Third time's the charm

...I hope.

I've rewritten the opening scene of this particular story so many times I've lost track. I started with a basic setup and rewrote that first version over and over. Changed the main character's age. Changed the POV of the entire story. Then decided to drastically chop the opening scene after lots of feedback pointing to the story starting too soon.

Of course I swung too far the other direction. At least I only went through one really horrible version of that intro. Unfortunately, that was the intro I used to enter a contest. In some ways it worked out anyway, though, because that contest let me know that I had really screwed up the beginning quickly so I didn't waste as much time on it.

On to the third try, and I think I've struck the balance I need. I've resigned myself to the fact that this particular story doesn't lend itself to starting off with a bang; it's advice I've heard before, but I hadn't consciously realized that I was trying so hard to start with a bang. For Emily's story to work, the reader has to get inside her head a little more before her world starts to fall apart around her. It's more subtle. Starting with a huge action scene is great for some stories, but sometimes it's okay to take a step back. If the reader is investing in a character more than a series of dramatic events, then the reader has to get to know that character and start to care about her/him first. So that's where my story starts now, and I'm loving it.

Hopefully other people will too. Here's the first page of Emily's story:

I knocked on the door to Room 113, but no one answered. Just to make sure, I rapped harder. Still nothing.

I wiped my clammy hands on my jeans before grabbing the bronze doorknob, half-hoping it would be locked.

No such luck. It gave easily, and the door swung inward without a sound.

“Ms. Briggs? You asked me to meet you after school…” My voice trailed off as I saw that the classroom was empty.

Well, except for the antiquated beast sitting on top of my desk. Curious, I stepped inside.

A note stuck out of the machine, addressed to me in sweeping blue cursive.

“Emily, I’ve decided what to do about your uncharacteristically irresponsible behavior on Monday. You have one chance to make up your final exam. You have until the 15^th to write a complete novella of at least 30,000 words, or you will fail the final and the class. As part of your punishment, you must use this typewriter instead of your computer to write the story. I hope you will find the creative experience illuminating, perhaps even enjoyable.”

I eyed the metal monstrosity. A typewriter? Writing a novella in two weeks was going to be hard enough, but using a typewriter? Ms. Briggs must have been more upset with me than she’d let on.

My muscles groaned as I scooped up the bulky machine. Once I found my balance I made my way to the bus stop, lurching through the halls like something out of an old horror flick.

Lauren Oliver's Delirium trilogy

Overall Rating: 3/5 stars
Genre: Young Adult / Dystopian / Romance (however, given some of the language and sexual tension, I'm not sure I'd recommend this to anyone I know under 16)
Gender Appeal: Primarily feminine
Re-read value: None for me
Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Delirium-Lauren-Oliver-ebook/dp/B00A9V2JSG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1401667017&sr=1-1&keywords=delirium
Goodreads link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11614718-delirium?from_search=true



First off, I really liked the premise of this series. The idea that, at some point in the future, scientists somewhere would decide that love (or all strong emotions, really) ought to be wiped out for the good of humanity, is just far-fetched enough to be startling, but believable enough to make the story work.

The tension throughout the books was good; the pace kept things moving along nicely. There was a good balance of action and more mundane moments, which helped to develop at least some of the characters.

The way Lena longs for her procedure in the beginning posed an interesting dilemma to me, as a reader. My natural instinct is to think that it's ridiculous how much she wants to be "cured," when I know that this cure is going to rob her of some of her most precious moments in life - marrying someone you love, having children, forming close bonds with friends, and such. However, as someone who has depression and was a rather socially awkward teenager, I can sympathize with her desire to eliminate those same feelings, especially in order to fit in better with society. Part of me thinks that at some point, most teenagers would jump at the ability to suppress those overwhelming feelings of love, loss, anguish, and isolation that Lena struggles with.

A nit-picky sort of thing that bothered me was the language. The book was, for the most part, devoid of swearing. But every now and then, someone would just start going off and drop lots of curse words, and not necessarily because they were in a situation that really demanded such a change in tone from the rest of the book. It was jarring, and if you don't enjoy that sort of language, you might want to avoid this book.

One of the main flaws to me is one that seems to be common in these types of young adult books: the instant, love-at-first-sight sort of relationship that Lena forms with Alex. It's not quite as bad in this book as Bella and Edward in Twilight, but it's similar. At least Lena and Alex spend some time together and know a few things about each other before they decide that they are madly in love. Now, I know that this is actually a common teen phenomenon - believe me, I fell prey to it enough times myself when I was a teen; however, these types of relationships don't usually last in real life. (And can you imagine what life might be like if you had ended up with your first teenage crush? I don't know about you, but that would NOT have been a good choice for me, at least.)

I'd have to say that, on the whole, this book was okay. The first book was my favorite; I kind of rolled my eyes at the end of the second book (and the way that how that situation came about was never really explained to my satisfaction); and the ending to the third was just plain bad writing. It felt like a cop out. More details below.


WARNING: BELOW THIS LINE WILL BE SPOILERS!!!


I have to admit that the end of the first book had me in tears. The emotional experience Oliver created for the reader was intense, and she carries it over nicely into the beginning of the second book, when Lena is hallucinating and dragging herself through the woods. That's a point in her favor.

The second book felt a bit awkward to me. In some ways, it made more sense after reading the supplemental story Annabel. I couldn't understand how Lena and the rest of the Resistance were able to so easily sneak into regular society, given how terrified Lena is of being caught in the first book. But Annabel (Lena's mother) reveals that the cure was first used when she was a young woman herself. This societal structure is much younger than we are led to believe. Which, again, feels a little odd, because that means that Lena's parents' generation were raised with parents who loved them and would have treated them very differently than they treated their own children. The new structure takes hold very quickly, and the Resistance itself takes hold almost as fast. That's a lot of social and political turmoil to take place within just 2 generations.

Hana's story just annoyed me, but only partially because of her behavior. If everyone knows there are rumors about her husband-to-be being this brutal, awful man, how was he able to avoid getting in trouble with the thought police? His own parents knew he was messed up; given Lena's fear of the authorities, I have a hard time believing that he could get away with everything he did. And yes, I know that money buys power, but it still just seemed odd.

But here is my biggest annoyance with the novel: the ending. It was so awful that I read it out loud to my husband, after giving him the 3 sentence summary of the trilogy, just to see if it was really as awful as I thought it was. He agreed. Breaking the "4th wall" and addressing the reader like that was so incredibly strange. And there was just enough ambiguity about the passage that I couldn't tell if it was really Lena addressing the reader, or if she was simply talking to the other cities that hadn't been brought down by the rebels yet. Either way, it felt so incredibly awkward to read. It felt like she got to the end of the story, and then had no idea how to give it a good sense of closure. As an "amateur" author, I sympathize, but there had to have been a better way than that. And poor Julian! Lena just decides to dump him and run off with Alex and she doesn't even look for him to see if he was killed when the retook the walls and tell him that she doesn't really love him. That was heartless. It also seemed unnecessary. The love triangle tension could easily have been accomplished with whatever that other chick's name was (you know your characterization is bad when people can't even remember your characters' names...) and Alex's anger at Lena. And the big discussion Lena has with her mom just fell flat for me. Lena went from being all mad at her mom for leaving her to suddenly just being okay with it.

I'd say that Oliver needs to take some more time to flesh out her characters and think about how and why people act the way they do if she wants to keep writing. A good plot idea will only get you so far so many times before people get tired of reading your stories.