Hazel has found her Gus!

This fantastic fan-made poster by Herondair on Tumblr  features the actors in the upcoming film, 
Shailene Woodley (Hazel) and Ansel Elgort (Augustus)!  

The Fault in our Stars, is turning into a film, as you all know...and the question is: who will play our beloved couple that seem to hop right out of the pages and into our hearts?
John Green's latest novel,

It's official, guys! Hazel Grace Lancaster and Augustus Waters has finally been cast. It's none other than Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort! Shailene signed in for the role first after auditioning for the part...and after much deliberation, Ansel followed.

We won't comment on the looks, because we all know that Hollywood can do wonders. And we strongly believe that it's the portrayal, the acting, that carries the character and not the looks. Before anyone criticize the choice, let us absorb the fact that they are chosen for a reason and the people behind these choices are individuals that worked in the industry far longer than anyone of us ever would and that they are in a close working relation to the creator himself, John Green. If anyone should have a say in this, it would definitely the author. And if John Green approves, we do to.

John Green on "Creating Characters"

John Green talked today about how to create characters in novels and other text-based forms of storytelling. Green said, “While I do try to think about what a character looks like and what her defining characteristics are — what makes her interesting, what makes her special, what does she value, and how does that system of values lead to the conflicts in her life and that kind of thing — I try not to forget that characters are made of language, and you must be attentive to that. So a lot of the defining characteristics of characters in novels are language-driven and ought to be.

“When I think about character, I like to think about them in relationships to each other. In the same way, I think that’s how humans are ultimately defined. We are our relationships to one another. And a lot of what is interesting about us happens in the context of other people. And I also try to think about conflicts … A lot of what kind of defines character — you often hear this — is hard times … Like you hear that in hard times you find out who your friends really are and you find out the true character of people. I think that’s a bit exaggerated … But it is true that conflict does in many ways define us and define our experiences.”

He also said that while characters need to be real to the reader, they don’t necessarily need to be real to the author. “They remain my own constructions,” he said. “But I need to be invested and empathetic toward the characters in my novel … Even if I don’t like them or I don’t agree with the choices that they make, I need to understand the value of those choices.

“[Writing] is a chance to get into someone else’s shoes. One of the pleasures of having this sort of non-image-driven relationship with the character is that you’re able to emphasize with someone you can’t picture in some ways, I think, better than you’re able to emphasize with people you can picture.”

He said, “I really think it’s helpful to try to divorce yourself from the culture of image saturation and try to understand that the people you’re writing about are not characters in movies, they’re characters in novels. And that those people are going to have sort of fundamentally different ways of being because they’re made out of words instead of being made out of images.”

Read more at John Green on creating characters

Getting to know John Green

John Green is the New York Times bestselling author of Looking for Alaska,An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, and The Fault in Our Stars. He is also the coauthor, with David Levithan, of Will Grayson, Will Grayson. He was 2006 recipient of the Michael L. Printz Award, a 2009 Edgar Award winner, and has twice been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Green’s books have been published in more than a dozen languages.

In 2007, Green and his brother Hank ceased textual communication and began to talk primarily through videoblogs posted to YouTube. The videos spawned a community of people called nerdfighters who fight for intellectualism and to decrease the overall worldwide level of suck. (Decreasing suck takes many forms: Nerdfighters have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight poverty in the developing world; they also planted thousands of trees around the world in May of 2010 to celebrate Hank’s 30th birthday.) Although they have long since resumed textual communication, John and Hank continue to upload two videos a week to their YouTube channel, vlogbrothers. Their videos have been viewed more than 200 million times, and their channel is one of the most popular in the history of online video. He is also an active Twitter user with more than 1.2 million followers.

Green’s book reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review and Booklist, a wonderful book review journal where he worked as a publishing assistant and production editor while writing Looking for Alaska. Green grew up in Orlando, Florida before attending Indian Springs School and then Kenyon College.

Recently, he gave the commencement address at Butler University on May 11 2013. It's funny, smart, thoughtful, and going viral; if people start wishing you "happy birthday, sir," you can thank him. He has also  put the text of the speech online on his Tumblr.

For those of you who loved this novel, Mr. Green has also written:

Looking for Alaska

Paper Towns

An Abundance of Katherines

Let it snow: Three Holiday Romances

Will Grayson Will Grayson 

Favorite Fictional Couple

Hazel and Augustus.

I’m a bit obsessed with The Fault in Our Stars, and I think it was the star crossed romance of Hazel Lancaster and Augustus Waters that enthralled me so much. I made no secret that I was head over heels in love with Augustus from his witty comments but I believed in his love for Hazel after their picnic when he told her about Amsterdam. When you have someone saying things like this:  ”I’m in love with you, and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.”

Like, God, Augustus, how am I supposed to go on knowing there are no actual real life people like you?

So True!

Picture Quotes