Books I Read: The Hunger Games

Title: The Hunger Games
Author: Suzanne Collins
Genre: YA Science Fiction
Published: 2008
Content Rating: PG-13 for violence*

Growing up in District 12 is hard for Katniss. She has to hunt, illegally, just to feed her family, and every year two children are chosen from their district to fight in the tyrannical Hunger Games. This year, it's Katniss' turn. She must fight for her life against 23 other teenagers put in the same position -- all for the amusement of the citizens of Panem.

No joke, this book reached into my chest, gripped me by the ventricles, and didn't let go. Katniss is an awesome character: tough, often heartless, yet willing to do anything to protect the people she loves. The characters she meets are awesome: the boy who may or may not secretly like her; her surprisingly-sympathetic stylist; her mentor, a previous winner of the Games driven to drunkness, but who makes himself (basically) sober when he sees Katniss has a fighting chance.

The world is awesome: a post-apocalyptic America where the majority does hard labor for the few. And the games... Geez, it's like Survivor had a baby with Lord of the Flies and then gave it steroids. It's that cool. Before I read this, my favorite book was easily Ender's Game. Now... I'm not so sure.

One warning though: it leaves you hanging. I mean, the games end and everything, but the end of the book is not The End, strictly speaking. Fortunately there's a sequel (and more fortunately, I have it on my shelf).


* Content ratings based on what I think a movie might be rated, if the things shown in the book were shown in the movie. Ratings are very subjective, and I don't always remember/notice things. If you're unsure whether the book is right for you, do some research so you can make your own decision.

The Problem With Quidditch

One totally optional, but (in my opinion) totally fun aspect of world building is making up fictional games for your world. Like made-up holidays and festivals, games unique to your world can give it a deeper feel and provide an endless source of subplots, conflicts, and climactic settings.

For a lot of fictional games, the rules don't actually matter. Nobody knows how to play that chess game R2-D2 plays against Chewbacca, but the scene gives the world a deeper feel and gives us a taste of Chewbacca's character (also Han's and C-3P0's). Avatar: the Last Airbender frequently uses a game called Pai Sho to reveal things about one of the characters, but the rules are never explained.

But sometimes you want more than that. A critical event might turn on the outcome of a bet, like in Pirates 2 or Phantom Menace. You might have climactic events that center on the playing field, like Harry Potter's Quidditch. Or your entire plot might center on a game, like Ender's Battle Room. In these cases, the reader needs to understand and care about what's going on. They need to know the rules, which means there need to BE rules.

The easiest way to make a fictional game is to take a real-world game and change it slightly. Take chess and give the pieces fantasy names. Take soccer* and give it two goals instead of one, or play with three teams at once on a circular field. But whatever you do -- whether you vary a real game or invent one of your own -- it needs to be a game that, for the most part, would make sense in the real world.

Here's where Quidditch fails. The made-up game starts okay: basically basketball with broomsticks, three goals per team instead of one, extra balls that hurt/distract the players, and a snitch to determine the end of the game. None of these variations break the game, and they all make it more interesting. If we had flying broomsticks and semi-sentient balls, this is a game we could play in the real world.

The problem is the point value of the snitch. Every goal in Quidditch is worth 10 points, but whoever grabs the snitch simultaneously ends the game and earns 150 points -- 15 goals. The overall effect is that regular goals don't matter. Ever. Unless the score reaches 15-0,** the rest of the game has exactly the same tension as if both teams just sat around and waited for the snitch to show up (which, really, why don't they?).

The only reason we don't notice is because the protagonist is the one who gets the snitch. Can you imagine if Harry was the one making meaningless goals, while some minor character caught the snitch and won the game? We also don't notice because usually something else is going on during the match -- like someone's trying to kill Harry or something -- so we don't actually have to pay attention to the match. But to me, all the wizards who go crazy over every goal seem silly and short-sighted.

So by all means, include made-up games in your world. But give them some thought. They don't have to win Game of the Year or anything, but they should at least make real-world sense.

Though I guess if you really are writing the next Harry Potter, it doesn't matter.

UPDATE: As I mention in the comments, I do like Harry Potter. A lot. It has it's flaws, but there's a reason I own all seven.


* A term I use, not because it's correct, but because it's the least ambiguous. They call it football in Thailand too.

** Which is ridiculous. When was the last time you saw a soccer team up 15-0? Or an American football game at 105 to nothing? Unless you were watching Big Leagues Beat Up on Tiny Tots Day, these scores just don't happen. Not at a professional level anyway.

What's Your Backup Plan?

Yes, I mean the title literally.

Until a few years ago, I never really thought about backing up my stuff, not at home. Part of it was that I had nothing worth backing up; I didn't write much, my music was on CDs, my pictures were on glossy paper, etc. My strongest backup method was to put things I thought were important onto a CD every so often -- which, because it was troublesome and I'm lazy, turned out to be once every 6-12 months.

So when my hard drive failed, I lost months of stuff -- pictures of my friend's Karen village wedding, my son's ultrasound pics, a month's work from my novel... It was a Bad Day. I made a resolution then, and I encourage you to do it now. If your hard drive failed completely, to the point where even recovery services could do nothing, what would you lose?

And what are you going to do about it?

It's not just hard drive failure. Theft, fire, and viruses are all possibilities too. But hard drive failure is the most likely. You may never get robbed and your house may never burn down, but unless you buy a new computer every year or two, your hard drive WILL fail someday.

Go ahead. Prove me wrong.

So as I said, I'm lazy. I needed a backup plan I could set up once and forget. I'm also cheap and well-aware of the strength of the open source community. I found a program called DeltaCopy, which is basically a Windows wrapper around an old, powerful Unix program. It's free, it's fast, and it works with Windows Scheduler so I don't have to think about it.*

Now my files gets backed up whenever my computer is idle and the kid's computer upstairs is on. The backup is usually current to within a day. And every month I copy the upstairs backup to an external hard drive which I keep locked away.**

So if my hard drive fails, I've got the upstairs copy that's a day old. If my house gets robbed, I've got the locked up copy that's a month old.

If my house burns down, I'm kinda screwed. But I figure it'd have to be a magical fire to burn down both floors of my brick-and-concrete house before I can get my laptop out. And I'm not aware of any wizards who want to destroy my stuff.

I've also started e-mailing chapters to my alpha reader (despite the fact that she lives in the same house and uses the same computer) because it's convenient and can be used as yet another backup for my most important documents.

If you don't have a backup plan, stop whatever you're doing and make one. At least save your work and your pictures -- whatever's important to you. It doesn't have to cost much. A little research can find free online storage, or software like DeltaCopy. External hard drives aren't that expensive, and apparently Windows 7 has some kind of backup scheme as well.

And just in case anyone is still being lazy about this, anyone have more horror stories of stuff they lost because they didn't back up?


* Well, usually. Sometimes it has some way-cryptic errors, like "writefd_unbuffered failed to write 4 bytes" which technically can mean lots of things but in my experience only means "the disk is full."

** Said copies are very fast because only files that have been changed since the last backup are copied. Still, it's a good idea to do a clean backup every once in a while.

That Thing Where I Draw: Masks or Filters?

I often feel like there's two Adams, and I'm always afraid one of them is a mask. Maybe both of them. I worry about a future in which I meet some of you in person -- or that one of you who DOES know me in person will notice something amiss -- and you find out one of these is a fake.


But the more I think about it, the more I think there's just one me. It's not that I'm putting on a mask; I couldn't put on an act like that for very long if it didn't come from something real inside of me. The truth is probably more like this:


Depending on how I know you, you might get a different version of me. But it's still me. Social Adam is not very social (I can hear my wife laughing). Online Adam is only social because that's the whole point of being online. My sometimes-grumpiness doesn't show up here because I filter it out (usually). In many social situations (like with scary people, new people, situations where I have to talk, situations without food or a movie, or any other time in which I cannot hide from the attention of others), my heavy filters pop up, and what you get might appear very different.

But it's all me. I swear.

Does anyone else get like this?

Books I Read: Silver Phoenix

(Note: It may appear that I'm reading books fast, because I posted a book just last week. The truth is I meant to start talking about books a while ago, but haven't gotten around to it until now. I usually only read a book a month, if I'm lucky.)

Title: Silver Phoenix
Author: Cindy Pon
Genre: YA Fantasy
Published: 2009
Content Rating: R for a scene of almost-rape, a scene of almost-sex, and many scenes of violent action.*

On the day of her (unwanted) betrothal, Ai Ling discovers a strange and frightening ability to hear the thoughts of others. When her father disappears on a trip to see the Emperor, she goes to rescue him and finds that her ability is more powerful than she thought. She has been chosen by the immortals to destroy an ancient evil that has ruled the Kingdom of Xia from the shadows for generations.

I'm sort of a sucker for Asian, or even pseudo-Asian, folklore. This book is like a YA version of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Set in ancient China, Ai Ling faces demons, makes mixed-race friends (to which I also have a soft spot, I guess), and talks to the immortals themselves. That was the most interesting part to me: the portrayal of the gods and immortals of ancient China. We just don't get enough of that in the West, and it was weird to read sometimes, but also very cool. Like watching Spirited Away.

At the same time there was something that didn't grab me as tightly as I wanted it to. (MINOR SPOILER): It may have been the idea that Ai Ling was living out someone else's destiny -- actually that of a previous incarnation. I was really curious about the character of Silver Phoenix (Ai Ling's past life) and why she did what she did, setting things up for Ai Ling. (END SPOILER)

Although it may have just been my Western mindset messing things up. Whatever it was, I'm definitely interested in a reading a sequel and staying in this world a while longer.



* I base content ratings on what a movie might be rated if the things shown in the book were shown in the movie. Please remember that ratings are subjective, and I don't always remember/notice things. If you're unsure the book is right for you, do some research so you can make your own decision.

Dealing With the Funk

Writing is hard, at least if you let other people see your work. There are three stages in particular that, for me, are harder than any others: beginnings, critiques, and rejections. I always get depressed about these, but I've learned some ways to get through them.

Beginnings
I talked about starting new stories before. How the new story always seem so crappy compared to the polished perfection of the one you just finished. Ideally you want to push through until you find "the zone" again, but it's not easy.

The solution that works for me is an alpha reader. The point of an alpha, as Natalie says in her own post on the subject, is "to love you no matter what and be wildly enthusiastic about your desire to write."

Don't get me wrong. An alpha doesn't blindly say, "This is awesome!" no matter what you write. That would be mildly encouraging, but it would get old, and it is not helpful. A good alpha reader encourages what you're doing right without making you feel like an idiot for doing things wrong. They see the gold that, when you're starting something new, you just can't see for yourself. They help you through the New Beginning Funk (also the Sagging Middle Funk and the Can't See How My Characters Are Going to Make it Through This Climax Funk).

Critiques
An alpha reader provides a kind of critique, but you and they both know they're not reading a finished work. Beta readers (and other species of critters) are more critical than that. Sending work to a beta is like saying, "This is as good as I can make it without your help," and they respond accordingly. Sometimes harshly.

I never like getting critiques. I'm not allowed to read them in the hours before I go to bed; if I do, I don't sleep. When I do read them, I need a good hour or two of space just to get over it. Nothing puts me in the funk faster.

But getting out of the Critique Funk is even easier than the other kinds. I don't need an alpha, I just need myself. My solution is to make a plan and get to work. Nothing makes me feel good about my story faster.

Rejections
Here's the tough one. Alphas see potential. Betas see things to improve. But what do you do with agents and editors who say nothing except, "This isn't for me"?

Some personalized rejections can be treated like critiques. Others are too vague ("I didn't connect with the character enough") or are simply form rejections which cannot be used to improve, no matter how much we wish they could.

Rejection Funk is much harder to deal with, but there are two things you can do: (1) send the story somewhere else and (2) write something new. I recommend both simultaneously. Hopefully by the time you run out of places to send it, the new thing will nearly ready to send on its own.

Of course there is also the time-tested solution of escape. Read a book, watch a movie, eat chocolate, get drunk... These are good, but they are not solutions in the strictest sense. They will help you feel better and can aid in emotionally preparing yourself for what needs to be done next, but eventually you have to do something. I suppose you could also give up and regret it for the rest of your life. But what fun is that?

So what about you? What are the hardest parts of dealing with writing for you, and what do you do about it?

My Writing Process

My amazing wife gives me two hours of dedicated writing time most days. One would think I could produce novels like some kind of ninja cyborg with all this time, but for some reason that never happens. As an experiment, I recorded my writing process to see if I could determine where the problem lies.

1:00 - Unplug laptop and bring it upstairs.
1:01 - Open laptop. Go to the bathroom while it wakes up.
1:03 - Wonder why laptop isn't waking up. Reboot.
1:06 - Open manuscript, writing stats, and all the other things I need to start writing.
1:10 - Start writing.
1:14 - Realize I have no idea where I was. Have to reread what I did last time.
1:16 - Well that's just terrible word choice. I can't leave that there. (Edit)
1:18 - Is that what side his eye patch was on? Let me check...
1:23 - (Reading old scene) Wow, I am a TALENTED writer. What was I doing again?
1:25 - It's been half an hour and I haven't written anything. Crap!
1:26 - Okay. (Typing) Chapter 14 - To Be Titled [enter][enter] [left-justify] Hagai... Hagai what?
1:40 - Realize my mind wandered from Hagai to Sam to the climax to my query letter to what I will say when an agent calls me to what I'll post on my blog when I get an agent...
1:48 - Realize I haven't been thinking about writing for at least 15 minutes now, and the last thing I wrote was Hagai.
1:49 - Okay. Hagai peered over the ship's railing at the ocean hundreds of meters below.
1:50 - Hundreds? How high should they be. I need to look this up...
1:55 - Wow. I didn't know H.G. Wells wrote an airship novel..
2:05 - What time is it? Dang it! Okay. I'm not allowed to open my browser again.
2:06 - "Do I have to?" Hagai asked. "Can't make port with firehooks in the hull," Ren said. "Causes all manner of... of... problems? Anxiety? There's gotta be a better word than that.
2:08 - Boy, Open Office's thesaurus sucks. My real one's downstairs. Fine, I'll open my browser again just to check real quick. No Wikipedia.
2:10 - Anxiety, distress, foreboding... None of these feel right. Is this something I could make up a slang word for? What's a good metaphor for unrest?
2:15 - Hm, an e-mail...
2:25 - Crap!
2:50 - Wrote 400 words. That's good for today, yeah? Maybe I can see if any blogs have updated. You know, like a reward...
3:15 - Me: "Sorry I stayed up there late, honey." Cindy: "Oh, that's okay. How was your writing time?" Me: "Good. It was good. I think I'm getting faster."


(Note to Cindy: some events have been exaggerated for comedic effect. Please, please, please don't take away my writing time. I'm totally good for it.)