Toxic Jam

Week Ten Task

I find I can get much more involved in a book, film or game if I can identify with the characters in the story. I am a huge fan of reading, and there are books that I will read over and over again because I enjoyed the story so much. Good writers are able to make you emotionally involved with a story. They can make you feel happiness and sadness according to what the characters are experiencing.

One of my favourite series of books is The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice. She is consistent with the actions of characters, this enables the reader to understand more deeply what the character is like. Rice tells stories in a unique way, even though she is telling a fictional story, she makes it believable. I love the way in each book she works on different characters, and lets you know more about them, building up the fantasy world as she goes. The image shows an artist interpretation of Lestat.

An important factor of a good story is that it seems effortless. Readers want stories to entertain them. If it is difficult to read or hard to understand the plot, readers will get bored and give up on the story.

Another fantastic book is Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. The reason I like this book is because for the style in which it is written it is hard to pull off comedy, but Austen defiantly manages this. I also find the plot extremely intriguing, it is well thought out, and keeps you interested. I think it is important when books are converted into films or a tv series, that each character is cast and acted correctly. This is hard to judge, as everyone has a different picture in mind when they read a book. In my opionion Mr Collins was cast perfectly in the BBC series of pride and prejudice. His comic value was deffinately as effective as it had been in the book.


It is important for writers to come up with original ideas. Another favourite of mine is Watership Down by Richard Adams. My favourite character in this story is Blackberry, who is a very clever rabbit. Adam’s used some very interesting concepts in this book. He studied books that explained how rabbits lived, and their behaviour, he then expanded on this with some of his own ideas. In one part of the story, the group of rabbits need to cross a river, most of them can swim, but there are two little rabbits who are not strong enough to make it. Blackberry notices how wood can float on top of water, and makes the two little rabbits climb onto a piece of wood and pushes it out onto the river. The plan works, but none of the other rabbits can even comprehend the situation. I like the way in which this confusion is explained, its all done from a rabbit’s point of view. At different points in the book the rabbit uses their own ways to explain things. The way in which they talk about Myxomatosis, known as the White Blindness, is particularly interesting.

'The thinker dies, but his thoughts are beyond the reach of destruction. Men are mortal; but ideas are immortal.' - Richard Adams