Getting your swoon on...

I have to admit, I've got zero excuses for being a day late on my post. And I mean zero. I just got distracted by my website overhaul, opening my Tumblr, trying to figure out what the heck to do with Instagram (still confused, so if you have any tips, now's the time), and generally bumming around the internet watching comedy sketches.

However, I'm here now, and I'm going to talk about getting your swoon on. Or, more specifically, learning how to. I'll be 100% honest, swooning is not my gig. It's been something I've had trouble with for a long time, but it's something I'm learning one slow bit at a time. So, to that end, I thought I'd give you the top three tips I've learned so far. Hopefully, you'll get some use out of them, like I did when I got them.

1) Figure out what your main character values in a person. If you're going to have them fall head over heels, then it helps for the reader to see one or two of these qualities in the potential love interest. Those qualities can be hidden at first in some books, and revealed as the plot progresses, but there should be some indications sown in throughout the novel.

2) Make your love interest worth it. We all connect to different people for different reasons. However, if I said I was looking for dark hair, dark eyes, and someone loyal...well, that could be a lot of different, generic someones. So while that might be my first stepping stone, I'm looking for more. You know what attracted me to my husband-to-be when we met? On our first date, he very honestly said, "I'm divorced, have 3 kids, and they come first." I fell there and then (not that I told him that until a long time later!). Why? Funny thing is, I never wanted kids. Still don't. But family is the most important thing to me. And for someone to be that frank and honest with someone who might just turn and walk away? That is what caught me. The fact that he's also kind and loyal add to this. But it's the other things, too...the way he agrees for us to foster dogs, even though he finds the smell and hair hard to abide. The way he supports me working from home. The way he goes out of his way to do the little things that matter to me...turning up with a mini-cake just because he knows I feel crappy. These are the things you learn about a person over time. So make your MC learn these things about your love interest over time, and your reader will buy into them, hook, line, and sinker.

3) Make your characters interesting! In fiction, characters need to be dynamic, imperfect, entertaining, devilish, loyal, larger than life, down to earth... Now, you don't need to make them have all these qualities. But what you do need to do is make sure that you give them something to stand out from the pack.

So, I hope this helps. And if you're interested in more of my blog posts, you can check out my blog, too.

Remember How it Feels to be a Teenager in Love

This one goes out to all the YA writers, the creators of teens, and especially the writers who aren't, well, teenagers anymore. If your teen character is going to fall in love, you need to remember what it's like to fall in love at that age. If you can't remember or never experienced it, my high school diary and I are here to help.

Disclaimer: I married my high school sweetheart, so I've never fallen into new love as an adult. I can't compare new teen love to new adult love. Buuuut, after you read my diary excerpt, you'll probably agree that new adult love wouldn't look the same.

A little background on my highschool love story:

In sixth grade, my family moved into a new house, where I met my future husband, who lived next door. At first, I thought he was a weird creep because he and his siblings stood on their side of the hedges and just watched us move in all our bags and boxes. Then, to my dismay, he started coming over to our house to hang out with my brother. Little did I know, he was only befriending my brother to spend time closer to me! I can't remember how or when it happened, but suddenly I started caring how my hair looked when he came over. I found out he thought Donna from That 70s Show looked cute in her school uniform, so I started keeping on my school uniform after school, but in a totally chill way, like, "Oh, I forgot to take off this outfit I'm forced to wear every day? Huh." I giggled over every little thing he said and couldn't wait to come home from school so we could play dodgeball together.

We both like liked each other, but we pretended not to until the summer before ninth grade. Everything changed the night of the Miss America Pageant. He was watching the pageant on TV with my family and me (I know, he REALLY liked me), but we were bored and passing notes. Because you don't just have a conversation right there with your parents and siblings listening. And we didn't have cell phones quite yet. I asked him if he liked anyone, he said yes. Someone I knew? Yes. How many letters in her name? Seven. (SEVEN! OH MY GOSH, THERE ARE SEVEN LETTERS IN JESSICA.) And then finally he sent a note back that said, "YOU." My face erupted with heat. I couldn't breathe, couldn't form a response, and definitely couldn't look at him. Because it was the only answer I wanted, but at the same time...when you're a teenager, falling in love for the first time feels like:

Source: giphy.com

Source: giphy.com

Source: giphy.com

Source: giphy.com

Source: giphy.com

Source: giphy.com

You get the point. Lots of emotions backed by lots of hormones.

Okay, so I mentioned a diary excerpt. My old diaries should probably be burned, but instead, I'll share pieces of them with the internet because that's a good idea and not at all embarrassing.

The diary:

First of all, check out this cover.

I was obsessed with Hilary Duff. But not as obsessed as with Gary, my crush and now husband, as you can see from the inside cover.

I mean, when I was fifteen and he was fourteen, I actually thought that a marriage proposal was in the realm of possibility just because he said he had a surprise for me.

And then here are a couple just in case you don't understand how consumed I felt.

As an adult with normal amounts of hormones and some life experience, it's tempting to tell the teen who wrote these diary entries, "Whoa, calm down because you're kind of desperate and obsessed and there's more to life than this boy." But my feelings were real. Healthy? Ehh, probably not. But real. And that boy was the great love of my life. My forever. (And you know it's real love because he has since seen this diary and did not run away.) 

So when you're writing teen love, checking to see if you pass the Bechdel test, and writing independent young women, don't forget what love actually feels like to young people. It's HUGE. Love consumes. Love is wild, torturous, good, emotional, physical, and oh so real. Don't be afraid to go there because teens need to see themselves in books...even the parts of them that are desperate and obsessed.

A Normal Love

The month of love is nearly over. Whether it was great, or you just curled up in bed and waited out the baby with the bow and arrow, congratulations, you’ve survived another Valentine’s Day!

In writing YA it’s easy to believe that every date is a make or break moment for your life. This boy is the one! This date is the start of something amazing (or, depending on the genre you’re working in, how a serial killer chooses you as his next victim)!

Sometimes I worry that the literary community is setting the world’s youth up for disappointment. In all likelihood, that date is just going to be a date. Hopefully it won’t be terrible. If it is terrible, maybe you’ll at least get a good story out of it. Maybe you’ll have a second date, maybe you’ll stay together for a while, but in all likelihood, it’ll just be a date. Telling stories that promise breathtaking romance seems like a cruel lie when the beginning of Bridget Jones is more likely to be the truth.

In an age where social media gives us polished looks into people’s lives, it’s easy to think that being swept off your feet by the perfect partner happens once a week, lavish bouquets are standard practice for Tuesday breakfast, and if a relationship does end, it will be in utter tragedy. It’s all either perfection or disastrous. It’s what we see in storytelling and online.

How do we normalize…normal? It wouldn’t make a good book. A long string of average dates with a side of being ghosted rather than dumped. I don’t know how many people would want to read a whole book about having nothing to say when someone flirts with you.

So then what? If the author platform won’t work, then perhaps we should rely on the storytelling of those around us.

My Valentine’s Day consisted of brunch with my husband and a ten hour rehearsal. There were no rose petals or drama involved. But that’s okay. That’s how life should be. It might not be a great book, but it is a great day.

So how was your normal, non-literary Valentine’s Day?

Fiction and a More Loving World

Fiction is powerful. Magical, even. In 2014, Scientific American wrote an article reporting on a study linking reading—specifically Harry Potter—and the development of empathy in the reader. With all the hate reported in the U.S. in the last couple of years, empathy and love seem to be in desperate need. And authors have the power to encourage a more loving world. So how and in what ways?

1. Create Characters that Honestly Portray a Marginalized Population. Authors provide the opportunity to crawl inside someone else’s skin. We show the emotions and the uniqueness and not-so-different-ness of people. Readers have the opportunity to connect with someone who is different from themselves, and yet not so different (we’re all just human, after all!), and that can change their perspectives about someone they may have ignored—or worse. 
2. Don’t Consistently Reinforce Stereotypes. Personally, I’m not against a stereotypical minor character. I believe stereotypes exist because plenty of people fit. But we need to be wary of consistently allowing an entire group to always be villainous. Like police officers being the bad guys, parents being unreasonable, jocks being bullies. We have the opportunity to show authority figures can be relied on and the popular kid is kind and friendly. That’s power to stop fear.
3. Don’t Include a “Type” Because You Should. This is basically me saying, ignore the first two suggestions if they don’t fit the story. Readers recognize fakes. If it’s not natural or you can’t pull off a certain ethnicity, don’t include that just to make your story diverse. Yes, we need to create a more diverse world in our stories because the world around us is diverse. But it has to be real. Better authentic characters than a token minority.

If used well, fiction can create a more loving world. Through reading, we learn that people, regardless of race, socio-economic status, religion, or whatever difference, share similar emotions, similar fears, similar love. Yes, a story needs a villain, and plenty of bad guys exist in real life too, but fiction can be the starting point for people to react with love and kindness instead fear toward someone who is different.

Sarah Tipton is a writer of Christian Young Adult fiction. Her debut novel, Betrayal of the Band, releases in August 2017.