Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Teen movies teach us so much...

Tip of the Day: having a chocolate party this week and decided to try a fondue buffet. Let me know if you have suggestions of things to put in fondue!

Last week I talked about my love of libraries, this week we get to talk about my love of movies (wow, I feel like I'm in heaven).

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE movies (and TV).

So much so that I'd love to try writing scripts one day. Until that day comes, I'm perfectly content writing MG and YA fiction.

When I first started getting into reading teen fiction I was an adult. I was obsessed with teen romantic comedies and there weren't any scheduled to release and I needed my teen fix, so I opted to start reading a bunch of them. Then I discovered I love to read them just as much.

But I haven't forgotten my love of teen movies and I turn to them every now and then to get ideas for my books.

Here's just a few common things I've found while watching teen romantic comedy movies (and to be honest a lot of the supernatural ones too!):

1.) The main character is almost always the underdog, the ugly duckling, or gets picked on. From Mean Girls to A Cinderella Story to Princess Diaries and everything in between.

2.) There's ALWAYS a makeover scene or speedy scene taking place in a store where all the girls dress up. I had my doubts about this being in every movie, but then I started to pay attention and was amazed at how there's almost always a physical way of showing a character's transformation. Have your doubts? Just watch any Mary Kate and Ashley movie.

So what does this tell us: character transformation is KEY, especially for teen movies and novels.

--Emily

2 comments:

Andrea Lipomi said...

Hi Emily,
Chocolate fondue is my jam! I bring it to almost every pot luck at work. Luckily I live near a Trader Joe's, so I can make the fondue using one dark chocolate Pound Plus (read: really big) bar and one milk chocolate PP bar. That's it for the fondue...using two "colors" makes for neat swirls in the pot.
Any kind of small or cut fruit is popular. Our new thing at work is "chocolate banana", where we take a whole peeled banana and submerge it in the fondue. (We have no shame!) We also do marshmallows, graham crackers, pretzels, cookies. I'd venture to guess that *anything* tastes good when dipped in chocolate fondue. :)
Andrea (Deena's sister)

Kristina Springer said...

We do fondue parties too-- so fun! Some of the fondues have been cheesecake, chili cheese, an asiago cheese, and then of course the normal chocolates and cheese. Things to dip: brownie bites, vanilla wafers, pound cake, pineapple (YUM), berries etc., and then of course the variety of things you can dip in the cheese fondues-- ital bread etc. Have fun!