I spent most of this morning crying over a book. Eighteen
months ago, I read this totally amazing book called Divergent. Reading it
shifted something in me, altered my outlook on life, on humanity, on myself. I
have always questioned things, analysed things, and Divergent made me analyse
myself, question myself. It helped me discover more of who I am. Each time I reread
it, I get something more out of it. And each time I reread, I find myself
relating more and more to the main character.
Yesterday, I bought Allegiant, the final book in the
Divergent trilogy. I planned to have a “Sleep is for the weak” attitude and
stay up all night reading, but at about quarter to three, I put the book down
and decided to finish it in the morning.
So when I woke up this morning, I read the final 116 pages
of Allegiant. And I spent the last 50ish pages completely sobbing. I found the
ending beautiful, in a tragic way. It was so human, so heartbreaking, and so
honest.
I always thought that The Hunger Games was the book that
changed me the most, but now I think it was Divergent. That book taught me so
much about basic human personality traits such as selflessness and bravery. But
the thing I love most about that book is the characters.
I think Tris, the main character, is one of my all-time
favourite fictional characters. I love her because she’s not perfect, and she
doesn’t always make the right decisions. But she is brave, she is selfless, she
is a hero. And she is amazing. She is so human, yet she is so much more than
human.
The characters of Tris and Tobias seem so real, and when I
read those books, I feel like I am reading about real people, not just
fictional characters. Tris and Tobias’s relationship is flawed, it is
imperfect, because they are imperfect, but there is something pure about it,
something beautiful. They belong together not just because they love each
other, but because they make each other better people.
When I read books like Divergent, Insurgent, and Allegiant,
I am reminded of why I want to be a writer. Some books can affect people so
deeply, and I want to write like that. I want to create characters that become
so real that they carve their way into people’s hearts. I want to create
characters that make a mark.
When I finish reading book series’s that I love, I always
have this feeling of what will I do with
my life now? And for some reason I don’t have that with Allegiant. Perhaps
this is because the ending felt so…final, I guess. It was a conclusion to a
chapter in those characters lives, and it was a conclusion to a chapter in the readers’
lives.
When I am obsessed with a book, I always think the obsession
will never fade. When I read The Hunger Games, my sister said: “You won’t still
be obsessed with this in a year from now.” I was, by the way, but in a
different way. Some obsessions fade, they give way to something else. I guess
the obsession is like having a crush on the book, and then the crush turns to
love, and what you feel for the book is a lot deeper.
I am not crazy obsessed with The Hunger Games any more. I
love it; it is one of my top two favourite books (oh my gosh, I actually
managed to narrow it down to two!), and it means a lot to me. The Hunger Games
showed me a whole genre of books I never would have read; it introduced me to
dystopia, to post-apocalyptic novels. If I hadn’t have read THG, I wouldn’t
have written CONSEQUENCE.
With Divergent, I love it differently to how I love/loved
THG. There is a part of me which is still in the Book Crush stage. And there is
a part of me that has moved on to the In Love With The Book stage. Normally,
after a year and a half, I would have started to move on from a book, no matter
how much I loved it, but I haven’t done that with the Divergent trilogy.
Those books have been there for me whenever I needed them.
They were the books I read when I was upset and needed to feel better, the
books I read when I needed to restore my faith in humanity (which is ironic,
given the genre), they were like a friend, I guess.
Some of the boys at school seem to find it entertaining to
tell me that books are a waste of paper. I am always tempted to reply with “You’re
a waste of oxygen”, but I don’t think that’s a very nice thing to say, so
instead I just start defending books, and my voice gets higher and higher
pitched, and they tend to respond with a particular word that starts with F.
(Why do teenage boys swear so much?)
The reason I get so defensive when they insult books, is
that for a long time books have been my everything. Books have made me who I
am; they have shaped my personality, moulded me into this person who I could
never have been were it not for fiction. And yes, that sometimes means that I
act a bit crazy because I would fit better in a fictional world than in the
real one, but I don’t care.
Books rest on the line between the magic and the ordinary.
To some people they are mundane and ordinary, and to some people they are a
whole world. How many things are there that are like books? One of the annoying
boys at school who told me that books were a waste of paper said that books
were pointless because you can just watch TV instead. If I hadn’t had to go
into a chemistry lesson at that exact moment, I would have gone into full rant
mode (which is always scary) and explained about how television is NOTHING
compared to books.
When you watch TV, it’s all there, it’s already made. When
you read a book, you have to use the writer’s words to weave a world inside
your head. You have to create something based on another person’s creation. A
book is a body that has no blood. It has flesh, organs, but there is a vital
part missing. The reader’s imagination is the blood. It flows through the book,
makes it work, makes it a living thing.
As a writer, it is sometimes hard to think about the fact
that when someone reads my books, they don’t read the book in my head. They don’t
get my thoughts, my imagination; they only get my words, and they have to make
of them what they will. The book I write is not the book they read. There is a
part of me that wants to scream “You will read this my way! I made this! I
wrote this! You have to see it how I see it!” And there is another part of me
that marvels at the beauty of the whole book arrangement. My words, my silly
little thoughts that I write down, become something more than me when other
people read them. They change, they take on their own lives, and they
constantly shift and alter. They will never be my words again, because I have
given them to other people. And I’m okay with that.
As a writer, I sometimes forget that I am a reader, too. I
forget that what it’s like to read a book, because I’m too lost in the process
of creating books. When I read books like Allegiant, The Fault in Our Stars, or
The Book Thief, I am suddenly hit with the realization that I am a complete
hypocrite. What do those books have in common? They all made me cry. BECAUSE
THE EVIL AUTHORS MURDERED MY FAVOURITE CHARACTERS!
It’s only a few hours since I finished reading Allegiant, so
the pain is still pretty raw. I knew how it ended before I read it; I knew I
would cry at the end. But there’s a difference between knowing something’s
going to happen, and reading about it happening.
And then I remember that I
am one of those evil authors who murder characters. I mean, the main feedback I
get about CONSEQUENCE is “Why did you kill Persephone?” The answer to that, by
the way, is that I was killing Drew, and I wanted to spare Persephone the pain
of living without him. I’m nice like that, see. Or maybe I killed her because I
thought she was kind of one-dimensional. (I’ve changed my mind about that now.)
I regretted killing Persephone the moment I started writing
AMEND. I regret killing my characters. I regret being an evil character-murderer. And no, that does not mean I am suddenly going to change my mind
about killing the love interest at the end of the book I’m currently working
on.
I think sometimes characters do have to die. Not because the
authors are sadists who want to brutally murder the readers’ feelings, but
because it would be unrealistic if all the minor or horrible characters died,
and the heroes were left unscathed.
I, personally, like to kill off my favourites, because I can
really get into the pain of their deaths. In the second novel I ever wrote, there
was this character called Maeve. She was a little bit like Phoenix in some ways (troubled past, hated
lots of people, had a best friend who was kind of naïve). Maeve was my
favourite character. Naturally, I had her throat slit. That was the first time
I killed one of my favourite characters. I loved it. Can I just reiterate that
I am not evil, not a sadist, and not some weird twisted monster? I just like to
write dramatic books.
Yet when I read
books where characters die… Well, I think the fact that I have spent half the
day crying over Allegiant is a clue as to how I react. I am broken; Allegiant
shattered my heart into a thousand tiny pieces. But it was worth it. I think if
a book/book series has an important message, or has a lasting effect on people,
it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t end happily. It’s the story which makes a
book, and the ending is only part of that. It’s not the ending that makes the
reader fall in love with the story; it’s the characters, the words, the plot.
Judging a book by its ending is like judging a person by how they die. Judging
a book by the story is like judging a person by how they live.
^ Me with Allegiant, before it broke my heart.
