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@noah-cochran

I suppose I should do something like that as well.

You can try it out! It won’t do any harm, at least, and it may work for you.

Behold the Dawn by K. M. Weiland is still my favorite stand alone novel hands down, and having studied characters and structure myself now, I love it all the more.

Still need to check that one out, it’s high on my TBR!

Gale is a perfect example of a side character who is not developed much and is rather boring (I really wouldn’t care much at all if he just keeled over dead).

Honestly, you’re completely correct, but Hunger Games is a very interesting example because a. it’s told from one very deep and detailed POV, and b. it’s in present tense with a great sense of immediacy.
Because Gale is never much of a priority to Katniss, he is automatically a more shallow side character. Admittedly, the author sacrificed the depth of the side characters for the depth of the POV, which… worked in that specific scenario but isn’t a great payoff in most other works.

And two, book three (which I have not finished yet, so I suppose this could be a hasty judgement), is a good example of how great internal conflict and character arc can not make a story good by itself.

That’s… an interesting point and I do see where you’re coming from. It’s very differently structured from the earlier books, and it isn’t my favorite of the series, but I think it was a good conclusion to the series.

I read a lot of mystery books that aren’t really structured around a three act story structure much, and they’re still great (Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Willike Collins, Will Thomas).

I have noticed that as well. Older books don’t maintain strong structure but still keep good pacing, which is pretty interesting. Well, some of them. Many older books just drag for a hundred pages somewhere in the middle XD

I read a lot of mysteries as well, and have recently listened to several Agatha Christie books. I’ve read “And then there were none”, “Murder on the Orient Express”, “The Murder on the Links”,  and am currently in the middle of “The Mysterious Affair at Styles” Which Agatha Christie novels have you read and which are your favorite?

How about you?

I have an instant answer for a series that has gotten worse the more I learned about how stories work XD Ranger’s apprentice.

I love those books dearly, but mostly for sentimental value. The premise is… fine, but not original. I listened to the first twelve books in the Dutch translation which was way better than the English. It’s the only book I have ever read where I prefer a translation. The English is clunky and filled with regional words and voice. (very poor prose overall) (It was a brilliant translation though, with only a few blips with translating puns)

Especially in the latter books the author is not only stretching plots out far longer than needed, but he doesn’t have an end goal in mind anymore. The plots have no structure and are predictable at best. The characters are vastly overpowered to the point where they haven’t faced an equal in… six books. At least.

Also, he has a very bad habit of infodumping for chapters at a time which is really frustrating.

The characters have great relationships and pretty good interactions but it doesn’t really develop beyond the first ten books.

Also, Brotherband is… possibly worse XD The initial concept is cool but again the issue with dragging out a concept. And it gets extremely repetitive. Also, love triangle for no reason with no payoff. It was mentioned in the second book and then it just vanished for six books. And in Brotherband his main cast has exactly one girl who is “not like other girls” and is basically only there to be tough, sarcastic and a love interest. (She annoys me.)

The lack of continuity is so dramatic that it’s a standing joke in the fandom how the characters change eye color and hair color and how there isn’t anything that resembles a timeline.

These books are still very dear to me and if I wasn’t a writer I probably wouldn’t have realized it. I’m being overly critical, but it’s something that I’ve noticed as I started analyzing books more. Ngl, it kind of makes them harder to enjoy XD

On the other end of the spectrum, books I never appreciated for their full value.
There’s this one series that I faintly remember, that I read back when I was a horse-crazy tween, which, thinking back on it, was actually pretty brilliantly written. I don’t remember any details but I remember good development, solid plot, a really good MC, and Christian messages that felt like a part of the plot instead of a preachy message. Also, I remember it dealing with pretty heavy subject matter several times.

(I have no idea if this is a Dutch thing but all the MG books I borrowed from the library were about every deep societal issue you could imagine covered in gritty detail. And YA was… vampire romance. That’s… it. XD)

That author mainly writes middle-grade, I do need to reread for sentimental value sometime.

And another series I still reread now and then. It’s a duology called Letter for the King by Tonke Dragt. (I may have mentioned it before but I will rant about it again because those books are so good. Brace yourself 😉 )

It was published way back in the sixties, and it’s a pretty typical quest fantasy. The worldbuilding is interesting, with a flair of originality without feeling like it’s trying too hard. It’s pretty strongly based in Medieval times and it’s more accurate than many books I’ve read.

It has deeper themes and messages than you usually encounter in works of the kind, and they’re well executed.

The second book is by far my favorite. It has an amazing dynamic between good and evil, and a facinating villain and a lot of gray middle ground with conflicted characters. And did I mention the setting is captivating? I can absolutely see it.

Unlike a lot of fantasy, it doesn’t try to be dark and gritty. The world is gorgeous and I’d love to live there. There’s a river called the Rainbow river because of how it looks in the sunshine and it’s crossed by a bridge with seven arches, and on the other side there’s a forest filled with flowers. The descriptions in general are just beautiful.

It’s just pure escapism and I live for it. Ngl, I would read those books just for the settings.

Besides that, it has a very interesting and well developed good vs. evil battle. As in, good can do wrong and evil can be very appealing and sympathetic.

The rulers are largely kind and work to serve the people with justice, and the common people are largely much kinder than I generally see in fantasy. Random villagers offer the MC rides to get places, or take him in for the night just because they want to help a stranger.

It demonstrates a very interesting theme that I don’t see a lot, it sets a world up as largely good with most people being well-intentioned, which makes it that much more important that it should be protected from the threat.

Also, great prose, especially in the second book. There’s one character who speaks almost only in alliteration and hyperbole for comedic effect and it’s glorious. Unfortunately, the translator gave up on it so that aspect didn’t translate well 🙁 However, the rest of the translation is really good! I’ve read both versions and I like both.

I get unreasonably excited over those books, I just still love them so much. As I learned more as a writer I recognized just how brilliant the settings and themes were in general.

(You may have heard of/seen a Netflix series by the same title but I refuse to acknowledge it’s existence. I will not rant about it but I could.)