Writing the Great American Romance Novel, Thursday Per 2

[glacial_queen]

Unlike the past two weeks, there was a teacher in the classroom when the students showed up. There was also an assortment of decadent pastries on everyone's desks. "I suck at apologies, so I tend to keep them short and simple," Karla announced when class began. "I'm so sorry for the past two weeks. My mun was a flake Territory was facing a nasty outbreak as I mentioned in my note and it hadn't fully run its course by last week and I didn't have the presence of mind to have someone take over class instead. I'm so sorry, but I highly doubt it will happen again."

There. Apology over. Now to move onto the more interesting things. "So, today, we're going to talk about your couple. Because the central plot of every romance is the story of how the couple--or, more rarely, the triad--got together, the characters of the story have to be interesting enough to make the story stand out. They have to be an interesting blend of traits, their relationship has to be interesting and believable, and there had to be some kind of conflict keeping them apart, since conflict is what drives a plot. Good stories usually have several sources of conflict, both internal--'I can't be with this person because of reasons!'--and external--'I'm going to try to keep these people apart for reasons!' A mix of quality, creative conflicts gives the couple stuff to do besides stare longingly into each other's eyes, which gets very boring very quickly."

Your Coworkers are Still Jerks, August 11, 2016

[heroic_jawline]

"So one of the first things I've learned about this new century is how very many emails are sent in the course of a day," Steve said.

And how so few people should be allowed to use the reply-all function, but he was keeping that part to himself. "You can get buried in the noise of daily, weekly and bi-monthly staff meetings and absolutely forget to do an actually important task."

Reply-all existed to make people suffer. This was known. "Which is understandable between work and homelife," Tony said. Despite needing both an AI butler and personal assistant to help keep his life in order. "Of course, that might not stop a coworker from adding to the stress. Patience and understanding are two key factors in success."

"And not nagging about it," Steve said. "I had a team member at SHIELD send an email, then another email fifteen minutes later, then an IM and then she called me to follow up. That's basically a guarantee to being shifted to the middle of my priority list."

Because he was too nice to put you at the end.

Tony was trying very hard not to laugh at that. So, if everyone would just assume he was coughing, that'd be great. "Unless it is a matter of life or death, you don't need to follow up that quickly. Take a breath. Walk away from your desk. Maybe avoid the coffee for a little bit."

"Maybe my travel reimbursement is not that pressing," Steve muttered.

"Bureaucracy at its finest," Tony said brightly. "Pair up and discuss how to follow up on things without going a bit overboard about it."

More Adventuring for Idiots [Thursday, 3rd Period]

[wrongkindofsith]

There was actually class today, though it was being held in the Danger Shop.

"So our current location has a lot of portals." Cara was not going to talk about last week. Repression was a perfectly good coping method. "Hopefully by now, you all know that randomly poking about in them is only going to lead to trouble, but what about people who lack survival instincts?"

Was anyone at all surprised that a simulation of Tino appeared right then?

"Your job today is to save an idiot from himself. However you can."