The Persephone myth, and a random tree analogy.

In Greek mythology, Persephone is both the goddess of spring, and the Queen of the Underworld. One person, (well, goddess) and two opposites. In the beginning of the myth, Persephone is young and innocent. She symbolizes spring, and lightness. Then she gets kidnapped by Hades, and she’s no longer thought of the same way. She becomes the Queen of the Underworld. She eats a pomegranate before her mother takes her back. If you eat food in the underworld, well, you aren’t exactly gonna be free from the place forever. What I want to know is, within the time of being abducted, marrying Hades, and just hanging out in the realm of the dead, why did she only eat one thing?  I mean, if I was kidnapped by the King of the dead, I’d be doing some serious stress eating, and you can bet it wouldn’t be fruit. Do they have carbohydrates in the Underworld? Okay, so I’m starting to think this Persephone chic was seriously skinny. Anyway, somewhere along the line, she stopped being thought of as Demeter’s perfect little daughter, and became feared. She was known as “dread Persephone” if mentioned at all. Though mostly mortals called her by other names, cos she was apparently so scary.

In CONSEQUENCE, my Persephone is kind of innocent. At the beginning she’s really clueless about the world, but curious too. Then she’s stupid enough to go off with some guy she hardly knows cos she’s sick of living in a vineyard. Okay, she’s more naïve than stupid, so far… At the beginning of the book she’s very spring-goddessish, you know, long red hair, dresses, that kind of stuff. As the book goes on, she…well, basically, she grows up. For the first sixteen and over-a-half years of her life, all she knows is routine. She knows about growing grapes, and about painting wine labels, but she knows nothing of life. She doesn’t know love, she doesn’t know hate, she doesn’t really know anything other than a need to find out. Let’s just say by the end of the book she knows a hell of a lot about love and hate.

 Persephone is one of my “good characters”. Not just cos she’s one of my two protagonists, but because she is naïve and trusting (well, for awhile), and a nice person.

 I always thought nice characters would be easy to write, but Persephone’s not.  She’s got this whole duality thing going on, for a start. I mean, Queen of the Underworld/Goddess of spring is hard enough when you’re a goddess…try being a fictional character and having that duality. No, try having to write it. I think I subconsciously got some of that through with her personality. I mean, she’s innocent, mostly sweet, and beautiful. But there is this other side of her, which is kind of below the surface for most of the book. I think the “Underworld” is actually a metaphor for what I don’t know about her character. There are so many aspects of her which I can’t quite grasp, and those aspects are what make her. I hate it when I don’t fully understand a character. There is something which I put in AMEND which I got annoyed with myself about. I made a character something he wasn’t. I’m working on fixing that with TRANSCEND. Anyway, with Persephone, I don’t know her like I know say, Phoenix, my other protagonist. Phoenix is complex, but she’s far easier than my simple Persephone. Phoenix has a ton of issues, has commitment phobia, and some weird things with fruit. Persephone is stubborn, loyal, and not much else. Who do you think is the most complex? Well, surprisingly, it’s my little Goddess.

The “Queen of the Underworld” aspect of Persephone actually comes out more with the storylines toward the end of CONSEQUENCE. It also has some effect on the next two books, but saying that would give away some storylines that I want to keep hush-hush for now.

If someone said to me “choose one character, and tell me what they would do in any situation”, I would always choose Phoenix. I know what she would do in any circumstance anyone could put her in. That is not because me and her share some, uh, similarities. It’s because I know her inside out.

I don’t know Persephone like that. For practically all of CONSEQUENCE I dismissed her as simple and easy to write. I’m now totally kicking myself about that. She had so much potential, and not only did I not see it, I didn’t use it.

Some people, who have never held a pen in their lives, might say that fictional characters are like clay: you can mould them into shape until they are perfect.

As I said, anyone who thinks that has never even held a pen, probably never read a book, either.

Fictional characters are made out of wood, or maybe even stone. No, wood: they are like a tree.

First you get the outline. This is a young tree, which you are considering planting. Then you plant it, and make sure you use a tree protector, make sure it doesn’t get all chewed up by some wild animal (I.E your mind).

Then the tree starts to grow. You can prune it back to make sure it doesn’t go in directions you don’t want it to, but you don’t have that much control. This tree could be a stubborn little word-I-won’t-use, like, say Phoenix. She always decides her storylines, so annoying. Or it could be a character like, say, Kai. If he was a tree, he’d be the kind that is easy to prune, and never causes trouble. He would probably be some kind of fruit tree; therefore, his whole existence is giving to others. Phoenix would never be a fruit tree. She’s in my head right now yelling at me to put that fact in. Phoenix hates fruit. No, I think she would be an oak tree. Taking a while to grow, then making sure she’s with you for a long time. Persephone would be a willow tree.

Anyway, your tree is a little older now. You can’t prune it as much, only in winter. You love your tree, and you’re incredibly proud of it. This tree is also a complete pain in the neck. It gets in the way of most of your garden. The garden represents your life outside said tree. If you have a tree like Phoenix, well, she’ll make sure that an oak leaf falls on you and never leaves you alone. She’ll never let you forget who planted her.

If you have a Persephone tree, she won’t put leaves on you, she won’t hassle you. What she will do, is grow without telling you so. One minute she’s your beautiful naïve almost seventeen year old, then, she’s so incredibly brave. She’s turned into a hero, and you didn’t even see when. If you had pruned her a lot, she never would have become who she is. Though I think Persephone turned into a weeping-willow rather than just a willow tree.

Your tree is now almost fully grown, and it’s nearly time to move on from that part of the garden. You feel this overwhelming sadness, and you have no idea why. Then you realize it: this tree was everything to you. You spent so much time pruning it, or sitting under this tree rather than doing whatever you were meant to. This tree is so much of who you are, and you’re moving on from a major part of yourself. The book’s over, and you’re finished. Maybe you’ll take a cutting from that tree, make it a sequel. The cutting isn’t that same as the tree you planted. The cutting is just its child. Just cos your first oak is strong, it doesn’t mean her daughter will be. Maybe the cutting from the weeping-willow gets this disease which makes it seem sour.

Then, one day, there aren’t more cuttings to be made.

You move to a different part of the garden, and you plant a new sapling. It’s a young tree; it’s not ready to brave the weather on its own. Then you realize it doesn’t have to. There is an old oak, and a weeping-willow which are taking the worst of the wind. They’re what you see when you look at the garden. They are what the world sees.

One day, the world will see the tree that the sapling grew into, too. But not until this tiny tree has grown into the character she will one day be.

Woah! That oak tree sums up Phoenix perfectly: it's completely crooked.

Note to self: must stop insulting characters.

Genre Discrimination.

Okay, here is something to try: write a science fantasy novel, and tell people what genre it is. If people are sci-fi fans, you’ll run the risk of them hating it, because it’s not sci-fi enough. If the people aren’t sci-fi fans, you’ll get a polite smile. This polite smile more times than not translates to “Oh god, you don’t expect me to read this.”

When books contain science, people tend to assume it’ll be a book about science.

When I wrote CONSEQUENCE, I tried to avoid telling people the genre, because of discrimination.

CONSEQUENCE is science fantasy, not science fiction.

Take a fantasy novel ~ Say, Harry Potter ~ and describe why it’s fantasy.

Okay, Harry Potter is a wizard; he uses a magic wand to make things happen. There are magical creatures, magical objects, and loads of other awesome stuff.

Try Inkheart. Meggie’s father can bring characters out of books just by reading aloud.

Those are two different fantasy novels. In one, the fantasy is brought by a kind of magic, in the other; it’s a different kind of magic.

In CONSEQUENCE, I don’t have magic. But it is fantasy.

I use science, because in my characters’ world, science is more fitting than magic.

If there was magic, the book would be a good versus evil battle of magical power.
I swear to science that I will never in a million years write a book which is nothing more than good versus evil. (BTW, that last sentence was not insulting fantasy books, I love fantasy, I’m just using this as an example).

In CONSEQUENCE, most of my “evil” characters have something to tip the scales slightly; they’ve done something good in their lives. Not all of them, but the main “baddy” at least.

Science isn’t good or bad. It’s fact ~ nothing more, nothing less. I don’t actually like science that much as a subject, I don’t understand it: at all. But in this book, science is the characters’ greatest tool. It is their making, and it is their downfall.

When people turn up their nose at science fantasy, it really annoys me. If there wasn’t science in my book, it would just be a love story. (I’ll get to romantic fiction discrimination later).

The scientific element isn’t as strong in CONSQUENCE’s sequel, AMEND. In TRENSCEND, the third and final book in this trilogy, the scientific storylines re-emerge.

These storylines are things which will almost certainly never happen in the real world. But in my book, they are “possible” because of science. This is a world where science is extremely advanced.

They don’t have televisions or cars or mobile phones. There scientists work on things far greater than creating an iphone 3000, or whatever number they’ll be making in three hundred years.

 Now for dystopia discrimination.

 Dystopian fiction is probably my favourite genre. I’m fascinated by these horrible worlds. They have these characters that are so strong, and I always wonder how they can be. Dystopian worlds are worlds without hope. I don’t know how people can live without hope.

There is actually a sentence in CONSEQUENCE where my character Phoenix is saying about living without hope, and that comes from my love of dystopia. I always wonder what makes a person keep on living when their world isn’t worth living for.

I also think romance in dystopian fiction is so much stronger than in say chic-lit or something. In dystopian novels, the characters are in desperate circumstances, and it’s so much different from the real world. I think characters in dystopian novels fall in love quicker because, well, basically, everyone they love dies, so they have to cling on to the first living person they like.

Anyway; dystopia discrimination annoys me even more than science fantasy discrimination. Why? Because people don’t judge by genre, they judge by other books.

Someone once said to me that they owned Divergent, but probably wouldn’t read it cos it was “too like the hunger games”. 

As somebody who has read ~ and loved ~ both those novels, this really annoyed me.

Yes, they are the same genre, and they do have similarities, but they are not very similar.

I don’t like it when people judge books that they haven’t read.

What I really hate are people who judge things by reviews. What is a review? Someone else’s opinion.

Okay, for example: how would I review twilight? Well, I would probably give it one star out of five.

That is my opinion.

Twilight was/is incredibly popular, and lots of people love it.

Say somebody was going to read it, and they didn’t because I gave it a bad review.

That wouldn’t happen, seeing as people tend to tune out when I talk about books.

But anyway, this person could love twilight, and they’d never know all because I have vampiraphobia.

This brings me to my next example or genre discrimination.

I don’t read vampire novels.

I read half of twilight, and couldn’t finish it. I read breaking dawn, and did finish it. (I can’t believe I put that on the Internet!)

I also read a book called Blood Sinister. It was by Celia Rees, one of my favourite authors. And I enjoyed it. I think the best part was that it wasn’t a vampire “oh my god, please please eat me!” love story.

See, even that last sentence was discriminatory.

Then, we come to romance.

For years, I criticized romance novels. Well, all that happens is girl meets boy, loads of obstacles happen, girl hates boy, girl realizes she loves boy. Girl and boy kiss, and they all live happily ever after.

The irony is, my favourite singer is Taylor swift. She has been my favourite singer since I was ten years old. What does she sing about? Love, romance, crushes, break ups.

I actually love books with romance in, these days; I hardly read books without romance. I think it shows a softer side to main characters. The female leads in the books I read tend to be a bit…feisty. Having them fall in love softens them up a bit.

I write books with romance, too. But I still have trouble reading ones which are “just” romance. Due to the fact that I know how they end.

I am trying to broaden my taste in books though.

What have we next? Chic-lit.

This is a genre that I also avoided for quite a while. It was kind of a “what’s the point to it?” thing. I didn’t see the point in reading about people’s boring everyday dramas.

If you’ve read any of the books that I tend to mention as books that I like, you’ll know they’re kind of dark.

The truth is, I do read “what’s the point of it?” books every now and again. I can read them in a few hours, they don’t take much energy. The best characters don’t die, and I don’t go to sleep in emotional turmoil, all cos of the books I like.

Then, there are historicals.

They were my favourite genre before I became a full time futuristic dystopian fan.

The first two (extremely terrible) books I wrote were historical.

The funny thing is, I can actually see a lot of similarities between historical and dystopian.

Anyway, I used to read historicals all the time. I also read a lot of history books, combine that with the fact that I like to talk for extremely long amounts of time, you get this result: history lectures. I would talk about history all the time. I have Marie Antoinette’s time of death memorized. In fact, her two hundred and nineteen year death anniversary was just over an hour ago. (Give or take for time difference).

Anyway, people tended to think me and my love of history were a little crazy. I don’t talk about history very much these days, and I don’t read historical novels as often. Genre discrimination stopped me talking about something that I love.

When people get something historically incorrect, I’ll tell them. But I don’t talk about history like I used to.

Instead, I talk about books I love.

(Here is where I should apologize to my family for the fact that I can’t go a day without making a reference to Divergent).

I also talk about the books I write, therefore, I’m always going on about the plots of AMEND and TRANSCEND. It is rather fun when my sister’s like “Do you know that you’re a genius?” I doubt that I am, but hey, it’s a great compliment.

And, because it's the sixteen of October, a picture of Marie Antoinette.

Popular novels and character archetypes.

Yesterday, I finished reading one of my favourite books, Divergent. It was the second time I’d read it, and so I thought of it differently. The first time I read it I was getting to know the story, anxious to guess the next plot twist, and hoping that two characters would get together.

The second time was different. I knew what the characters where like, I knew all the plot twists. And those two characters did get together (YAY!!!!!!!!!). So this time I read Divergent, I spent a lot of the time thinking. This was a reflective read.

I read a lot of books. And I read all kinds of books.

Until recently, eighty percent of the books I read were relatively unknown. I had a knack for picking books that no one had heard of. Therefore, I could never “fangirl”. (Basically screaming and getting hyper over something with someone. In this case books. Note: fangirling isn’t so fun on your own) with someone.

Earlier this year, I read the hunger games. I was crying from an early stage in the book, usually a sign that I like a book, and I stayed up half the night reading it. I read it when it was incredibly popular, and right on the brink of becoming well, what it became, ridiculously famous.

This year I have read a lot of books, as well as writing two of my own. When I love a book, I begin to analyse every detail of it. Then, tonight, I was thinking about a part of Divergent, and a part of Harry Potter, then, I started thinking about what makes books popular, and what popular books have in common.

In Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Harry decides to sacrifice his life for the people he loves, and goes on a suicide mission to see Voldemort. In Insurgent (the sequel of Divergent), Tris (the main character) goes to the Erudite compound even though she knows they’ll kill her, to protect the people she loves.

In The Hunger Games, Katniss (the main character) is sarcastic and always in a bad mood, as well as being feisty and kind of violent, and not exactly a nice person. In Divergent, Tris is sarcastic, extremely feisty, and also has a tendency towards violence. These are the worlds the characters live in, these worlds are horrible places, and so the characters are a bit…well, how they are. Don’t get me wrong, I love these characters, Tris more than Katniss, but I love them both. Anyway, what other popular books are there? Twilight. I didn’t make it past chapter seven, the storyline freaked me out, I don’t like the idea of a teenage girl throwing herself at a guy who wants to eat her, but that’s just my opinion. Anyway, I’m hardly an expert on twilight, seeing as I only read half of it, but it is my next example. The hunger games; As well as killing people so she can survive, Katniss has two boys fighting over her, well, she does in the sequel. In twilight, Bella has two boys fighting over her. Though I personally prefer Katniss, she can look after herself, and doesn’t actually (or doesn’t think she) need these guys, Bella’s just kind of “I’m going to throw myself off a cliff into the ocean so Edward can come bite me”.

One of my favourite things about Divergent is the lack of love triangle. Well, I love Divergent cos it’s awesome, but that’s one of the reasons that it’s awesome.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, all the most popular novels tend to have things in common.

I think popular books have characters from a certain range of archetypes. Tris has aspects of Katniss and Harry, so people who like those characters will relate to her, and so on. Also, these archetypes are cross genres. Harry Potter is fantasy, whereas Divergent and the Hunger Games are futuristic dystopian, but the character thing comes across in all of them.

In my own books, I can’t find that particular archetype.

Persephone, my main character, is, for a start, not particularly feisty, or violence loving. She’s stubborn, but, at the end of the day, she easily falls into the “nice person” category. She doesn’t really have the Harry/Tris prepared to die to save people they love thing, though she would do anything to save people she loves, so maybe she does have that archetype.

Phoenix, my other main (and favourite) character, has a lot more personality than Persephone.

Phoenix has traits which actually tend to come with lesser main characters. She has a difficult past, (Tobias, Divergent. Well, character that main one gets together with (YAY!) rather than minor character, but not main main character. Okay, I can’t think of other examples, but there are some). Phoenix is smart, that tends to be a female sidekick (I.E Hermione, Annabeth) trait, as opposed to a main character one. Phoenix also is suspicious, has commitment issues, and runs away when she can’t handle things. (Katniss alert! Seriously, going to district two just cos she can’t kill the president and her boyfriend-whose-technically-not-her-boyfriend has tracker jacker venom in his brain.?Okay, understandable).

Also, there are scene archetypes.

In Mockingjay (Third hunger games book), Peeta (One of the two guys involved in the love triangle aspect) tries to strangle Katniss cos his brain’s been messed with with the venom of sci-fi wasps.

In Insurgent, Tobias (The ONE male love interest for Tris) tries to strangle Tris because he’s in a weird simulation caused by all the Erudite (it’s a Divergent thing).

OOOH just remembered another archetype. Percy Jackson from the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series has a smart female friend, and a male friend who mentions food on several occasions.

In Harry Potter, Harry has a smart female friend, and a male friend who mentions food on several occasions.

And then there’s setting archetypes.

Harry has to fight the evil wizard trying to take over the world, he goes to magic school.

Percy has to fight the evil titan trying to bring down Olympus; he goes to a magic camp.

Katniss lives in a society which is divided up based on what happens in each section. The government hate her for a reason which isn’t her fault.

Tris lives in a society which is divided up based on personality, and what is most important to each group of people. One of the factions hates her for a reason which isn’t her fault.

Rick Riordon didn’t copy J K Rowling, and Veronica Roth didn’t copy Suzanne Collins. (And I didn’t copy any of them, just thought I’d put that there seeing as I used my book as an example).

Yet these books have similarities.

Are books popular because they’re well written, or because people crave a certain kind of character?

Character deaths, and wherever that theme leads this blog to.

Last night, in one of my favourite TV shows, my favourite character died.

I am not the kind of person who cries at TV shows. I cry at books (A LOT!), and I even cry at the occasional movie, but hardly ever TV shows. I think maybe the reason I cried was not just because it was extremely sad, but because that character wouldn’t be coming back. Then, I started thinking about my own characters. I am sometimes a little ruthless when it comes to killing characters, and I don’t think about the consequences (yeah, ha-ha, irony alert!). There are two characters who die in CONSEQUENCE who I really liked, another who I liked, but was dispensable, and one who wasn’t very nice and was a minor character, so bye-bye characterwhosenamewhoIwon’tmention. The two characters who I really like, I did have a reason to kill. But as I set out to write the sequel, I really began to feel those characters’ absences. They were two of my favourite characters, and I killed them to make it dramatic. And then they were gone. Those two characters were nice people and good characters, they deserved a happily ever after. I didn’t give them one. Then, I started writing AMEND, and I realized that at least one of my main characters was seriously getting on my nerves. This character, whose name I also won’t mention, was really NOT a nice person. So there I was, stuck in a rut, all because of my brutality towards my nice characters.  It was only really towards the end of AMEND that I began to appreciate my main character for who she was. Yes, she was sadistic masochistic and a complete pain in the arse, but she was who she was, and I couldn’t change it. I don’t decide on my characters’ personalities, whenever I do, they always set me straight. My characters be themselves, and I have to put up with it (lucky me!). I don’t have much control over the content of my book, either. My characters stay true to themselves, so whatever situation I put them in; THEY find their way out of, even if it’s me who gives them the map. Though the consequence of cutting my favourite characters from CONSEQUENCE, and me being annoyed with the new characters in AMEND, is that I found myself gravitating towards the CONSEQUENCE characters that made it to the sequel. One of the characters who reached AMEND, is a character who at least four people have said I was like. In CONSEQUENCE, this character is a teenager, in AMEND she’s like thirty or something. So then, even though this is the character that is apparently most like me, I had to work with that fact that she was now double my age. There is an incident towards the end of AMEND where said character acts a little immature to get revenge on someone. I am actually considering removing said incident because most thirty-something year olds probably wouldn’t be that petty. But I enjoyed writing that chapter. Also, I tell myself that if this character is like me, that bit is staying in. I am NOT a revengeful person, but the thing that she does as revenge, is something that I put in because, well, it would be kind of amusing if it happened in real life. I also think that I, even when I’m in my thirties, will still have a weird warped crazy sense of humour, so if I was in that character’s position, I would do the same.

And, R.I.P lady Sybil, downton abbey won't be the same.