Reading Journal: Wither by Lauren DeStefano

So I just finished reading Wither, the first book in the Chemical Garden Trilogy ad I have no idea what to make of it. The book was advertised as the next great read for hunger games fans, but the only thing it has in common with Suzanne Collins HG trilogy is the post-apocalyptic setting. For every sappy vampire book Twilight brought to the forefront as a result of its success there is an dystopian tragedy waiting in the midst as a result of the success of the Hunger Games.  I admit, I fell victim to this craze, which is probably why I have about ten of them on my to-be-read list. The first of which was Wither. 

Plot Overview:

Wither takes place in a future world where genetic manipulation of the population has resulted in a deadly virus that kills off all of its victims in their early twenties. Women die at twenty-one, men at twenty-four.   There is no escape, there is no cure, despite the fact that members of the first generation (the only generation to live out full lives) are desperately searching for a way to reverse the curse. 

Rhine, the main character, is kidnapped and taken from her kid brother and sold to stranger to be one of his three brides. The story follows her struggles for escape and peace in a world full of death and disease. 

My Reaction:

Overall I enjoyed the book. It was a quick read, though it started out a bit slow, I found myself drawn into this mysterious and dark world and wanted to know more about what has and will happen to the characters. At first I found the main character, Rhine, pretty annoying. She is initially obsessed with escaping, unwilling to learn anything about her captures/husband or her other sister wives. She's set on finding her brother but (spoiler alert!) he never even gets an appearance in this book! It was hard for me to believe she is so desperate to return to such a grisly and dangerous life. It sometimes felt as though she were resisting just to resist. 

Later as she began to learn more about her new family the book becomes more interesting and you see new relationships born and difficult sacrifices made.  Still the whole book seems to be setting you up for heartache. After all, how likely is it that someone in this world is going to find a cure in the last three years of her life, if they've been searching for twenty years to no avail? Definitely a happily for now, kind of read. 

Reading Journal: Characters & Viewpoint Part 2

The other day I posted my reading journal for Orson Scott Card's Characters & Viewpoint book and spent a lot of time focused on the character piece of the puzzle. Today I want to reflect on the third half of the book which is devoted to POV and Tense, (among other things).

Card identifies this last section of the book as "Performing Characters" and he starts off with very basic and often technical descriptions of what POV and tense are. Given the number of people who get confused on this subject, perhaps that is a good thing. Though I did not find those 8 pages very informative and let's face it, talking POV is not the most exciting thing one could be doing with their time.

Despite the fact that I think the subject a little dull, I was excited to dive into the book given the challenge I have undertaken with my newest WIP Salem's Triad.  In this novel I have three POV characters. I am writing in third person limited for a large majority of the book. However there are also excerpts throughout the book that offer a third person omniscient POV.  I call these interludes (taken from the music industry) because they offer quick snippets from minor/secondary characters that help to broaden the reader's perspective about what is taking place.

Originally these scenes were written in third person limited but I am starting to realize, after spending some time with Mr Card and all his wisdom, that it might make the transition easier if I adjust the POV from third limited to third omniscient.  This will allow me to signal to the reader that they are getting a glimpse of a scene taking place that does not involve one of our main characters (in case the chapter header INTERLUDE doesn't do the trick).

Another thing that I picked up from reading this book was the idea of effectively setting up the audience for a POV change. Card mentions that you can reduce confusion for your reader by introducing the second POV character in a scene with the current POV character.  This is common in romance novels, where you alternate between the hero and the heroine's POV and are often introduced to the hero through an encounter that the heroine has.  

In reading this I discovered my earlier draft does not connect the three characters until well into the first act, and certainly not in the first 30 pages.  Given this is now a YA and I have some new creative liberties to play with I decided to rewrite the prologue to include a critical scene (one that some may argue is the inciting incident for our protagonist)  where all three girls are together but not friends.  The fun thing about this is that the reader is not dependent upon one narrator's attitude or opinion of another character. Writing in limited third person allows me to express how my girl Gracie feels about herself and what her soon to be friends think of her. I'll give you a hint, they always have differing opinions!

One thing that caught me completely off guard was Card's thoughts on third person limited as a choice for narrating your story. I could chalk it up to the time period in which this novel was written (copyright 1988) but I don't actually think the industry has changed that much in the last twenty some years. I'll share a quote and let you make your own judgement.

"If you are uncertain of your ability as a writer, while you're quite confident of the strength of your story, the limited third-person narration invites a clean, unobtrusive writing style--a plain tail plainly told. You can still write beautifully using the limited third person, but your writing is more likely to be ignored--thus covering a multitude of sins." (Card)

I had to read this quote a few times and let it really sink in before I could even acknowledge my thoughts on it. I was surprised for a number of reasons. First, since I began actively pursuing writing around 2004 I have always been told by editors that you have to write in third person, that first person is for novice amateur writers and you will stick out like a sore thumb. That of course implies that writing first person is the easier choice. It certainly comes more naturally for a lot of new writers. I know that I use it a lot when I am having trouble getting into the character's head.  But that seems to contradict with Card's statement that third person limited is the easiest of the POVs to use. He also implies that it covers up most faults because your reader won't notice the writing as they are too absorbed by the character.

I am slighlty less concerned with what this says about me as a writer, and more concerned about what it says for me as a reader. If a majority of readers prefer third person limited does that imply that we are not mature enough as a readership to appreciate the other POVs? Is the ultimate goal to tell a great story or to tell a story that people will read and are they mutually exclusive? And what does this mean for genre fiction vs literary, for I most often see first and third limited as the preferred POV of choice?

In reading this quote I felt that Card was implying that writers who choose this POV are either too lazy to take on the challenge of writing in another POV or not talented enough to do so.  But should/would you purposefully write in another POV even if it means the work is less received by your target audience?

I'm not sure I know the answer to this and perhaps I am reading more into the line than was intended, but it does make me wonder.  As I continue to write more and more stories and novels I find myself grappling with the question of POV in a more deliberate manner and ultimately choosing the POV that is the best fit for the story and what I hope to accomplish. Maybe I'll score a few bonus points for using multiple POVs despite the fact that I am writing in third person limited.


Works Cited: Card, Orson Scott. Characters & Viewpoint. Cincinnati, OH: Writer's Digest, 1988. Print.

Reading Journal: Characters & Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card

One of the things we are strongly encouraged to do at Seton Hill is keep a reading journal to reflect on the fiction and non-fiction books that we read throughout each term.  While I could certainly do this in a word document and send it directly to my mentor for review, I thought it would be more fun to do my journal entries on posts to my blog. I promise to try and be consistent and regular, without the additional prodding on your part!

Book: Characters & Viewpoint

Author: Orson Scott Card

Genre: Non-Fiction, Writing/Craft

Why did I choose this book??

It has been recently brought to my attention that though I may love some of my characters to death not everyone who picks up a copy of my manuscript or current WIP feels the same way. I'm not sure why this should come as a surprise to me. Everyone's tastes are different, so of course they are going to have different reactions to my characters, but my goal is not to alienate or piss of my reader because they do not like or understand my characters.  That said, I've been on a mission to learn as much as possible about character development and creating sympathetic characters so that I can figure out what I have done wrong, or at least polish up the prose so that readers can come to know and love the characters they way that I do.

Initial Reactions to the Book??

Despite the title and premise of the book I found it to be unhelpful for me as a writer given where I am in the writing process. The book is divided into three parts: inventing characters, constructing characters, and performing characters and a large majority of the time is spent on how to develop strong characters at the start of your writing. Several questions and thoughts are presented, about where characters come from, how to get great ideas for stories, how to discover traits and idiosyncrasies. The information overall is useful, but given what I was looking for, which was guidance on ways to better show your character on the page, this did not meet my needs.  That said there were several interesting notes that did stand out to me and made me question my own process for developing characters and thinking more deliberately about the time on the page those characters get. I'm going to highlight some of those thoughts below, and focus on initial character development today and POV in the next post.

Core Thoughts on Character.

Card starts the book at the very beginning asking the reader to reflect on what a character is and does a good illustrating that "character is what he does". We make assumptions about all characters based on what they do and what we see them do. It is a very surface level observation and most often wrong as a result, but it is the starting point for a reader.  What is interesting about this point is that if you don't go deeper and offer other ways of showing the reader who the character is, they will have no resort but to rely upon these baseline judgments. 

Why are these judgments often wrong? Because they do not offer motive or take into consideration their past experiences or their reputation. Audiences have a different reaction to a character who kills for pleasure vs. greed vs. revenge vs. self-defense.  If they only see the act of murder by itself they will have a different opinion of that character than if they have the additional context around the situation, the circumstances and the motives/intentions.  Their past experiences also play a huge role in how we view someone, do we see them as a victim, or the underdog, or are they a manipulator? What is it that made them turn to a life of crime or greed? 

For my Love Sex Magick novel, this  was a big issue that I had with my main character Chai. She can come off as superficial and insensitive to those around her. She is afraid of the magickal authority in the book but the reader doesn't know exactly what it is that is motivating that fear. The current justification on its own is too weak to feel realistic and credible, where as once I explained her family history, her connection to a known felon, and her sting with an underworld magickal gang, suddenly her actions and paranoia begin to feel more real. I used the same technique of revealing more of her backstory up front so that the reader understands the connection between her and the secondary character Yasmine and why she treats her differently from everyone else in the book.

For my current WIP Salem's Triad, I have three main characters and am switching POV between each of them. Which mean each character has to clearly establish themselves on the page and they have to be different from each other. The pacing of the book is much faster, and I have realized that I am going to have to work hard to ensure that in the first act the reader is invested in each character and has enough context to understand and by sympathetic towards them. 

Changing Behaviors with Changing Networks

Another thing Card mentions is that people change when they are in the company of different individuals. We may present ourselves one way at work, another way with our friends and yet another way with our families. A great way to show a different side of a character is to put them in a scene where they have to interact with a different type of person. For my Mystery Classics class I just finished reading "Cop Hater" by Ed McBain

Questions I needed to Ask Myself:

After reading this book there were a couple of questions that I want to continue to reflect on as I make edits to my WIP. 

1. Do I have the right scenes to allow my character to show who they are?
2. Did I give readers enough backstory to understand where my character has been and why she may behave a certain way?
3. Are there different types of people in their network that allow you to see all sides of this character? In some cases, since this is a trilogy, those relationships are developed and played out over a longer character/plot arc.
4. Consider the characters we hate. What do they do that makes us dislike them? Typically they deliberately cause someone else to suffer (physically or emotionally) that is usually not deserving of that suffering, they lie or betray people close to them.  Are my bad characters bad enough? Are my good characters doing things that on the surface look bad?

I'm going to use this as I think about my edits to my current WIP and I will include another brief post on the last third of the book that is devoted to POVs.