Why Dialogue is Important

     Like I said in my last blog you would start seeing a lot more topic from The High School Author and here is another one. Another one of my favorite posts from their site is “simple dialogue”, and I feel that it portrays the author’s beliefs on how dialogue should be written. Now I want to talk about how dialogue is so important.

     Dialogue is one of the most if not the most important thing when it comes to writing, because if you don’t have dialogue you really don’t have a story. Without dialogue you can’t move your plot along, and you couldn’t have details.

     First off without dialogue you don’t really have a plot. See when you use dialogue you have characters talking out problems, making tensions, etc. but if you didn’t have it you could only tell a story by saying what was happening and that is pretty much it.

     Ok let’s say you do make a book without any dialogue, first off very impressive and secondly it is probably going to be one the most boring books anyone will read. Without dialogue you can’t get detail in there and it is just so boring. You can’t have any action, or adventure, because all of your characters are now mute.

     So there are my reasons why I believe that dialogue is important and yes I do that this was a very short blog but since my last blog was a monster I thought I would take small break. And if I missed anything really obvious please leave a comment so I can make it better.  

How to Make a Good Character

So last week I was on a spree looking for topics and on one of my now favorite blogs The High school author was talking about good characters so I thought I would put my own twist on it.

So characters without them you don’t have a story. Characters can be good, bad, or neutral. They can be a male, female or even a different species entirely. But there is one problem, how do you make a good character? Since they are so many different ways people can create characters I am going to stick to the basics so I am not here for an hour.

1.  Know the characters traits.

     One thing that I hate the most in any form of literature is when you have a character whose motives change just randomly. What I mean is that if your character starts out good and heroic, don’t have him go around and start killing people for no reason. Either make a point to why there trait changes or keep it the same.

2. Back Stories

     Now I understand if your character is supposed to be mysterious and doesn’t want to give us their back story, but when your main character doesn’t even really have a good reason to be doing what they are doing you have a major problem. Another problem with back stories is that there are so many cliché back stories. A few examples.

·       My family, village and or species is now dead and I must get vengeance.

·       I am the choose one and I am the only one who can do this

That is only two examples of back stories, and I can think of over 30 books I have read that have used those back stories for their main characters. And before I move on to my next point I want to put some attention to a specific back story cliché that I truly hate amnesia. Now if the amnesia back story idea is used correctly then yes it does make it very interesting, but to many authors now a days use as just a lazy way for us to slowly learn the characters back story.

3. Character Details

     This one will be my last point but it is still important. I hate when authors give us this cookie cutter hero that is so basic that you already know what is going to happen before the end of the first five chapters. So when you are making your character please gives us more details, make it so that we can relate with the hero.

     Well that is my opinion on how you should make a good character, and yes I know there is many more things that I could have listed but I feel that this is enough to get a few writers through. And finally I want to say thanks to The High School Author because I have a feeling that I may be borrowing a few more ideas from them.   

Why Sharing Your Ideas is Imporant

     Again I was browsing through some blogs on the internet when I stumbled across a blog call, and yes this is its actual name, “Brad’s Entertainment Blog”. Yes you can tell how much creativity went into creating that title. But making fun of his blogs title aside I found a blog on there that I found rather interesting, it was called, why sharing your ideas helps. After reading through it I connected it back to one of my earlier blogs, how to get through writers block, and I felt like one of the points I made in that blog I could look at from a different point and that was the idea of asking others for help or the another way sharing your ideas.

                

     See there are two reasons why I believe that people should share their ideas. One of them, is that you get another angle at what you’re writing, now let me explain. See when you are writing anything a book, a script, heck even a blog post most of the time you are writing from your beliefs or mindset, so sometimes it’s hard to step back and see the real picture. So if you ask another person about that idea you can get another view from another person’s mindset, and the more people you ask the more viewpoints you get. The more viewpoints you get the more diverse your writing will be.

                

     The other reason I feel that people should share their ideas is because of editing. Now I understand more people think, ‘oh I know how to edit I was taught this in high school so I don’t need to have someone else check it”. Trust me I’m in high school and some people do sound like that. But the reason I say this even though it seems really cliché it will make your writing better. Now when you’re writing anything you feel proud of it and can look over some simple mistakes, I will admit I have done this a lot so getting someone else to look at your work will make it better.

                

     So I do feel that people should share their ideas more, now there are many more reasons why I think people should share ideas, but we would be here all day if I wrote that. So instead I am going to leave you with a small warning about sharing ideas. Even though there are many positives to sharing ideas you do have to be careful with whom you share it with because that might end up biting you in the butt.  

How to use Passion in Picking Subjects

Another blog that I read this week was “Musical Theater and Other Things”, the title pretty much speaks for itself. One of the blogs the author wrote had to deal with her passion in music and theater and how she used that passion to improve her acting and music skills. After thinking it over a little bit I came to the conclusion that this idea could be used in many more topics including writing.

See when you’re writing you have to know what you’re writing about. I know that sound very redundant but let me explain. When writing you just can’t choose a topic to write about by spinning a wheel and choosing at random. No you have to think and think about it until you finally come to an idea that you know enough about to write something.

Now I know what you are thinking, “how does this have to do with passion in writing?” well as you see passion is crucial thing when coming up for a topic to write about. For an example let’s use writing an essay, and let’s say that when you’re writing this essay you have two choices to pick from as your topic. One of these subjects you are extremely proficient in it, you know the ins and the outs like that back of your hand. But the only the problem is that you don’t really like the subject it doesn’t really interest you. The other topic however you love, you have done it your whole life, since you were a kid you have had a true passion for the subject, the only problem, even though you have that passion you don’t know a lot about it. So there is you problem, now here is the question, which topic do you choose?

Personally I feel like you should pick the topic that you have more passion for. Now I know that may seem stupid because, “you should pick the other subject because you know more about it.” But sometimes knowing more isn’t always a good thing. See personally I would go for the one I have more passion for because even though I don’t know a lot about it I feel that I would write a way better paper then if I had chosen the one I wasn’t that passionate about. The reason why is because if I pick the other subject yes it may have been a more informative one but, for me it would just be a bland and boring paper. Now if I had chosen the subject I was more passionate about, yes it would be less informative, but it would be easier to write because it would be freer flowing and creative.

Now would I say never pick the subject you know more about? No, but I would say try the one you have more passion for first because it just might be easier to write.

Why Love Triangles Should be Used

So this week I was reading around some blogs and I found a post on the blog “What to Watch” titled, What’s so Great About Love Triangles. Basically the post was bashing on the idea of love triangles and why they should exist but I entirely disagree.

Now the problem with love triangles isn’t that they exist, it’s that most love triangles are done so poorly it just makes them looks really bad, and make no sense. Now don’t get me wrong, personally I have never been a really big fan of love triangles, but some books do need them to keep their story going.

See the author said that love triangles give an unnecessary drama, which in some cases is true but not always. See I feel that when love triangles are done correctly it can just the right amount of drama to make keep a story going.

See a lot of the time when love triangles are used, the author just kind of throws it in there just because they can. But when a love triangle is written correctly and keeps going through the story and to the climax it usually works really well.

And the funny thing is that love triangles can still be used in non-romance books. A lot of science fiction and fantasy authors use love triangles to add another problem that their main character has to deal with, including the main force of evil.

So in my opinion love triangles should still exist in writing because some books do need them. But it’s that love triangles are an overused cliché, and are usually written poorly because they are an afterthought.     

Just Why Twilight?

                After hearing about every teen girl at my school yell at each other over Team Jacob or Team Edward I have just about had it with Twilight. I absolutely refused to read those books, even today I still do but this I why did this have to happen. If you don’t know what I am talking about, it is about the new “re-imaging” of Twilight.

Now maybe if the author of Twilight was doing a re-release and was making a new cast of characters to tell maybe the same story from a different view, they could have change the point of view that the story was told from, or even the author could have created a new story in the same universe, any of these I would have been fine with, but this is just stupid. All the author is doing is just taking the original cast and gender swapping every single character. That isn’t “re-imaging” the book, it is basically just taking the same book, throwing a new coat of paint on it and saying it’s a new book.

I personally feel like the author just looked through some ones bad fan fiction of Twilight and said “hey I could make money off of this”, and just went to writing. This is just such a stupid idea. I really don’t want people going around my school screaming which is better, Team Jeanette or Team Emily, and who should truly fall in love with Brad. I just don’t want every single girl in my school obsessed with Twilight all over again.

Oh but there might be something good that comes out of this. What might be entertaining is if this “re-imaging” does well enough and would get a movie deal, (which let’s face it, it most likely will) is seeing a female vampire and werewolf fighting over a human, that would be something even as a hater of Twilight I would pay to see.

So the “re-imaging” of Twilight if you can even call it that, is just such a stupid idea. Like I said the author isn’t changing anything there just putting a new coat of paint on an old book and calling it new. The only thing good that may come out of this, and that is a very, very big may, is a movie because personally I think it would be extremely funny to watch and laugh at it.

Paper v.s. Plastic

So my friend Rowan over at http://popculturefordays.blogspot.com/ and I are having a little friendly competition. We each took a side to see which was better, reading from a paperback book or a tablet. So after you read my side of the argument go over to her blog and see what she has to say. So with books I personally prefer to read on a tablet for many reasons. Tablet are better because they are so much more transportable and are so much easier to use.

Reading books on a tablet is so much nicer than using hard copies, with tablets you take books anywhere you go and as many as you want. With hard cover books they take up so much space and are decently heavy so if you want to read when you are on a trip you can only really bring one or two hard cover books. Now with tablets however, you can bring as many as you want because all of the books are stored on one device, so you don’t have to lug around a hundred books with you wherever you go. Also when you want to find an older book you don’t have to go searching through a huge pile of books you just have to search the name of the book.

Another reason why tablets are so much better than books is because they are easier to use. Now I know what you are thinking, “how is a tablet easier to use than a normal book?” well here is how. First off if you want to take notes you don’t have to end up destroying the book you are reading since most tablets come with a feature to take notes with.  Another thing that tablets make easier is reading at night. If you are using a hard copy and want to read at night you either need to have a lamp on the book at all times or figure out how to gain night vision. With most tablet now a days they come with a back light so you don’t have to worry about not being able to read at night.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love to read a hard cover book from time to time but it is just son inefficient. Books decay and tare over time, but with tablets you don’t have to worry about that. That is why I believe it is better to read on a tablet than from a hard cover book.       

My Top 5 Favorite Authors

Before I do start this I do want to say this is my opinion and there are so many Authors out in the world so if your favorite authors doesn’t get on here that most likely means I haven’t read any of their books or personally I just didn’t enjoy them. So with that all out of the way let’s move onto the list.

                

     5. Rick Riordan

If Rick Riordan on this list is a huge shocker then you clearly haven’t read any of my previous post. I have been a fan of Rick Riordan sense like 5^th grade. Now I am putting him very low on the list because even though he has written some of my favorite series I don’t believe it’s fair if I just instantly put him as #1.

               

     4.  James Fey and Nils Johnson-Shelton

Now this also should not be that big of a shock. My first blog ever was about the book they wrote. No I know it is kind of cheating putting two authors in one spot but I couldn’t pick one over the other because the only book that I know of that they have both written in Endgame. But they are really great authors.

                

     3. Orson Scott Card

I am so happy I finally get to talk about Orson Scott Card on this blog. One of my favorite sci-fi books of all time was Ender’s Game. The way that Orson Scott Card writes is amazing. He writes his books just simple enough for most people to get, but is just confusing enough for people like to really dig in and love the story.

                

     2. Kristin Cashore

This author I recently learned about, and she is amazing. She does a great job at creating a world of fantasy and magic that any of her books will keep you entertained. I love her books so much I used to set a certain day were I would try to find books written by her because sadly she has written a lot of books yet to my knowledge.

     1. Jenny Nimmo

Now I know what a lot of people are thinking, who is this author. Jenny Nimmo is the author of the Children of the Red King series. Now this was another book series of my childhood. Maybe not as prominent as Rick Riordan’s books they are still amazing. These were the books that got me into reading. So if you are ever looking for a book series that is just a little too easy I would recommend any book by Jenny Nimmo.     

Old School v.s. New School: Books

I was over at the blog Today's Entertainment in Movies and Literature I was reading a post titled Old School v. New school. The post was comparing the old Jurassic Park movies with the newer ones and how the hold up. So I thought about it and came to the idea that you could compare books in the same way. So compared to older books how do books that came out around now hold up.

When thinking about this I came to a weird realization that book that were published back in the day are pretty close to books today. Now the ideas and messages are complete different because they were published in different eras so different things were happening, but the books were very similar and their plots.

Fantasy books written is 1970’s still have to deal with evil mages, fire-breathing dragons, an unexpected hero and damsels in distress. Si-fi books still have to do with evil aliens and the endless reaches of space. Even Romance books are the same, a guy and girl fall in love, something happens, they break up, they both realize they were wrong, they make up and happy ever after. There I probably just summed up over 80% of ever romance, fantasy, and Si-fi book ever created. But now why do there basics plots stay the same over so many year?

Well here is what I think, I feel the plots stay the same is because they tell a good story. All of these books keep the same basic plot because it is what works. Yes there are a few books that do break this idea but most stay to basic mold, and it works. In fantasy we love to see the hero progress through his journey to beat the evil whatever. In Si-fi we want to see places that we have never been and probably never be. And even in romance we want to see the two perfect strangers get together in the end.

So are books to day basically the same as they were many, many years ago, basically. No matter what kind of genre it is, the basic plot has probably stayed the same over many, many years. But books today have still changed with the times. With addition of new genres it is becoming harder to make connections to books from the past. But if you do look hard enough books today are basically books from the past with a new coat of paint.  

                       

Why a Book Turned Movie Will Never Be as Good as the Book

                Books turned into movies… let’s admit it, they all suck. There hasn’t really been any good movies based of books. There are just so many things wrong with these movies but who can really blame them. Trying to turn a book into a movie is a lot harder than it seems.

First off, they have to try to fit an entire novel or series which can take up to multiple days to read, into a few movies each about two hours long. So they can’t do everything that the book has. Another problem with the time constraint is that they can have the exact amount of detail that the book has because if they do it wouldn’t make a very exciting movie. And that leads into my next point keeping the movie entertaining.

The job of a movie is to keep you entertained so when you have an entire book to pick your scenes from you are probably going to pick the more exciting scenes then the scenes that just are pure dialogue. But the problem with this is that the scenes that are mainly dialogue are what helps movie the story along so when you have just a movie with only the most exciting scenes from a book you get nowhere near the level or story telling that book gives.

The next things is having to add scenes to a movie that weren’t in the book to begin with. Now if this is done correctly and works with the story then you are fine most people won’t be upset except the obsessed fans, but most of times these scenes aren’t done correctly. When this happens it can lead to a major plot hole or completely change the story entirely. The reason I think directors do this is to make the story more exciting but most of the time it just makes the movie worse.

Now let me say there are exceptions to this idea. But the only two exceptions to this rule that I know of is the Harry Potter series, and any book written by John Greene, and the reason why they are so good is because they stay to the original plot and don’t change much. I know with the movies based on books written by John Greene they had him come in and watch filming to make sure they were staying true to they story.

So in my opinion will movies based on books be ever as good as the books? Probably not. Now maybe it could happen but I don’t see it happening because just with how long and detailed books are I don’t think they will ever be truly portrayed correctly in movies.   

How to Pick a New Book

Picking a new book to read is actually pretty hard. From personal experience I know that feeling after finishing a great you want to find another one and just keep going. But there are so many to choose from how do you know which one to pick. With a wide array of titles and coves it can sometimes be over whelming to find a new book. But I do have a few ideas that might be able to help you out.        

             
     1. Pick a book by the same author your last book was written by.

If you really enjoyed the most recent book that you read than you’re most likely to find that you like more books by the author who wrote it. But be careful this can also be bad because maybe the author only published one or two books, or maybe you didn’t like the last book you read. That’s ok there are still many other options.

               
     2. Ask for other people’s opinions.

Now personally when I don’t know what to read next I go to local library and ask one of the staff workers what she suggests because we have similar interests. But if that’s not the case with you, go ask friends, family, teachers, co-workers, and one really .They can probably come up with a few suggestion for you. Now if somehow all of the books they suggest you don’t like or have already read there is a still an option for you.

               
     3. Do some research.

I know personally when I couldn’t find any books that I hadn’t already read there was one thing I could always do, go to the internet. Seriously just search what kind of books genres you’re into and you can find lists upon lists about books with those kids of genres. But do be careful make sure that if you do use the internet, before you just look at a book with a cool cover and say “oh that likes like a good book” please read what the book is about. I have personally done that once and I truly regretted it.

Like I said picking a new book to read is pretty hard. And yes it still may be overwhelming with the number of choice given to you that you can read. But I do hope that these tips help make it a little easier to find a new book that you might like.

My Top 5 Favorite Book Series

 Before I do start this I do want to say this is my opinion and there are so many books out in the world so if your favorite book series doesn’t get on here that most likely means I haven’t read it. Another thing, spoiler warning for any books on this list. So with that all out of the way let’s move onto the list.

5. The Missing Series: Margret Peterson Haddix

           This was one of the book series of my childhood, Margret Peterson Haddix did and amazing job writing this series so far. The books that have come out are so detailed and are able to show so much emotion for being targeted for a much younger audience. Even today if I’m looking for a quick book to read I will pick up the first book and just read it really quick.

4.  Hunger Games Series: Suzanne Collins

            I know this book is on a lot of peoples lists of top ten series but allow me to explain myself. I know the series gets a lot of crud for creating a type of stereotypical teen book but that still doesn’t mean it’s a bad series. Suzanne Collins did an amazing job of writing a very engaging book series that was very entertain to read, and it always kept me interested.

3. Divergent Series: Veronica Roth

            Yes I know another stereotypical series on my top ten list, but again I do have my reasons for it. This again truly was another book that really kept me entertained for a long time and it was the first time I had ever seen a book take the idea that the main character couldn’t die and just destroyed it so that is why it is on this list.  

2.  The Maze Runner Series: James Dashner
             This is the last one of this kind of series I promise but it was to good not to put on here. James Dashner did an amazing job a creating a world that you could feel like you were in. He made it feel like you actually their watching all of this happen. It is a great series.

1. Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Rick Riordan
             Yes I do know I bashed on the movie last week but that still doesn't mean that this isn't an amazing series. the books have kept me intertwined since elementary school and I still read them to this day. The book had action, mystery, and even a little romance but it was still great. I still remember the days that me and my friends would pretend to be the gang of that book so that is why it is my #1 choice. 

How to Get Through Writers block

Writers block… it sucks. You know that felling, when you’re writing a paper, you’re on a role, words are just following from your mind onto the paper and then suddenly you stop. You hit a wall a blank, white empty wall, and you can’t think of anything, you try to rack your brain but can’t find any words, it sucks. But there are a few ways that I have found to beat writers block.

My first idea is go do something else creative. I know it sounds very cliché but it does work. Go take an hour to two hour break and just completely ignore the paper. On your break go do something make food, read a book, or do what I do go play video games. I personally believe that if you take a little break you can find some inspiration and go back to paper with a fresh mind. But if this doesn’t work there are still a few more options.

The second idea that you can do is talk to others. I know that when I write and get stuck, if I can’t think of anything I always go and ask someone else for ideas. Other people can have great ideas, they can give you other opinions or look at your paper from a different angle and give you more ideas. Still if this doesn’t work there is one more idea that I have that might work.

If you can find anything more to write about maybe just change your subject. Now the reason why I put this idea last is because you can’t always change the subject you’re writing but if you can change the subject maybe you just might need to. Maybe you just can’t find the right words to get your point across or maybe you can’t find anything more to write if both of these are reasons why your stick then maybe it is time for a subject change. But this last one is a little shaky because like I said you can’t always change your topic so use this one as a last resort.

So yes writes block does suck, but there are still ways that you can battle it. I know that sometimes it may feel that you can’t do anything about writes block, so I do hope that this blog does help some people out.