Entertainment

'Divergent' Author Veronica Roth: I Finished Book Series Because I Didn't Drink, Movie Adaption Was Luck

• Peter Black , Design & Trend Staff Writer
• Jul, 25, 2014, 11:27 AM
• peter.black@designntrend.com

1 shares 1 tweet

Tags : Divergent, shailene woodley

(Photo : Getty Images - Dave J Hogan) Veronica Roth at the European premiere of 'Divergent' on March 30, 2014 in London, England.

If you want to finish a book before you finish college, don't get wasted every night.

This lesson of the day was provided by "Divergent" author Veronica Roth, the 25-year-old whose dystopian series was grabbed by Hollywood while Roth was still enrolled in Northwestern's creative writing program.

In an interview with the Huffington Post, Roth revealed that the key to her productivity, unlike Hemingway, is that she "didn't get hangovers."

"I didn't go out much," she told the website. "That sounds a little sad but it's true."

Although many books get written, few get published, and even fewer get turned into movies. Roth is thankfully aware of this, crediting her success on finding the "right people" at the right time.

"It worked out well, which is very fortunate, [but] the thing about books is that you don't know how people are going to receive it... so the way I feel about it is, it was just kind the right time and it found the right people," she said.

"Divergent" may have needed better people, however. The film received a lukewarm reception from critics, many of whom thought it was astoundingly cliche.

"This dystopia flick offers a pseudo-allegory for teenagehood along with a predictable plot, bland setting, and pat romance. So it conforms to today's alt-world teen-film formula," wrote Vue Weekly Brian Gibson.

"Barely diverting," echoed the New Yorker's Bruce Diones.

The movie does, for better or worse, mark yet another cog in Shailene Woodley's ascent into superstardom. Despite her growing fame, the 22-year-old actress claims to have found a balance between being a food forager and being a movie star.

"I find myself living in two worlds sometimes - being this person who can walk a red carpet in a huge, fancy-ass ball gown, high heels and mountains of makeup, but also being the girl at a hippie festival in the middle of the forest with war paint on my face, dancing around with hairy armpits," she told Vanity Fair in June. "I exist so well in both, and I used to feel like I had to choose one or the other. I struggled with that up until doing The Fault in Our Stars."