We Need To Talk About Divergent: Part 1

I have this problem where I like to read books that are currently popular with the YA audience, because, y'know, as a writer I like to keep up with where the market's at. Currently the YA market orbits around things labelled Dystopian, thanks to that thing called The Hunger Games.

Remember that (painfully recent) time when you'd walk into a bookstore and look in the YA section and EVERY SINGLE BOOK looked like Twilight? Thankfully we're finally moving past that stage and now every book looks like The Hunger Games. For example, this image here on the right is the cover of Divergent, the debut novel of Veronica Roth. Note the pretentious Oh-Look-At-Me-I'm-The-New-Hunger-Games cover design. Not really the author's fault, of course. Got to love publishers/marketers and their irritating love of making every book look the same. Ugh.

I was really, truly hoping that this book would be great because I was so disappointed with the ending of THG. Surely there's some gem of a Dystopian book out there that I could really love? I know, I'm picky, but I am capable of loving YA books (Saving Francesca, The Fault In Our Stars, Tamar, Holes, etc), so it was entirely possible that I could love this one.

It wasn't long before I was let down.

When I started thinking about how to write a coherent review on this book, I couldn't think where to start. So I've decided instead to write a blow-by-blow account of my reading experience, which means I'll be saving people like Keira the trouble of having to read the book (trust me!). Anyway, just so you're not struggling to decipher the basic story line in my rant, here is the back-cover-blurb to get you started:

In sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior’s world, society is divided into five factions – Abnegation (the selfless), Candor (the honest), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent) – each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue, in the attempt to form a “perfect society.” At the age of sixteen, teens must choose the faction to which they will devote their lives.

On her Choosing Day, Beatrice renames herself Tris, rejects her family’s group, and chooses another faction. After surviving a brutal initiation, Tris finds romance with a super-hot boy, but also discovers unrest and growing conflict in their seemingly “perfect society.” To survive and save those they love, they must use their strengths to uncover the truths about their identities, their families, and the order of their society itself.

Yeah, quite obviously that's not the ACTUAL blurb that's on the back cover, but I stumbled across it on this blog and liked it a lot better than the original. And now, without further ado, We Talk About Divergent.

Back Cover
At this point I'm already not a fan of the society-divided-by-virtues concept. But hey, I'll try not to judge now and just give it a go. Maybe if Roth gets detailed with the world building it'll be really cool. 

Page 1
All righty, so the main character (Beatrice) and her family are part of the Abnegation faction. This is about being selfless, apparently. Realistically I can't imagine that one whole fifth of this future Chicago would identify Selflessness as the main characteristic that they're going to live by. I probably wouldn't, to be honest. But I'll just roll with it for now. Maybe they're actually a really tiny faction.

On with the prose: "I sneak a look at my reflection when she isn't paying attention..." Oh dear. By page one Beatrice is looking at herself in the mirror. Surely she's not going to - nope, there she goes, she's describing herself. "I see a narrow face, wide, round eyes, and a long, thin nose..." Wow, that was  such a necessary description of the character - I feel so informed. Thanks, author! I'd really prefer to be introduced to the character by their actions and personality, seeing as this is first-person and all, but you know....

Page 3
Introduction of Beatrice's brother, Caleb. Again with an unnecessary character description of his facial features. And also this horrendous sentence: "He also inherited my mother's talent for selflessness." I get that Abnegation holds selflessness in high regard, but last time I checked, it wasn't a talent. More of a virtue. Where is her editor?

Page 4
Apparently everyone in Abnegation wears grey robes, like the Weasley kids at Hogwarts. Weird.

Page 6
Okay, so I'm only at the end of the first chapter, but already I need to stop and think about this concept again. So far in the story we've only been told that this is what the future looks like, but there have been now clues as to how it got this way. Also, society is still functioning fairly well, after all the main characters live in houses and ride the bus and go to school. Either way I can't understand why dividing the society into factions based on virtues is a good idea. How come there are only five? Why do people agree to defining themselves with only one virtue? There are a million other dividers that society already separates itself by - race, culture, financial status, etc. Have these completely disappeared? If so, how did that happen? And also, where is the rest of the world? Is it gone? Is it also divided into little factions like this future Chicago? Are they the same factions? Are they different? Where is the Chicago government? Or has the government been destroyed by someone else? Apparently a lot of the city has been rebuilt, but there is no explanation for why or what happened to it. And there's this building that "was once called the Sears tower, but we call it The Hub". WHY? WHAT IS THIS BUILDING? If I don't get answers to any of these questions soon I'm going to pretty annoyed. 


Page 7
Beatrice has a class at school called "Faction History" and she goes into it. Funny, why didn't she take us with her? That sort of information WOULD BE USEFUL TO THE READER, VERONICA. At this point, I actually wouldn't mind a little Info Dump. So far all I know is that the Erudites (intelligent ones) hate Abnegation, and Dauntless are weird tattooed folk who jump off moving trains. 


Page 18
Beatrice has to do this weird aptitude test for the Choosing Ceremony, to help determine which faction she's actually supposed to be in. It all happens in her head after she takes this drug. An imaginary dog attacks her and some strange guy yells at her, asking if she knows this murderer. I still have no idea how these things help determine the kind of person she is.


Page 23
So, either the test failed or she failed the test - I'm not sure which - because she's now DIVERGENT (whoa, title drop!), meaning she actually fits into three factions and she can decide which one to go into. Oh, and being divergent is REALLY RARE AND REALLY DANGEROUS, but we haven't been told why yet. It is probably Foreshadowing An Epic Climax. We hope. 


Aaaaaaand those are my thoughts on the first 3 chapters. And I will come back later and write more about the crazy experience. Here's to hoping this book gets better! :D

Murdered Darling Monday #1

Got another segment for ya. I stole this one from the lovely girl who runs *Headdesk*, which I insist you check out if you haven't before. Especially if writing is your thing.

This segment, appropriately titled Murdered Darling Monday, is for scenes that I've written that I liked but had to cut for various reasons. If you're one of my beta-readers for "Semblance", you'll be familiar with a lot of the dialogue in this brief scene, but I thought I'd post it anyway. This was the first draft of the meeting between two of my main characters, Jordan and Hayden. The context is a funeral (changed to a wake in the current draft), and previously Jordan spotted this boy during the service, looking like he might faint from the heat. "Semblance" is the first in what I expect to be a series about some teenagers with super powers. In this scene, Jordan is unbeknownst to the fact that Hayden is a cryokinetic, someone who can create and manipulate ice. 

  ‘Hey, excuse me.’ 

  She looked round. The sweaty boy was standing by the air-conditioner, motioning for her to come closer. She glanced back to see her father nowhere in sight, and so went towards him. The boy smiled as she approached. ‘I saw you earlier - you look really familiar - have we met?’ he asked. 

  His eyes were bright green. Jordan scanned the rest of his face and shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think so.’ 

  The boy shrugged. ‘Can’t place you anyway. My name’s Hayden Connor.’

  She took his outstretched hand and shook it. ‘Jordan Elliott.’ 

  At that, his eyes widened. ‘You’re an Elliott? Is your dad’s name Daniel?’ 

  ‘Well, yeah -’

  ‘Oh, my gosh. Your dad is Daniel Elliott. The Daniel Elliott?’ His hands curled into excited fists. ‘I don’t believe this!’ 

  Jordan frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’ She’d never heard anyone talk about her father like that. ‘What’s so special about him?’ 

  ‘Daniel Elliott,’ Hayden repeated. ‘He was on the last elite team in the academy. His strength powers are amazing, I’ve heard.’ 

  ‘Strength powers? I - what?’ 

  Hayden stared at her. His shirt collar rippled under the blast from the air-con. ‘But you must know…’ His eyes darted back and forth, and for a moment he was silent. Then he said, ‘Do you … not have powers?’ 

  She couldn’t make sense of his words, and so she just shook her head. His shoulders sagged a little. 

  ‘Oh. Well,’ he added, with a twitch of smile, ‘Maybe you’re like a late bloomer, y’know? If something ever changes, you can come train with us. My dad says his powers lay dormant until he was almost sixteen. Maybe it’s the same with you. Sometimes you just gotta give them a kick-start.’

  She opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but at that moment she heard her father call her name. 

  ‘I have to go,’ she said. She started to trail backwards, and his green eyes followed her as she went. 

  ‘See ya round,’ he said.

  Daniel was waiting by the door, his sunglasses hanging around his neck. ‘Who was that you were talking to?’ he asked. 

  Jordan shrugged. ‘His name’s Hayden. He knew Hezekiah.’ And you, she thought. 

  A look of recognition flitted across Daniel’s face, but for some reason he didn’t elaborate on it. She wondered what he would say if she told him what Hayden had said. Maybe Hayden had had the wrong person. Either that, or her father was hiding a very big secret. 

Why it's a Darling: I was really happy with the description of Hayden and the air conditioner, and was disappointed that it wasn't fitting in the rewrite of the scene. I did, of course, keep some of the lines of dialogue the same in the rewrite, because in terms of character they worked very well for me. I also liked the way Hayden just sees her and starts talking, leading the conversation the whole way, which is very like him. He still does this, but in a slightly different way, in the current draft.

Why it got Murdered: The big problem was that the context created a huge problem for me when I tried to write the scene after this. The setting was too vague, and I knew I had to make it more specific. That's why I reset the scene at a wake, in a house, by the pool in he backyard. It works much better for me.

Anyway! Currently writing chapter four, which is going well, albeit slow. Better keep going with it. The goal for today is to finish it, which means I have about 1800 words still to write! Gonna get cracking. Ta ta. 

Ugh.

So I'm having an awful moment where I'm looking at my writing and thinking, this is all terrible! This is going to need so much editing to be any good!

But then I remember that I need to push those thoughts aside and save them for later. I'll never finish the first draft if I keep going over the first two chapters again and again.

So I changed my desktop picture to give me a little reminder. It's now a white background with the words 'Just tell the story' in the middle. That's my new motto. Just tell the story. Don't worry about the sentence structure or the description or your voice, just get the story out on paper. The other things can be fixed later.

Ugh. Sometimes I consider just forgetting this whole 'writing' thing, but then I think of the finished project that I so desperately want to have and I keep going.

Onwards!

I've already decided that if I haven't finished a first draft by November (which is, unfortunately, likely) that instead of writing a whole new novel for NaNoWriMo I will set my own personal goal and try and write 50,000 more words of the story in November. And if in the (also unlikely) even that I run out of story before I reach 50,000 in November, I'll just started editing.

Anyway. Back to Scrivener I crawl go.