Mainstream Novels Need More Character Development

A novel has a plethora of different story elements that work together to make an amazing book. However, many of the more famous and mainstream novels focus way too much on the plot and the action and just poorly develop rather badly written characters. Character development is the most important factor of a story. Plot is not nearly as important as the characters you experience the events of the story through.

The characters of a story must be relatable and likable, as well as grow as people. No amount of action can make up for that. After all, who cares about a monster attacking the protagonist if the characters have shallow personalities and superficial conflicts? These characters must be able to change throughout the course of the novel. In fact, there is really no need for an interesting plot if the characters are developed well in the novel. For example, my favorite book, The Book Thief, is focused primarily on the character development and the protagonists relationship with others. Almost every one of my friends I recommended this book to thought it was bland and tasteless. However, they themselves liked bland and tasteless novels, filled with forced love triangles, overly sappy romance, terribly written protagonists who seem to have multiple personality disorder, underdeveloped side characters, and mostly random deaths that contributed nothing to the overall story(See “My View on The Hunger Games” and “Why Divergent Sucks”). All of the books they liked, the super popular mainstream novels, always emphasized the action and either left out most of the important character development, or developed the characters with disgustingly horrific and clunky writing.

With all of these action-based-terribly-written-stories becoming the most popular dish, many of the genuinely exceptional stories get pushed to the bottom of the trash heap. A friend of mine literally said “If it has no plot, it’s automatically a terrible book” to my face. I thought that people who took the time and effort to read books would at least have some form of taste, but it seems like I was wrong. The development of a character’s personality and traits is more important than anything else a book has to offer.

Homemade Falafel!

Today I made falafel with my brother! It was delicious. We ate it with homemade(not authentic but still good) tzatziki sauce (even though it’s Greek and falafel is Middle Eastern–we didn’t have the stuff to make tahini sauce). It was delicious! Even though I was a little dubious about it, I ended up loving it! Here’s the recipe so you can recreate it at your own house, but bear in mind that these ingredients are not completely exact:

Falafel Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups of water

2 cups of falafel mix (We used falafil mix)

Olive/cooking oil

Tzatziki sauce ingredients:

2 cups of Greek yogurt

2 tablespoons of white vinegar

4 tablespoons of relish

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1 green onion

1 clove of minced garlic

salt, black pepper, and oregano to taste

Directions:

1. Mix all of the ingredients for the tzatziki sauce thoroughly and refrigerate it for about 8 or so hours or overnight, like we did.

2. Mix the falafel mix and water and refrigerate it for the same amount of time.

3. Fill a frying pan with cooking oil until it is about a centimeter high on the pan and put it on medium to high heat.

4. Shape balls out of the falafel mix and set it into the pan carefully–the oil may splash out of the pan.

5. Fry the falafel until it is nice and crispy on both sides.

6. Set the falafel on a plate with a paper towel to let the oil drain out of it.

7. Dip it into the sauce and enjoy!

Here’s a photo gallery:

Finished tzatziki sauce

Balling up the falafel before cooking

Falafel being cooked and crispy

The finished product! (My brother’s holding it)

Vice Documentary: Heroin Holiday

http://www.vice.com/Fringes/heroin-holiday

This documentary is probably one of the most interesting ones I’ve seen. It’s not that long either, so it’s definitely worth a watch! It shows how heroin junkies make their own heroin from the poppy fields. While it does seem a little filthy and gross, as pointed out by my disgusted mother, it’s pretty fascinating. I’d never have thought that junkies would be so friendly, or that their lifestyle would be like what was shown. It also had the plus of discouraging me even more from ever wanting to dabble in the drug business, which is always something good.
For those who follow me, sorry about not posting for such a long time! I promise I’ll try and be more on track.

Update: The Girl With Silver Eyes and Collab Stories

I haven’t really been updating this blog for a while…(sorry to those who read my stories). I added a bunch of new chapters to The Girl With Silver Eyes, though. I also started a collab story with two of my friends last week, and so far we’v written 33 pages, so I’ll be posting that on here too. Read the stories please!

The Passenger At Paris

 

Update: Website Title

Hi! This is just an update post. I originally created this blog to only post my stories, but obviously, I’m starting to deviate from that idea. So I’m changing my blog url and title. It is now icedteawithvinegar.wordpress.com.

Why Divergent Sucks (Spoilers)

Divergent is a very popular book series-the movie came out recently. But honestly, this story is even worse than The Hunger Games.

The beginning of the series was action-packed and entertaining, but it deteriorated quickly after that. I picked up Divergent, giving the popular dystopian novels another chance, and in the first book, I had high hopes. Tris was a very admirable character. Obviously, she was brave, and she was also unflinchingly selfless, despite her own feelings toward being too selfish. She even stands in the middle of a target while Tobias throws knives at her face so that her friend wouldn’t have to do it. However, a big complaint I do have about the first book is Will’s death.

First of all, Will didn’t even have to die. There was barely any effort put into his death scene, a fact that is accentuated by his very likable personality and his growing relationship with Christina. This is yet another textbook example of an author randomly killing off a character in an attempt to pull some heartstrings. Even though Will was one of my favorite characters, I wasn’t really floored by his death. It felt too rushed and last-minute. After all, it’s not like Tris had to kill him. She could have simply shot another part of his body so that he would get distracted, allowing her to escape. But no, Veronica Roth decided to have Tris kill him so she could have PTSD in the next book and draw some tears. Also, Tris is barely fazed by the fact that she killed Will in the first book. She just shoots him and moves on, without mourning him at all until the second book. She also uses her gun hundreds of times without any hindrances.

The second book didn’t really add much to the overall story. Tris’s character weakens (see “My View on The Hunger Games”). Now, she can’t use a gun because she shot her friend. She didn’t seem to have any problem using it after Will’s death in the first book! But now, she can’t touch one without feeling fear. She worries a lot more about her friends and about Tobias. In fact, most of the second book is a blur to me. The biggest thing in Insurgent is that Tobias keeps nagging Tris about being too selfless-something I don’t really agree with, because I can’t see any noticeable change in Tris’s behavior from book one to book two.

And then comes Allegiant, book three. This book was so horrid that I stopped reading it right in the middle. It was absolutely terrible, even worse than Mockingjay. The plot was extremely poorly written. That surprise plot twist in the middle completely eradicates the purpose of the factions all together! The whole POINT of the factions was that you had to choose the one that you felt spoke the truth, even if it meant that you had to leave your family behind. It was all came down to a characters morals. Factions before blood, right? And Tris goes through one of the toughest choices she has to make in the whole series by choosing to leave her family behind. But with this nonsensical plot twist, the whole foundation for this series literally disappears! It’s not a questions of morals now, it’s just the question of a person’s genetic makeup!

And another thing! Tris’s death scene is the worst death scene I’ve ever read in my life. Now, I didn’t actually read through the whole book to get to that part-a friend of mine told me about Tris’s death and I went back to find it and see if Veronica Roth had enough writing skills to at least write that well. Of course, my hopes were brought crashing down once again. First of all, Tris isn’t even aware that she is dying! It’s literally like her mother appears to her and tells her she can lay down her burdens, which is one of the cheesiest things I’ve ever heard of. Anyway, there are no sad last words, or any tragic realizations of how short her life was. She doesn’t think about how she’s leaving behind all of her friends, or how Tobias cope when he realizes that she’s dead. And when I found the scene in the book, I didn’t even realize that Tris was dying. I thought it was some sort of hallucination from blood loss or something, but I didn’t think she was actually dying. It was only in the next chapter that I realized Tris had died. As with Will’s death, I didn’t feel sad at all. With a death like this, I’m surprised if anyone managed to dredge up some tears.

Divergent doesn’t deserve to be popular. Honestly, I’m not that confident in the tastes of the public anymore, if they liked this unstructured mess.

Why The Fault In Our Stars Is Overrated (Spoilers)

The Fault In Our Stars is a pretty good book. I’ve  reread it two or three times already. But honestly, it’s not as good as it’s cracked up to be. Everyone who told me to read it said it was outstanding and amazing! I took their words with a grain of salt, but I was still excited to read it. And frankly, I was kind of disappointed. Sure, Augustus had a cool, quirky personality, and Hazel’s cynical sarcasm and insights added depth to the story, but it didn’t seem to stick out from the crowd, at least in my opinion.

Augustus and Hazel’s relationship was pretty typical. Of course, Hazel has cancer and so did Augusts, but it developed like every typical romance in a story. It was good, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that the way it was executed was pretty generic. Also, Augustus’s character didn’t really show much depth. He was mostly shown as a funny Prince Charming, the guy of every girl’s dreams. He didn’t actually show any kind of weakness until his cancer came back. Before that, he was basically the perfect character, which is never a good thing in a book. Perfect characters aren’t very relatable.

One thing that I was annoyed with was Augustus’s death. It just came out of the blue. We knew about Hazel’s inevitable early death, but Augustus was supposed to be NEC! It was completely random, and random deaths are not good deaths. I usually miss some hints at foreshadowing in a story on the first time around-that’s part of the reason I love rereading books-but when I reread this story, there was barely anything on Augustus’s death, nothing that I didn’t notice on the first time through. I don’t know…his death just seemed kind of rushed.

The ending was not satisfying! This one isn’t specific to The Fault In Our Stars-I’ve noticed that this happens in every single John Green book. I liked his writing style after finishing The Fault In Our Stars, so I gave his other books a whirl. EVERY ONE HAD AN ABRUPT ENDING. I’d turn the page, see the acknowledgements and think, Wait…the book just ended? What?! For The Fault In Our Stars, the ending wasn’t bad…it just didn’t seem final enough. I liked how Augustus wrote a eulogy for Hazel before he died…but the last sentence just was not good enough to end a book. Honestly, I feel like the ending should have had some more finality, like Hazel finally coming to terms with Augustus’s death, or realize how people really can’t help falling in love with people who are grenades. It could have been ended infinitely better with a final insight on death or something, like how Hazel started the story. Just not, “I do, Augustus. I do.”

So yeah…I’m not saying I could do better than John Green, because his writing was pretty good. But in short, The Fault In Our Stars was a good book, but it definitely doesn’t deserve all the hype and praise that it received.

My View on The Hunger Games (Spoilers)

The Hunger Games is an awful series. I have no idea why it is so popular. And before I get showered in hate comments, I do actually have valid reasons for this.

The last book in The Hunger Games is definitely the weakest point in the whole series. The first book hooked me in enough to get the second book, but it started going downhill from there. The second book wasn’t nearly as good as the first one, but I was still interested enough to get the last book and finish the series. That was probably one of my biggest mistakes when it comes to getting books, second only to buying the Divergent series. But we’ll get to that later.

In the first few books, the plot is mostly centered on the Hunger Games, of course, and on the corrupt government that rules over Katniss’ society. The plot is fairly straight forward and interesting to read,and  even if they weren’t the best books I’d ever read, I still liked them. But of course, the series gets TOTALLY ruined by the last book.

While the story takes place when Katniss is in District 13 and trying to support the rebellion in Mockingjay, the story itself doesn’t emphasize the cruelty of the Capitol nearly as much as the other books did. Suddenly, Katniss needs to be used as a figure for the rebellion, which gets rid of her appeal as a badass character, and the story mostly revolves around her trying to decide between Peeta and Gale. Surely a book about a dystopian world would focus on the action and revolt. But no, now it is all about the love triangle between Peeta, Gale, and Katniss.

Also, there is so much unnecessary tragedy in the last book. To me, it just feels like Suzanne Collins wanted to have a tear-jerker and decided to kill off most of the characters that weren’t as important as Katniss, Peeta, and Gale. For example, Finnick just randomly dies. We don’t see him die, we just literally have to assume he dies because he stays behind and sacrifices himself to save Katniss. And it isn’t even tragic! I loved Finnick as a character, but when I read that part, I barely reacted. It didn’t seem realistic. It was just like I blinked and he disappeared. And what did Finnick’s death accomplish? As far as I can see, it didn’t add anything to the overall story. The most it did was leave his fiance behind. Even Prim’s death didn’t really do much for the story-yes, it sinks Katniss into a deeper depression, but as I state below, Katniss’ character hardly needs that extra sadness.

Another reason The Hunger Games was a horrible story was Katniss’ character. In the first book, Katniss is portrayed as a very selfless and independent character. She volunteers to go into the Hunger Games in Prim’s place. Before that, she had to hunt for her food and becomes the breadwinner of her family. She also survives in the Hunger Games  pretty well on her own. In fact, Peeta just weighs her down when they team up. She had to save him by getting the medicine for him and shooting Cato to save Peeta’s life.

However, by the third book, all this is thrown away. Instead of being strong and determined, Katniss becomes riddled with weaknesses and basically falls apart in Mockingjay. She is constantly depressed, and while I don’t remember the details,  I do remember that Katniss’ thoughts fall in a darker direction and she even tries to commit suicide at one point. Her character just becomes a needy little kid who is only useful because of her popularity. In contrast with her personality from the first book, Katniss constantly thinks about Gale and Peeta and whines about needing someone to lean on, or else she can’t live. I really admired Katniss for being one of the strong female characters in the first book, but I completely hated her by Mockingjay.

Honestly, I have no idea how this book series has gotten so popular. It doesn’t deserve any of that publicity.

Hurricane Sandy

Hi guys! I thought I’d write about my experience during Hurricane Sandy when the power went out for weeks.

My family stayed in our house for a few days. The days were filled with the thin, reedy light of the winter sun, and the evenings filled with a dim, candlelit darkness. The darkness was sinister and intimidating. The candles only gave out a small amount of light, and I was always afraid that someone was hiding around each and every corner. Amazingly, the lack of light shortened our days. We always went to bed at 8 or 9 o’clock, because we could do very little without power and without sunlight. Everything in the refrigerator slowly spoiled, so we had to live on the snacks my parents had bought from the supermarket in anticipation of losing power. We have well water, which runs on electricity, so there wasn’t any running water, either. The thing I remember the most, though, was the cold. The whole house was just constantly chilly. At night, the temperature dropped swiftly, and I’d climb into a frigid bed, the blankets as cold as ice. In the morning, the only thing that wasn’t freezing cold was where I’d wrapped the blankets around myself. I would reluctantly climb out of the only warmth and shiver as I walked down the stairs. We couldn’t even go outside and play because of the cold, and we could only read by day because our flashlights and candles didn’t provide enough light at night, though I had a kindle, so I could read when I wanted to as long as it had battery. When my dad managed to generate electricity by letting the car run idle in the garage, all of us would gather around the single power strip connected to the car, plugging in chargers in every available slot as our electronics slowly regained battery life with the intermittent power. After putting up with this for a few days, we got out of the house and spent nights at friends’ houses that luckily did not lose power. It was sort of like being a refugee, always only staying a day or two at the same house. I couldn’t even enjoy the pleasure of no school! Finally, on November 4th, the day after my birthday, our power came back on! It was such a relief! Everything worked properly! The house was actually warm for once! It was a bliss. I wasn’t even mad about going to school the next day. It was an amazing feeling.