Stephanie M.

Today, it’s common for writers to use Meyers-Briggs, Kiersey, Enneagram, or another personality test metric to type their characters, or at least to determine how characters might act in certain situations. Even if writers don’t consciously do this, their characters can often be "typed." For instance, many people discuss the Meyers-Briggs or other types of characters in popular series like The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and so on.

In exploring literature, what personality types do you think come up most or least, and why? For instance, do you think authors tend to create characters based on their own personalities? Are you attracted or repelled by certain types of characters–say, a bookish yet adventure-seeking character like Jane Eyre, vs. a "trickster," street smart character like the Artful Dodger?

The 1980s was a great decade for children’s movies. From The Neverending Story to The Princess Bride, from Return to Oz to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, young audiences had all kinds of new cinematic stories to whet their appetites. Some movies, like ET and The Black Cauldron, went on to become classics (or "cult classics") and achieve great fame even if their initial box office performances were less than stellar.

However, the kids’ movies of the 1980s are famous–or infamous–for scaring kids, too. On YouTube especially, but also other forms of social media, you can find detailed discussions of which films and moments from this decade were the scariest and what effects they might have had on kids. As adults, millennials might look back at these movies and wonder, "What were we, and our parents, thinking?" But we still hail these films as classics, and mainstays of the children’s cinematic canon, so to speak.

Choose one, or perhaps two, of your favorite scary ’80s movies for kids. What made them memorable? What made some scarier, thus "better" or "worse," than others? Has cinema "softened" too much toward kids since the ’80s? If yes, what could it do to bring the edge back (do we need/want it)? Why do you think scary moments from kids’ movies stick in our minds, and what would it take to create such memorable moments now?

Fiction loves a fat character…if that character is antagonistic and held up for ridicule or villainizing, that is. Antagonistic and fat characters can be found in all kinds of fiction, from Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist, to Dudley Dursley in Harry Potter, to the sea witch in almost any form of The Little Mermaid, to (occasionally) the witch in Hansel and Gretel. To twist the knife further, these characters are often juxtaposed against "good," but malnourished and pitiable, characters from whom they take even the basic necessities (food).

Of course, there are some fat protagonists in classic literature or myths and fairytales, as well. Santa Claus, typically portrayed as fat, is a personification of goodness and charity. The Ghost of Christmas Present, when juxtaposed with the gaunt yet greedy Scrooge, is a reminder that "fat" can also be healthy, prosperous, and joyful. However, most fat characters tend to be either 100% good or 100% bad in "older" forms of literature.

In the last few years, authors have become more aware of these issues, and there are now more body-positive books, especially geared toward young women. However, some of them are not as positive as they seem. Dumplin’, for example, stars Willowdean, a fat girl who competes in a beauty pageant to show she’s worthy to…but then has to watch a "typical" contestant win. Watch Us Rise has Jasmine, a black girl who is put down and demonized for being both black and big. One Fat Summer has Bobby, who begins to find inner peace and acceptance by his social circle…after losing weight.

How has "fat phobia" in fiction evolved and changed? How is it influenced by how our modern society views body size? Throughout the article, you might explore questions such as, what size constitutes fatness, how fat characters could be represented as more three-dimensional, and whether stories about body size lend themselves to fat phobia or pigeonholing fatness by default.

I’m a writer, and right now, publishers and agents are warning fellow writers not to craft pandemic plotlines yet because it’s too soon and we are too close to the event. However, what might pandemic-centered fiction look like when the crisis is safely past and we are able to examine it with a distant, critical eye? Discuss the elements of the pandemic that might make the best fiction. What kind of characters might be most compelling? Are there certain tropes or plot twists that would lend themselves well to pandemic fiction? Also, consider whether pandemic fiction could fit into already-established genres or sets of titles (i.e., Camus’ The Plague, Love in the Time of Cholera, young adult titles like Laurie Halse Anderson’s Fever 1793, etc.)

Ever since June 2020, I have been gratified to see more books starring women of color, and have been privileged to read some. However, I’ll leave this topic to those who are more qualified than I (a white woman)am to write it.

If you were to make an essential list of YA books young women of color should read, what would be on it? Would you mix "classics" with more current offerings, and if yes, how and why? Which authors do the best job of representing female POCs, and why? Consider comparing and contrasting modern and classic characters, such as Janie from Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston) vs. Renee Watson’s Jasmine of Watch Us Rise, or any other combination of characters you would like.

Born This Way was a docudrama series on A&E chronicling the lives of several young adults with Down Syndrome. In the series, viewers saw them navigate independent lives, work, relationships, and many other frontiers the temporarily able-bodied (or non-disabled) often take for granted. Yet, Born This Way was cancelled after just a few seasons, and not a lot of people talk about it anymore. The only exception seems to be within physical or online communities of people with Down Syndrome or other disabilities. Why is this? Did Born This Way have a bigger or smaller impact than expected, on the disabled and non-disabled? What does the trajectory of the show say about representation of PWDs in the media and their stories?

Netflix’s newest hit show Bridgerton has some features of a trademark Regency England drama, such as girls looking to secure their futures through marriage proposals, ballroom gossip, and a mix of gentility, morality, civility, and scandal. Yet some critics point out Bridgerton isn’t Jane Austen’s England, or even Regency England as we know it. Bridgerton, it is said, is part of a "new genre." If so, what genre is it? How does Bridgerton’s narrative on the show and in the books the show is based on compare to other period dramas or stories? What might another show in this "new genre" look like? Discuss.

I recently read Things We Didn’t Say, a World War II epistolary novel by Amy Lynn Green, and enjoyed it immensely. However, it reminded me I had not encountered a good epistolary novel in several years. This led me to ask some questions about this sub-genre. Namely, what are some of the best epistolary novels? Are they classics or contemporary novels, and what are some differences between those two? Are there some things epistolary authors do that make their works less than enjoyable, and what are some of the "worst" or lowly-regarded epistolary novels? Discuss.