{"id":3101,"date":"2013-11-04T10:09:28","date_gmt":"2013-11-04T15:09:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=3101"},"modified":"2013-11-04T10:54:05","modified_gmt":"2013-11-04T15:54:05","slug":"adding-the-unicorn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/writing\/adding-the-unicorn\/","title":{"rendered":"Adding the Unicorn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3102 alignright\" alt=\"Add Drama Here\" src=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/beachdrama.jpg\" width=\"225\" height=\"168\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t add unicorns to my novels, but sometimes I can tell that a scene needs something more.\u00a0 The stakes need to be higher.\u00a0 A surprise needs to occur.\u00a0 A bone needs to get snapped.\u00a0 Last week, I tried adding a dead sister to my novel.\u00a0 For a whole day, I played around with how that could tie certain threads together and add resonance to family scenes, and then I realized I was crazy.\u00a0 It would mean telling an entirely different story from the one I\u2019m telling.\u00a0 Dead sisters cannot casually be thrown into this novel. \u00a0They would take over, emotionally, even if they&#8217;ve been dead for a while, and this is not a book about grief.\u00a0 I should know this.\u00a0 I do know this.\u00a0 But I\u2019m experimenting, and anything is fair game.<\/p>\n<p>I like my book.\u00a0 I do.\u00a0 It fascinates me and keeps me up nights, but none of this means I have it figured out yet.\u00a0 This creative puzzle is a stubborn, unyielding one, and all I know for sure is that the thinking I\u2019ve done so far has set up nice problems, but not the answers.\u00a0 For answers, I need to cast out for other ideas, likely and unlikely, and play them around, which means maintaining an open-minded spirit of hope.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s count this as progress.\u00a0 The dead sister is gone again, taking that day of work with her, but she left a teddy bear behind, and I wouldn\u2019t have found the bear without her.\u00a0 Maybe today I\u2019ll get another idea that\u2019s just the one I need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don\u2019t add unicorns to my novels, but sometimes I can tell that a scene needs something more.\u00a0 The stakes need to be higher.\u00a0 A surprise needs to occur.\u00a0 A bone needs to get snapped.\u00a0 Last week, I tried adding a dead sister to my novel.\u00a0 For a whole day, I played around with how [&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-3101","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\/3101","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=3101"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3113,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3101\/revisions\/3113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}