Why Do Characters Use Sour Grapes In Storytelling?

The night before the study abroad application deadline, the class group chat blew up. [Oh my God, Ryan, why did you switch your application to the UK? Weren’t you supposed to go to France with Emma Bennett?] Ryan Hawthorne replied like it was nothing. [Yeah, I changed it. She has my login anyway.] [Once she sees it, she’ll switch too. She always follows me around. She can’t function without me.] I stood there with my phone in my hand, my mind going completely blank. Scattered across the floor, half tucked between my open suitcases, was the gift I had prepared especially for Ryan. I left the group chat, threw the gift away, and never opened the application portal again. What he did not know was this. He could give up the future we were supposed to share for Sophie Quinn. And I could give him up too. I could choose my own future without ever looking back. All those late nights, all those years of work, had never been only for him.

Even the coldest heart would soon grow warm if she kept holding on to it. That was what she believed. That was why she became his unloved placeholder of a wife. Unfortunately, all her devotion only led to a heartless divorce. “She’s awake now,” he told her. “Step down and step away, you miserable knock-off.”Then, he left. When he came back, it was because he needed her to do something only an impostor could do: go to jail for his dream girl’s crime. Deirdre McKinnon was condemned to perdition. She lost her baby before it was born. She lost her face to violence. She lost the ability to see. It was two months of a hell-like nightmare. At last, something died inside her heart. Two years later, she found herself another man, but when Brendan Brighthall met her by pure happenstance, a new feeling was born in his heart: jealousy. There were no means too terrible, no scheme too underhanded—not if it meant he’d possess Deirdre’s heart again. And yet, she simply refused to love him anymore.“What do you want me to do, Deirdre McKinnon?! What must I do to go back to the good old days?” His eyes turned red. “I’ll give you everything I have!”“You gave me a copper trinket two years ago. It was a sorry excuse for a wedding ring, and yet I cared for it as though it was the most precious jewel in the world…“But now? Nothing you can give would be even remotely worthwhile. Not even you.”

When I was seven, my father brought home a beautiful lady who gave me a mango. That day, my mother watched me happily eating the mango while she signed her name on the divorce papers. After that, she jumped off the roof of our building. From then on, mangoes became the nightmare of my life. So on my wedding day, I told my husband, Alan Holt, "If you ever want a divorce, just give me a mango." Alan pulled me into his arms, quiet. From then on, mangoes became off-limits for him, too. On Christmas Eve of our fifth year of marriage, Alan's childhood sweetheart, Larissa Fennimore, left a mango on his desk at the office. The very same day, Alan announced he was cutting ties with Larissa and fired her from the company. That day, I truly believed he was the man I was meant to be with. Half a year later, I flew back from overseas, having just closed a partnership deal worth about 200 million dollars. At the celebration dinner, Alan handed me a drink. After I had finished half the glass, his so-called childhood sweetheart, the woman who had been kicked out of the company, stood behind me with a big grin and asked, "Does the mango juice taste good?" I stared at Alan in disbelief, and he was trying hard not to laugh. "Don't be mad. Larissa insisted I played a little joke on you. I didn't actually give you a mango; I just gave you a bottle of mango juice. But I think she's right. The fact that you don't eat mangoes is a real problem. You were really enjoying that juice just now." My face went cold. I lifted my hand and threw the rest of the mango juice in his face, then turned around and walked away. Some things are never a joke. I wouldn't kid around with mangoes or divorce.

I see her in his arms. Adrian’s hand is at her waist, and she’s looking up at him like he hasn’t spent years breathing the same air as her without ever earning that look. My fingers curl around my glass. Then he says something. I don’t hear it. I don’t need to. Because Wren… giggles. My world tilts. I’ve heard her laugh before—sharp, defiant. But this was different. And it was not for me. Rage claws up my throat, aimed straight at Adrian. I shouldn’t care. Except I do. I fucking do. Then Wren stumbles. Adrian catches her, pulls her back—and their lips collide. Just a peck. Clearly accidental. But it detonates inside me. Something snaps. The glass slips from my hand, shattering, and all I see is red. My body moves before my mind can catch up. Because suddenly, it all crashes into place. Her silence. The loss. It felt like I’d lost something I didn’t even know I was holding onto. And I was the one who did it. My pranks. My cruelty. I was the reason her scholarship got revoked! God! A bitter taste floods my mouth. She cut me off because she had every right to. Because I deserved it. But that doesn’t mean I can let her go. It doesn’t mean I will. If it takes groveling, I’ll grovel. If it takes begging, I’ll beg. Hell, if it takes dropping to my knees in front of this entire fucking college and tearing my pride apart piece by piece just to earn a fraction of her forgiveness. Because she matters. I don’t care about anything except her slipping out of my reach. And I’m ready to burn everything down for her.

My sister, Emily Statham, "accidentally" spills a pot of scalding Cajun gumbo onto my leg. I'm in so much pain that I roll around on the floor, but she cries harder than I do. Mom hugs and comforts her. "It's okay, it's okay. Your sister's tough." My fiance, Elliott Gray, glances over at me and says, "Just rinse it with some cold water. Stop embarrassing yourself." Comments in gold float past my eyes. [Emily just loves her sister so much that she got overexcited!] [And the mother just has a sharp tongue. Deep down, she's actually devastated!] [The male lead is just weird that way. He cares, but he's too shy to show it in public!] I look down at the blisters already forming on my leg. For the first time, I wonder if it's not the commenters who are blind. Maybe I am.

Famous author, Valerie Adeline's world turns upside down after the death of her boyfriend, Daniel, who just so happened to be the fictional love interest in her paranormal romance series, turned real. After months of beginning to get used to her new normal, and slowly coping with the grief of her loss, Valerie is given the opportunity to travel into the fictional realms and lands of her book when she discovers that Daniel is trapped among the pages of her book. The catch? Every twelve hours she spends in the book, it shaves off a year of her own life. Now it's a fight against time to find and save her love before the clock strikes zero, and ends her life.