Maria Semple

And so I just kind of went along with it.

And so I felt really guilty for being part of that, but also I felt really angry about what had happened to me.

And so this combination of like guilt and rage- All of that gets- Yeah.

So I thought like, wow, there's something right about it.

So I usually start with my protagonist.

You know, that's always where I start.

And I think about the journey that I want to put her on and the character arc that I want to put her on.

And from there, I kind of build the world around her.

But you don't know the full arc.

No, I kind of know emotionally where I want her to land, and I think you have to in order to work backwards.

But in terms of the plot machinations to get there, I don't know that yet.

And so in terms of where I want her to land, I then start kind of...

filling her world with characters who um to me have to earn their keep you know they have to come into conflict with her they have to make her life miserable they have to kind of go the distance of the novel I have to just really make sure it's not just a funny person who appears on page 10 and disappears like how am I really going to work them into the fabric of the entire novel and

I normally don't start writing a character until I come up with like an emotional truth or a comic premise.

And usually the emotional truth is based on something about me, like my emotional truth.

And it's often nothing I'm particularly proud of, kind of even better, you know?

Okay, in Go Gentle, Adora's emotional truth is that it's a woman who has always struggled with desire.

That when she's young, she's just burning with desire.

But she has like bad values and she's chasing these bad values that get her into so much trouble.

And so then she kind of maybe overcorrects.