I have yet to talk about the book I have been reading for Stephanie's class, so I figured I would take a break from writing about tragedies and talk about Atlas Shrugged. Currently, I am about half way through the book and it's really staring to get interesting. Regardless of her political ideologies, Rand is a phenomenal writer. I've realized that throughout the novel she typically will briefly reference a character at one point, then start talking about them more later in the book, and ultimately have at least one of the main characters meet them. It's like she's constantly setting up interactions and events that are unlikely to happen yet happen anyway, and when they due the reader is blown away. This lead me to realize that this plot device is used in many novels and helps to make them extraordinary because so many unlikely events are taking place. It seems common for authors to allude to characters or events so that they can make them cross paths to the amazement of the reader later in the story.
Also, when considering the fact that Atlas Shrugged is almost 1,100 pages I keep wondering how much of the story Rand planned out before she started writing the novel and how much she included in the spur of the moment. The plot is seems so intricate and covers so many interactions between a very large amount of characters I find it hard to imagine her meticulously planning out a novel of this proportions before even starting to write it.
I agree that Ayn Rand is a very good writer, but about that character plot device, I thought it got a little too predictable. Once someone is mentioned in the book, it almost becomes expected that you'll meet them later on, even if they have been supposedly "lost forever". As for the planning of the story, I think Rand laid out a basic outline of exactly what she wanted to cover, then while writing went on to write extremely lengthy descriptions of everything that is going on. I'm pretty sure she knew how she was going to end the book.
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