{"id":4358,"date":"2016-01-25T18:45:13","date_gmt":"2016-01-25T23:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=4358"},"modified":"2016-01-25T19:41:16","modified_gmt":"2016-01-26T00:41:16","slug":"double-voices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/the-rule-of-mirrors\/double-voices\/","title":{"rendered":"Double Voices"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Perspectives\"<\/a>

Perspectives<\/p><\/div>\n

Before I wrote Birthmarked<\/a><\/em>, I worked on a novel that contained five points of view, all following different members of the same family in crisis. It was a worthy experiment, but I swore afterward that I\u2019d never try it again. I couldn\u2019t make all the perspectives equally compelling. I felt like I was shortchanging each character, and the collective honesty I was aiming for didn\u2019t resonate enough.<\/p>\n

Imagine, then, my surprise when I started writing The Rule of Mirrors<\/a><\/em> and discovered I could not write it from only one perspective. I was telling the story of a girl whose mind is split in half and ends up in two bodies. Each Rosie is both a captive and a survivor, but in very different ways. The dual quality of the novel depended on the interplay of two voices and a dovetailing of story lines. Based on my previous efforts, I feared I was doomed to fail, and then I had a very important bit of inspiration. I started reading Mary Pearson\u2019s<\/a> The Kiss of Deception<\/a><\/em>, which has three primary points of view, and the book plays very clever mind games on the reader. I was in awe, and though I knew I couldn\u2019t do what Mary did, I realized I had grossly underestimated the possibilities of multiple points of view.<\/p>\n

I needed to think beyond a strict \u201cin the meantime\u2026\u201d swap of the storyline, and use the parallel perspectives to explore how the characters were changing and growing. I had to let characters make mistakes and get ugly. I had to trust that my readers would grasp the contrasts without my spelling out explanations. I had to fight to make sure each girl was interesting enough so that a cliff-hanger chapter ending from one perspective didn\u2019t turn into a bummer when the next girl came on stage. It was a fascinating and humbling experience, and I could not be happier with how the novel came out. It\u2019s hard for me to believe The Rule of Mirrors<\/a> <\/em>will finally hit the shelves in a few weeks. I\u2019m excited!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before I wrote Birthmarked, I worked on a novel that contained five points of view, all following different members of the same family in crisis. It was a worthy experiment, but I swore afterward that I\u2019d never try it again. I couldn\u2019t make all the perspectives equally compelling. I felt like I was shortchanging each […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4360,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[689],"tags":[9,742,37],"class_list":["post-4358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-rule-of-mirrors","tag-birthmarked-2","tag-the-rule-of-mirrors","tag-writing-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4358","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=4358"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4364,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4358\/revisions\/4364"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}