500 Words in a Chapter

E. Don't you 'princess' me!

EXPLANATION.

I don't know if you guys picked up on the 36 Students references, but yeah. Gertrude and Anonymous? They're straight from there.

Thought I should add in something a bit extra.

Anyway.

So yes, that was cliché.

On to the explaining!

       .       .       .

"the makeover"

Now I know I mentioned something about this before, in the chapter about nerd clichés. But instead of going into detail about the nerd cliché itself, I'm going to talk about why I think this makeover thing has become so cliché.

There are only so many makeovers people in the world can have before they're pointless.

As the first matter of business, let's get something straight here.

Makeup does not fix everything.

And since when did every main character's best friend become a makeup artist? Especially in high school?

I mean I know lots of girls do wear makeup. But there's a difference between being able to put makeup on yourself and being the kind of makeup guru that can turn someone else into Beyoncé and Ruby Rose combined.

A difference that, apparently, has not been seen by lots of people.

And, also, there's something else that's gone unnoticed.

Okay, so let's say the MC – main character – does have this life-changing, epic makeover that makes everyone realize she's hot and suddenly want to befriend her. Is this girl, the girl who is used to waking up, washing her face, maybe having a shower, and just putting on her outfit, really going to start spending hours every morning putting on piles of makeup?

And I say hours because if this girl only needed a little bit of mascara and blush, the makeover wouldn't have been so epic.

If this girl isn't going to continue wearing makeup, how is this going to work, exactly? With the way these stories usually work, the MC gets noticed with makeup on. What happens if she wakes up too late to put on makeup in the morning and goes to school looking normal, the way she used to?

And another problem with this cliché is that it's also kind of shallow for us writers to be writing about the idea that the only way a girl is going to get noticed is if she has a ton of makeup on her face and some tight-fitting dress on.

I know that the way society works these days makes that idea seem more realistic.

But it's not always true. Not every guy only looks at a girl for those reasons, not every girl looks great with makeup on, and not every girl has the type of body that can be shown off in a tight fitting outfit.

What's up with these romance books these days?

Isn't the whole point of those things to showcase love in its purest form? What happened to unlikely couples besides the nerd and the player?

. . . And . . .

On a different note, why is Wattpad's Discover section overflowing with books that sound like Fifty Shades of Grey?

Seriously.

I went on a hiatus for a while, as you probably realized, and when I came back and started looking for stories to read all I found was a whole bunch of books about billionaires in suits.