English 325: Eleanor and Park

I’ve enjoyed the novel up to this point. The central theme centers on love, teenage love specifically though I’m unsure if that really needs to be a sub classification. In my opinion, the subject is handled well. The progression of the two lead characters feels natural and unrushed, and you can clearly see how they slowly come to together. The fact that love does not simply and suddenly materialize for the two characters is one of the stronger aspects of the novel. It is a slow burning, but constantly growing, passion. This is not a Romeo and Juliet love story, it is not instant and powerful love, but rather a more realistic representation. It feels very authentic. The passion, fantasy, and reality of young love is well captured. There are moments of romantic fluff, but they are grounded by authentic sounding dialogue and situations. The characters are developed well, and the plot, though fairly straightforward at this point, is not bad.

I do have a few issues with the novel however. The story, despite being well written, follows an overused format. Who are the protagonists? The social outcasts. Who are the antagonists? The mean bullies. Why can’t the lovers be together? Because of the social stigma. Don’t get me wrong, these are all legitimate issues that teenagers have to deal with, but we’ve heard this story a million times before. We like stories of unlikely and beaten down heroes rising up and finding success and happiness. It’s a great story! But it’s an oversimplification of reality. Most people are not treated like dirt, and most people don’t treat people like dirt. It does happen though, it sucks and that should be focused on, but in YA Lit that is all we focus on. I think the novel, like a lot of other works of this type, illustrate teenagers as haves and have nots when in reality most people don’t fall into either of those categories. I hate bringing this up because it sounds like I don’t care about people who are bullied or have terrible home lives, I really do care. I’m just trying to say that by focusing so heavily on the negative aspects of the teenage experience, the novel fail to truly illustrate an accurate representation of what that experience is.

That said, I think the text is still relatable in the languages that it uses (while in some cases it may be over exaggerated). Characters speak in an authentic manner and it feels like the thoughts of the characters are really the thoughts of teenagers. For these reasons, I think adolescents would enjoy the novel.  

     

Overall, I give the novel a B+ so far. While I do think the story is cliché in many aspects, it executes everything else perfectly. The romance feels just right, the characters are believable, the language is accurate, and the issues are important. In a sense, the book is like a marvel movie: It’s still just another superhero movie, but it has enough action, humor, romance, and heart to make you enjoy it. 

English 326: Blog #1

What grammar and punctuation issues do you, as a writer, want to focus on this semester?

  

I have two different issues that I would like to delve into this semester. They are quite different because they involve different aspects of my writing. The first focuses on my formal writing, while the second is more centered on my interest in recreational creative writing. They are important for different reasons, but I am equally interested in both of them.

Getting an endorsement in history as well as English requires me to write a substantial amount of papers. Because of this, I would like to make my writing as formally presentable as possible. While I would like to focus on all aspects of writing a formal paper, I have consistently been told that I need to avoid “passive voice”. This topic has always been somewhat clouded in confusion because, even after multiple explanations, I’m not quite sure what passive voice is. At one point in time last year I felt like I had a solid, or at least reasonable, understanding of what it was, but I was still unable to eliminate it from my writing. In all honesty, I’m not even sure if passive voice falls under the banner of grammar and punctuation, but if it does I would like to be able to finally understand what it is and how to avoid it.

On a different note, I have another issue I’d like to focus on. While passive voice is important because it involves my school work, I enjoy writing for pleasure as well. With that in mind, there has always been an aspect of creative writing that I have never fully grasped: how to write dialogue.

I think the reason this is so confusing for me is because it’s never focused on in school. When learning grammar and punctuation in school the focus is on being able to write a good paper, and writing a good paper does not require a firm understanding of how to structure dialogue. Because of this, I often feel lost when trying to structure long conversations in my writing. Do I indent when someone speaks? Can I connect a line of dialogue to the beginning or end of a paragraph? How many times do I have to state “he/she said” before I can drop it completely? If the character states a full sentence do I end it with a period or a comma before capping the quotes and adding the additional “he/she said”? These are just a few questions I have when dealing with dialogue. Take this example from a short story I wrote awhile back:

“Wait,” I stammered, stumbling backwards, “you want me… I mean I will be…”

Should I have capitalized “you”? Is the “stumbling backwards” formatted correctly? There are just so many questions that I have that have never been answered by traditional grammar classes. I hope this semester I can learn a little more about how to correctly punctuate dialogue as well as avoid passive voice.