{"id":2858,"date":"2013-05-28T10:21:06","date_gmt":"2013-05-28T14:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=2858"},"modified":"2013-05-28T10:21:06","modified_gmt":"2013-05-28T14:21:06","slug":"bright-things-in-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/writing\/bright-things-in-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Bright Things in Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SilverDish\"This may be just me, but I need occasional bright things in books.\u00a0 Once, when I read a string of YA dystopias back to back, the physically dark settings had me feeling like I lived in a cave, and I needed a break.\u00a0 By contrast, I was rereading Levine’s\u00a0Ella Enchanted<\/i><\/a> this spring, and I actively noticed the happy scenes of friendship, which were just as nourishing as physical brightness.\u00a0 Of course, it made the contrast all the worse when Ella lost those friendships and had to endure loneliness, but those bright spots had existed.\u00a0 I felt them within me, and I felt them in the balance and movement of the book.<\/p>\n

I like writing grim stories where the trouble perpetually gets worse.\u00a0 It\u2019s fun to work that way, and if I don\u2019t have enough conflict in a section, I tend to feel like I\u2019m doing something wrong.\u00a0 It makes me impatient.\u00a0 Questioning or tinkering with my conflict barometer feels risky to me, but I\u2019m finding that taking a chance to lighten up a scene also gives me room to develop a relationship.\u00a0 It reminds me of how I revised Birthmarked<\/i>, when the flashback scene with Gaia\u2019s father and the development of several scenes with Leon came late to the framework, when it felt safe to hold back the action a moment to let the characters and relationships come forward.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s always about balance, isn\u2019t it?\u00a0 This time, I have physically bright settings to work with, in spades.\u00a0 I have conflict, and the right characters to manipulate.\u00a0 I just have to find the right balance of bright and grim.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This may be just me, but I need occasional bright things in books.\u00a0 Once, when I read a string of YA dystopias back to back, the physically dark settings had me feeling like I lived in a cave, and I needed a break.\u00a0 By contrast, I was rereading Levine’s\u00a0Ella Enchanted this spring, and I actively […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[246,326,37],"class_list":["post-2858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-project-next","tag-revising","tag-writing-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2858"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2862,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2858\/revisions\/2862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}