Things You Want LESS Of In Books

• While Leah does miss Jayson, she still feels betrayed by him for what he did, and while they do rekindle a friendship, neither one of them feels comfortable starting up a romance.
• Jayson's years of emotional abuse weigh down on him and he's straight-up traumatized by the end of the book, being one of the only surviving characters and having pretty bad injuries from his fight.

You know what I feel like we don't see?
Characters with facial scars. I feel like most characters with scars have them on everywhere but their faces, so I try to add in characters with facial scars. Ayla has a scar all the way down her left eye (a la Anakin), Jayson has a glasgow grin (can it technically be called that? The blade didn't enter his mouth, but was dragged across his face), and Jon has a pretty faint but still noticable scar on his cheek.

A lot of mine has scars too, I'm fairly certain that everyone has at least one physical scar by the end of my Twyllo story, except for maybe Meg, by the virtue of her not being heavily involved in physical combat.

No I see that

Joan has burn scars on her arms from the fire she was in.

Jon later has a long scar down his lower leg from events later on.

(I personally find it fine as we're citing examples, and as the creator I officially decree that if you have a book/character/anything else from your story that subverts a trope mentioned on here, add it. Please. I want to be comforted in knowing these mistakes aren't being repeated lol)

Oh my gosh those are the literal worst!!! Like, I have romances, but they don't take over the plot most of the time, they act as motivation if anything.

I have a lot of romances but I like them all so they're staying.

I'm debating whether or not to have one of my pairings together from the beginning. I don't really have time for a lot of romantic subplot between side characters, so I figure if they're already together, it would work out a lot better maybe. What do you guys think? I know a lot of you, including myself, said there need to be more pre-existing relationships in stories.

I mean, you lose out on the slow burn if they're together right away, but you also don't have to deal with the awkward set up and stuff for a relationship.

I have other relationships with more prevalent characters that are more slow burns, so I think I'm okay in that respect. Definitely less set up stuff I'll have to do though.

I think if it feels right, do it.
I have several pre-story relationships (Maia/Esther, Lucas/Ophelia, Francesca/andrew (Our Supreme Lord and Overseer), Claudio/Liz, and Henry/Victor) and I think the key is to still give them focus, not just let them drift into the background since there's no during-story set up.

Too true. I'll try to write it in and see how it goes. And if it doesn't fit in earlier on, I can act like they started officially dating during the one year time skip. But they've known each other since their teenage years and been friends, so it works.

One thing that is constantly being missed is having relationships that are just moving along without drama. Just a good, solid relationship would be fun to read every once in a while.

I plan on having a slow burn friends-to-lovers in one of my stories where two friends fall in love slowly and don't get together officially until their senior year because soft romances are the best. There's not much drama in the relationship, just outside of it.
Same with Victor and Henry, the drama they deal with isn't (often) caused by misunderstandings and stuff, but by one of them (usually Victor) getting held hostage or otherwise injured or sick, or issues involving money and college.

Yeah Victor couldn't afford the college he was at after he lost his partial scholarship and his parents disowned him so now he goes to a less expensive one with Henry.