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The Mysterious Script

I have finished the James Dashner series, The Maze Runner, and it has reminded me even more how writers create different worlds. They vary from creative time lines in normal reality, to completely unique universes, and I wonder how it comes to happen for each writer.

For my book, I had an idea, and I fleshed it out with characters and events, but still… it developed a mind of its own, and told me how it was going to go. Does that mean how I planned my novel went to the wayside entirely? No. It means how I got to point B from A had some added twists and turns to it.

Still, I don’t feel the level of planning I put into it  matches others like James Dashner or Suzanne Collins with the dystopia realms they created. Or George R.R. Martin. Or. J.K. Rowling. Or J.R. R. Tolkien. Or Jacqueline Carey. Or C.S. Lewis. And the list goes on and on.

Do they have a method, a level of organization that comes with practice? Does their ‘instinct’ or the book’s mind tell them what to do? Is a mixture of both? Or is it individualistic like their personal voices?

To be honest, I wish there was a concrete answer, and I guess practice will tell me which works best for me. Hopefully I will be able to create a captivating universe one day if my first book is indeed a flop (if it’s ever published *fingers crossed*).

The storytelling gift is innate: one has it or one doesn’t. But stile is at least partly a learned thing: one refines it by looking and listening and reading and practice- by work.  ~Donna Tartt

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The Mind Flutters

My mind has this bad habit of collecting scattered thoughts and images, and racing through them to find even more hiding underneath the messy pile. It drives me insane some days especially when I am trying to focus on anything. The racing has its moments though, because it is like I trip or stumble, only to fall on an idea I can’t shake off.

Today that idea was to continue reading James Dashner’s series, The Maze Runner.

I will admit I am my mother’s daughter in that I tend to read more romance novels than anything else, but before that shuts you down… I will read anything that calls to me, or strikes a chord, and while James Dashner’s first book failed to do that, I am glad I persevered. The Scorch Trials has me clutching it tightly to continue reading, something Maze Runner didn’t do. (This is where, I am sad to say, the movie realm can help books).

The movies, though I have not watched The Death Cure, were intriguing to me, and I decided after that to read the books to see where the story all came from. And The Scorch Trials is delivering so far. I may be less than a hundred pages in, but I have a feeling I will be finished reading it much quicker than the book before it.

The next series I will pursue, most likely, in reverse will be A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin. The show, Game of Thrones, has had me enthralled since the start, and I dislike the rushed ending it is coming to. I am glad I will have the books to relive the tales, and learn more about some of my favourite characters Tyrion Lannister and Arya Stark.

After that, who knows? Maybe I will grow my taste for books ever further, or revisit some ‘old’ stories with characters I have missed dearly.

One nice thing about science fiction was that we could steal from one another quite freely. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

P.S. I know it seems awful movies or shows came before I read the books they were based on, but sadly, my husband is not a reader. I have to compromise at times as anyone who is married or in a committed relationship knows! (Sometimes, we are on the losing side, but there are those few victories too!)