I'm in Love With My Kindle.

This is not news.

*prepares for deluge of angry hipsters yelling that real writers don't kill the printed word*

It has caused me to read a whole slew of new books that I otherwise would have never picked up. They're cheaper, and I can read new writers who haven't been published yet.

Of course, that also means running into hundreds of first person stories about an eleven year old girl with a vocabulary straight out of a Thesaurus who has abilities that only Jesus, Satan, and Bill Clinton combined should have. Oh, and guess what? Everyone HATES her for these abilities! They also constantly tell her she is wrong, only to find out that she was right and get screwed over.

GAH!

Am I the only completely annoyed by this? I can't be the only one who's put down a book the second the ditzy, cheerleader type main character uses a word like "microorganism" in narration. First person is, in my opinion, supposed to reflect a character's train of thought.

I know that everyone out there wants that super special awesome character who can burn down entire cities with a single glare, but said character completely turns most readers off if they can't relate to him/her. Characters should be human, too. People want to read about people. Nobody wants to read a story about someone the author obviously wants them to envy.

Not that having magical powers isn't good...it's just that nowadays they're more of a Deus Ex Machina than anything else. How is Mary Jane going to change as a character by getting out of the aforementioned situation?

Well, she isn't! Because her magical powers that make her more awesome and smarter than everyone else in the universe enable her to just poof right out of that concrete room seven miles underground.

I'm more of a fan of average characters who become less average as a result of being put in out of the ordinary situations, like Alice going down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. But then again, apparently I'm often guilty of neglecting my characters. In fact, according to a Mary Sue Test I took, my characters are anything but.

I scored a negative seven.

Maybe I should throw them a bone or two to keep things interesting. I don't know...a little magical animal friend or some crap.

I begin this story in the same way I've began many others...

...with a vague and possibly flawed introduction in the form of a flashback attempting to draw the reader into the rest of the story. I've been told that the main reason I can't finish projects is my habit of writing my first draft as if it were the final when I should simply just be writing. I've been trying harder to take that advice and just "write". The following introduction to my newest project (which, God willing, I will finish) is the result.

I'm not happy with it, but then again I'm not happy with anything I do. To be honest, I'm far too frightened of what might happen if I were to allow myself to be satisfied.

-----

The cave walls, bathed in an orange glow from the fire, were crumbling all around her. The entire world wanted to crush Muriel under its weight and trap her flattened body underground where no one would ever find it.

If, of course, anyone would even look. Muriel wasn’t the fastest thinker you’d ever come across, but she had been given due time to figure out that this sort of thing had happened before. 

In front of her lay the dank opening to the rest of the catacombs. If she took one more step into that darkness that was so thick it looked like she could choke on it, she may never find her way back again. Worse yet, she would more likely than not be trapped inside when the whole damn thing collapsed. 

But if she didn’t? Well, then she would never know.

Biting her lip and shaking with both fear and anticipation, Muriel listened to the sounds of her footfalls as she took a first, second, and then a third step into the rocky aperture. Once she had passed the stone gateway, the shaking earth became silent as quickly as if switched off by the press of a button.

----

Now, if only I could begin from the actual beginning and work up to that particular point in the plot.

Of course, it could really put a damper on things if I decide to take the above mentioned scene out of the story...you wouldn't believe how many times that has happened. Seeing as it's the most climactic point in the plot, however, I don't believe I will. 

On a related note, am I the only person who has changed a character's name and been forced to go back through the entire manuscript and make the appropriate adjustments? 

The first time that happened to me was definitely the last. Now I try as hard as I can to make sure I've got the name set in stone before I begin writing. I decided to change a character's name from "Mark" to "Lucas", and since I was already at least ten chapters in, I simply used "find and replace".

What I ended up with was chapter after chapter of people making "reLucass" instead of remarks and "Lucasing" things onto pieces of paper.