• good skin
• $$$$$
• a tall boy that will worship me and tell me i’m pretty 

Dua Lipa photographed by Danny Aarons for The Daily Telegraph Sydney

so a lot of people love to write YA Fiction (us included!) but I think sometimes our teenage characters are given such huge tasks and embark on such wild missions that we forget that they are just that– teenagers! and one of the big things about being a teenager is all the hormonal changes that are going on (books love to focus on the sex/romance stuff), but we forget to mention things such as acne. even having a brief description of a character like “they scooped back their curls and I could see the acne that dotted their jaw” can make a world of a difference to a young teen who’s reading that book and struggling with having cystic acne. imagine if one of your favorite, most other-worldly beautiful characters had acne and they were still considered beautiful? you know how much it would rock people’s worlds to see that imperfect skin isn’t only found in villains?

now I’ve seen this one more often, but never too much. all i have to say is that braces are expensive (i know from personal experience jfc) and getting your smile straightened isn’t something that’s readily available to everyone. let one of your characters reflect that, a whole backstory you don’t even have to come up with. 

we know that cindy crawford and marilyn monroe have their famous beauty marks (we have piercings named after them) on their faces that enhance their beauty. having a unique placement of a characters mole/birth mark/beauty mark can give them a whole other dimension/back story you may not have thought of right away.

Linds, how come you never told me about your parents’ divorce?