Tagged: fiction
4 Lessons Writers Can Learn from Opera
Opera has a reputation as a rather dreary art form, full of over-complicated/ridiculous plots and fat women screeching. Nothing could be further than the truth in a lot of cases. And rather than mocking opera without even trying it, many people would do well to learn lessons from it. Writers especially because it may come as a shock to some, but opera imparts some very important lessons to us. The following are just some of them.
Lesson: Good characters can have terrible flaws.
As taught by: Tosca, Ernani, Aida and La Boeheme.
In Tosca, the title character (who is a notable singer within the opera) is the epitome of a wonderful person: she’s sincere in her faith, tries to do good in the world and her love for Cavaradossi (a notable painter and her lover) knows no bounds. Except that Tosca becomes wildly jealous when she sees that Cavaradossi has portrayed another woman as the Madonna in his painting in the church in Act 1. She is haunted by the woman’s eyes and they argue back and forth before Cavaradossi finally changes the Madonna’s blue eyes to black eyes like Tosca’s.
Normally I’d say that extreme jealousy like Tosca’s would make me hate a character, but it works in her case. She’s a good person but has a fatal flaw: her jealousy. The same is true in real life, as I’m sure we’ve all noticed. Even the best people in our lives can have horrible character traits and that’s something authors really need to recognize. Yes, even the main character of the novel has to have something unlikeable about them. That’s how real life is so why should fiction be any different? Continue reading
The Beauty of Fiction
As I learned years ago, fiction is a beautiful thing for so many different reasons. It can teach you about the real world, provide an escape and bring history to life. Of course it can do so much more than that, but those are the main reasons why I love fiction.
Literature has been a driving force in pop culture for hundreds of years from Charles’ Dickens Oliver Twist to Harry Potter. So many different books have left their marks on world history, but more importantly on the lives of many individuals. When you find that one book that really changes your outlook on life it’s a hard feeling to put into words.
When you find that book that changes your life, it leaves you quite literally breathless when you finish it. You close the book, maybe stare at it for a few seconds and then slowly release your breath as you’re sucked back into reality. You get that odd feeling in your chest that’s a mixture of sadness, amazement and sheer awe. Continue reading
My Favourite Heroines
There is no shortage of female leads in YA fiction, but strong female leads (that are not simply butt-kicking cardboard cutouts) are very rare. They’re not nearly as rare as good female villains because there is only one female on my list of favourite villains, but they are rare nonetheless. Here are my favourites in descending order.
1. Lisbeth Salander from the Millenium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson.
What I love most about Lisbeth is that she truly doesn’t care what other people think of her. She’s smart and independent, but she is also deeply flawed. Because of all the trauma in her childhood, she has a hard time learning to trust people and it takes a very long time for her to develop any sort of relationship with Mikael Blomkvist in the first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. She seems to have Asperger’s Syndrome (or something similar) and she is not afraid to speak her mind. But Lisbeth is not your stereotypical punk girl, however, because she feels insecure about her petite body and falls in love with Mikael, which causes her to sever ties with him throughout The Girl who Played with Fire. She is my favourite heroine because although the book is mostly told through Mikael’s point of view, she steals every scene she is in throughout the trilogy and Stieg Larsson gave her an incredible amount of depth. Continue reading