<![CDATA[D.R. Ranshaw

<![CDATA[D.R. Ranshaw - Blog]]>Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:59:12 -0600Weebly<![CDATA[When Characters Lose It]]>Mon, 27 Apr 2026 13:56:07 GMThttps://www.drranshaw.com/blog/when-characters-lose-it

“What the fuck is wrong with these people?!”
-Ellie Williams, Philosopher Extraordinaire

Well said, Ellie, marvelously well said. Perhaps a tad… irreverently blunt… but certainly passionate, and definitely astute. It’s a comment that could be directed at, alas, far too many members of the population at large these days, and is something which comes to mind for me in my daily interactions with people… well, Each. And. Every. Day.

I confess I’ve fallen into a very Bad Habit of late: Twitter appears replete with fascinating videos of people Losing Their Shit (LTS), mostly when interacting with law enforcement officers, and I also confess these videos are… well, mesmerizing, and not just when there’s household chores waiting to be done. It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion, and most of us have a macabre fascination with things like that. They usually tend to develop the same way: there’s a wary circling of the wagons (sometimes literally), a defining of the incident’s parameters, the rising tension, and then the explosion, which occurs either over a certain amount of time, or… well, explosively sudden. Then they tend to conclude the same way i.e. the subject of the police officers’ attention winds up getting their just rewards (read: arrest and detention). And the end of every video, I ask myself Ellie’s highly pertinent question… though I’m pretty sure hers was meant to be rhetorical. Then again, so is mine… because, in our heart of hearts, we all know the answer.

Scenes where literary characters LTS are great fun to write, aren’t they? (And just as much fun for readers to read, bless their black, twisted little hearts.) This is because most of us --- if our parents have done their jobs properly, which seems by no means as certain a thing as it used to --- have been taught since childhood to Keep It Under Control and not Lose Our Shit… at least once we’ve left the feral confines of toddlerhood. (It fits in beautifully with Robert Fulghum’s famous poster Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, a copy of which I used to helpfully have posted on my classroom wall… and even more helpfully would periodically refer my students to.)

So, it all led me to contemplate why our literary characters tend to LTS. There are numerous reasons for such a meltdown --- too many to list here in their totality, and many of them tend to run together --- but I randomly picked a few of what I consider to be among the most relevant, for your entertainment and edification:

Entitlement – based on my highly academic (ahem) Twitter research, this must be one of the top reasons why people LTS. There are simply too many people/characters who possess this quaint notion --- well, it would be quaint if it wasn’t so damned annoying --- that the rules just don’t apply to them. (Are you listening, parents?) This is egocentrism, folks, plain and simple, and as I used to tell my students, as far as I’m concerned, is the worst of the worst cardinal sins. (Sorry, Roman Catholic church.) Because it boils down to this: I want, and my wants are more important than yours. That is one deadly formula for mayhem.

Rage – everybody gets angry now and then, but rage is the state beyond anger, that terrifying point where people really LTS and view their surroundings through a fine red mist. Rage means you’ve been pushed just a little too far, most of the rational controls in your mind have been toggled over to the ‘off’ position, and in that state, you could cheerfully kill someone. Unless you suffer from some deep-seated psychiatric problem, it generally takes a great deal, and a lot of provocation, to push someone over the edge into genuine rage. Thank goodness.

Desperation – this is rage’s more melancholy twin, though perhaps more worthy of sympathy. Characters who LTS due to desperation are often at risk of losing something so vitally important to them or those nearest and dearest to them that they can’t work it out rationally.

Bullying – although it seems to have reached new heights (depths?) of epic proportions in the age of social media, bullying has been around in all its nasty forms for pretty much as long as humans have walked the planet. People bully others for all sorts of pathetic reasons: to assert power and control, to bring the victim down to the bully’s level, to deliberately inflict pain and suffering, to register their disapproval of the victim being different from the rest of the pack --- the list goes on and on. Victims may suffer in silence, or may eventually be goaded into the act of LTS.

Being Ignored – we all want to feel like we’re listened to; conversely, no one wants to feel they’re not being heard. But to be ignored… to be deliberately, actively discounted… our views not even taken into consideration when we’ve put them out there to the world (I think this must count as one of the writer’s greatest fears, truth be told)… that can certainly push people to LTS. “I matter, and you need to hear what I have to say!”

Sigh. What fragile, frail little flowers we are… all too emotional and ready to Lose Our Shit, some of us with more provocation, some with less. And lest you accuse me of being supercilious, I’d be the first to admit I’m a part of that category. We all are, really. But with the exception of Entitlement, most of these reasons for losing our shit are reflections of how vitally important something is to us. Perhaps not very socially acceptable reflections, but then again, we’re not automatons, and as the old saying goes, due to the shortage of robots, some of the staff are human and may react badly or unpredictably when abused.

]]><![CDATA[Can Characters Change?]]>Mon, 30 Mar 2026 13:56:38 GMThttps://www.drranshaw.com/blog/can-characters-change

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.
-Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

I saw a question on Twitter the other day, and even though it was patently there just for engagement stats, I often find good grist for the blog mill among such rubbish. It had nothing to do with the quote above --- I suspect the Twit in question has probably never heard of Dickens or his works --- but it’s relevant, and immediately came to my mind, at least.

Can people change? asked the Twit. (Which rather sounds like a line of dialogue Lewis Carroll might have had Alice ask of the Cheshire Cat). Chuck’s answer, seen above, is a resounding yes! Ebenezer Scrooge, that twisted, bitter old man, undergoes a complete makeover at the hands of the three spirits, and gives us a jolly old Yuletide HEA. Yay!

I agree with Dickens… with one major caveat. People can change (thank God), but it generally requires some sort of cataclysmic life event to act as a catalyst, and even then, it’s not a transformation one can take for granted. Why? Well, most people tend to be extremely resistant to change. Change involves the unknown. It requires sloughing off the manacles of inertia, because it’s usually easier to just continue along a course already set --- even if that course is clearly not working. Especially when we’re talking about personal change… we usually cherish our sense of self and don’t like to admit there’s much, if anything, wrong with our values, ethics, habits, worldview, personal hygiene, etc. Making such an admission requires clarity and honesty not everyone seems to possess. Let me give you a few literary examples.

As already noted, Scrooge changed. Did pretty much a complete 180, and I think we all want to agree not simply because he was terrified by the spectre (no pun intended) of what the rest of his life looked like if he didn’t mend his ways. The three spirits managed to wake his dormant compassion and empathy, which had withered as he endured what Will lightheartedly calls the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.’

Frodo Baggins, Tolkien’s plucky little protagonist in The Lord of the Rings, also changes --- or perhaps grows is a better descriptor. He begins the tale as a pretty carefree hobbit, but is shaped by the awful events occurring around him, and by story’s end, he’s become far more worldly, more knowledgeable, far more aware of loss and sacrifice (which, as Conrad Roth astutely observed, are two completely different things. IYKYK.)

Now, like most things in life, this concept of change we’re discussing is a bit of a double-edged sword. For example, my wife and I just finished watching the television series Breaking Bad. (I know, I know… given the series concluded over a decade ago, we’re pretty late to the party, but… there it is. The fact that my gentle wife, who prefers her television shows to include a good dollop of redemption, with maybe a HEA thrown in for good measure, watched all the way to the show’s grisly and pretty final conclusion, speaks volumes for its high-quality storytelling.) The show’s protagonist, meek, mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher Walter White, undergoes quite a metamorphosis following his cancer diagnosis, becoming a notorious methamphetamine manufacturer who tramples on other people, then kills --- and orders killings --- with nary a qualm. His descent into narcissistic murder, madness and mayhem is a searing tale, and besides being a damning indictment of the American health care model --- Walt’s inability to pay for his cancer treatment on a teacher’s paltry health insurance is the original reason he turns to a life of crime --- is a cautionary lesson on how personal change isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.

Of course, there’s also the literary characters who… well, don’t undergo any meaningful change over the course of their tales. Back when I was young, naïve and less jaded, I used to find this a headscratcher: it takes a really resistant mindset to undergo those slings and arrows of outrageous fortune I mentioned earlier and come away without really growing as a person. Then again, one has only to glance around at some world leaders --- perhaps one in particular --- to realize with incredulity that yep, it’s perfectly feasible to be so locked into one’s own psychopathy/sociopathy/narcissism that it is all too possible to pass through life-changing circumstances without being changed.

Literary examples of such clods? you ask. Well, at the risk of stirring the ire of their fans… I never liked Katniss Everdeen very much. At her narrative’s beginning, I found her sullen, apathetic, and really unwilling to assume the role fate was attempting --- admittedly unfairly --- to foist upon her. And… must say, I really didn’t see much change in that attitude or growth in her by narrative’s end. I’d also lump Harry Potter into this category --- it’s not always easy to see how he grows throughout the series --- though I admit I side with Ursula K. LeGuin’s rather uncomplimentary view of Harry. (“When so many adult critics were carrying on about the “incredible originality” of the first Harry Potter book, I read it to find out what the fuss was about, and remained somewhat puzzled; it seemed a lively kid’s fantasy crossed with a ‘school novel’, good fare for its age group, but stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.”)

Most literary characters, though, do change over the course of their stories. After all, it’s far more satisfying to watch characters be dynamic, rather than static. As Will would also say… ‘tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.

]]><![CDATA[The HEA. Again.]]>Mon, 16 Feb 2026 14:39:42 GMThttps://www.drranshaw.com/blog/the-hea-again

Kobayashi Maru (koe’ bay ash ee ma rue’) noun 1. In a Starfleet simulation, the name of a spaceship freighter, under attack and in desperate need of assistance. 2. In Star Trek lore, any situation or problem regarded as a ‘no-win’ situation i.e. no matter which solution is applied to a problem, the outcome will be unfavourable to the participant.

So, here’s the thing: after some 47ish hours of play, I recently finished a PlayStation video game --- and yes, Virginia, your author does enjoy playing video games…. though he should probably hastily amend that statement by adding some qualifiers. First, he only plays solitaire, because, as in so many human fields of endeavor and recreation, somewhere along the way, somebody let the dogs out and lamentably, gaming can be full of Nasty, Misogynistic Trolls. (Note I said ‘can be,’ not ‘invariably is.’) Second, he prefers games featuring intelligent storylines and strong, female protagonists. And third, yes, he has been happily married to his wife for decades, and is not living in his parents’ basement.

The game’s title is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and while it’s got absolutely nothing to do with Star Trek --- and I’m not really reviewing the game itself --- there is a rather elastic connection (at least within the febrile depths of my fertile imagination), so bear with me and eventually we’ll get to today’s thesis. Clair is a lushly imagined and illustrated game where you are a participant in an expedition to locate the mysterious Paintress, a godlike character who’s been, year by year, steadily destroying the population of your little world, which is unnamed but bears more than a passing resemblance to a very stylized Belle Epoque-era France. (Unsurprisingly, as that’s where the game was designed.) The 33 in the title refers to the fact that everyone older than that has by now been eliminated, one year at a time.

Anyway, after many adventures and combats --- by the way, Here Be Major Spoilers, so you’ve been warned --- it turns out your whole world is (surprise!) nothing more than a painting, created by a really damaged and devastated family who have endured huge tragedy involving fire and death. One of those family members has been on the expedition, and as her, you get to decide how the game ends --- because there are two possible alternatives. Oh, boy! I thought, rubbing my hands in gleeful anticipation. Except…

Both alternatives are horrible. And it really isn’t even a case of one alternative being slightly better or worse than the other; they’re both awful. (One involves keeping the painting going, though the characters somehow are self-aware enough to understand they’re merely powerless puppets, and view you with hatred and contempt. The other alternative involves erasing the canvas and being back in the real world, with the family coping with death and extreme disfigurement from the fire. As Philip Henslow sarcastically noted, “Well, that will have them rolling in the aisles.” IYKYK.)

Not for the first time, I found myself wondering why? Why do writers do this to readers (or in this case, viewers). IGN, an American gaming website, actually came out with a lovely little essay sort of addressing this issue, pointing out that tragedy is something all too many of us have to deal with on this broken rock as it hurtles through the inky vastness of space, and sometimes, really unfortunately, there just is no good solution to many of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune our species must contend with. (BTW, when I call it a ‘lovely little essay,’ I mean I found it really well written, not that it was intrinsically lovely. The retired English teacher in me --- you can take the teacher out of the classroom, but you can’t take the classroom out of the teacher --- would have given it top marks. Unless it was written with the help of AI… in which case I would have set it on fire.)

I understand the argument IGN was making. I really do. As someone obsessed with keeping up with the news (oy), I know all too well there’s a lot of death and despair in our dumpster-fire world. Which is kind of like saying the Pacific contains some water.

But writers… within the pages of our deathless prose (or the confines of our electronically created gaming worlds), we have the godlike power to ameliorate that… at least some of the time. Now, I’ve written about the HEA (happily-ever-after) ending before, but Clair Obscur compelled me to revisit it, and my viewpoint hasn’t changed at all. We don’t have to go with ridiculous fairy tale endings where EVERYONE goes manically dancing and singing off into the sunset like an army of crazed Munchkins… but… come on, people… throw readers/viewers a frickin’ bone here. Sure, I realize a good old Kobayashi Maru scenario is full of dramatic possibilities --- well, up until everybody dies, anyway, at which point things rather become moot, don’t they? --- but unless you’re a writing buzzkill along the lines of a Mr. Poe, there’s just no need to end your story by saying darkness and decay and the Red Death ruled forever over all.

I’ll even venture a hot take and say (in my obligatory Lord of the Rings reference for the day) that Frodo deserved better than being unable to enjoy the fruits of his labours and shipped off from Middle Earth. Yes, yes, I know, spare me the righteous arguments about sacrifice and the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the one. Unless you’re deliberately trying to be didactic, lighten up a little.

We need a little light in the darkness. Give us an ending which provides hope, or glimmerings of happiness… or even some ambiguity where we can think, with some justification, “well, maybe things did work out…” We’ve just invested a fair amount of time and, if the tale is well written, emotional energy in the characters, and they deserve some happiness, dammit. I mean, sure, we all know everyone’s final destination is that Undiscovered Country Will cheerfully mentioned, but until that day arrives…

I’ll say it again: we need a little light in the darkness.

]]><![CDATA[The Seeds of Creativity]]>Mon, 26 Jan 2026 14:54:32 GMThttps://www.drranshaw.com/blog/the-seeds-of-creativity

I saw an interesting Tweet the other day (on Twitter, don’t you know, because the Muskrat can call it what he wants, but so can we). No, no, wait, I know what you’re thinking, but hear me out. Yes, I’m aware saying that a driblet of social media can be interesting appears to be both heavily ironic and an oxymoron. And yes, I’m perfectly aware most people asking questions on Twitter are doing it for the engagement stats, not out of any real interest in what their fellow humans are thinking. But…

This particular Tweet asked a question of writers --- at least putatively, I suppose, to see if we can establish any kind of causal link betwixt a writer and his/her sordid past. Many non-writer types (a distressingly large segment of the population, and judging by how people write these days, a segment rapidly growing in its illiterate approach to life) seem to think that writers must all have had traumatic childhoods, in order to provide the grist for all the angst going on in their stories. And… it ain’t so, folks. At least, not in my case. Sure, I had the usual childhood traumas, but nothing horrifically outstanding.

Anyway, the question was: were you encouraged to be creative when you were a child? Which seems just a tad disingenuous: nobody ever sat down with me and proclaimed that today, we were going to learn to be creative, so my answer to that would be well, not overtly. In fact, like most parents back in the Dark Ages when I was a kid, mine tended to be fairly… well, disengaged. I don’t mean to say they were negligent or unloving or anything like that. The implicit understanding was that it wasn’t their job to schedule my daily play, either solo or with friends. But most good parents learn pretty early on that if you want to get your kids to do various things, the roundabout way is often better than the straightforward didactic one. So there was a pretty good supply of what we would today call toys. And books. An endless supply of books, from the earliest age on.

The toys were designed to foster creativity. My absolute, all-time favourite was my Lego collection. Back when I was a boomerlet, Lego was… just blocks, in all sorts of shapes and sizes. There were no kits. Just blocks, blocks, and more blocks. (Rather like Sam describing the lembas situation to Frodo.) What you did with the blocks was up to you, which I think was hugely important and significant, because what it meant was that there were no constraints on a kid’s creativity. No one was dictating that this kit makes this model, and you assemble it like a jigsaw puzzle, and then you’re done. Okay, cast it aside and move on to the next piece of conspicuous consumption, kid!

So I built all kinds of things with my Lego. My younger sister had received some little plastic troll figurines for Christmas one year, and each figure was about an inch/couple of centimeters tall. Somehow, I discovered they fit almost perfectly into the objects I was designing and building. So ‘the trolls’ became the stars/action figures of our many games in these various creations. I built all kinds of stuff, some of it things thoroughly grounded in reality, like hospitals, some of it firmly in fantasy --- every Christmas I built a massive Santa Claus palace --- and some it straight from science fiction, like spaceships. We spent uncounted hours playing with them, creating various scenarios and acting them out.

And the books! As I said, my parents made sure there were lots and lots of books in the house, and long before I could read for myself, they read stories to me. (I still vividly recall racing through the front door of our house one day in grade one, yelling to my mother, ‘I can read! I can read!’) As a teacher many years later, I always used to tell parents that one of the best things they could do for their children was encourage them to read, to see the language in use.

I discovered science fiction around 1968 with Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and went hunting for SF books immediately thereafter. Shortly after that, I discovered fantasy when my mother gifted me a copy of The Hobbit, and the rest, as they say, is history. (I thoroughly agree with Wednesday Addam’s comment that ‘writing what you know’ is a hall pass for the imaginatively impaired. For goodness’ sake, folks, you’re writers. Imagine stuff. Including stuff you’ve never personally experienced. You can do it, Brucie!)

And of course, after reading stories, it was only a short leap to begin writing stories. I still have some of them, stretching all the way back to elementary years. I began writing longer stories in junior high, chiefly with me as the hero and whatever girl I was currently infatuated with as love interest. I’ll charitably allow that there’s… well, some embryonic talent in those writings… but I should probably include a clause in my will that they be burned once I’m gone. Since then, of course, I’d like to think my writing has improved by several orders of magnitude. Sure hope so, anyway. Nowadays, as Isaac Asimov famously said, I write for the same reason I breathe: because if I didn’t, I would die.

So I guess the simple answer to the Twit’s original question is… yeah, I suppose I was encouraged to be creative as a child. Because of my parents’ either knowing or unwitting actions.

Thank God.

]]><![CDATA[When Characters Go Silent]]>Mon, 29 Dec 2025 14:37:15 GMThttps://www.drranshaw.com/blog/when-characters-go-silent

Areellan, please call home.

(Okay, let’s blithely gloss over the fact that the curse of the phone --- especially the cellular variety --- is unknown in her particular reality, because it makes for a relatively catchy opening sentence, and most writers are peculiarly smitten with those.)

Maybe she’s taking a much-needed breather, I pensively tell myself. Possibly she’s gone fishing, or taken a long, extended hike through the lushly gorgeous mountainous terrain surrounding where she lives --- breathtaking scenery, to be sure, as she’s told me numerous times, and surely balm for a troubled soul. Or an untroubled one, come to that. Perhaps she’s just gotten (justifiably) tired of both the characters around her and the crap --- Will far more poetically called it the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune --- which I perennially toss her way. Maybe she’s doing… I dunno, whatever she does in her spare time. She hasn’t listed all the ways she likes to relax.

Whatever, it is… she’s stopped talking to me. And I hate it.

Areellan is 19 seasons old, feisty, lithe, very handy with dagger and bow, and totally unafraid to call out people’s shit. I like her a lot, actually… have done since she first showed up in my mind’s eye five or six years ago. (Yikes! Has it really been that long?) She’s also the protagonist in my current story writing. I was going to say the ‘fictional’ protagonist, but I know she’d be mightily annoyed by that adjective, and I don’t want to annoy her, because she wouldn’t be hesitant to voice her displeasure, and to modify the old saying, if Areellan ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

Now, I’ve gone to some lengths to provide you with the facts of what’s actually going on, though non-writerly types will, of course, dismiss it all as nonsense. They’ll even point out that there’s a perfectly good layman’s term for what I’m describing, too. It’s quaintly known as ‘writer’s block,’ they’ll say. Characters just don’t stop talking to their authors, they’ll add with a roll of eyeballs and a demonstrative sigh. It’s the authors who are in control, not the characters, they’ll remonstrate. (To paraphrase Will, methinks the writer doth protest too much.)

Pfft. Shows what they know. (Actually --- incredibly --- there are even some who claim to be writers who will make the same assertions. Pfft. Perhaps they should return to the widget factory they’ve so recently left, because I’d maintain, with tongue firmly in cheek, that they don’t really have the souls of writers.)

Why does it happen? Well, there are lots of reasons, a big one being the intrusion of the Outside World. I think most people will agree with me that the last year in particular has provided some real doozies in terms of unwelcome distractions… although there’s always something going on. As the saying goes, it isn’t merely one damn thing after another; frequently, it’s a bunch of things all happening at once.

Anyway… what’s a poor writer to do when confronted with this silence from their characters? I will say this isn’t the first time this has happened to me, and it probably won’t be the last. So, I think there are about three avenues available to the Afflicted Writer.
First is to surrender to it. Pause writing. Go and do something else, hopefully something not stressful or likely to make the writer’s block worse, not better. This doesn’t work for everyone, of course, and what starts out as a strictly temporary hiatus can stretch out into something much longer… even take on an aura of permanence, which must rank as one of most writers’ ultimate nightmares.

Second is to talk to someone about either the immediate story in question, or the concept of not being able to writer as a whole. This is… well, possible, I suppose… but I’m not sure most writers are either able or willing to discuss their literary children with others, even their nearest and dearest. I know that’s the case for me. Writing for me tends to be a deeply personal and mostly solitary journey.

The third option is the one I try to go with as often as I can: plow ahead anyway. (I won’t use that trite and overused phrase of ‘powering through it,’ because I really don’t see it as that kind of process. It’s more of a grind than an effortless powering.) It’s frequently a slog. But I keep writing. Even if it’s only a little bit in a day. Even if it’s only a few words. Even if it’s only polishing what’s already been written. I take heart from famed science fiction writer Frederik Pohl, who used to maintain that he had to get four pages typed each and every day. He said sometimes it took 45 minutes, sometimes it took 18 hours, and that sometimes he was ‘reasonably satisfied’ with what he had written… and quite a lot of the time he loathed it. I used to say something similar to my students when they were stuck while writing critical essays. Just get something down on the page, I used to tell them. You can hate the words you’re writing, but after a while, something strange will usually happen: those words will start to flow, make some sort of sense, and probably begin to sound not half-bad. In fact, they may sound pretty good --- which is great. And you can always go back to those initial words you hated, and change them once you’ve gotten into your groove.

And maybe… just maybe… (actually, more likely than ‘maybe’) Areellan will eventually pick up her phone, or look at her notifications… and call back.

And then we’re in business again as I hear the words from her: “I have so much to tell you!”

]]><![CDATA[Idiotic Adult Characters]]>Mon, 24 Nov 2025 15:01:17 GMThttps://www.drranshaw.com/blog/idiotic-adult-characters

They’re idiots.

Slack-jawed, dull-eyed, tuned-out, self-absorbed, mouth-breathing, addle-brained idiots. (Like all the hyphenated compound insults?)

They’re disengaged, disinterested, incompetent, petty… well, I think you get the idea.

And who or what, exactly has aroused the fire of my ire this day? you ask. The answer is simple: adults. To be more specific (and more fairly), most adults in any storyline where children are the protagonists.

Let me back up a little. My wife and I have recently been rewatching the first four seasons of Stranger Things in preparation for the imminent arrival of the fifth.

(This has been necessitated by the fact that entirely too many modern television series take roughly 50 years between truncated seasons --- consisting of a paltry six to ten episodes --- thereby completely destroying for viewers any sense of continuity whatsoever. Okay, perhaps I exaggerate a trifle, but it’s damned annoying, especially in a series like Stranger Things, starring young children… whom all adults, both intelligent and otherwise, know age at supernormal rates. According to Wikipedia, the Stranger Things season dates are as follows:
            Season                         Set During                   Released on TV
            1                                  November 1983          July 2016
            2                                  October 1984              October 2017
            3                                  July 1985                     July 2019
            4                                  March 1986                 May 2022
            5                                  Autumn 1987              November 2025
Now, I realize season 4 was likely delayed by Covid… but these kids, who were 13ish when season 1 debuted, are supposed to be 17ish by the time of season 5… and as anyone who’s seen recent pictures of Finn Wolfhard or Millie Bobbie Brown will attest, that’s just straining the concept of the willing suspension of disbelief a little too much, in my humble opinion. Anyway. This isn’t even my main point of contention for today, but you’re here, so you get to listen to my cantankerous rant.)

Watching Stranger Things, my persnickety little writer’s mind was constantly struck, yet again, by how so many of the adults in the tale are… well, idiots, as I stated at the beginning. Not all, no, but most of them. In particular, the kids’ parents range from totally clueless about their children’s lives and activities (how can so many parents in one locale be so completely incompetent at parenting? Is it something in the water?) to ineffectually hysterical (granted, one parent --- Joyce --- is certainly justified in being hysterical about the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune the show’s writers keep hurling at her poor kid, especially during the first season). My parents certainly weren’t like that… and neither were my wife and I. (At least, I don’t think so. My kids might think differently.)

I’m not picking just on Stranger Things, either. I remember thinking much the same thing when I first saw Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, lo these many years ago… and my opinion hasn’t changed over the decades. Now, I realize Ferris is a comedy, and much of the rather heavy-handed, juvenile humour relies on Ferris outwitting all the moronic adults around him, but… come on. Is there no one over the age of 18 in this film who can’t see behind the --- well, frankly manipulative --- behaviour Ferris manifests? (His sister can, but she’s not over 18.) Perhaps that was part of the problem about Ferris, at least for me: I just didn’t like him very much. In fact, I found much of his behaviour, particularly towards his best friend, the hypochondriac Cameron, to be borderline sociopathic.

And in a more literary vein, much the same could be said of most adults in the Harry Potter series. They’re either malevolent, clueless, ineffectual, distant, unhelpful, incompetent, or some combination thereof. Again, not all, but most. It’s pretty much always up to our plucky teenage protagonists --- Harry, Ron, and Hermione --- to foil the malignant plots perpetrated by Voldemort and his Death Eaters. And frankly, Hermione is the only one of the trio who really has much idea of what’s going on and how to go about solving the problem. Never really understood why she’d fall for the buffoonish Ron, who is obviously so much less intelligent than her and whose primary role seemed to be mostly comedic relief. In fact, if I was feeling particularly Snape-ish, I’d probably observe that Ron is definitely not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

(I also really didn’t like the fact that much of Harry’s success come about by engaging in morally questionable behaviour --- a lot of the time, he gets results by breaking the rules and doing things which can most charitably be described as ethically grey. And it’s not really a message subtly delivered, either. I’m not alone in this… look up Ursula K. LeGuin’s comments regarding the Harry Potter books.)

So… why is this? Why do writers make these choices for their pint-size protagonists?

Part of it, I think, is because so many people have this perverse need to see authority figures --- who are almost always adults in our world --- taken down a peg or two, especially if said authority figures are self-important or arrogant, and especially if it’s the underdogs (i.e. the children) who are doing it. Oh, look! The kids are doing exactly what we would have liked to do, back when we were powerless children! Yay! Fight The Man, kids!

It also makes our plucky, can-do child protagonists that much more so, functioning effectively in a grownup world filled with grownups who are not functioning effectively.

Sometimes, as I’ve noted, there’s an element of comic relief in this, particularly in the role-reversal of children being capable while the adults are not. Macaulay Culkin’s 8-year-old character in the Home Alone films is a better example of this than Ferris Bueller, even though the level of violence he perpetrates on the hapless burglars is nothing short of Road Runner vs Coyote cartoon level.

I suppose… when you get right down to it, if the adults in these stories were doing their jobs properly and fulfilling their authority roles effectively… the kids in said tales either wouldn’t have to or be able to step up to the plate. It’s rather like that other ubiquitous narrative device, the characters who don’t communicate effectively with each other. If all characters did communicate effectively, sharing vital information, eliminating misunderstandings… well, we mostly wouldn’t have much in the way of stories, would we?

Desirable in real life… but not so much in stories.

]]><![CDATA[Pantsing Along]]>Mon, 27 Oct 2025 14:16:46 GMThttps://www.drranshaw.com/blog/pantsing-along

“You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It’s all there and you just have to find it.”
-Thomas Harris

Today’s writing quote is brought to you by the author who created one of the most terrifying characters in all literature: the cheerfully demented Dr. Hannibal Lecter. For the half dozen of you who have never heard of the good doctor, let’s just say this is a character who, when he says he’s having you for dinner… well, my advice is: don’t go. Run far, run fast, in fact. Because he means that sentence absolutely literally, and you’re going to have to be both extraordinarily resourceful and careful, because Dr. Lecter’s predilection for consuming humans is matched only by his fiendish brilliance.

(On thoughtful consideration, I’d have to say that watching The Silence of the Lambs was the last time a film --- and its antagonist --- truly shocked and terrified me. Then again, those types of stories aren’t really my cup of tea. So.)

However, my focus today isn’t really on the strangeness (some might say disturbed) mind which could generate such a story, but rather on the comment at the top of this post, which I’m going to use, without any evidence from Mr. Harris himself, to bolster my assertion that pantsing is the way to go when writing a story… in fact, possibly the only way, really. Notice he says you have to find it, not plan it. That’s a very important distinction. I’m not sure if he made it deliberately, but it's there, nonetheless.

Now, now… all the plotters in the audience can just jamb their hands into their mouths and stifle their howls of outrage at this point, thanks very much. I know those of you who count yourselves as dedicated plotters expend much energy crafting carefully planned outlines of how your protagonists goes here, then there, encountering difficulty A, then B, then C, all in brilliantly scripted progression. And I want to assure you that I sympathize with you. Deeply. In fact, to establish my bona fides, I’ll tell you that, in my daytime job of 35 years, I was a secondary school English teacher. And I was a massive plotter --- in terms of being extremely concrete-sequential and efficient about planning out exactly what was going to happen in each day’s classes. Had to be, in order to save my sanity. Because I cannot, for the life of me, imagine how any teacher can get through a single class with 35 hormonal adolescents, let alone a day, without being as carefully planned as the D-Day amphibious landings of World War Two. (Which is not to say I wouldn’t go off-script if a teachable moment presented itself, however; one of the hallmarks of successful teachers is their ability to think fast on their feet and execute nimble maneuvers whenever the opportunity presents itself.)

But…

When it came to my writing, I fairly quickly discovered a pretty major wrinkle in this philosophy: the characters in my stories didn’t want to follow any damned outline, thanks very much. They wanted to strike off and do their own thing, which frequently was at odds with what I’d carefully scripted. They thumbed their noses at me, made rude farting noises and obscene gestures (not unlike some of their real-life student counterparts, come to think of it) and rode cheerfully off in their own chosen directions, leaving me spluttering, red-faced in the dust created by their passing.

(And for those prim types who sniff disdainfully at such comments, rolling their eyes and haughtily saying something to the effect that, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, you’re the writer! They’re fictitious characters! You’re in control, not them!” I would like to respectfully suggest, with tongue firmly in cheek, that you return to your job at the widget factory, because it’s painfully clear that viewing your characters as mindless Pinocchios is holding you back from really creating.)

Pantsing is really just true to life, when you think about it. After all, pretty much every one of us spends our entire lifetime pantsing, don’t we? Oh, sure, we can plan all we want about something going this way or that, but… well, pop quiz, folks: here, fill in the blank at the end of this famous statement by Robbie Burns: “the best-laid plans of mice and men ____________.” Life has a way of making a mockery of our best-laid plans. So if we go through it pantsing, why wouldn’t our characters do the same?

Here’s what happens when you pants your way through your day: an event occurs. You respond to it, choosing from among a number of possible alternatives. (Sometimes you have a reasonable amount of time to analyze and pick an alternative, but quite often, you must make a decision very quickly --- which most of us are terrible at doing. Like, I mean, atrociously bad… especially if life has thrown us some kind of curve ball crisis, which it is often wont to do, bless its black little heart.) And while some of those alternatives are pretty excellent, most are varying degrees of okay, and a few are spectacularly awful. Caveat: you may or may not be in a position to understand which is which… and understanding that something is a bad idea does not, strangely enough, automatically preclude you from doing it anyway. (Sigh.)

Choosing that alternative sets you up (sometimes literally) for another event, which you likewise respond to… and so on… hour after hour, day after day, for… yeah, pretty much your entire life. I know, I know: it can suck like a vacuum cleaner, because it tends to demolish one of the most cherished myths we have about life (and writing): no, not Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, the other myth: that We Are In Control. The problem is, that’s just as utterly, completely false for you as it is your characters, so you might as well learn to make your peace with it… just like your characters should, too.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t craft plans for your characters; just don’t expect them to work out in textbook fashion… or if they do, perhaps you should reflect on whether that straitjacket is really all that comfortable.

]]><![CDATA[The Perspective Monster]]>Mon, 29 Sep 2025 14:22:12 GMThttps://www.drranshaw.com/blog/the-perspective-monster

Captain William Bligh of His Majesty’s Armed Vessel Bounty.

Now, if you saw that on a business card (an anachronism in this instance, I know), and if you have any knowledge of history worth speaking of (a fairly major leap of faith on my part, I’m also aware), that name would likely evoke all kinds of negative emotions, bolstered by at least five film versions.

In 1787, Captain Bligh (who was really a lieutenant at the time) commanded a small British naval vessel on an expedition charged with carrying breadfruit samples from Tahiti in the south Pacific to the Caribbean, where the samples could be used to feed slaves on plantations there. Not exactly the most exciting mission, though they did encounter ferocious storms trying to go around the Cape Horn at South America’s southern tip, eventually forced to turn east and go around the southern tip of Africa, then across the Indian Ocean and into the Pacific that way, certainly quite an epic voyage in a small sailing ship.

What we know for certain is that, after successfully obtaining oodles of breadfruit samples in Tahiti, and being thoroughly charmed by the people there, the Bounty left, heading west on a reverse track from their outbound journey. We also know that along the way, there occurred one of the most famous mutinies in history, when one of Bligh’s officers, Christian Fletcher, led a band of the ship’s crew and took over the ship. Bligh and a number of men loyal to him were put overboard in a small boat with some supplies, and the mutineers took off back towards Tahiti. Bligh and his men completed a stunning voyage of thousands of miles over open ocean in a small boat. Nearly all of them survived to reach help and eventual return to England. Some of the mutineers lived in Tahiti, while Christian and other mutineers took the Bounty to Pitcairn Island in the south Pacific and settled there, burning the Bounty and establishing a settlement. A number of the mutineers were later found by English authorities and brought back to England. Several were hanged. There’s much more to the story than that, but I’ve given you the Coles notes version.

I know all this because I recently finished a well-written 2003 book titled (unsurprisingly) The Bounty, by Caroline Alexander. She skillfully weaves her tale, recounting the events of the mutiny and its aftermath. The only problem arising --- which I should stress isn’t her fault --- is that, if you’re looking for a definitive answer to the overriding question, you’re going to be disappointed: was Bligh the tyrannical sadist who drove his desperate men to rebel against him, or was he the enlightened victim of a group of malignant malcontents who rejected his authority and cavalierly tossed him and his men overboard to apparent certain death? Part of the answer, it seems, depends on your perspective… which brings me to the central point of today’s epistle: the Perspective Monster.

Bligh protested he was quite lenient with his men; the mutineers swore Bligh was a tin-plated dictator. The various courts-martial were a tangle of conflicting evidence, complete with lots of ‘don’t-remembers’ and such, which seems to suggest people’s memories were just as bad 250 years ago as they are today. So, again, perspective. Fletcher Christian’s tale would have been an interesting one to hear (he was never apprehended, and died on Pitcairn).

When writers spin a narrative, we can use one perspective --- usually the protagonist’s --- or we can go with multiple perspectives in the same tale. Tolkien did it in Lord of the Rings; George RR Martin did it (to excess, some might say) in Game of Thrones. (Then again, some wags might note that Martin’s modus operandi is all excess, all the time.) One of the most creative uses of multiple perspectives I’ve ever run across was in Jack Whyte’s magnificent Dream of Eagles saga, an extensive retelling of the Arthurian saga which runs across six lengthy books. (Not to be confused with TH White, whose Once and Future King tetralogy I personally found intensely disappointing.) Most of Jack Whyte’s Arthurian saga is told from the perspective of Merlin, but a companion volume, simply titled Uther, tells the story --- as you might expect --- from Uther’s view.

Using multiple perspectives does open things up, from a storytelling vantage point: you can explore events from the eyes of different characters, whose take on things will, naturally, be quite different depending on who and what they are. This can lead to interesting situations and interpretations. It allows the writer to branch out and, to use video game terminology, construct some side quests which may or may not have a pivotal impact on the main quest’s outcome.

On the other hand, multiple perspectives means increased complexity. Instead of just a single story arc, you now have several to keep track of, depending on how many characters you want to let off the leash. This can be confusing for both writer and reader if it’s not done well. And frankly, it can become annoying for the readers if they want to keep following a particular character’s tale, but have to switch to a different character. I really wanted to know, for example, what was going on with Frodo and Sam, and was far less interested (and invested, TBH) in what was going on with Merry and Pippin (sorry, guys, the best thing about that particular plot line was the great death scene it gave Boromir when you were captured by orcs) and the search for them by Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli. And GRRM… oy, don’t get me started with all those characters, and all those plot lines running every which way, like a monstrous spider’s web constructed by an arachnid on crystal meth.

I’m not saying multiple story perspectives can’t, or shouldn’t, be done. But Occam might have been onto something, and there’s an argument to be made, I think, that as a writing technique, it should be accompanied by one of those old cartographic warnings: beware, writer; here lies danger for the unwary.

]]><![CDATA[Can We Still Be Surprised?]]>Mon, 25 Aug 2025 13:33:20 GMThttps://www.drranshaw.com/blog/can-we-still-be-surprised

Once upon a time, a very long time ago now (at least as measured by anyone born in the last 20 years or so), a nice lady by the name of Aggie published a stage play. It was a murder mystery, complete with an ending with a twist (not a twisted ending, which is something quite different), and it was an astonishing success. Aggie never thought it would be the hit it turned out to be, and neither did the early newspaper reviewers who first watched it.

But The Mousetrap, as the play was titled, endured. To this day, in fact. Just about the only thing which could close it down was the Covid pandemic, and after that, it sprang back to life, rather like the zombies in numerous film franchises.

I’m going to make a ‘hot take’ about The Mousetrap. (A term I only started to run across relatively recently in the last year or two; Wikipedia says that, in journalism, a hot take is a "piece of deliberately provocative commentary that is based almost entirely on shallow moralizing," but also admits the term has broadened through social media use to “an unpopular or controversial opinion.”) So here it is: I don’t particularly care for The Mousetrap. I find it simplistic and predictable. (Yes, Virginia, I have seen it. At least twice over the years, maybe more.) And I agree with the early critics, who, again according to Wikipedia, said the play was ‘built entirely of clichés,’ with a number of the characters ‘too obvious by half.’

Now, in Aggie’s defense --- not that she really needs a thoroughly unknown writer to come to her defense, though I will anyway --- she wrote this story more than 85 years ago. I’ve said many times that writers write for, and of, their times, and she certainly did. Was it a kinder, gentler time? Not really, on one level --- the Second World War, with all its attendant horrors, had just wrapped a few years earlier --- but on another, literary level, I’d say it was. It was certainly a less frenetic time.

The same case can be made for the early James Bond films, by the way. Simplistic, trite, beyond dreadfully sexist… they were crimes against cinema. (And yes, I’ve watched them, too. The entire collection, he said with a sigh. My wife wanted all the Bond films for Christmas one year, so, dutiful husband that I am, I got them for her AND watched them with her. Of such sacrifices are successful marriages made. Oy.) I know many will find it sacrilegious that I’d mention Agatha Christie mysteries and Ian Fleming potboilers in the same sentence, but I’ll offend people all over again by saying that there’s probably more similarities between the two writers than a lot of people care to admit.

At any rate, I’d like to advance the idea that literary audiences weren’t quite so… so jaded. And that’s what led me to my central question for today: have we lost our capacity for surprise? How many times do we read/watch the climax where the protagonist prevails against all odds, and we relax… but only for a moment, because we know, even if the clueless protagonist doesn’t, that something else is coming along before the end of the story? Something even nastier and scarier.
(Think of the climactic sequence of the film Aliens: the protagonist, Ellen Ripley, has rescued her de facto daughter and the injured soldier Hicks, and together with the android Bishop, they’ve escaped the nuclear destruction of the alien-infested colony and are safely back on their spaceship and ready to go home. Or are they? Turns out they aren’t, because a big, badass momma alien hitched a ride on their little shuttle and is just a little pissed off with the way things have played out.) Whenever a character heaves a sigh of relief after defeating the enemy and says something to the effect of, “Well, glad that’s over, guess we’re done here,” as the audience, we’ve been trained over the last few decades just to know they’ve overstrained the universe’s tolerance for that kind of foolish naivete, and something really ugly is about to happen. Haha! Biff! Kapow! Take that, ridiculous puny characters!

Have we lost our capacity for literary/filmic surprise? Well, no, I don’t think so… but authors and filmmakers have to be a whole helluva lot more creative about it now than they needed to be lo, those (more innocent) several decades ago. Characters we used to routinely assume were invulnerable to lethal harm because they were primary characters (something I called the Immunity Syndrome several posts back) … people like George R.R. Martin sure killed that idea (and the characters themselves) off right smartly. In fact, more often than not, if you stumbled across a likable, fairly heroic character of his, it was a pretty good bet said character would likely soon be pushing up the daisies after a grisly demise.

It’s fairly rare nowadays that I can read or watch something unfold and think or say, “Man, I sure didn’t see that coming.” Part of that is because of the aforementioned process as writers have to endlessly ramp up the extraordinary twists and turns of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to keep readers/viewers increasingly aware of various plot machinations on their toes and guessing as to what will happen. Part of it is also because in that quest, too many writers become lazy about making sure those machinations are logical and make sense within the confines of the world and narrative they’ve created. Overwhelming and confusing your audience with explosions, metaphorical or literal, isn’t brilliance, folks.

You know, I rather wonder what Agatha --- and Ian, too, for that matter --- would make of it all now.

]]><![CDATA[Contrived Isn't Okay. In Fact, It's Bloody Awful]]>Mon, 28 Jul 2025 14:00:45 GMThttps://www.drranshaw.com/blog/contrived-isnt-okay-in-fact-its-bloody-awful

Item 1: Shout-outs
Now, there’s something on a staff meeting agenda which never failed to make me roll my eyes and swear softly… or not so softly if there weren’t any kids around. (Sometimes it was the sheer length of the agenda… like so many worker drones, I hated meetings, hated the waste of time with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns, and when I ran my own department meetings, made sure I ran things crisply and quickly so we could finish and get down to the never-ending real --- and far more important --- work directly associated with teaching.)

I was a public-school teacher for 35 --- count ‘em, thirty-five --- years, but it wasn’t until the final five of those 35 that things really started to progress beyond ludicrous and it seemed we were, daily, guests of honour at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. (It’s the reason I retired, but that’s a story for another day.)

Shout-outs were one of the ridiculous things which sprouted like hideous mushrooms in those last five years, and since they’re related to the issue I (eventually) want to arrive at today, you get to hear my rant. For those of you living under a rock, shout-outs are, well, just that: congratulations, compliments, appreciation for jobs well done, that kind of thing. And I know what you’re thinking right now: you miserable old curmudgeon, how could you possibly object to giving people some positive feedback? Just who peed in yer cornflakes this morning? And my simple answers are: I don’t; and nobody. I have no objections whatsoever with giving people who have done a good job, or gone above and beyond, or simply demonstrated kindness in a very cold, unforgiving world, some ego boo and/or appreciation. Matter of fact, we could do with a helluva lot more of that in said bleak world, and a helluva lot less criticism… or just as bad, indifferent silence.

My issue with the shoutouts at our staff meetings was the blatant artificiality, the hearty, bluff, forced nature of it. Toxic positivity is just as bad as negativity. Let me explain with another example. I used to teach Orwell’s Animal Farm in my grade ten English classes as an excellent introduction to the concepts of authoritarianism and dystopian literature. (Though my kids still needed lots ‘n lots of context about Stalin’s Soviet Union to understand the allusions, to be sure. Which I didn’t at all mind providing --- seeing the proverbial light switch go on above student heads was one of the great joys of teaching.)

Anyway, late in the book, every week the inhabitants of Animal Farm have to hold what are officially termed Spontaneous Demonstrations. With masterful understatement, Orwell says no one is forced to participate, but animals who don’t have their rations cut by half. The big thing I drew to my kids’ attention was the idea of a planned demonstration which was supposed to be spontaneous. The irony, the ludicrous premise, was so thick you could cut it with a knife. That’s kind of what shout-outs were to me, because you can’t mandate morale (“the floggings will continue until morale improves”) or schedule a time for people to be nice to each other. Doing so just encourages artificial bleating from the flock, and people shouldn’t need or desire an audience when they’re being nice. To me, it was merely another example of well-meaning but clueless administrators drinking the educational Kool-Aid and trying to solve complex problems with trite, simplistic solutions. (Why, yes, as an introvert, I also hated playing staff icebreaker games at the beginning of the school year, too. How did you know?)

Now, you don’t have to agree with me. Some of you won’t. You’re entitled to your opinion… as am I. But if people are too afraid/reluctant/intimidated to voice appreciation spontaneously… then we need to create atmospheres where they do feel comfortable voicing support and positive messages. (And by the way, to be clear, there was a lot I loved about teaching… just not things like those I’ve mentioned above.) I really loathe the phoniness of artificial situations… which brings us to today’s point.

In writing scenes, things have to be natural and not artificial. Readers can smell contrived situations from chapters away. Real life is frequently chaotic, and cliches and tropes do exist. That’s why we can identify with them even as we sometimes roll our eyes at them. (Human beings are, for the most part, not nearly as clever or original as they quaintly think.) But when situations seem contrived, when the deus ex machina takes over… that’s when viewers turn off the TV and readers close the book, tossing it scornfully into a corner. Even carefully structured scenes need to have that sense of reality and randomness about them.

It’s the same thing with dialogue. One English project I used to do was to have students hypothetically invite famous historical figures to a dinner party. A major part of the project was simply called The Conversation, and the kids had to research the historical figures (I provided a lengthy list of figures from different fields of endeavor) to find out how they’d respond to questions and discuss issues during the dinner party. One of the big things we had to do quite a lot of work on was constructing believable dialogue. Given how many of their dinner party conversations resembled little more than stilted games of 20 Questions, you’d never know these were kids who never shut up in real life. I had to point out that when someone says something, if the other participants are actually paying attention, they respond based on what was actually said. One character’s comments spark analysis, discussion, promulgation of new ideas, etc. Dialogue is a tightly woven tapestry of interconnected strands… at least among participants whose entire communication history isn’t defined by texting on their phones.

So. Spontaneity is fine. Structure is fine. Natural is fine. Contrived isn’t. Doesn’t really seem like rocket science… though with many print and film writers nowadays, you’d never guess that.

But if I read a page, or watch a scene, and my immediate take on it is, “hey… wait a minute…” well then, we have a problem, Houston.

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