I think I might be the world’s biggest procrastinator. Why you might ask? Well, I’ve owned this blog for about 5 years and this is my first official post. I have found a million things to do and each time they are incredibly important, thus cannot wait for even another second when I even think about writing. I’ll let you in on a not well-known fact about me, I have this huge dream of writing, of becoming an author. Whenever I think about what it would be like to create a world that people want to be a part of it gives me happy tingles all over. I also hate people and would love to have to interact with them less daily, but that is another story. Imagine having complete control over the characters and every aspect of this foreign world! Ok, that makes me sound like I have control issues, but it is just about being able to take the qualities of people and accentuating the parts you like, but leaving out the parts you don’t like. Maybe not leaving out the parts you don’t like, but putting the parts of life that you wish would happen in the story. I feel like I’m still not making complete sense so let me explain. I am kind of a big justice person. I hate stories where the character is suppressed and unable to have any kind of voice.
My favorite character arcs are the ones in which the person is meek and suppressed, but by the end of the story, they find their voice and can draw strength to make things right. It always has you rooting for the character and for some reason when they finally stand up to the bully, you can’t help but draw some strength from that. Well, at least, I can’t seem to help it. I could talk for hours about character development and what all of it means to me. Good character development can make or break a book. If you have a good story, but your characters are one dimensional it can ruin the book. I love all kinds of books and all different genres, but I go through periods where I need to read something that is in-depth and has “meat” to it. Likewise, I sometimes want a book that is simple, mindless, and entertaining. I usually want those when my life is in an upheaval and I need a little less drama. It is kind of like watching one of those Lifetime movies…girl finds herself in a situation over her head, usually, because she is needing to “find herself”, a knight in shining armor arrives, but they don’t get along at first, then tender moments ensue, they give each other looks and find they are falling for each other only to then have a past love or situation arise that the other miss reads, hate comes back full force until one yells that they love the other one, then everyone lives happily ever after. The same story, insert new names and occupations. Add a little explicit love scene in the book and you’ve got yourself a fool-proof bestseller. I know for me I can only read so many of those before my brain goes numb. I want to read some stories that make me think a little. A character that I can see myself in and that challenges me to be better.
Vicious by VE Schwab is one of those books that was hard to read mindlessly. My husband even said that he couldn’t listen to his usually audible version because he couldn’t do other things while listening. The characters in this book are very complex because they are like humans, they are not definitively good or bad. I loved diving into this story and never quite knowing for sure who was going to end up the good guy. Even the “good guy” didn’t necessarily see himself as a good guy. That is genuinely the human condition…at the end of our own story we hope that we are the good guy, but a lot of times in the middle we are a little bit of both.