine souls.”

6.  Travis and Mary from Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

“Suddenly, all I can think about are all the things I don’t know about him. All the things I never had time to learn. I don’t know if his feet are ticklish or how long his toes are. I don’t know what nightmares he had as a child. I don’t know which stars are his favorites, what shapes he sees in the clouds. I don’t know what he is truly afraid of or what memories he holds closest.”

5. Sam and Kent from Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

“Maybe you can afford to wait. Maybe for you there’s a tomorrow. Maybe for you there’s one thousand tomorrows, or three thousand, or ten, so much time you can bathe in it, roll around it, let it slide like coins through you fingers. So much time you can waste it.
But for some of us there’s only today. And the truth is, you never really know.”

4. Tris and Four from Divergent by Veronica Roth

“You think my first instinct is to protect you. Because you’re small, or a girl, or a Stiff. But you’re wrong.”

3. Anna and Etienne from Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

“Is it possible for home to be a person and not a place?”

2. Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

“There was a clatter as the basilisk fangs cascaded out of Hermione’s arms. Running at Ron, she flung them around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth. Ron threw away the fangs and broomstick he was holding and responded with such enthusiasm that he lifted Hermione off her feet.”

1. Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters from The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

“You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world…but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.”

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

In Which My Roommate Attends the Harry Potter 7 Premiere for Us

My wonderful roommate, Blair, is studying abroad in London right now and was one of the crazy fans who camped out for the Harry Potter premiere! Seriously, she was all over newspaper pictures and was interviewed. She was right up front because she’s hardcore like that. That’s why I’m so thankful that she was awesome enough to do a post on the event. So, here she is giving lots of details and great photographs from the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Red Carpet! Thanks, Blair! (*P.S. After the cut, Blair’s taken some great up-close pics of the HP7 Stars!)

No one really understood why I brought a sleeping bag to class, and my explanation didn’t help.

I got a few “No one else will be there at 2pm!”s and “You’re a crazy person!”s, but I didn’t care- I was headed to Leicester Square to camp out for the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 World Premiere right after class. I’d made up my mind months before I even arrived in England for my study abroad semester, and reason and friendly ridicule weren’t going to stop me.

I stopped once on my way there, to buy those little handwarmer packets you put in your gloves and boots when you go skiing.

There were about 40 people already there when I arrived at 2pm the day before, as I knew there would be. A practically toothless, middle-aged woman dressed as a witch at the front of the line told me where the end of the line was. Slightly embarrassed, not sure whether it was for her or for me being a part of this crowd, I walked down the line of about 10 tents and arrived at a group of 3 normal-and-friendly-looking girls at the end of the line, sitting in chairs they’d brought.

Crap. I forgot chairs. I didn’t think about a tent. Oh well.

I sat down on my borrowed sleeping bag next to them, and like any good-and-chatty Texas girl, I made some new friends out of these strangers. To my surprise, they’d just met each other too. In fact, two of them decided to meet up at the premiere while on a message board.

This made me feel better about having come alone…and about having people to save my spot any time I’d need to use the McDonald’s bathroom down the street over the next 29 hours.

Fenceposts for Your First Person Narrative

This week I’m going to be talking about writing in first person. I know that I struggled with the idea of writing in first person. I don’t find it the most natural mode of storytelling and always feel a bit of “Why is the character telling me this?” 

But, I’d say the vast majority of YA novels are written in first person and I’ve come to love it. First person adds voice and sympathy for the protagonist. There is no closer narrative form than that of first person. So embrace. I did.

The first work I switched over to first person landed me an agent. Of course, that’s not to say that everyone should write in first person. I love Melissa Marr’s works, written in alternating 3rd limited POV. 

Rather this series of posts is meant to help those interested in a foray into first person. And please, feel free to leave your tips and comments below. Thanks!

 

So today I’m talking about fashioning fenceposts. *So much alliteration, I can hardly handle it!* Anyway, fenceposts are something I use before I start writing. If you want to outline before this point that is more than fine. But, fenceposts are there to help you find your voice. 

I think I can explain this best through illustration. 

From I’d Tell You I Love You But Then I’d Have To Kill You by Ally Carter, narrated by Cammie:

“We waited two weeks. TWO WEEKS! Do you know how long that is in fifteen-year-old-girl time? A lot. A LOT, a lot. I was really starting to empathize with all htose women who talk about biological clocks.”

“Okay, so I didn’t know the Jacksons, much less how Granny way feeling, but Gradma Morgan had taught me that Chinese Water Torture is nothing compared to a grandmother who really wants to know something.”

 

From The Forest of Hands and Teeth (because it’s fresh in my mind) by Carrie Ryan, narrated by Mary:

“But there are times when I stand at the edge of the Forest of Hands and Teeth and look out at the wilderness that stretches on forever and wonder what it would be like if it were all water.”

“Inside it feels as though the stone walls drain the heat of the day and the hairs on my arms stand on end.”

 

Or from Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling [Not in 1st person, but definitely a fencepost for Hermione’s voice]:

“Just because you’ve got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn’t mean we all have.”

 

Ok, so of course, I don’t know what these authors did or how they started or anything like that. But what I do, prior to beginning, is talk in my characters voice. I get out a notebook and just think of random things that my narrating character would say. These become my posts. 

Naturally, the focus is not so much on what the character says, but how the character says it. 

I started with an opening line: “If the gnashing teeth ten feet behind didn’t kill me, my dad would. But that was a problem for Future Scout.” 

That was fencepost #1. 

One of my other earlier fenceposts was: “The fact that my eyes hadn’t burned crop circles in place of his nostrils felt like a small miracle. Of course God would be on his side.”

We’ll call that fencepost #2. 

 

After the creation of several more fenceposts, I’m left with a bunch of supporting structures jutting out vertically. That’s good. I’ve got them written down in no particular order, but I’m going to work with them. Because to build the actual fence, I need to constantly link back to the posts. 

Voice is about consistency. The character has to own the voice you give him or her. So these fenceposts you create are there to refer and link back to. Each sentence you write in first person has to be close enough to attach to one of the vertical posts. 

That’s the real danger with first person, I think. You want to go into some beautiful description about what the passage of time feels like, but Cammie Morgan is just going to say that it is A LOT of time in fifteen-year-old-girl time. Yanno?

Or you might want to describe the setting really eloquently. If you are writing from Mary’s perspective, you can get away with the pensive, lovely description. If you are Cammie Morgan, you can’t. Not ever ever. Never. Seriously.

So, start out by writing your fenceposts and in every sentence ask, Is that too far away from one of my fenceposts to link back to?