Dunno
(Day Forty-Three)
Sunday nights are the worst. Where did the weekend go?
Let's focus on the positive.
When we left for the lake on Friday, our backyard was flooded and everything was gray and dull. But when we got home this evening, it was like Spring had snuck in and infected everything... in the best way possible. The grass is bright green, the daffodils are coming up, and and the air smells like growing. I've got plans this week to clean up the yard and start controlling the weeds that are already sticking their heads up. I'm strangely excited about it, though that excitement will probably only last the first 5 minutes, given my existing feelings about weeding.
The lake was great. A couple days with my grandparents and away from the normal flow of things was exactly what I needed. I wish I could have stayed longer. But when we got home, we went to see Captain America 2, which was very satisfying. The Marvel movies are actually pretty well-written, most of the time -- and they spend time developing their characters. A good super-hero movie makes me really happy. You know what was not well-written? The third book of the Divergent series, Allegiant, which I finished Saturday. I don't think I even want to see the movie anymore given the way the third book went. Disappointing. Here are a few things we can learn from Allegiant, while I'm on the topic:
1) Don't in the third book of a series suddenly decide to have two narrators. Especially when you're not going to make them sound different enough that your reader can even tell which one is talking.
2) Don't abandon the world you spent the first book creating.
3) Stay consistent to the development of your freakin' characters. People start arbitrarily doing things their character never would do. By the end, the characters, even the two narrators, just feel like shells. The only reason I care even a little about them is because I'm holding on to who they were in the first book.
4) Don't take on too much so that you stop spending time on the story points that matter and instead just keep pulling in new characters, new worlds, and new plot points that your readers never have time to fully invest in.
5) SPOILER HIDDEN BELOW (highlight the text)
Don't freakin' kill off your main character if you're not even going to give it enough payoff or make it feel substantial. There was no point to killing Tris, and once she was gone, we were left with stupid, whiny, weak Tobias, who was an interesting character in the first book but by the end he's lost anything that would have made us care about him. I don't even buy that he loves Tris anymore.
But Allegiant aside, overall it was a nice weekend. Tomorrow after work I'll go running, as long as the weather's nice, and maybe some time this week I'll stop and pick up what I need to transfer my strawberries to a new container.
For now, though, I'm going to sleep. I feel like this post was really lame.
Sunday nights are the worst. Where did the weekend go?
Let's focus on the positive.
When we left for the lake on Friday, our backyard was flooded and everything was gray and dull. But when we got home this evening, it was like Spring had snuck in and infected everything... in the best way possible. The grass is bright green, the daffodils are coming up, and and the air smells like growing. I've got plans this week to clean up the yard and start controlling the weeds that are already sticking their heads up. I'm strangely excited about it, though that excitement will probably only last the first 5 minutes, given my existing feelings about weeding.
The lake was great. A couple days with my grandparents and away from the normal flow of things was exactly what I needed. I wish I could have stayed longer. But when we got home, we went to see Captain America 2, which was very satisfying. The Marvel movies are actually pretty well-written, most of the time -- and they spend time developing their characters. A good super-hero movie makes me really happy. You know what was not well-written? The third book of the Divergent series, Allegiant, which I finished Saturday. I don't think I even want to see the movie anymore given the way the third book went. Disappointing. Here are a few things we can learn from Allegiant, while I'm on the topic:
1) Don't in the third book of a series suddenly decide to have two narrators. Especially when you're not going to make them sound different enough that your reader can even tell which one is talking.
2) Don't abandon the world you spent the first book creating.
3) Stay consistent to the development of your freakin' characters. People start arbitrarily doing things their character never would do. By the end, the characters, even the two narrators, just feel like shells. The only reason I care even a little about them is because I'm holding on to who they were in the first book.
4) Don't take on too much so that you stop spending time on the story points that matter and instead just keep pulling in new characters, new worlds, and new plot points that your readers never have time to fully invest in.
5) SPOILER HIDDEN BELOW (highlight the text)
Don't freakin' kill off your main character if you're not even going to give it enough payoff or make it feel substantial. There was no point to killing Tris, and once she was gone, we were left with stupid, whiny, weak Tobias, who was an interesting character in the first book but by the end he's lost anything that would have made us care about him. I don't even buy that he loves Tris anymore.
But Allegiant aside, overall it was a nice weekend. Tomorrow after work I'll go running, as long as the weather's nice, and maybe some time this week I'll stop and pick up what I need to transfer my strawberries to a new container.
For now, though, I'm going to sleep. I feel like this post was really lame.