Critique: I Am Legend

It took some time to finish, but I did, and it definitely wasn't what I was expecting, especially the ending. I won't give that away though, that'd be wrong.

As a reader:
It was a little too slow at times for me, I found it hard to keep reading; there were a lot of times when I had to read in short bursts. But it was mildly interesting; I'm curious to see the movie to see what differences there are between them.

As a writer:
I'm slowly starting to recognize and understand the importance of variety in sentence structure, it makes for a better read all around. I have yet to get better at it though.
The variety in this story gave it a more formal read, made it feel more developed and whole. Detail, which I'm learning to use more of, also helped it feel whole; when I think of it, I see the comparison between lack of detail and a complete work as a skeleton vs. the human body complete with flesh muscle, etc. It helps.
I'm also starting to recognize pacing. I've read in many different places that alternating between slow pacing and quick is a good idea to keep the action parts moving, and the downtime between as a place for readers to catch their breath and take in what they've learned. The use of shorter sentences and less detail helps speed up the pace of a scene, while more detail and longer sentences slows it down.

I don't know when then next critique will be, I have to find another book I'm interested in reading, and that could take awhile.

Critique: Twilight

I decided to pick up and read this book after hearing all the positive and negative opinions about it and decided I wanted to see for myself, hopefully learning something useful along the way.

As a reader:
I found the book to be pretty slow and uninteresting through the beginning; I wasn’t particularly interested in the main character or her day-to-day life. I became a little more interested near the later half of the book where I feel like it picked up significantly. There were strange parts where names were mentioned that weren’t mentioned before and other small things which were odd but weren’t too distracting.

As a writer:
I found unusual sentences that didn’t sound right, some issues with perspective, and typos. I noticed there were a lot of semicolons, which doesn’t really bother me but makes me wonder how many are too many for a novel.
The novel made me think about starting a story with action vs. starting slow and leading up to more, and the effects they both can have over readers. When I do more reading I plan on looking into it further.

Not a particularly comprehensive critique, but it’s a learning experience for me.

On Improving My Writing

Everywhere I go I read that one of the best things you can do for your writing - other than just writing - is to read, read, read. Having lately not been able to pick up a book and take anything from it other than rereading a line over and over again yet not comprehending what I just read, I took a break from it. Now I feel like I can get back into it and - hopefully - learn something so my plan is to look for some books to read - preferably ones around my genre, read them, and try to take something from them if I can. Maybe I'll learn something useful, maybe not, either way I'll be reading again and it'll at least give me practice on critiquing, which I seriously need work on.

Okay, so maybe Twilight isn't quite what I'd normally read, I figured I'd try reading it to see what the buzz is all about, both good and bad. I think it'd be a good place to start.