I got summer reading, and once again, I hate it. It was Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson. It is about a girl who is "A high school outcast".
First, 20 points for originality. Oh boy, a High School Outcast! In a highschool so cliche it could be a high school girl itself!
Firs off, about 20-40 pages in you really start to get annoyed by the main character. She is lazy, incompetent, and ignorant. I will admit that the humor is pretty good at some points, but if I wanted dark humor I would read Douglas Adams.
As later revealed in the book, she has a perfectly understandable reason for being so depressed. My problem is, why would you not give even hints about this before hand, instead of shoving it into your face near the end?
The character development. Weak, weak weak. The term would be "Cardboard Characters". With the exception of the main character, they are all 2D, flat, weak, and worst of all, predictable. Not like a real person would act, not even in the slightest.
You can't write a book with so many people, if only one has any character.
Otherwise, its your typical formula book.
For those of you who don't know what that is, its when the writer sits down, outlines a full plot, and writes exactly whats on the paper.
Not how you write. Writing should flow, evenly and smooth, with surprises, and protuberances that seem totally natural. This was blatant, crude, and events occur like they were scripted, which they were. You want to have a basic idea of what to write, not everything sentence by sentence.
Anyway, thats my rant.
