The Beginning And End Of Everything - Tumblr Posts
novel intro: the beginning and end of everything!!!
the beginning and end of everything is my second novel, currently in the midst of draft one!
summary: tbaeoe follows ty kassisieh, a twenty-three year old college graduate with no direction in life. the novel is set in the year between his college graduation and the year he begins graduate school. his parents insist he gets a job while he’s figuring out what to do with his life, and he picks up a position at a local library. at said library, ty is introduced to his coworker jude, who is the opposite of ty in every way imaginable. he’s cold, distant, mean, and worst of all, humorless. ty makes it his mission to uncover jude’s secret soul, and along the way, falls for him.
genre: new adult romantic comedy
setting: boston in the early-mid 2020s
pov and tense: third person limited present tense, from the point of view of ty (the first three chapters are in first person, though, cause i switched mid-draft)
word count goal: as of now, abut 75k, but it’ll definitely increase in draft 2
major characters:
ty kassisieh
-he’s that asshole who has never studied a day in his life and goofs off the entire class, but still gets an A.
-he went to yale and he talks about it every single chance he gets, but only because he hates himself for not getting into harvard. he’s a harvard legacy, both his parents went there. his twin sister ada went there too, and he’s pretty much been second-best to her his whole life. so he compensates by bragging about yale nonstop.
-everything is a joke with this kid. do not expect him to take anything seriously.
-pretty much everyone adores him. he’s so charming and friendly, all he has to do is grin and people love him. which is why he can’t fathom the fact that jude simply doesn’t like him. (of course, jude is secretly in love with him, but ty doesn’t know that.)
-his pride and joy is his hair. he has amazing hair, it’s dark and curly and flops in his eyes.
-iced coffee addict
-king of late-night research spirals
jude olsen-jacobs
-class president of his high school class all four years. president of every club he’s ever been involved in. went to georgetown and majored in government. he wants to be a senator.
-very well-put together. pressed slacks, button-down shirt, shined shoes, and a tie. clean-shaven and his hair is close-cropped and always combed.
-he comes off incredibly rude and aloof, but once you take the time to get to know him you crack into his nerdy, funny side that stays up all night researching conspiracy theories
-god he’s so stubborn
-earns the nickname uptight jude from ty because he’s so rigid and ty is convinced there’s a real-life stick up his ass
-fluent in sign language! one of his dads is deaf.
-valedictorian of his high school class
ada kassisieh
-an aspiring astrophysicist getting her master’s degree at harvard. valedictorian of her high school class and top 10 in her college class. she’s had a near-perfect gpa pretty much every single year of school. she’s a legitimate genius.
-ty’s twin sister and best friend. also his only friend.
-refuses to go a day without a full, dramatic face of makeup and six-inch heels. she’s really into 50s style dresses and poodle skirts. (without the actual poodle)
-The girl to go to if you don’t know where to go on a friday night. she’s the ultimate party animal.
-knows every single word to baby got back
-girl needs to loosen the hell up. she’s so wound up about being perfect all the time. which is why her and jude end up such good friends
-simultaneously the most and the least organized person you’ll ever meet
a couple other important, but not quite major characters:
-dorothy stein, library director extraordinaire and everyone’s grandmother
-madison zales, a young library patron who ty befriends and develops a unique but impactful relationship with
and that’s the beginning and end of everything, and my first post! i don’t have a tag list just yet, but message me if you want to be on that. thank you for reading and i hope you all continue to keep up with me and these dorks🥺💕
vanya is jude and five is ty
This had such good meme potential I couldn’t resist
GUYS I MADE A WHICH TBAEOE CHARACTER ARE YOU QUIZ
https://uquiz.com/mUq7YD !!!!!!!!!! pls rb with your results i wanna see!
new tag game!!
im making up a new tag if you’re tagged you have to list five songs that most encapsulate your wip/the most essential songs on your wip playlist
kicking it off with the beginning and end of everything:
1. lover by taylor swift
2. baby got back by sir mix-a-lot
3. electric love by børns
4. hey jude by the beatles
5. god in jeans by ryan beatty
(bonus: sweet pea by tommy roe)
tagging: @chloeswords @coffeeandcalligraphy @alicewestwater @august-iswriting @lottieiswriting @phiwrites @writing-in-delirium @sophiewritingstuff @radiomacbeth @jennawritesstories
and anyone else who wants to do it!!
i’m eating leftover halloween candy while listening to christmas music and working on my nano novel. and isn’t that just the mood for november 1st?
I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self-respect. And it’s these things I’d believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all she should be. I love her and that’s the beginning and end of everything.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (via bnmxfld)
the beginning and end of everything: pride and prejudice except mr bingley and mr darcy fall in love instead
gonna watch brooklyn 99 to get in the ty narration zone because again he is gina linetti
im writing chapter 11 to soulja boy and tbh best decision i’ve made
i just wrote for like 6 hours straight without stopping to do anything but the important thing is that TBAEOE DRAFT 1 IS COMPLETED!!!!!!!
the beginning and end of everything UPDATE!!!
DISCLAIMER: This is my original work. I choose to share my work here and here specifically for my comrades in the writing community. Plagiarism in any form will not be tolerated.
HI EVERYONE! I FINISHED MY NOVEL! Whooo hoooo!!!
It’s actually sort of surreal, I started it in June of 2020 and now it’s 2021 and it’s over! Ty, Jude, Ada, Dorothy, and Madison have been living in my head since October 2019, and less than a year and a half later, they’ve been brought to life! Crazy!!
A summary in case you forgot/are seeing this and don’t know who the hell I am:
Ty Kassisieh has no direction. He’s just graduated college with a degree he doesn’t care about and no clue what to do with his life. Per his parent’s request to be more like his genius twin sister Ada, he picks up a job at a local library to save some money. There, he meets his coworker Jude, who’s stuck in a position not too far from his own, and Ty immediately sees the potential for companionship. But after speaking to him, Ty discovers Jude is everything he isn’t: he’s cold, introverted, aloof, and worst of all, humorless. Soon, Ty forgets all about his initial goal and becomes determined to crack Jude and see what makes him tick.
Ty’s journey of self-discovery is uprooted completely as what begins as an investigation blossoms into a friendship, and then into something more. Ty is forced to confront the feelings he’s been pushing down since high school and come to terms with himself, his family, and the relationships he thought would never change. It’s only when he befriends a young library patron, Madison, that he finally begins to see the world for what it is and figures out how to pave his own path.
Here are some stats!
Word count: 65,900 (it’ll get at least 20k words longer)
Genre: Romantic comedy
POV: third person limited, present tense
Characters: Ty, Jude, Ada, Madison, Dorothy, Diane, Omar, Paul, Uncle Hubie, Ethel
Chapters: 15
Font: Times New Roman (sorry)
This was my second novel, but the first novel where I actually knew what I was doing, at least a little bit. And holy shit, I learned SO much about my writing process:
1. I cannot pants for the life of me. I have no idea what I’m doing without an outline. But sometimes, the outline doesn’t know best. I added a ton of subplots and off-the-cuff scenes halfway through that have no set up, gave up on subplots that weren’t working halfway through, it’s a disaster of a plot. BUt the important thing is that I know how to make it perfect. I know what the story needs and how to get that.
2. Why can I only write in bursts? I wrote like seven chapters, half the novel, in the month of July. There was a day where I wrote almost 5,000 words. And last night, I wrote for 6 hours straight, without eating, drinking, or going to the bathroom (because frankly, I forgot those things existed) and I cranked out a chapter and a half in a DAY. I had such a headache and was very hungry by the end, but it was SO REWARDING.
3. I noticed while drafting is how often bits of my real life bled through. Little anecdotes, arguments, dynamics and experiences. Those who know me particularly well can probably pick out little allusions to either some of my past works, my friends, and myself.
It was 1:00 AM when I finished, and I live on the east coast of the U.S. so we’d just had a huge Nor’easter (New England for blizzard) and I went outside in the middle of the night, in my pajama pants and my uggs, and stood in my backyard and looked at the trees and processed the fact that wow, I just wrote a novel. It was cathartic and beautiful and I 110% recommend standing in snow up to your knees by yourself in the middle of the night. Very peaceful.
As exciting as it is to be done, it’s kind of weird to be ending it. I started this novel from Ty’s first person POV, and he was just kind of another goofy, dorky character that shared my own sense of humor as well as my sense of perfectionism. But as I wrote, not only did I realize that third person worked so much better, but I started realizing how much of me and my own journey as a queer person had gone into this. It turned from a light-hearted, silly rom-com with little depth, a fun summer project to keep myself busy, to the most self expressive story I’ve ever written. I didn’t expect it to come out with much deeper meaning, it was summer and I was on a light-hearted rom-com kick, and life was carefree and silly and I wanted a book that reflected it. And then, school started, and life just descended into absolute chaos, and it was November, and it was NaNoWriMo, and I was writing my novel while watching CNN for a week straight. (But it all turned out great! New president!)
I can’t remember exactly when I started to incorporate my own struggles growing up as a queer kid, but somehow they bled through in the second half. The last scene of the book is (no spoilers) an incredible breath of fresh air for Ty. It’s something I can only wish for every queer teenager, that moment where you can finally be unapologetically and authentically queer without that nagging worry in the back of your mind. I’ve struggled over this past year with my identity, and as Ty found his place, I found mine as well.
Seriously, writing this book was one of the best experiences I’ve had. Yes, the entire time I had a separate document open, writing down every little thing that needs to change, but I legitimately feel excited for draft 2 and continuing working on this project. I think about how much this book helped me, unconsciously creating the story that I needed to hear, and how maybe, in ten, fifteen years, some queer teenager will be wandering around a bookstore and pick up The Beginning and End of Everything. Maybe just because the cover is pretty. Maybe they like the F. Scott Fitzgerald reference in the title. Maybe they heard about it on Twitter somewhere. But they pick it up, and see themselves in Ty, or in Jude, or in Madison. I know every book that gave me that feeling, I cherish them so deeply, and all I really want is for someone to get that feeling from something I wrote. To see themselves in the pages and know they’re not alone. It’s cheesy, but it’s true, and it’s important.
I think one of my favorite themes in the novel is the whole ‘someone’s got your back’ thing. I 100% did not mean for it to go in the way it did, but I was writing this as I was going through some Stuff, some stuff in which I realized that having someone, just one person in your corner can mean the entire world, if only for that moment. And if there’s no one in your corner when you need it, you can be in someone else’s when they need it. Frankly, I love how it plays out throughout the novel. There was always that theme of Ty and Madison sort of being there for each other, but as I found myself in the first semester of the school year building new friendships with incredible, smart, funny people (albeit most of that being online) and strengthening old bonds, it worked its way in, and it fits perfectly. It adds depth and strength to the story I couldn’t have done consciously.
Essentially, it is still the romantic comedy I intended it to be, but it’s also a coming-of-age (except much older than the traditional coming-of-age). Watching some of my close friends and family graduating college and continuing to struggle with their identities and places in the world I think is what truly carved out this idea. Because not everyone has everything figured out as soon as they graduate, and I feel like, as a teenager, that’s something my friends and I really need to get through our heads. A lot of us expect to have everything figured out as soon as we turn 18. But, we’re 18. There’s a lot of life ahead of us, and we can’t possibly know what we’re going to do so young. So I think that was my main source of inspiration for this novel, and I’m really proud of the way that fleshed out. Of course it needs lots and lots of work, but. I like it. The way my personal life bled through and strengthened the story is incredible to reflect on. Honestly, I really, truly, cannot wait to start working on draft 2.
taglist:
@alicewestwater @august-iswriting @lottieiswriting @phiwrites @jennawritesstories @chloeswords
first spoken line tag
RULES: post the first spoken line of the main characters of your wip
thanks for tagging me @alicewestwater !
from the beginning and end of everything:
ty: “At your service.”
jude: “Please tell me you’re not Theodore Kassisieh.”
ada: “What an ass. Is he hot though?”
madison: “I don’t know you.”
dorothy: “He means well.”
diane: “Who texted you?”
omar: “Please chew with your mouth closed."
tagging @coffeeandcalligraphy @lottieiswriting @jennawritesstories @smalltownwriter @august-iswriting
must i outline? is it not enough to calculate income taxes that will never, ever, ever come into play during the novel?
why do height differences in shipping always have to be about one being really tiny and the other being really tall. what about one being exactly a single inch taller than the other and the second being consistently angry about this.
if there is one thing i’m good for as a writer it’s insanely melodramatic paragraphs about the #pains of having to hide being gay
celebrating me beginning draft 2 (on nov1) with this meme i made
i actually don’t even care about nanowrimo i just want to unlock the little badges