{"id":78511,"date":"2015-12-07T16:39:49","date_gmt":"2015-12-07T21:39:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/?p=78511"},"modified":"2015-12-07T16:39:49","modified_gmt":"2015-12-07T21:39:49","slug":"scene-stealer-a-secondary-character-flexes-her-muscle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/?p=78511","title":{"rendered":"Scene Stealer: A Secondary Character Flexes Her Muscle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>I\u2019m thrilled that my novel, Provenance<\/em> is getting great comments from readers. They’re saying things like, \u201cI could not put the book down.\u201d \u201cThe sign of a good book for me is when I think of the characters later on.\u201d \u201cI have thoughts and questions about the book that I want to explore with you.\u201d \u201cYour novel is wonderful!\u201d \u00a0I love them all (the readers and the comments) however, the most surprising thing about reader\u2019s reactions to Provenance<\/em> has been the way one of my characters seems to have stolen the limelight from the lead character.<\/p>\n

I thought Provenance<\/em> was about Lance Henry Whitaker. That it was the story of a young man who finds out at the age of 18 that the father he adores has been lying to him his whole life. Lance believed he was a scion of the segregated South until his father, Hank, reveals he is a black man passing as white. In the early 20th<\/sup> century, when Provenance<\/em> takes place, a revelation like that led to social disgrace \u2013 it might even end your life. Determined to continue to live undefined by race, Lance, his mother Maggie and his not so traditional grandmother, Charlotte, flee to Europe.<\/p>\n

So, I\u2019ve been promoting the book as a coming-of-age story about Lance, and while the cast of characters is engaging, Charlotte seems to resonate most with readers. Every conversation about the book, includes a question or comment about Charlotte. I wrote her as a strong, willful and determined female during a time when that kind of behavior from a lady was not encouraged and often not tolerated. Charlotte never believed the rules applied to her and so it seems respecting Lance as the primary character is totally in character<\/em> for her.<\/p>\n

Reader\u2019s comments range from \u201cCharlotte was the character I liked best; and in hindsight the book seemed to be really about her,\u201d and \u201cThat Charlotte, she was something else.\u201d \u201cI couldn\u2019t wait to see what Charlotte would do next.\u201d \u201cCharlotte was Charlotte to the very end, wasn\u2019t she?\u201d \u201cGirrrrrlllll, that Charlotte, how did you come up with her?\u201d<\/p>\n

To answer that last question, I have no idea. Initially, Charlotte was a very minor character\u2014she muscled her way into the story and took over. I guess she knew she was a\u00a0central character, she just didn\u2019t bother to tell me. But then, that is just so, Charlotte.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m thrilled that my novel, Provenance is getting great comments from readers. They’re saying things like, \u201cI could not put the book down.\u201d \u201cThe sign of a good book for me is when I think of the characters later on.\u201d \u201cI have thoughts and questions about the book that I want to explore with you.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,132],"tags":[133,134],"class_list":["post-78511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gender","category-provenance-characters","tag-strong-women","tag-writers-craft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78511"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78516,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78511\/revisions\/78516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}