Grammar: Fragments

*cough* Awkward. This was supposed to go up yesterday.

Anyway, today I shall talk about using sentence fragments in your writing. Obviously, grammar-wise, fragments are a no-no. I was always taught in school that using a fragment in your paper is the basically the worst thing you can do. But let's be honest here - writers break the rules all the time. Sometimes we capitalize words that aren't supposed to be capitalized just because it's important to the book. Some of us even make words up. We don't use commas when we're supposed to, or we use them wherever we think they fit. And with all that rule-breaking, some people still write great books.

To me, fragments are no different. Obviously, there are plenty of times when they don't work, but sometimes they just make a bigger impact. And when you're writing in first person - well, we think in fragments sometimes, don't we? So why should our characters be any different?

For example, you could have something like His eyes stayed on me the entire time. Like he actually cared. The second sentence is considered a fragment, but it seems to fit. It makes a bigger impact to me than the revision would, which would be something like this: His eyes stayed on me the entire time, like he actually cared. 

And . . . that's all I've got for today :D

Heroes and Heroines

When you read a book, you don't usually want the hero/heroine to constantly whine and moan about what they have to do, so why should you write them that way?

A hero is defined as a person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal or a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities. A heroine is the same thing, just in female form. 

For the purpose of this post, I'll be talking about heroines, since most YA books I've read have female narrators. But all of this can be applied to a hero, too, for the most part.

In my opinion, when you're writing a character you want to be the heroine, who is mainly going to be the narrator, you still need to make them realistic. Sure, a heroine needs to have admirable qualities, but at the same time, they still need flaws. They can't be all high-and-mighty; they need to have problems. To me, that's what makes a true heroine - someone who can recognize they're not perfect, has some major issues just like everyone else, but at the same time still goes above and beyond to help other people. 

Another thing I think you have to be careful of is that your heroine can't just become a heroine right out of the blue. She can't be completely boring and whiny and teenager-like and then suddenly, at the climax of your story, save everyone. Even before she can be recognized as a "true heroine," she needs to have admirable qualities. Even if it's just something like stopping some bullying in the hallway.


Which brings me to another point - heroes and heroines can be found anywhere in your story. It doesn't have to be the narrator/main character. Sometimes, it's the random secondary character that saves the day, and I think that's okay - as long as there's some kind of predecessor to it. Maybe the secondary character stopped someone from bullying your main character. Maybe the secondary character stopped your main character from being chowed on by a wolf. I dunno. It can be anything. o.o


Since this post is so scrambled and probably confusing, I'll just say my main point is this: Heroes and heroines can be any character. For the most part, they're just like the other people in your book, but you need to make sure they're not the stereotypical whiny teenager. Of course, that goes for any character, really, but when it comes down to it, your heroine has to save the day - and hopefully do it in a smart way. 

Book Review: Dearly, Departed by Lia Habel

It's Saturday once again, and I've got a book review today :)

Dearly, Departed by Lia Habel
Publish date: October 18th, 2011 by Random House Publishing Group
//Amazon//B&N//The Book Depository//

Love conquers all, so they say. But can Cupid’s arrow pierce the hearts of the living and the dead—or rather, the undead? Can a proper young Victorian lady find true love in the arms of a dashing zombie?

The year is 2195. The place is New Victoria—a high-tech nation modeled on the manners, mores, and fashions of an antique era. A teenager in high society, Nora Dearly is far more interested in military history and her country’s political unrest than in tea parties and debutante balls. But after her beloved parents die, Nora is left at the mercy of her domineering aunt, a social-climbing spendthrift who has squandered the family fortune and now plans to marry her niece off for money. For Nora, no fate could be more horrible—until she’s nearly kidnapped by an army of walking corpses.

But fate is just getting started with Nora. Catapulted from her world of drawing-room civility, she’s suddenly gunning down ravenous zombies alongside mysterious black-clad commandos and confronting “The Laz,” a fatal virus that raises the dead—and hell along with them. Hardly ideal circumstances. Then Nora meets Bram Griswold, a young soldier who is brave, handsome, noble . . . and dead. But as is the case with the rest of his special undead unit, luck and modern science have enabled Bram to hold on to his mind, his manners, and his body parts. And when his bond of trust with Nora turns to tenderness, there’s no turning back. Eventually, they know, the disease will win, separating the star-crossed lovers forever. But until then, beating or not, their hearts will have what they desire.

Zombies! I love zombies, whether they're the eat-your-brain kind of way or the misunderstood way. (Though I will admit that I like the eat-your-brain type a little better.)

I will also admit that while the prologue was amazing, when I started the first chapter, I didn't think I was going to like this novel. I was just too confused - I had no idea what anyone was talking about, and I had no idea if Mink and Vespertine were the same person. It made my brain hurt. And then the entire beginning of the second chapter was basically just the info-dump. So I really thought I wouldn't like it.

But then it got better. The world that Dearly, Departed is set in is fantastic - and it's something fairly new, too, so I wasn't bored with it at all. The writing, most of the time, was great. It wasn't full of unnecessary details, but at the same time, it didn't leave anything out.

The place I really had a problem with was with the conflicting narrations. Most of the book is narrated by Nora and Bram, the two main characters, but there are a few other characters in there, too. It's simply too many people narrating for me. I really think most authors should just stick with two as a maximum, maybe three if they can pull it off, because it's too easy for characters to blend together. It was fairly easy to distinguish the difference between Nora and Bram's narrations, but when you add in the others, their narrations started to sound the same.

And the ending did not make sense to me. At all. >_>

Despite that, I still really liked the book. It didn't have a totally futuristic feel to it, and I liked that because we weren't overwhelmed by new technologies or other unfathomable things, but you could still tell that it wasn't definitely in this time period. I also loved the relationships in this book - not just the romance between Nora and Bram, but the friendship between Nora and Pamela and some of the negative relationships between some of the characters.

Ah, the romance. FINALLY, NO INSTA-LOVE. Well, there may have been insta-love, but it wasn't all "OMG FIRST-SIGHT I MUST HAVE HIM/HER." The pace of the romance was nice. Very nice, especially considering some of the books I've been reading lately. Sometimes Nora was a bit too innocent/shy for my tastes, but her and Bram have some adorably-awkward moments that I absolutely loved.

Also, this book gets an extra star just because Bram was not an acts-tough-and-has-slept-with-every-girl-but-is-actually-really-sweet character. Bram came pretty close to being an innocent virgin boy, even though he was still completely awesome, and I feel like that's not something you see in YA novels very much anymore.

Overall: While I was not a fan of the beginning and I wish the amount of narrators had been cut down, the plot was fantastic, the characters even more so, and Dearly, Departed was fairly original. 4 1/2 stars.

Inspiration

We all have those days where nothing comes out. Not even any word vomit. All you've got is a blank page, and every time you type three words you delete four. Or maybe you've got a writer's block that's been lasting for weeks. So how can you get inspired?

To be honest, I think you can find inspiration anywhere. While you're watching TV, when you look at a picture, even when you're just walking down the street. But one of the ways I find inspiration most often is simply by reading other books. Sometimes, reading another book might give me an idea for a single sentence, or maybe it'll remind me that there's something missing in my own book. Some people have said that they read a book that changes their lives, and they want to be able to do the same with their own book. Maybe you see a book's success and find that you want that, too. Whatever the reason, reading a good book always seems to give me inspiration.

And, of course, there's the obvious - music. I tend to listen to Florence + the Machine or The Fray when I'm feeling stuck. (I also like to listen to the song Sail by AWOLNATION, regardless of how weird it might be.)