An interview with a teen reader
Over the next few weeks we’re participating in a work experience program with students from high schools across Melbourne. Today, Joe Murray from University High School tells us what book he would love to see adapted for the screen, and why creating good characters is the most important element of creating good stories.
How would you describe your taste in books?
I mostly enjoy reading fantasy and science fiction stories, and especially those that don’t put too much focus on world-building, but instead use the world as a vessel for a really interesting plot and character development. That being said, a well-crafted world does great things for stories as they give you a great sense of wonder.
I also really enjoy exciting books – thrillers that can really only be described as page-turners. Books with gripping action scenes and a fast moving plot are always good fun to read.
Outside of fiction, I also like to read books about maths and science that have a sense of fun to them, setting them apart from textbooks. These are the sorts of books that leave you interested in learning more, and wanting to share all the things you now know with your friends.
Tell us about one of your favourite books.
One of my all-time favourite books is The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. It’s the first book of Ness’s Chaos Walking trilogy and of all the important things I mentioned above it scores 3/3. It has a really interesting world, brilliant character development and an incredibly exciting plotline.
In the world of the story, everyone’s thoughts can be heard as a constant noise. As the last boy in his town, the main character,Todd Hewitt discovers something that immediately forces him to flee from his home, with a growing army on his heels. The action is intense and the writing feels human, like the main character is opening his heart out onto the page. The story also deals with themes of morality and coming-of-age.
What is the most important element in making a good book?
The most important element in writing a good book is creating good characters. You can have an interesting plotline, a carefully thought-out world and action that would be at home in Hollywood – but without characters that you can relate to and care about, a book is still going to be boring. On the other side of the spectrum, a story with very little plot or action, but with great characters can be very entertaining. Characters are pretty damn important.
What is a book you’d love to see made into a film?
Obviously, my first choice for a book that would be made into a film would be The Knife of Never Letting Go, but since it is already being made into a movie next year, my next choice would be The Edge Chronicles.
The Edge Chronicles has the most interesting and well-realised world of any book I’ve read (with perhaps the exception of Discworld). It is set in on a gigantic piece of rock jutting out into the abyss – and when I say gigantic, I mean gigantic. The majority is covered in a dense and impassable forest. Not only that, there is a huge city of wizards on a floating rock tethered to the very edge of the world. This floating rock is broken up to make flying sky ships. To see a world like this depicted on a cinema screen would be incredible.
There are three main eras in which the stories take place, with descendants of a family as the protagonist. If the series were made into a movie, these three protagonists could even be played by the same actor. Who that actor would be? I have no idea…
What would you like to see more of in book covers? What would you like to see less of in book covers?
My favourite types of book covers are those that use a minimalist design concept to show a major idea or theme of the novel. The worst book covers are those that show an artist’s interpretation of the characters in its page as this more or less prevents you from developing your own idea of what the characters look like. Covers like those hamper your imagination.
Do you like to write as well as read? What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?
I do enjoy writing – just as much as I enjoy reading. Some of the best advice I’ve received is the classic wisdom of ‘show don’t tell’. This is harped on a lot, especially by teachers, but it is useful and makes your writing 10 times more interesting. It always helps when you’re not shoving information and thinly veiled ideas in your reader’s face.
Another piece of advice I stick to is that you shouldn’t be afraid to cut parts of your writing. Even though you may like it, it might do very little for the piece of writing as a whole, and might even ultimately bloat it. Sometimes it is best to kill your babies.
What is the worst mistake grown-ups make when recommending books to teenagers?
The worst mistake grown-ups make when recommending or even writing books for teenagers is thinking that they know what teenagers like based only on previous successful books.
After the success of The Hunger Games, the number of post-apocalyptic stories that claimed to be ‘just like The Hunger Games’ was absurd. (Heck, even Uglies a book published three years earlier than the first Hunger Games book, was hitched to the bandwagon.) While some of the books to come out of this period were great, and many were good, I ended up feeling completely sick of that particular breed of post-apocalyptic story.