Most Hated Chracters

I feel a little bad about this post. I realize that I am going to be attacking people's work and so I feel some guilt. However, bad or disliked characters are going to pop up from time to time and if you create one of these monstrosities you just have to grin and bare it. You guys just might have to remind me of this if someone names one of my characters on a list like this. But without further ado here are my most hated characters (TV, Books, Video Games, and Movies are included):

10 Katniss Everdeen (Hunger Games Trilogy, Books and in March a movie)

So much whining, and she can never remain conscious during any climatic moment

9 Delores Umbridge (Harry Potter series, Books and Movies)

Flat, annoying, and one sided. Not nearly the quality of Rowling's other characters

8 Wesley Crusher (Star Trek The Next Generation, TV)

Know it all Mary Sue.

7 Doctor Octopus (Spiderman 2, Movie)

I knew he was a good guy the whole time which made it hard to cheer against him.

6 John Mandrake (Bartimaeus Trilogy, Books)

Could have been one of the best characters in YA lit, but I felt like he was underdeveloped compared to Bartimaeus.

5 Navi (The Legend of Zelda, Video Games)

Annoying voice and popped up all the time with useless information

4 Bella Swan and Edward Cullen (Twilight, Books and Movies)

Shallow, angsty, and oblivious.

3 Jar Jar Binks (Star Wars, Movies)

Not sure why he even exists. Maybe George Lucas owed someone a favor?

2 Jon and Kate Goslin (TV)

I know these are real people, but if you don't realize that people are portrayed as characters in a reality show then I pity you.

1 Holden Caulfield (Catcher in the Rye, Book)

Reading Catcher in the Rye made me want to claw my eyes out. I found Holden and his slow decent into insanity to be as uninspiring as anything that I have ever read.

Favorite Characters

Who are your favorite characters of all time?

 

Mine include are not limited too:

Snape

Dumbledore

Zeddicus Zul'Zorander

Pug

Jimmy the Hand

Tyrion Lannister

Kvothe

Bartimaeus

Raistlin

 

 

I would love to  hear some of yours

#NaNoWriMo Day 1 #amwriting

Day 1 was a smashing success with over 2000 words. I am at a strange spot in the story where it is revolving around three characters at once. Sort of a Harry, Hermione, and Ron sort of thing. Except the Hermione of my story keeps getting lost in the shuffle. She has to be there, and her presence is important, but her minute to minute activities are getting lost in the story of the two guys.

It is appropriate for the scene, but not much like her character who is very boisterous. Do you think this is a problem? Have you noticed things like the before when there are multiple characters all traveling together in what you are reading or writing?

I only ask because they are about to take a journey together. Now I can write the story of the journey and throw in some mini adventure involving the magical horse they have with them, or I can skip the deals and get them to thier destination when the Hermione character is really going to take off.

What do you think?

Warming up for #NaNoWriMo 2011 #amwriting

I am back to blogging this month!

Since NaNoWriMo is just around the corner I am starting to get myself ready for the event. I am going to be continuing my work on last year's project so if everything goes well I will have 76000 words done by the end of November. You can look forward to daily updates as I blog to clear my head before writing.

So for the people who are doing NaNoWriMo this year: Are you doing a new project or are you working on something old?

I have not read nor edited anything from last year's project, but I am going to have to go back and reread it to get the thread of where I was in the story and to remember some of the nuance. Should I do any editing or should I just cringe my way through and edit when it is over? I would love your thoughts!

Adult Fantasy: The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

About the Book: What happens to legendary heroes when they grow tired of saving everyone? How do you motivate a hero? How does someone go from being an ordinary, albeit talented child to being the greatest hero in a generation? The Wise Man's Fear is Day Two of the back story of the legendary hero Kvothe.

My Thoughts: Again relayed mostly through a series of flashbacks, this story continues to be fun fast paced and exciting. Rothfuss reclaimed his wonderful writing style and again the voice clearly changes when he is writing in the past versus writing in the present. Kvothe is flushed out much more as a character, but his story takes a darker and more dangerous turn. Adult relationships flourish in all of their complexity. While there were a couple breaks in voice as the book went on, for the most part Rothfuss quickly brought the story back to where I expected it to be. My biggest problems are that the middle of the book is a sexual romp in a fairy realm and the story seems to be progressing too slowly. I can handle sex in a book, but it seemed like 200 pages of the book was devoted to sex, it just kind of dragged on and on. The other problem with progressing too slowly is this. In the present, Kvothe is around 30 years old. By the end of the second book, he is not even twenty in his flashbacks. That means in the next book he has to cover 10 years worth of back story and I am not sure how he is going to do it.

Since this series is called The KingKiller Chronicle, I am hoping that the series will be longer than a trilogy. I have not heard how many books this series is scheduled for, but I image it will take at least 2 more.

Overall this book was very good and had a much better ending. Rothfuss has won me back and I well be impatiently awaiting the next book. I give it a 7 out of 10.

An "Appropriate" Ending *SPOILER ALERT*

I don't care if the ending is happy or tragic. All I care about is an appropriate ending. I can't stand when everything changes at the end of the book. I don't like when the solution comes out of the blue without any foreshadowing, or when we find out the whole conflict really was no danger after all.

An inappropriate ending ruins books for me.

I have known where my ending was going to end up since the beginning, but I am wondering how to execute that ending.

**SPOILER ALERT**

It comes down to this question: How bothered would you be as a reader if the book ended on a very public murder, but you as the reader never knew which of the characters was killed?

Adult Fantasy: The Way of Kings By Brandon Sanderson

About the Book: Roshar is a world dominated by weather. Powerful, enchanted Highstorms sweep across the land with such fierceness and regularity that the plants have evolved to retract into the ground to avoid them. The energy of the storms provide powerful magic to Roshar's citizens and captured Stormlight can be used for everything from adding value to money to making legendarily powerful weapons and armor.

Kaladin is a brilliant soldier betrayed by his commander and sold into slavery for knowing too much. Shallan is a minor noble and talented artist who can capture a scene with a glance and duplicate it hours later, who's family no longer has enough money to survive, has a daring plan to steal a powerful magical item to try to save her family. Following the assassination of the king, and six years of war with the people who sent the assassin, Kaladin and Shallan must each risk everything just to stay alive.

My Thoughts: This book is massive, over 400k words and over 1000 pages. It is the first book of a ten book series, but it is amazingly written and the story is masterfully crafted. The characters are vibrant and leap off the page even if the background is more sparse than one typically finds in fantasy. The setting reminds me of the seafloor just without the water.

Part Lighting Thief, part Ben-Hur there is a lot of action and adventure. While not quite the page turner that Goodkind's Sword of Truth was for me, this book is definitely one of my favorites and I will be eagerly awaiting each new addition to this series. I have not spotted any major flaws other than perhaps its length, and a desire to see a few of the background characters flushed out a bit more particularly, Wit and Szeth. (of course assuming that the rest of the books will be just as large, Mr. Sanderson will have plenty of time to flush out these characters). I have had the ARC of the book for about a year and just never made the time to get to it, but now that I have I am drooling over the next one. I give it an 9 out of 10. Oh, and the audiobook is awesome too!