{"id":3147,"date":"2013-12-02T23:00:51","date_gmt":"2013-12-03T04:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=3147"},"modified":"2013-12-02T23:00:51","modified_gmt":"2013-12-03T04:00:51","slug":"ripples","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/writing\/ripples\/","title":{"rendered":"Ripples"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ripples\"When you throw a stone in the water, the ripples spread outward in predictably widening circles.\u00a0 When you throw a stone in a novel, it has ripple effects, too, especially if the stone kills somebody off.\u00a0 This makes sense as long as I\u2019m writing from the beginning to the end of a novel, in order, but sometimes when I\u2019m revising, I add an event later in the book and realize I have to go back in, earlier, to set it up.\u00a0 In such a case, I\u2019m working from the ripples back to the stone.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s kind of fun.\u00a0 I especially like working with ripples where plot and setting dovetail.\u00a0 For fictional space to feel natural to me, my characters need to inhabit a location (like a tower or a basement) more than once.\u00a0 It makes me feel grounded to return to a familiar place, and I like to play with patterns where the place is the same but the stakes keep rising.<\/p>\n

A clear example of this happens in John Knowles<\/a>\u2019 A Separate Peace<\/i> when Gene and Finny keep returning to a tree beside a river.\u00a0 Gene is terrified and resentful that he must\u00a0 climb the tree, step out along a high limb, and jump into the water, time after time.\u00a0 The activity parallels his relationship with Finny and ultimately leads to disaster.<\/p>\n

In my own latest novel, my characters keep circling back to certain key locations, and it\u2019s interesting to me how first impressions of a place change as the risks there become more dangerous.\u00a0 My characters aren\u2019t repeating the same routine, as Gene did, but they engage with the locations by climbing them, or working there, or in one case, dropping pebbles down a pit.\u00a0 It\u2019s only a matter of time before someone gets hurt, and that will in turn cause more ripples.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you throw a stone in the water, the ripples spread outward in predictably widening circles.\u00a0 When you throw a stone in a novel, it has ripple effects, too, especially if the stone kills somebody off.\u00a0 This makes sense as long as I\u2019m writing from the beginning to the end of a novel, in order, […]<\/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":[326,37],"class_list":["post-3147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-revising","tag-writing-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3147","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=3147"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3153,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3147\/revisions\/3153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}