How Did I Not Know?

Ship Dynamics

How to create quick chemistry

How to write a polyamorous relationship

How to write a wedding

How to write found family

How to write forbidden love

Introducing partner(s) to family

Honeymoon

Date gone wrong

Fluffy Kiss Scene

Love Language - Showing, not telling

Love Language - Showing you care

Affections without touching

Giving the reader butterflies with your characters

Reasons a couple would divorce on good terms

Reasons for breaking up while still loving each other

Relationship Problems

Relationship Changes

Milestones in a relationship

Platonic activities for friends

Settings for conversations

How to write a love-hate relationship

How to write enemies to lovers

How to write lovers to enemies to lovers

How to write academic rivals to lovers

How to write age difference

Reasons a couple would divorce on good terms

Reasons for having a crush on someone

Ways a wedding could go wrong

Arranged matrimony for royalty

Hugh Jackman has played Wolverine for over 23 years

The longest career as a live-action Marvel superhero

Hiding information from your readers on purpose will help you create tension in your novel. I know this doesn’t work for every novel, but if you’re writing something with elements of suspense and mystery, hiding details and revealing them later will improve your story. This also helps add dimensions to your characters and explore their motivations on a deeper level.

Here are a few things to hide about your characters to create tension:

Whether or not your protagonist is lying

Even good characters lie, especially if they feel like it will protect other people in the long run. There are ways to hint that your character is hiding the truth without actually revealing what the truth is. If your protagonist gets nervous or changes the subject when they’re asked about a specific detail, this will help show your readers that something isn’t quite right. If your character’s deception is hidden and then revealed at the right time, you’ll be able to add exciting tension and shock value to your story.

Who the real villain is

Some of the best tension is created when we’re uncertain about who the real villain is. In mystery/crime novels, for example, there’s often evidence that points to one person who ends up not really being the one we need to worry about. If you hide this information from your readers, you keep them guessing throughout the course of your novel and this will aid in creating suspense.

The truth about their past

When you hide your character’s past from your readers, you have the ability to use it as an explanation for something important later on. For example, if you character has these mysterious powers they can’t explain, you can use their parents and back story in order to reveal later on why it’s happening. Revealing past details slowly over the course of your novel helps build the mystery.

What their secondary goals are

Sometimes characters will have goals no one else knows about but them OR they will have a false goal that their using to cover up their real goal. For example, a character might say they’re rescuing another character because they want to help, but it really might be all about finding some hidden treasure along the way. There are many reasons why a character might want to hide their goals. Explore character motivations on a deeper level and you’ll be able to realistically include this type of deception in your story.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will become the 116th Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court and the FIRST Black woman to sit in the highest court.

Bingo’s line “maybe you just saw something you wanted.” Referring to Chili is like a one hit KO oh my GOD.

Civil War veteran Isador Banor, who lived to the age of 102 in Port Clinton, Ohio. He was born in 1811 when Napoleon ruled most of Europe. He died in 1913 – ten years after the Wright Brothers flew the first airplane, and a year before the First World War began.

Olga Smirnova in The Sleeping Beauty, Bolshoi Ballet, May 2016. © Damir Yusupov.

Hey Anon! I’ve gotten a lot of asks about the Amazon forest fire situation so I’m going to address them all here.

The most concerning thing about the Amazon fires isn’t necessarily the fires themselves, but the reason that there are so many this year: This is almost certainly because Brazil’s current president is very anti-environmentalist, which has led to more clearing of the forest (which involves setting fires).

The fires themselves aren’t actually a new threat. People have been practicing slash-and-burn agriculture in the Amazon for a long time. What’s different this year is that there seem to be more fires than usual and they are impacting densely populated locations.

Something that I think is being glossed over by many of the images and headlines being passed around is that it’s very normal for there to be forest fires in and around the Amazon at this time of year.

Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research says that this is a record year for forest fires in Brazil since they started monitoring fires via satellite in 2013. 

However, NASA says that the overall fire activity in the Amazon basin as a whole is actually slightly below average compared to the last 15 years; fire activity has increased in Amazonas and Rondonia but has decreased in Mato Grosso and Pará.

A manager for Global Forest Watch has said that the fires this year are roughly equivalent to what they saw in 2016 (according to satellite images). Now, 2016 was also a bad year for forest fires, but it goes to show that this level of fire is not unheard of.

So, why are we only hearing about the fires this year if they’ve been this bad before? Probaby because ash clouds darkened the sky over the most populated city in Brazil, which is a big, dramatic, apocalyptic thing that tends to get people’s attention.

Although some meteorologists think the ash over Sao Paulo may have been caused by fires in Paraguay, not even in the Amazon, the air quality in populated areas has been so strongly affected that Amazonas has declared a state of emergency.

To be clear, it is still definitely bad that parts of the Amazon are burning and the fact that the fires are impacting air quality in populated cities poses very real human health risks. We should be speaking out about this, drawing attention to it, and donating to organizations that are working to protect the Amazon. But this is not necessarily an apocalyptic scenario.

And the good news? #PrayforAmazonia went viral on Twitter. Tons and tons of news sources are covering these fires in a way that Amazon forest fires have not been covered in the past. People are talking about Amazon deforestation and its potential impact on climate change.

This whole debacle is generating a lot of outrage towards Brazil’s presidential administration. Hopefully, this will lead to more international support for those who are fighting his damaging policies towards the Amazon and the indigenous communities that rely on it. By the way, I think it bears mentioning that last week an indigenous women’s march occupied a Brazilian health ministry building in protest of their president’s harmful policies.

Do you want to help? Donate! I really cannot stress how much small amounts of money can go a long way in situations like this.

Donate to SOS Amazonia, a Brazilian NGO working to preserve the Amazon (I can’t find any third party information on how reputable this NGO is, but I think this may largely be because of the language barrier-they’ve been operating since the 1980s)

Donate to Rainforest Trust which buys and protects rainforest land all around the world (4/4 stars on Charity Navigator)

And don’t forget to vote for politicians that prioritize environmental protection and can put pressure on Brazil’s government to clean up its act!

Fund for indigenous peoples of the Amazon in Brazil

Support the Indigenous Women’s March (as mentioned in the original post)