End of August Wrap-Up

Whoa, this month just zoomed by! Here's how things went on the reading/writing for me in August:

Camp NaNoWriMo

Uh, yeah, that was kind of a... total fail. AGAIN. But I did write slightly more than last year, so that's something, I guess. At this rate, I should be able to win my first NaNo in, oh, about forty years or so. Sigh. Momentum is SO important! (Also, I got struck by another Shiny New Idea. Oops.)

Reading

These are the books I read in August: 

I was super excited about diving into this stack, but unfortunately I found most of them incredibly disappointing, including the two books I was most looking forward to reading. Turns out that reading them in order of ascending average Goodreads rating did NOT actually result in a similar increase in my reading experience.

Here's the books I read, average ratings on Goodreads, and my own rating with links to my status updates (may include spoilers):

1.The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson | 3.55 stars | DNF and 1 star from me
2.Dani Noir by Nova Ren Suma | 3.77 stars | 3 stars from me
3. Un Lun Dun by China Mieville | 3.78 stars | 3.5 stars from me
4. Wake by Lisa McMann | 3.78 stars | DNF and 1 star from me
5. A Fistful of Sky by Nina Kiriki Hoffman | 3.92 stars | 2.5 stars from me
6. The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly | 3.97 stars | 4 stars from me
7. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland... by Catherynne M. Valente | 4.06 stars | 1.5 stars from me
8. I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak | 4.08 stars | DNF and 1 star from me
9. Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai | 4.09 stars | DNF and no rating from me
10. Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier | 4.14 stars | 2 stars from me

So yeah, like I mentioned in my Goodreads status update, it turned out that I didn't particularly like any of the books that had average ratings of >4 on Goodreads. Guess that means I have peculiar taste.

Anyway, this made me think about what kinds of things appeal to me or put me off in fiction. (Great post by Patricia C. Wrede on the subject!) The main categories that I think of when it comes to a book are: plot, character, writing, setting, and message. In order for me to enjoy a book, at least the plot or main character has to be stand-out excellent (by which I mean, a good match for my tastes) and the rest has to be decent-to-good.

So here's how my tastes usually run when it comes to books (though there are always exceptions):

PLOT
I can love a book for plot alone. I tend to like mysteries a lot, and time travel stories with one consistent timeline (none of that changing history crap, thanks). I get impatient if nothing seems to be happening, or if things are happening too slowly, unless the other elements are strong enough to capture my interest. And no insta-love or love triangles, thanks. (See my post on romance pet peeves.) Plot holes and and cliffhangers also bother me a lot, and so does predictability (I was great at annoying my sister during family movie nights because I loved to predict what would happen next). Most of all, I am a sucker for really intricate, clever, twisty puzzle plots. Those are the best.

CHARACTER
If the plot isn't mind-blowingly amazing, then I need to love the characters. I prefer to find them likable, admirable, intelligent, relatable, and engaging. I lose respect for protagonists that do stupid or hurtful things, and I tend to dislike feeling detached from the protagonist. I particularly despise characters who start doing dumb things because they've "fallen in love." I'm much more fond of sensible, capable, and funny characters who have a good grasp of logic. (No speshul snowflakes who whine a lot, thanks!) I also have a difficult time reading about characters who don't see the world, or social interactions, or themselves, the way most people do. For example, Jack in Room, Marcelo in Marcelo in the Real World, and Lia in Wintergirls. I think these are all worthwhile books that shed light on important issues, but they're just not enjoyable reading experiences for me. I know those characters don't see things the way I do, but it's frustrating for me to be able to see what they don't and not be able to do anything about it.

WRITING
I am not a fan of description, lyrical, or flowery writing. I tend to prefer writing that's straightforward and clear, and doesn't call attention to itself. I care more about story than word-smithing, so I definitely notice when the writing is so over-the-top that it distracts me from my reading experience. I strongly dislike narrator interruptions, awkward and stunted prose, and overly creative/nonsensical metaphors. I do enjoy a gorgeous turn of phrase here and there, but great writing isn't enough to make me like a book if the rest was only ok (unlike with brilliant characters or plots). I don't think I have any strong preferences for POV or tense, other than my dislike of second person.

SETTING
This, like writing, is something that would bother me if done badly, and best when it doesn't call too much attention to itself. I tend to skim description, I don't really notice if the details are on the sparse side, and I'd probably be bored by too much of it. I'm perfectly fine with filling things in myself, so setting only bothers me if there is so little there I have nothing to go on or if there are things that don't make any sense or if there is clearly a huge gaping hole that ought to be addressed but isn't. As long as the world building isn't too obviously lazy or implausible or unreasonable, I'll be fine.

MESSAGE
I don't think I would love a book solely because I agreed with its message, but messages I don't agree with can definitely kill a book for me. I think a lot of this has to do with characterization, as well — if the protagonist gets away with being petty, whiny, or useless, I'm not going to be happy about that. I'm not ok with misogynistic messages, either, and I'd be annoyed if superstition plays a positive part in the story (hate chosen one/prophecy plot lines). Also, I hate when authors attempt to bash me over the head with their messages. It pulls me out of the story and makes me feel manipulated, which will definitely cause me to think poorly of the book.

So yeah, I tend to be a pretty picky reader. I am also easily swayed by positive reviews. This usually results in me reading a lot of books I don't particularly like, which is unfortunate and why I adore negative reviews.

Blogging

I think part of the reason I didn't write as many words for NaNo is because I got distracted by blogging as a semi-acceptable form of procrastination (even though it isn't really). But still, I'm glad I got these blog posts out there. I still have some drafts in the works and ideas I'd like to blog about, but my motivation will probably decrease once I stop seeing blogging as procrastination and as what I'm supposed to be doing. XD

Life

I got a new bunny! And he is adorable! :D Meet Mochi:

Hope all of you enjoyed your August! :)

Villains

I'm a little bit (ok fine, a LOT) behind on Camp NaNoWriMo, but since I'm dying from my self-imposed Google Reader ban, I thought writing a post would help take the edge off blogosphere-withdrawal. At least I'm producing words, right? Can't wait until the weekend when I'll let myself catch up on blog posts (all several hundred of them — yes, I peeked a few times) regardless of word count!

I'm always on the lookout for great articles about villains and antagonists since I have such a hard time with them. I really liked the amazing Jodi Meadows' post about Villains You Like because it resonated with me and got me thinking more about the different types of villains out there. Here are some of my thoughts:

Generic Villainous Overlords
When I was in elementary/middle school, this was the kind of villain I thought up with my friend and sister. We'd play pretend and spin stories where we were magical princesses rebelling against an evil stepmother (so original, I know). I think she also had an evil sorcerer ally.

I've since discovered that evil villains out to take over the world for no good reason tend to fall flat and be utterly boring, so I'm glad I know better now. Imagine my surprise when I came across one in a recent debut! The one-dimensional villain actually claimed "I'm evil" as sole motivation for world domination, dashing all my hopes for an interesting and nuanced antagonist. It was hard not to groan or roll my eyes. (Oh well, the book pretty much nosedived into terribleness halfway through, anyway.) So yeah. No cliché, boring evil villains, please!

Sympathetic Villains
I guess it was so shocking to encounter such a lackluster villain because it seems that sympathetic antagonists are all the rage these days. And for good reason — characters that the reader can relate to are so much more engaging than cardboard cut-outs, no matter where they fall on the good/evil spectrum.

One way to add complexity to a villain is to give him or her a redeeming quality, vulnerability, or troubled past. A villain with motives that are understandable, or even almost noble, would make the protagonist's inner struggle that much more difficult (and who can say no to more conflict?). And who knows, maybe the villain actually thinks he or she is doing the right thing, even if the protagonist strongly disagrees. Jodi's example was Magneto from X-men: First Class; he's a likable character with an understandable motivation, but he's a villain because he wants to exterminate normal people (something I imagine most people would frown upon).

We (as in magical princesses) did later try to do this for our evil stepmother character. We decided she was our late mother's adopted sibling (heaven forbid we're related to her by blood!), jealous of our mother all her life, in love with our father, and basically out to take for herself everything her gorgeous, saintly sister ever had. Oh fine, I guess our attempts to bump her up to "sympathetic" wasn't all that successful, but we did try to give her some personality and motivation. (I think evil sorcerer remained irredeemably evil, though.)

Villains You Love to Hate
I think this might be where our poor evil stepmother ended up. These sorts of villains are dastardly, selfish characters who, through some twist of fortune, ended up with more power than is good for them to have, and then proceeded to annoy the heck out of everyone else. And you can't wait until this villain is defeated because he or she is just so despicable and pathetic. Not to mention rather useless once stripped of power. (I think they tend to be pretty wormy. You know, like Wormtongue from Lord of the Rings and Wormtail from Harry Potter. What is it about worms?)

These villains are probably best as irritants in the path of the hero and not as the Big Bad. I think I'd get pretty frustrated if the protagonist is fighting someone like that for an entire book. But maybe it's all in the execution?

Villains with Flair
These characters are not-very-nice people who become fascinating on the strength of their personality. Not a literary example, but I adored Regina George in Mean Girls. She's a lying, cheating, manipulative b— ah, witch who insulted and played everyone around her. But her confidence, charm, and determination to get what she wanted made her a lot more fascinating than Cady, the actual protagonist. (Plus, Rachel McAdams is gorgeous!)

Or take Artemis Fowl. He's a kidnapper who exploits the fairies for money and amusement. But because he's so brilliant, we can't wait to see what he has up his sleeves, even kind of hoping he'll succeed despite the fact that what he's doing is so wrong. It also helps that he's the main protagonist.

[*EDIT: Thanks to lovely comments from Mike and CanaryTheFirst, I think I'd put Artemis and their examples in a new category: Villains as Protagonist. What do you think?]

Villains can become attractive despite their moral flaws if they have personality traits the reader can admire. The danger with these villains is that they may steal the spotlight and become more interesting than the protagonist, so you'd have to make sure your protagonist is up to the challenge! I think it'd be a lot of fun to write such a character. :)

Villains that Give You Nightmares
These are the sadistic, genius serial killers of pure unadulterated evil. The crazed monster from the underworld who delights in bloodlust. The creepy clown, or alien predator, or that girl with the long hair crawling out of the TV... ok, I seriously need to stop before I scare myself witless.

Why? Because I am a total wimp. (I assure you, it pains me to admit it.) I avoid horror flicks and books as much as possible; even thrillers might be too much for me. I have an overactive imagination and do not appreciate having images of menacing evilness roaming my mind at night. So while others might love reading or writing about this sort of villain and enjoy the thrill of being thoroughly scared, I'm afraid (har, har) they're not for me.

Not-a-Villain
Of course, not every book has to have a villain. Some stories have antagonists that are made of sunshine and loveliness, and so sweet you want to gag — except their goals happen to conflict with that of the protagonist. Or maybe the antagonist isn't quite that innocent, but more morally ambiguous than outright evil. A lot of antagonists fall into this category, but it's fun to think about evil characters once in a while and consider how to make them interesting to the reader.

What other types of villains can you think of, and which ones are your favorite?

For My Fifteen-Year-Old Self

This is the first post in a series about creating a vision of what I want to write, as mentioned in my novel-writing game plan.

I've loved reading for as long as I can remember. My favorites as a teen were YA fantasies, and I still adore them now. I always dreamed of escaping to a magical world, having swashbuckling adventures, and living happily-ever-after with a swoon-worthy guy as the heroine of my own story. I figure the next best thing is penning (or typing, I guess) a YA fantasy novel myself, and write the story I've always wanted to read.

Thus when it comes to envisioning the kind of books I want to write, I already have my target audience in mind: my fifteen-year-old self. I was (and remain) a picky reader, and much of what I want to write is shaped by my reading preferences.

First, the protagonist. I idolized those strong, brilliant heroines I read about; I wished so much to be more like them, or to be part of their world. And yet a part of me felt it was impossible. As often as I fantasized about magically falling into their stories, I knew could never belong — I would be grossly out of place with my East Asian features.

I felt this even as a kid, when I played make-believe with my sister and childhood friend. We pretended to be magical princesses fighting to save our beloved kingdom from our wicked stepmother. Our alter-egos never looked like us, not even when we wanted a break from being princesses and pretended to be their maids (and best friends, of course). They were all blondes or brunettes or redheads with eyes the color of emerald, or sapphire, or steel. Because really, it would be ridiculous to have brown-eyed, black-haired Asian girls living in a medieval fantasy world... wouldn't it?

Almost all of the heroines I admired as a teen lived in worlds composed solely of people who looked nothing like me. I hated feeling I could never be a part of the worlds I loved so much, that I could only aspire to be like the characters in Asian historical fiction or Chinese mythology — who, at times, felt foreign and exotic to me, with values and worldviews that had but little in common with my Asian-American ones.

There were a lot of pseudo-European fantasylands; where were all the pseudo-Asian ones? Or, even better, where were the books where the protagonist happens to have Asian features, set in a fantasyland that's not based entirely on ancient China or Japan?

I know these books exist now, thanks to the increasing diversity of YA. And I am so, so grateful for the authors writing those novels. I admire them to pieces.

But to be completely honest, so far I haven't been able to find a book with an Asian protagonist that I can connect with deeply, despite how much I want to adore those books. It is completely unfair to the authors, because I think that, after so many years of longing, I've built up a specific ideal of the book I wish I could have read as a teen — and the books I read are the authors' visions, not mine. The only way to fix this is to start writing my own, so I can stop comparing the books I read to what I wish they were, and enjoy them for what they are.

That is why I'm going to write — for myself, because there are stories I want to tell; because, after all those years of reading, I want a story that belongs to me: a story that my fifteen-year-old self will embrace and adore, one that tells her that she, too, can be the heroine for once.

So I will write, and the protagonist will live in a world where she isn't out of place for looking Asian, and she will be capable and brave and clever and interesting and selfless (or try to be). She will fight for what she cares about and seek to do the right thing, and she will be the protagonist because of the strength of her character and not because of her birth — she will not be special due to a rare magical power or unique eye color or ancient prophecy, unless I am subverting those tropes (and I will). I will gift her with my own flaws, as well as with virtues I'm still striving to develop, and she will persevere despite all the difficult decisions and heartbreak I throw at her. And I will have succeeded with her when I know my teenaged self would read that book over and over just to watch her in action, laugh and cry and gush over her, and wish desperately to be half as amazing as she is.

It will be a challenge, to be sure; despite reading widely, there are few protagonists I can say I truly adore. Still, I am excited. After all, these are books I'm dying to read — ones that no one can write but me. :)

Thank you for reading! Next week I'll continue the series with my personal preferences for plot, setting, romance, and all that good stuff. Do you have protagonist pet-peeves? Are you also motivated to write by the need to read the book of your heart?