{"id":2946,"date":"2013-07-08T19:19:39","date_gmt":"2013-07-08T23:19:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=2946"},"modified":"2013-07-08T19:19:39","modified_gmt":"2013-07-08T23:19:39","slug":"survival-of-the-fittest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/writing\/survival-of-the-fittest\/","title":{"rendered":"Survival of the Fittest"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_2947\" style=\"width: 260px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2947\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2947\" alt=\"Charles Darwin\" src=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Darwin-e1373325379682.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"312\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Darwin-e1373325379682.jpg 250w, https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Darwin-e1373325379682-240x300.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-2947\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Charles Darwin<\/p><\/div>\n<p>As I understand Charles Darwin\u2019s theory of evolution, in nature, whatever can survive best in its environment will endure, allowing its offspring to evolve over generations.\u00a0 The theory covers lizards in the Galapagos, the prehensile nature of elephant trunks, and my own lack of a tail.\u00a0 I find the idea elegant and rather beautiful.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d like to propose the theory of Writing Darwinism, where the environment is the novel, and the characters and plot points that can survive generations of revisions must be able to evolve and adapt.\u00a0 Uncut characters must develop layers of history and motivation.\u00a0 They gain quirks and speak more frankly, or get better at lying.\u00a0 The plot must take chances, and then get streamlined, and then expand again.\u00a0 Fluffy baby ducklings of prose get honed for voice and pacing, or eaten by a hawk.\u00a0 The whole novel-environment has to hang together or it will become a ghost landscape with nothing but corpses, bony corpses \u00e0 la Georgia O\u2019Keeffe.<\/p>\n<p>Tempting as it is at this moment to have a meteor crash into my particular novel environment and destroy all life forms, I remind myself to have patience.\u00a0 Not everything has to be perfect in this draft.\u00a0 I will have more chances.\u00a0 I, myself, will survive this novel and come out the other end of it, if not fit, at least better able to adapt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I understand Charles Darwin\u2019s theory of evolution, in nature, whatever can survive best in its environment will endure, allowing its offspring to evolve over generations.\u00a0 The theory covers lizards in the Galapagos, the prehensile nature of elephant trunks, and my own lack of a tail.\u00a0 I find the idea elegant and rather beautiful. I\u2019d [&hellip;]<\/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":[246,37],"class_list":["post-2946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-project-next","tag-writing-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2946","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=2946"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2949,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2946\/revisions\/2949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}