Books That Creeped Me Out When I Was Young

I was a weird child (which you probably already know if you've read this post or this post), and today we're going to look at yet another weird part of my childhood behaviour...

So I've been working in a library recently and reorganizing the picture book shelves made me think of the books I read as a kid, in particular the books and fictional things that kind of creeped me out. If you didn't need yet another reason to think I'm weird, then just look at some of the things I was creeped out by:

 

1. The 19th story of Wayside school,  the one that doesn't exist

2. Heffalumps

 

3. Nova's Ark by David Kirk - For some reason, I thought the pictures in this book were fascinating but also kind of scary.

 

4. Time Flies by Eric Rohmann - In my opinion, that cover is still scary.

5. The wicked thought in The Red Racer by Audrey Wood - that big green monster struck fear in my young heart, I tell you.

 

 

I know these things aren't really that scary, but they genuinely did scare me when I was younger.  These fictional things and books actually made my insides twist and my heart speed up. (This is also why I don't read horrors or thrillers or anything, haha). Now, I kind of think it's cool how much of an emotional response these books got out of me, but it also brings up another point: every reader has different levels of what they can handle.

A lot of really intense books that you probably think are fluff would have terrified me if I would've read them even in middle school. I wasn't ready to read those kinds of books until now or a few years ago. But that's OK, because everyone is different and everyone reads differently and takes things in differently. Evidently I get taken in very easily by books and their fictional worlds, so they have, and have had throughout the years, a much stronger effect on me than other people.

Not every 13-year-old (or any age) is going to be able to handle all the same books that every other 13-year-old can handle. That's kind of why I think rating books is a weird idea. People need to "rate" books according to their own personal needs, and not make a general statement that everyone should follow.

What do you think? What books creeped you out when you were young?

The Fear of Writing Diversity

My sister has Down Syndrome. She has a hilarious personality, gets grumpy when she watches too much TV, and says funny things like, "[Bro], I have some advice for your driver's test. Cut your hair." She's a big and special part of my life, and I always sort of had the intent to write either a book about her or a book about a character with Down Syndrome.

But I couldn't, because I was sure I would get it wrong.

I was worried that I wouldn't be able to represent her properly as a character in a book. My thought always went along the lines of "I am not someone with Down Syndrome, therefore I can never accurately portray someone with Down Syndrome in a book, therefore I will not write them."

And I didn't.

But then I realized a few things.

1. People with Down Syndrome are still people.
2. Everyone is different.
3. I am a person.

I know writing a character with Down Syndrome would require some amount of research just because of the way a life is affected by that, but what I realized in realizing these things is that I'm not writing "Person with Down Syndrome", I'm writing "Person".

And I can do that.

I became unstuck from the thought of "what if I can't get my sister exactly right?" because I realized that yeah, my sister has Down Syndrome but she isn't THE representation of everyone with Down Syndrome, just like I'm not THE representation of 18-year-old white Canadians with curly hair. 

My sister is not a representation; she's a person. And if I chose to write a character with Down Syndrome, that character isn't a representation either. They are a person who is different than others with Down Syndrome and that's OK because people are different from each other.

The #yalitchat on Twitter the other day was about diversity in YA. And I think part of the reason why there is so few books with POC (Person of Colour) MCs or anything other than Caucasian MCs is because of this weird fear writers have (including me) that they're going to get it wrong or they're going to misrepresent someone along the way.

We have this mindset of "I'm not that, so I can't write that."

But I think that we need to stop worrying about that because people aren't just lumped into one huge group of White Canadian Females with Curly Hair that all have the same personality and charateristics and likes and dislikes, or one huge group of People With Down Syndrome who are all clones of each other and we've got to get our character-clone exactly right.

Stop being so afraid, and just write people who are different, because every person is different.

Because really, that's exactly what diversity means.



What do you think? 
(Also check out this awesome post by @ravenamo on writing POCs!)
(Also just so you know I did eventually succesfully write a short story that featured a character with Down Syndrome. ;) )

Cliff-hanger Endings: Are They Really That Bad?

Hey guys! In order to make up for my silence over the last while, I thought I'd just give you a short update on what's going on, and then I'll start my post. So, I'm actually in the midst of exams right now so I am taking lots of time studying and writing those (normally my exams would be in June, but because of the kind of courses I'm taking, they're in May). I'm also getting ready for wrapping up school completely and graduating high school in only twoish months! Eek. :D Let's see... I'm also trying to prepare a short story to enter in a local writing contest. I hope to start some fun new blog stuff after I'm done more of my exams, so you have that to look forward to. I have a few ideas up my sleeve. ;)

Anyway, I wanted to talk about endings. The two books that my English class most recently read were A Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence and A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Neither of them had very satisfying endings. A Stone Angel ends with the two words "And then..." and that's where the novel ends. The story ending of A Handmaid's Tale ends with the main character being taken away, and whether to safety or to her death the reader doesn't know. Then the last line of the epilogue-like ending is a university professor asking his students "Are there are any questions?" which is funny because, um, YES.

A lot of the students in my class complained loudly about how these endings were horrible, you don't get to find out anything, it wasn't wrapped up nicely at all, etc, etc. Then they write the entire book off as awful because you don't get to find out anything - and what's the point of reading a book that doesn't answer any questions it raises?

Well, that's a discussion for another day. But are these somewhat cliff-hanger endings really that bad? I feel like they are very effective, and they make you think. That is what I like about these endings - they force you to think. If there is anything that makes me love a book, it is that it makes me think. That's part of the reason why I loved Jellicoe Road so much. The intertwined and complicated plots required a whole lot of thinking to figure them out.

I think this is also why those "20 years later" epilogues sometimes really bug me, such as the one in Harry Potter or Rules of Attraction by Simone Elkeles. I feel like they shut down any opportunity for the reader's mind to wander and wonder further about the characters and story. Basically, it shut downs any opportunity for the reader to think about the book.

Yes, endings need to wrap up loose ends and whatnot. But I think they also need to be left at least somewhat open-ended to allow the reader to think and wonder.

So, I want to know what you think about all this... Do you like books that make you think? Do you like endings that wrap up completely, or that are left open? What books have made you think the most?

Are We Missing the Point of The Hunger Games?

So. Maybe I'm just crazy, or maybe I'm just looking waaay too deep into things like I always seem to do. But, I don't know, I get kind of annoyed when I see tons of stuff about "Team Gale" or "Team Peeta" or just in general the obsession over the supposed romance present in The Hunger Games. I can't help but think that, by focusing so much on the romance, we're missing the point.

The first time I read The Hunger Games, I was horrified. It was horrifying to think about kids being forced to kill each other. That same feeling came back when I was watching the movie last night. Is it not sick that all these people from the Capitol are cheering, laughing, being sucked into the TV story of the Games when these kids are going in there to kill each other?? How can you not be thinking that there's something really wrong with this society,  where the main entertainment is an annual war between kids?

Source

There's a John Green quote, that's referring to the difference between lying and writing fiction, that I like. It highlights something about fiction that I like (and that I don't think my non-fiction loving father will ever understand).

"...The other big difference, I would argue, is that lies are attempts to hide the truth by willfully denying facts. Fiction, on the other hand, is an attempt to reveal the truth by ignoring facts."  (Source)

Fiction can be used to reveal the truth. I think different types of books do this in different ways. Contemporary novels, for example, can reveal truths about people and individuals. Dystopian novels have such potential in this area, I think. They have the potential to awaken people to the realities of our world today.

Yes, The Hunger Games is fiction. But today's society's obsession with entertainment and reality TV is real. Violence and war in this day is very, very real. Heck, even kids killing each other is a reality in some places around the world. Lots of dystopian fiction shows us things about our world by extremizing them, or even just incorporating realities into fiction. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, Feed by M.T. Anderson, and others.

It just makes me really frustrated. How can you read books like The Hunger Games and not think beyond the romance?? How can you not ask questions like "how far-fetched is that, really? Could it happen? How different are we really from the crazy entertainment-addicted Capitol citizens?" and then answering them with things like "You know, maybe it can happen. Maybe it is happening. Maybe we're not that different."

The Hunger Games is so, so much more than the romance, or the stupid "love triangle". Dystopians should, I think, make us wake up to harsh realties in our own reality, our own society, our world today. They should make us think. Every book should make us think. But I think (whoa, lots of thinking... haha) that the relationship in The Hunger Games, or any book, should not be our focal point.

What do you think? Are we missing the point of The Hunger Games?

Movie Trailers and First Chapters

A few weeks ago I finished reading the book Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. I'd picked it up because of the hype, but mostly because a friend recommended it to me. After I finished, I decided to look up the movie trailer, just because I was curious.

My first impression of the trailer wasn't really a good one. I felt like it didn't really tell me anything. It just showed a bunch of pictures and random clips. I kept on waiting for the trailer to show me a reason why I should watch the movie, but... nothing. I'm sure part of the reason for this is because it's based on a book, which will automatically draw people in, but still. I felt like the trailer should have showed me more of a reason to watch the movie.

Here's where I started to make the connection between movie trailers and (what else?) books. It is absolutely essential that you draw readers into your book. This should happen in the first few pages or at least the first chapter. The first chapter has to unveil a reason for reading the book, whether it be to find out what happens next or because the characters are awesome.

Now there's also the problem of giving too much away in the first chapter. Just like the movie trailer for Fly Away Home did. I remember one time I was over at someone's house and we were going through movies to watch on someone's TV or something, and they had trailers we could watch. Since Fly Away Home is an awesome movie, we watched the trailer. After, everyone joked that we didn't need to watch the movie because it had basically given everything away.

Obviously, you don't want to do that either. I guess most authors don't give EVERYTHING away in the first chapter, but I think this could also count for doing an entire first chapter on backstory. What's wrong with going through the entire movie in the trailer from start to finish is you've left nothing for the watcher to figure out, which is a lot of the fun of watching a movie. Or reading a book. You want to let your readers figure stuff out, make them use their brains. It is a lot more fun, and makes a book way better in my opinion.

Now... looking at a completely different trailer... um, Despicable Me (it's the first one I thought of)...

This trailer gives a bunch of reasons for watching the movie... the characters, the comedy, to see what's going to happen with Gru and the little girls. It also doesn't give away everything that happens in the movie, like the Fly Away Home trailer did.

So like trailers, books need to give the reader a reason to be there, a motivation for reading the book. This motivation will differ from genre to genre and from book to book, but I think it needs to be there. Maybe the cast of characters is why we should stick around. Maybe the gut-twisting suspense. Maybe the romance. Maybe, just simply, to see what happens next. But there has to be a reason for the reader to be there, otherwise they're just going to put the book down.

What makes you keep reading a book? What spikes your interest in the first chapter? What in a movie trailer makes you want to watch the movie?