What the hell, Addy? Where have you been?

Don't y'all judge me. You know I stay busy, but I've got a couple of dead weeks where I'm legally not allowed to work, so here I am! Back and as bad at giving advice as ever. Here I am in all my unedited glory.

Anyway, I got some requests and suggestions and I thought it would be fun to combine some and kill a bunch of birds with one stone. So today, we're going to laugh a little and talk about: Wattpad vs Reality

There is a big push for hyperrealism lately, but at the same time, we have to remember that literature is also one of the best forms of escapism. So I thought it would be fun to point out some clichés on Wattpad that are nothing like what happens in reality. And, of course, you know I wanna talk about those, so let's do this.

1. Hot Guy Always has Abs

This one always gets me, because I feel like it's everywhere. The MC always runs into some dude who is a "brick wall" and he has these awesome washboard abs and I always laugh, because they go on to spend the next two hundred pages never leaving each other's sides and eating junk food.

You all know we're all about acknowledging different body types and celebrating them in all their glory and awesomeness, but c'mon. This one drives me crazy. Lemme spill the same secrets I've been telling everyone forever: you don't have abs if you don't eat right and exercise.

And here's another secret that it seems no one knows. Most of your high school athletes are going to be lanky. They won't have a good muscle mass if they're not eating right as well as working out. And even then, a lot of them just won't have the proper hormone balance to develop the kind of definition they'll see later in life when their body mellows out. It's just science. That's what used to drive the guys I graduated with crazy. It drives the guys I coach now crazy.

You don't get good muscle definition if you're not fueling right. Yeah, you might have some discernable muscle. You might have some definition. You're not going to get washboard abs eating pizza and ice cream. And if you try to claim you have them and you only eat junk food, you're a liar, and I will say that to your face.

I wish more people would consider this when they're writing, because there's a lot of great conflict that comes with this territory. Especially if you want to write a teen fic (which, let's face it, is what 90% of Wattpad stories are). Have you ever spent time with a through and through state champion athlete with college offers out the ass and scouts constantly trying to contact them? Because that's a really, really interesting place to be.

Just from my high school experience, it's a lot of fucking work. And also from my experience, teenagers don't like to eat healthy all the time. Teenagers are always, always, always hungry and if you've ever been athletic, you know that athletes are always, always, always hungry and if you combine those two, it's a recipe for some really great drama.

This time of year always makes me jittery, because June was what my best friend called "fat month", because it was a dead month where coaches weren't really allowed to hold practices (it was state law at the time), so he didn't have to diet. He didn't have to be at the gym all day every day. He could eat whatever, whenever and if he didn't want to roll out of bed at 5 to run with a hangover before hitting the weight room, he didn't have to. Except, he usually just ate Cheetos and didn't go run until 8. That was "bad" for him. He was a pretty disciplined athlete, so he spent a lot of time working out on his own, which is what it takes.

Lately, I've been hanging out with my best friend's dad a lot, because he's hilarious and he was very observant, so he always has some really interesting things to say about what my best friend and I were like growing up. I'm just fascinated by seeing my life and other people's lives through other people's perspectives. Anyway, his whole take on his son being a star athlete was that it really creeped him out, because he'd come home and find my best friend eating carrots while doing situps and watching game film. And as a father of three boys, two of which were bottomless pits that ate enough junk food to single handedly feed a small colony of people, he wasn't sure how to handle the diets.

And he also thought my best friend only ever drank water until he had the misfortune of finding out some of those water bottles actually had vodka (and when confronted, apparently his answer for this was that the original vodka bottle broke, so he had to have somewhere to put it.)

For real, though. If you want a character with washboard abs and the muscles of gods, they're gonna have to do some hardcore work in addition to some extreme dieting. I think that's fun to write about, because have you ever got to watch a teenager watch someone else eat pizza while they're munching on an apple. So much drama. So much entertainment. Do it. Someone do it.

2. Super Cute Height Difference

This has always been one of the more popular romance clichés and it's always a really interesting dynamic that I feel like no one really explores to its full potential.

As you guys know by now, I'm pretty damn short. Over five feet, but not by much. And at just a hair under 6'2", my best friend his almost an entire foot taller than me. So, yeah. You could say there's a height difference.

And it's not really as cute as everyone thinks. Especially not when people always mistake him for my older brother (and once my dad, but I swear that lady forgot her classes at home). I'll admit, I look insanely young. Like, I look at least half my age. At least. But I do some hardcore adulating, so they can bite me.

Anyway, in these stories, the height difference is just insanely adorable and you can hear the chorus of "awwww's" whenever you read the lines about how he towers over her and she feels so safe with him. They fit together perfectly and it's like they were custom made for each other. And they do cutesy things, like he rests his arm on her head and reaches things on the top shelf for her.

And as a small person, I don't like this. For a number of reasons which I will now tell you:

a) We tiny people are a crafty breed. No, I don't need a man to reach up on the top shelf for me. You think I got calves this badass from not standing on my toes, climbing on cabinets, or just not being smart enough to figure out how to gain access to things out of reach? No. I did not. We tiny people, we are climbers and I like that to be celebrated.

b) I don't enjoy being used as an arm rest. Never have. Never will. It's not fun for me when you put your arm on top of my head. I don't need you to push me any closer to the ground. I'm close enough to satan, so I don't need any help in that department, thanks.

c) When you have a serious height difference, you're 98% of the time not going to "fit perfectly" together. And not even just in a sexual way (although that can definitely be a problem too). Holding hands is insane, because his hand comes down to your elbow, so you gotta have your arm bent which is just kinda awkward and weird when you're trying to walk side by side. Eighteen of your steps equals one of his, so it's a serious workout trying to get anywhere with one another. It's a lot of work. A lot of annoying work.

And that's not even the end of my list of grievances, but I'll stop it there, because it's getting lengthy and since I'm short, I wanted to keep it short.

However, I will say, I wanna read a story where the girl is taller than the guy, because that never happens and I wanna see that happen. Or, like, she's just a quarter of an inch shorter and he's paranoid about it, especially when she wears heels. I think that would be fun.

3. The Convenient Illness

I've been noticing that when authors want to add drama to their stories, they throw in hospital visits and illnesses. Now, I'm not totally against these plot devices, as long as they're not just a simple cop-out way to add some unnecessary drama or they're a chapter long and then over. That's just stupid, in my opinion.

The horrible thing about being sick and being in the hospital is that it's incredibly inconvenient, time consuming, and simply not fun at all. These, obviously, are the exact same reasons why too many authors put them in their story, then promptly end that portion of the story line. But I hate that, because there is a lot of drama and conflict that can come from illnesses and hospitals. I hate when all the excitement ends after a chapter or two and then everyone is normal.

I'm sorry, but if you're sick or you went to the hospital and the next day it was nothing, then you didn't need to be doted on and it should not appear in a book.

Y'all know I spent a lot of time being sick and in and out of the hospital for a number of years (hell, some of you were even around for it and remember it quite well). It's not fun at all. At all. And, honestly, they're so awful and you usually feel so bad and so out of it that I understand it wouldn't make for a good narrative point of view. If you're going to add in a character being in the hospital, I'd suggest it not be your main character if you're writing in first person. It's going to be very crazy and light headed and hard to write, especially if you're a novice writer. Trying to be in the headspace can not only get confusing, but it can be boring, especially if it's a lot of conscious and unconsciousness and sitting. Oh, lord, the sitting.

Also, I'd suggest that if you're going to throw in a "surprise" illness, you're going to need to do some serious foreshadowing, otherwise it's going to be terribly unbelievable and it's going to feel like a slap in the face of readers. You can't just throw major, horrible illnesses at people that haven't already been a problem. And you definitely can't randomly take them away a few chapters later. If you're going to use an illness, you have to stick with it and flesh it out to make it successful.

However, in the other vein, I understand that sometimes you do have sudden, horrible accidents that lead to extended hospital stays. I've talked about the accident my best friend had back in high school, and he was in the hospital for a little over fourth months. For the first couple of weeks, it was pretty much understood that he probably wasn't going to come home and if he did, nothing would be the same. But, by the grace of God, he had this freaky miraculous recovery and it was pretty much everything I just told you not to do, but he's pretty much fine from it. Few scars. That's it.

But while he was in the hospital, I spent some time with him. This is another one of my infamous tangents, but I love it, so we're bird walking anyway. I'm sure I've talked more about it somewhere, but just a recap, he was in a car accident that pretty much should have killed him (and would have if he had been wearing his seatbelt and hadn't been asleep), but he found himself in the hospital with some serious internal injuries and broken bones.

The nurses had a love hate relationship with him. He was so sweet and kind and never an issue, but they could not get him to stay still once he figured out how to move with his IVs. Pretty much any time I went to visit him, I'd run into him shuffling around the halls, trying to hide from the nurses (which is insanely hard when you're supposed to be on oxygen, you've got an IV, and you have a broken leg but can't use a crutch because the right side of your chest is trying to recover from having collapsed).

His famous phrase, if you wanted to see him, was "walk with me", which he'd say as he was blowing past you acting like some kind of badass you see in the movies, where they just went through some kind of serious hell and walk away without a scratch. Except, he had a ton of scratches and at one point, the nurses actually shortened his oxygen hose to try to get him to stay in bed, but that did not work.

He also used to offer people his hospital food. Anything was fair game except the jello. And he used to hang out with some of the other patients there and all the old people loved him because he'd go visit them every day.

Anyway, he did so well with his rehab that they knew he was going to go home early. Unfortunately, he wound up with pneumonia and an infection and almost died again, so his stay was actually prolonged by another month. Obviously, he eventually came home, but it was a long four months. And afterward he still had an obscene amounts of appointments with doctors, he had physical therapy, and he had a few more surgeries.

So the point of all this was to say, you can't just throw in illnesses and hospital visits for fun. You have to explore the ups and downs, the goods and bads. It's annoying, but it's the price you pay for that kind of drama. Sometimes you're wondering around the halls hiding from nurses and other times you're lying in bed mumbling things because you're half conscious and in a lot of pain. I never see that Wattpad stories. I see dramatic crying and then everything is okay.

And that's it. That's my rant for now. It was a longer one, so hopefully that makes up for the fact that I suck at updating. Anyway, what do you think about this topic? Are there other things you've noticed on Wattpad that are totally different in reality? Let me know in the comments.

Until then, I'll just be busy. As usual. Have a good day/night/whatever.