{"id":4077,"date":"2015-03-11T10:11:48","date_gmt":"2015-03-11T14:11:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=4077"},"modified":"2015-03-11T10:26:30","modified_gmt":"2015-03-11T14:26:30","slug":"roots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/the-vault-of-dreamers\/roots\/","title":{"rendered":"Into the Roots"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Roots.<\/a>

Roots. Marie Selby Botanical Gardens.<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019ve had emails lately from some of my writer friends where we\u2019ve been discussing how important it is to be guided by character when writing a novel. Character, absolutely, is what draws me into projects I\u2019m writing and books I enjoy reading, but characters aren\u2019t going anywhere without a good plot, too.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to throw it out there that developing character can be a trap, much like the intricacies of small scale editing can be a trap to those of us who love tinkering with language more than first-drafting. Character is shown in the way people speak and think, but also in their actions and big decisions. Working on the nuances of voice can be a misuse of time when we still don\u2019t have the end of a book figured out.<\/p>\n

Ahem. I\u2019m figuring out the end of my book for the umpteenth time, and certainly it helps that I know who my characters are by now, but I am actively resisting going back to mess with little stuff, let alone backstory, because I need to know physically where my characters are and what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

Instead of thinking character<\/em>, I\u2019m examining the roots of my story<\/em>, searching out the promises it made as hints earlier on. When stumped, I have reached out to pick other minds. My editor Kate Jacobs helped me open up the novel a few weeks ago when we talked. This week, I\u2019ve learned important things from my daughter, who brought fresh eyes to the story and spotted a key spark of potential, and my sister, who has seen the book developing and corroborates that a certain missing scene must get in. My son and husband have weighed in without reading the book at all, reminding me about the epic scale: armies, weapons, a vast landscape.<\/p>\n

My characters are the same, but I have new plot ideas to play with, and while they might not be perfect, they\u2019re better than what I had before. Yess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve had emails lately from some of my writer friends where we\u2019ve been discussing how important it is to be guided by character when writing a novel. Character, absolutely, is what draws me into projects I\u2019m writing and books I enjoy reading, but characters aren\u2019t going anywhere without a good plot, too. I\u2019d like to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4078,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[606,37],"class_list":["post-4077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-vault-of-dreamers","tag-rule-of-mirrors","tag-writing-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4077","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=4077"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4080,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4077\/revisions\/4080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}