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D.R. Ranshaw

D.R. RANSHAW

The Dreaded DLC

9/11/2023

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Rather like Tulio did with Miguel, I blame it on all Areellan.
 
(You know… Tulio and Miguel, the two ne’er-do-well adventurers from the entertaining 2000 DreamWorks film The Road to El Dorado. At one point, Miguel, the more --- ahem --- free-spirited, spontaneous member of the duo, has just gotten them in (another) pickle. He looks sheepishly at Tulio and says, “Don’t blame me.” Whereupon Tulio, without missing a beat, stabs an accusing finger at Miguel and hisses, “I blame you.”)
 
Let me back up a little and warn that today’s epistle takes, of necessity, a slightly roundabout route to get to its intended point i.e. the addition to an already completed work. But we’ll get there, I promise… just bear with me. Though I’m not really apologizing, because, well… to paraphrase Lionel Logue in another entertaining film (The King’s Speech) … my blog, my rules.
 
 So there I was in my writing atelier the other day, glumly surveying the 13,000 words of my latest project, and fancied I could sense Areellan behind me, sheepishly pleading, “don’t blame me.” You can probably guess my response.
 
Backing up some more, she’s the protagonist of a novel (with the accurate if not exactly on-fire working title of Areellan’s Tale) which I finished the 53rd draft of three months ago. (Leastways, it felt like the 53rd draft, he muttered defensively.) Now, I have to say I actually like Areellan a lot. She’s a feisty, takes-no-crap, calls-‘em-like-she-sees-‘em 19-year-old who ploughs effectively through the slings and arrows of Arrinor, my fantasy world, in her quest for truth, justice, and the Arrinoran way. In this mortal and rather drab world of ours, she also elbowed her way past my other Arrinoran protagonist, Rhissan Araxis, whose story was told in my 2015 novel Gryphon’s Heir and whose sequel was nigh to being finished… when Areellan showed up, demanding her tale be told right away. Rhiss, gentleman that he is, graciously acceded to her impolite demand.
 
(It's at this point non-writers --- and likely psychiatrists --- eye me with some alarm and ask why I’m treating fictional characters as though they’re ‘real.’ To which I, and every other writer ever, laugh heartily and reply simply, “Well, because they are, of course.” Bwahahaha! No, we’re not crazy. Why do you ask?)
 
All in all, I’m pretty pleased with Areellan’s Tale, and that’s where blaming Areellan comes in, because the writing in her tale is, false modesty be damned, pretty good, I think… and it happens to pass the Bechdel Test with flying colours… and coincidentally puts the eight-years-past writing of Gryphon’s Heir to shame, in my fussy opinion. So what’s a writer to do with a work that’s no longer state of the art? Why… revise it, of course. Maybe create a second edition, for which, by the way, the rules seem to be rather vague --- I’ve checked. Mostly they seem to stress just needing a goodly amount (my nebulous term) of new content, not merely proofreading/editing the existing version. Don’t ask how much ‘goodly’ is, because no sources I consulted seemed to know. But… yeah, make it goodly.
 
So. Earlier this year, I began by going through Gryphon’s Heir and cutting over 11,000 words --- no plot, just extraneous words I swear I thought I’d excised lo, all those years ago. Turns out present-day me finds eight-years-ago me unnecessarily verbose, even worthy of an eye-roll or six. Which, I hasten to add, isn’t a bad thing… I mean, if I haven’t improved my craft in eight years, maybe I should just shut down my brand-new laptop and go find some mindless gig-economy job somewhere.
 
Then I (ta da!) finally turned my attention to the DLC.
 
DLC is actually a videogame term. (Yes, Virginia, your author plays videogames. Unsurprisingly, he likes ones featuring engaging storylines with strongly effective female protagonists.) It stands for DownLoadable Content, which at first glance, appears a tad nonsensical, but, again, bear with me. When a videogame company puts out a new title, it often, if the game sells well, publishes an addition to that game a year or so later, referred to as DLC. It generates new interest in the game, and not coincidentally, generates more money for the publisher, because they don’t give DLC away, heavens no! My experience with DLC is it adds an entertaining new side story to the main tale without affecting the overall plotline arc. It’s an add-on, not a replacement… so that’s what I went hunting for in Gryphon’s Heir. I had 11,000 words of room to write, which I naively thought was plenty. (Kind of like when I got my first Macintosh computer, several eons ago, and learned it possessed a 40-megabyte hard drive. 40 meg! I thought incredulously at the time. What was I ever going to do with all that space?! Ah, the sweet innocence of youth. My aforementioned new laptop needs more than 40 meg just to sneeze.)
 
What I needed to do, I decided, was come up with a DLC for Gryphon’s Heir: an entertaining side-story… an absorbing rabbit-hole protagonist Rhiss could just disappear down into for a few thousand words, than pop up again, older and wiser, to resume the main storyline. And it took a while, but I did find the ideal entry point for such a DLC.
 
Problem is, the DLC has become a veritable Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, whiffling through the tulgey wood. And it’s growing… I passed that 11,000-word self-imposed limit a couple of thousand words ago, and we’re galloping through the DLC at breakneck speeds towards a still-unknown climax which doesn’t appear to be coming anytime soon. (Rhiss hasn’t bothered to inform me what that is just yet --- when I began writing, I tried being a plotter, honest I did, but my characters kept laughing at my outlines and plot summaries and insisted on doing their own thing, so I gave up. Nowadays, I just let them tell me what to do. Non-writers, stop edging away from me with that carefully blank expression.) As a matter of fact, events seem to be getting messier and messier, Rhiss is in more and more trouble, and I understand viscerally what Tolkien meant when he said, “this tale grew in the telling.”
 
Well… having come this far… and even though all sorts of potential side plots keep manifesting… we must plug onwards. In the meantime… Dammit, Rhiss! No! That man is trying to kill you! Get back!
 
Sigh. It’s like herding cats.
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A Cautionary Tale...

8/21/2023

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There’s a map of Middle Earth hanging on the wall in my study/den (or, as I like to grandly refer to it, my writing atelier). It’s right above my desk. The poster was beautifully crafted by Pauline Baynes waaaay back in 1971, according to the date she provided in the lower right-hand corner, and I bought my copy very shortly thereafter (probably in a state of incoherent excitement, if I remember early teenage me correctly --- which, he said wearily, rolling his eyes, believe me, I do). So, it’s been in my possession, lo, these fifty years and more. I was thoughtfully studying it in the distracted way writers often do with objects surrounding their writing spaces when they seek inspiration… and it suddenly struck me.
 
At the top of the map, Ms. Baynes did an illustration of the Fellowship of the Ring --- the Nine Walkers, as Elrond called them --- and it was to this lovely artwork my eye was drawn. I’ve reproduced it for you at the top of this post. Let’s have a bit of a gander at that illustration, shall we? Then we’ll have a short quiz to see if you noticed what I did
 
The Fellowship is confidently striding along (no pun intended) in a loose, V-shaped formation strangely reminiscent of a group of geese flying south for the winter. Moving from left to right, let’s see how Ms. Baynes ordered the characters.
 
On the left end is Boromir, tall and proud as befits a son-of-Gondor-who-will-meet-a-messy-end, dressed in bright colours, the belt holding the horn which he will later employ in his hour of final need just visible.
 
To his right is Gandalf the Grey, incongruously dressed in black, with a rather more pointed hat than would probably be practical. His plain staff, devoid of the film’s decorative touches, is in his right hand.
 
Then strides Gimli son of Gloin, who, strangely, also appears to be carrying a staff rather than the axe we know he was armed with. (Artistic license, I suppose.)
 
Next we have two hobbits, Merry and Pippin. (Or Pippin and Merry, it’s not easy to tell, and in the final analysis, probably doesn’t matter too much. Sorry, Merry/Pippin aficionados. In modern fan parlance, we could refer to them as either Merpip or Pipry, neither of which sounds particularly inspiring, if you ask me. But I’m just a cranky old boomer, so what the hell do I know?)
 
In the lead position is, obviously, Frodo, Reluctant Adventurer, marching resolutely along on what pretty much everyone probably realizes is the mother of all suicide missions. Doesn’t deter our plucky protagonist, however. It’s gotta be done, and he’s prepared to do it, although… it’s never specifically addressed in either book or film, but I’d be willing to bet he’s more than a little pissed with Cousin --- not Uncle, as Peter Jackson would have you believe --- Bilbo for finding the damned Ring in the first place. Like, come on, dude, it’s not yours, leave it where you found it.
 
To Frodo’s right is Samwise Gamgee, sidekick extraordinaire, sporting an oversized backpack crammed with just about everything except the kitchen sink. Good on ya, Sam… every traveler knows that if you don’t pack a particular item, you’ll need it in some life-or-death struggle against undead apparitions.
 
Rounding out our Fellowship on the illustration’s right-hand side are the last --- but not least --- two companions (plus Bill the horse, who frankly gets better shrift in the book than in the film): Aragorn son of Arathorn, heir of Numenorean kings, and Legolas the wood-elf.
 
All in all, a warmly encouraging picture, the sort of thing recruiting agencies love to put on their propaganda posters. All it needs is the appropriate slogan. You know… MIDDLE EARTH NEEDS YOU or NIX THE NAZGUL or RUN RINGS AROUND YER ENEMIES or something equally patriotic.
 
However… pop quiz time, boys and girls! What fundamental difference do we note betwixt illustration based on the book, and the films?
 
Wait, what’s that you’re mumbling? YOU DIDN’T READ THE BOOK? Zounds! A pox on thee, thou uncultured poltroon. Get thee to a nunnery or other unsavoury place. Or in modern parlance, I’m sorry, we can’t talk anymore.
 
Okay, let me answer the question by relating how the late film critic Roger Ebert put it in his brilliant 2001 review of Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring: “If the books are about brave little creatures who enlist powerful men and wizards in a dangerous crusade, the movie is about powerful men and wizards who embark on a dangerous crusade and take along the hobbits.”
 
Too sadly true, Roger. He also notes that the film hobbits are, really, reduced to supporting characters. Which, given that Tolkien didn’t write them that way, is… really, really unfortunate. It certainly changes the tone of the story in dramatic fashion.
 
All my life, I’ve wondered why filmmakers do this, why they rewrite the Master. Even today, as the aforementioned cranky old boomer, I still don’t understand. What’s wrong with the original story that you feel the overwhelming need to change it? (Or destroy its point. One particularly egregious example is some American company --- partly funded by the CIA, according to Wikipedia --- made a cartoon film version in the 1950s of Orwell’s Animal Farm, where at the end, the animals rise up and overthrow the pigs to restore peace, justice, and the American Way to the world. Like, guys… you just completely destroyed the point of Orwell’s story with that wretchedly stupid little rewrite.)
 
Now, never say never. I’m not saying there are no elements to Tolkien’s writing which aren’t painful and don’t translate well to modern film. His depiction of women and romance, for example, is wooden and stilted… though even there, we have to remember that writers write for and of the times they live in. Tolkien was born at the end of the 19th century, and wrote much of his early Middle Earth work in the early part of the 20th.
 
But fundamentally changing a story? Perhaps our plaintive cry should be, “why’d ya do it, Mr. J?”

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Write What You Know?

7/24/2023

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Exactly, Wednesday. In fact, as writers, we might even say ‘write on, girl.’ (Sorry. Awful pun. I’ll stop now. Maybe.) I’ve always hated the expression, too. It’s a paean to pedanticism. A march to mediocrity. A license for losers. A sonnet for shackling. A--- well, enough with the alliterative imagery. You get my point.
 
Writers of speculative fiction --- science fiction and fantasy --- should especially take exception to ‘write what you know’ (WWYK --- maybe I should copyright that little gem, he opined satirically), because I’d venture to guess damned few of us have any particular experience with starships and dragons and fairies, oh my. But it isn’t just SFF authors who should object to the ethos of WWYK.
 
Agatha Christie didn’t go around murdering people in all sorts of grisly, imaginative ways (at least, as far as we know…) Elmore Leonard was neither a cowboy nor a criminal. (Yes, you heard me. A number of his early works were Westerns, not the crime fiction for which he was later famous.) Stephen King hasn’t (we hope) had all kinds of terrifying encounters with the paranormal. JK Rowling has no experience with wizards and isn’t a witch (except, perhaps, to her detractors, and the word there is more a pejorative descriptor relating to her character). Yet these are all highly successful authors who created their own worlds and wrote stories in them which have captivated millions over decades.
 
On a more personal level, the protagonist of my current work in progress is a 19-year-old girl named Areellan… and I’m pretty sure she’s gay. She’s feisty, angry, takes no crap from anyone… and has the wherewithal to defend herself against creeps, bums and the Compleat Dark Forces of Evil. I like her a lot. But… as anyone who knows me or has seen my social media profile picture can attest, I’m… really none of those things. In fact, as a white, straight, male, (retired) boomer (yes, I’m well aware of all the privilege wrapped up in that description, thanks… no need to belabour it), I’m pretty much as far away from ‘being’ Areellan as it’s possible to be.
 
(In my defence, I WILL point out a couple o’ things… first, I was a secondary school English teacher for 35 years --- AND lived to tell the tale with sanity more or less intact --- so had the opportunity to work with and observe behaviours/emotional ranges of 14-18-year-olds fairly extensively. [Oy. Did I ever.] And secondly, I’ve been told by women who read my first novel, Gryphon’s Heir, that I write female characters believably. There you are. QED.)
 
So… should I simply write about aging white male boomers with a penchant for sarcasm, occasional brilliant sallies of wit, and dad jokes? To quote Old Major from Animal Farm: “No, comrades, a thousand times no!” (No jokes about the resemblance of this writer to an elderly boar, please. Or puns about boars and bores.) Then what’s a fella to do? Again, a couple o’ things.
 
First, following Taylor Swift’s advice is a good place to start: as a society, We Need To Calm Down. Let’s dial back the constant outrage and sense of being offended, shall we? About the last thing needed is the shrill invective routinely occurring on social media and every public forum these days --- on any topic. I can imagine someone telling me, “You’re a straight, older man writing about a young lesbian?! How dare you?! How can you possibly capture or understand the subtle nuances of her personality?! What kind of arrogant presumption is this, anyway?!” (No one’s anyone actually told me that, BTW. Yet.) Now, you gotta love a good interrobang or six, but most invective is full of obscenities which would make a sailor blush… and nowhere near as literate as what I’ve expressed here.
 
Second… as a writer… settings are, at least for the purposes of today’s epistle, just window dressing. You write as honestly as you can about people. Their relationships. The bad (and good) things happening to them. In short, their lives. We all know about those things. And if you write about things you’ve neither observed nor experienced, you PRETEND. Readers will either like the way you pretend, finding it believable/relatable… or they won’t.
 
In 1976, Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier starred in the film Marathon Man, a thriller with Olivier as a Nazi war criminal who tangles with Hoffman’s graduate student character. As the tale goes, in one scene, Hoffman’s character has been awake for three days, so Hoffman, devout method actor, tried doing that, with predictable results. Shocked, Olivier asked Hoffman, “My boy, why don’t you just try acting?” In other words… PRETEND you’re exhausted from being awake 72 hours… you needn’t actually go to that extreme.
 
More recently, there’s a hilarious clip on YouTube (everything’s on YouTube nowadays) of a skit between Sir Ian McKellen and Ricky Gervais, with Gervais pretending to be an actor auditioning for a part in a play McKellen is directing. Responding to Gervais’ confusion, McKellen explains how he created the role of Gandalf: “I… pretend to be the person I’m portraying in the film or play…Peter Jackson comes from New Zealand and says to me, ‘Sir Ian, I want you to be Gandalf the wizard,’ and I say to him, ‘You are aware I’m not really a wizard?’ and he says, ‘Yes I’m aware of that, but what I want you to do is use your acting skills to portray the wizard for the duration of the film.’ So I said okay, and then I said to myself, ‘Mmm… how would I do that?’ And this is what I did: I imagined what it would be like to be a wizard, and then I pretended and acted in that way on the day… if we were to draw a graph of my process, of my method, it would be something like this: Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian, action, Wizard: ‘YOU SHALL NOT PASS,’ cut! Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian.”
 
Maybe I’m missing something here, but… I really don’t think it’s any more complicated than that, folks.
 
You’re a writer. Pretend. End of story.
 
Well, actually… just the beginning.

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Dads, By Category

6/19/2023

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Literary dads often seem to get short shrift, don’t you think? Wonder why that is.
 
I ask because, having already written in past years about notable dad characters in honour of Father’s Day (which, of course, was yesterday), I thought I’d do something slightly different and categorize them by type instead. To my semi-dismayed semi-surprise, out of nine categories I came up with… only two were positive. Doesn’t say much regarding literary daddishness, does it?
 
So without further ado… here are my categories, in all their glorious alliterativeness:
 
Disappearing Dads
Sometimes, the dad figure is entirely absent from the story --- we could probably create a sub-category here, labeling it Deadbeat Dads --- creating nearly as large a strain or hole in the family dynamic as when mom’s AWOL. (Note use of qualifier. Ain’t nobody can replace a mom.) For example, the Pevensey pater in the Narnia books is gone, presumably off to the nastiness of World War II, so his absence isn’t his fault. But it does make things waaay more difficult for the rest of the family.
 
Devious Dads
President Coriolanus Snow of Hunger Games notoriety is one cunning dude, as we witness when he regularly spars with Katniss. Donald Sutherland portrays him brilliantly in the films, particularly with that creepy… well, I think Stephen King called it (in relation to one of his own characters) a ‘shit-eating grin’ --- a rictus of the facial muscles utterly devoid of human warmth or good humour. It makes the contrast between Snow’s tenderness for his grand-daughter and his coldness towards Katniss all the more unnerving.
 
Domineering Dads
George Banks in the 1964 film Mary Poppins. (A bad dad? In a children’s classic? you whisper disbelievingly. To which I answer… oh, come on, people. Children’s lit is especially replete with awful parents of both stripes. We have many, many classical children’s lit authors who evidently had major mommy or daddy issues.) Mr. Banks isn’t an intrinsically evil man… just profoundly ignorant and arrogant. Does he love his wife and children? Well… yes, I’d say so… with one big-ass caveat: he wants them all to Know and Keep their Proper (i.e. Subservient) Places. It isn’t until Mary Poppins dynamites his smugness --- and his life ---that he realizes what a jerk he's been.
 
Devilish Dads
King Claudius in Will’s Hamlet. Let’s see: he’s Hamlet’s uncle, secretly murdered Hamlet’s dad the king, usurped Hamlet’s rightful crown, married Hamlet’s mom (which means we’re now in the icky/awkward situation where he’s Uncle Dad --- and just to confirm, Virginia, the evil stepdad trope does exist alongside the evil stepmom one), and oh, yes, it isn’t too far into the play when he decides to murder Hamlet, too. Not exactly a candidate for the Best Dad Ever Award. I just love a good Shakespearean tragedy.
 
Dopey Dads
Look, nobody questions Arthur Weasley’s love or loyalty to his wife and children in the Harry Potter books. But I think we all have to objectively agree he’s not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. If we’re feeling particularly charitable, we could say he possesses a child-like wonder… but that may not be the best quality when you’re confronted with a bunch of murderous Death-Eaters. (If I was feeling less charitable, I’d look at Arthur and Ron, then observe the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree…)
 
Detached Dads
Mr. Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is another loving father… but, confronted with a ditzy wife and a very large contingent of daughters who all need marrying off, he retreats into his study and really doesn’t take much of a leadership role with his family. Donald Sutherland again does a marvelous job portraying him in the 1995 film version.
 
Dismissive Dads
Not sure what this says about Tolkien, but at least two of the leading dads in The Lord of the Rings --- Elrond and Denethor --- are cold, patronizing, and dismissive. Elrond’s problem is the lesser, traditional “I know what’s best for my daughter, you’re not marrying that bum, you’re taking the next flight outta here, and that’s final” kind of silliness. But Denethor is a whole ‘nother level of nastiness, blatantly favouring older son Boromir and mercilessly disparaging younger son Faramir until it’s too late to make amends. To be fair, Denethor’s mind is unhinged by the time of his death, but even so, dismissive dads going around saying the equivalent of things like “you’re useless” and “why can’t you be more like your sibling?” cause real, lasting damage.
 
Now… something more uplifting…
Doting Dads
Bob Cratchit in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Poor Bob. He toils for Ebeneezer Scrooge, who wrote the book on nasty, skinflint, miserly characters, and is the employer from hell. The work is tedious and never-ending, the working conditions appalling, and Bob’s wages are a pittance, pathetically insufficient to house and maintain his wife and alarmingly large crowd of children, including the crippled Tiny Tim. And yet… despite all this, he remains hopeful, cheerful, and passionately in love with his family. His positivity stands in stark, ironic contrast to Scrooge’s negativity. And Tim’s death in the possible future shown to Scrooge by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come leaves Bob absolutely shattered. Note that while Bob is powerless to effect change for himself and his family, he certainly dotes on them.
 
And finally…
Dynamic Dads
These are the dads who are loving, effective, and smart. Not perfect, we’re not talking Superman here, because there ain’t no such animal in either the dad or mom departments --- we all have baggage of one kind or another --- but regardless of our age, they leave us with that warm, contented, secure feeling in the pit of our stomachs, because we know they’ve got this. Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird is one such example. He’s a man of principles, acts on them --- and is prepared to do the unpopular thing when it’s also the right thing. He’s largely unflappable in the face of his children’s antics, and loves them deeply.
 
So there we are. I’m sure there are more categories… those were just the ones I thought of during my initial ponderings. As I say, it’s dismaying that so many of them range from the merely incompetent to downright diabolical, but it is Character Failings, gentle reader and fellow writer, which drive so many of our stories forward.
 
After all, perfect people are… well… boring. So fail on, literary characters. Your failings are our bread and butter.

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What Drives Characters?

5/22/2023

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So… just how would you advertise if you were looking for a protagonist/hero? Possibility of great monetary reward and/or treasure? No, no… you want a hero, not some greedy, grubbing mercenary only interested in money and shiny trinkets. Great adventure accompanied by insane dangers? Definitely no. That belongs in the category of a little too much accuracy in advertising. I mean, who’d take on such a job except the hopelessly naïve of the insanely reckless? Preferably single with no family or emotional ties? Again, no, despite the fact such a requirement is honest and would keep your character out of messy relational entanglements. Besides, you want a person, not a robot. Should be courageous, able to laugh in the face of danger? Who the hell laughs at danger? Not sane people with intelligence, that’s for sure.
 
Where’s all this coming from? you might well ask impatiently, a jaundiced look in your eye. Well, the other day I was rewatching The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the 2012 (Sweet Earendil! Has it really been that long?) Peter Jackson film which kicked off the second round of Tolkien film trilogy mania. And I was struck by the image of Martin Freeman as Bilbo, cavorting over the New Zealand countryside, dementedly shouting, “I’m going on an adventure!”
 
Now, aside from the fact that those words are Jackson’s, not Tolkien’s --- and in an act of supreme self-control, I’ll refrain from a rage-rant today about jackalope upstarts rewriting the Master --- it suddenly struck me that this is a damned silly thing for a protagonist to do, especially a protagonist Tolkien (and even Jackson) have to that point been at pains to emphasize is a solid, quiet individual totally uninterested in the concept of danger, dismemberment and adventure in general. (Yes, yes, I know Jackson could be doing it for several reasons, including highlighting how fun it is to make abrupt and capricious turnarounds in a character’s nature. Or simply because he thought it’s amusing to watch. Shut up and stop interrupting. This is my soap box.)
 
So, then, the weighty question concerning all writers becomes (at least insofar as today’s epistle is concerned): What Drives A Protagonist? I sat down, pen in hand, and within a few seconds noted a number of reasons --- not a Compleat Lyste by any stretch, but it’ll do to begin with, as Humpty Dumpty said to Alice.
 
(I suppose, he admitted grudgingly, come to that, protagonists can be driven by a sense of adventure. Just not very many rational ones… you know, the ones who are okay with three square meals a day, hot baths, warm beds to snuggle up in while listening to the night rain… that kind of thing. The key word in my question is drives, which implies some sort of force creating the need for a protagonist to take action, leave a comfortable life, and embark on suicidal dragon-slaying quests accompanied by a bunch of smelly, uncouth dwarves who despoil their hosts’ dining areas with food fights.)
 
In no particular order, then, here are several possible Factors Which Drive Protagonists:
 
Curiosity. It’s simultaneously one of our race’s greatest gifts and curses. We Need to Know. We Need to Know Why. We’re insatiable in our curiosity (well, except hormonal adolescents in a hot classroom on a Friday afternoon, grumbled the retired secondary school teacher). At times, that curiosity gets us into a helluva lot of trouble, especially when we don’t bother to think of the repercussions of that curiosity. But it doesn’t seem to stop us.
 
Revenge. Ah, one of the oldest motivators of human behaviour, regardless of whether it’s served cold or piping hot. When we’re wronged, we are Not. Going. To. Let. That. Horrible. Other. Person. Get. Away. With. It. End of story. Even if it drags us both down into some spectacularly destructive mutual death-spiral. The problem with this drive is, obviously, it’s a pretty negative headspace to put your protagonist into --- like its close relative, Fear. Protagonists can be driven by fears --- my God, most of us are walking clumps of neuroses and fears which all too often govern our actions --- but it’s not really a very noble motivation for getting a protagonist to do something.
 
Duty. Which is a concept that may have fallen somewhat out of favour in our modern, narcissistic world. “I don’t really want to do this, but feel a moral obligation to start/finish this mission… quest… thing.” It’s a noble sentiment in theory, but I’d suggest that, if that’s the protagonist’s primary motivation, it’s not a great one. Doing something merely from a sense of duty implies your heart isn’t really in it, which doesn’t infuse one with a lot of optimism about possibilities of a favourable outcome.
 
Need to Defend Something. Person, loved one, land, city, way of life… take your pick. Whatever your little heart can imagine. This has been a primary basis for human behaviour pretty much from the get-go. As a species, we’ll do quite a lot to protect something we really like, or something, in Samwise’s words, that’s worth fighting for.
 
Need to Restore Something. Similar, but kind of the flipside of the previous drive. Loved one, land, city, way of life… it’s gone or been taken from the protagonist, who wants to try and bring it back. As before, humanity will go to extraordinary lengths to right a wrong, to bring about healing and restoration… it’s one of our (few) sterling qualities.
 
And finally… Love. We’ll go out on a treacly note. Let cynics roll their eyes and groan theatrically to their hearts’ content, ain’t no denying that love is a major driver of human behaviour --- and, I should note, there are many different types of love, the vast majority of which have absolutely nothing to do with physical attraction and sex. (Something our modern-day society seems to have forgotten in its puerile efforts to equate everything with sex. Chill out, dudes. As Freud is supposed to have said, sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.) But people will do all kinds of things for love, some honourable, some not.
 
So there you are. Seven-ish possible reasons to get your protagonist out of his/her armchair and leaping across the fields, shouting adventure memes. What are you standing around for? Get moving!

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More Decisions... Mostly Stupid

4/24/2023

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In my last post, I examined a really important question for writers (and just about everyone else, too): why do literary characters (and real people, come to that) often make such unfortunate --- and at times, inexplicably stupid, stupid decisions?
 
I examined the choice of Joel Miller, smuggler/survivor extraordinaire, in the post-apocalyptic, plague-infested world of The Last of Us. His decision to save Ellie Williams, who’s become his de facto daughter, from the desperate clutches of a group trying to get a vaccine from her --- a move which will save humanity but simultaneously bring about her death --- is a mammoth decision and, as I explained, one he only has seconds to make… truly a tragedy, given the far-reaching consequences of whatever he decides. So… yeah… time, or rather lack thereof, is certainly a major reason why we often make such poor decisions. But there are others, too, so today, for your entertainment and edification, I’ll look at five --- by no means a Compleat Liste, but certainly prime, enduring culprits.  In no particular order, here they are.
 
The first big-ass factor is ignorance/rationalization. My God, our species has a spectacular --- well, I was going to say ‘gift,’ but I think ‘curse’ is a better word --- to rationalize decisions which fly in the face of all reason and logic. People go to unbelievable lengths to ignore inconvenient facts/situations they don’t like. We’re past masters at it. You need look no further than the entire COVID experience for proof… gads, it certainly destroyed any lingering faith I had in humanity. Perhaps the best meme I saw relating to COVID was “we’re going to have to retire the phrase, ‘avoid it like the plague,’ because apparently people don’t do that.” I’m still shaking my head.
 
Another factor is duty. We make bad decisions because we feel a sense of obligation, of duty. (Less so nowadays in our juvenile, narcissistic society than in times past, perhaps.) Frodo agreeing to take the Ring to Mordor is an example. It’s a terrible decision, because everyone in the room knows perfectly well it’s basically a suicide mission, but he wearily raises his hand to volunteer regardless because, gosh-darn it, someone’s got to win the booby prize, and he’s brought it this far, and it was a family member who dredged it up in the first place, so...
 
Fear is another biggie, probably one of the dominant reasons why we behave as we do. We’re biologically programmed to very sensibly shy away from danger, because, despite the cartoonish violence we’re bombarded with on film --- and in literature --- humans are remarkably fragile organisms in a world full of terrors. But sometimes we allow that fear to overwhelm us into making really bad choices. It’s no coincidence the Litany Against Fear in Frank Herbert’s Dune included the lines “Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration” because it does. Fear clouds rational judgement, reducing us to gibbering idiots who dash from one danger right into the path of oncoming traffic. Splat.
 
Then there’s anger and its close relative, jealousy. Like fear, when we become angry, rational thought deserts us and we do/say really, really stupid things which later, when rationality has returned, we can’t believe we did/said. It’s hard to focus on stuff when we’re viewing it through a fine scarlet haze and we want to just reach out and crush, maim, kill, and in general be unkind. I lump jealousy into this factor because it’s similar: our anger/disappointment/resentment causes us to commit all sorts of violent, sabotaging things. Many people say Shakespeare’s Iago does what he does out of jealousy.
 
Finally, people make really bad decisions because of love, which seems a little paradoxical until you realize that love frequently does pretty much what fear, anger, and jealousy all do: rob us of our ability to be calm, rational, and objective. Crap, does it ever. The drive to reproduce is also biologically programmed right into us --- only just behind the drive to survive --- and my God, we are absolutely enslaved to it. People in love do all sorts of crazy things.
 
However, ultimately, as writers, it’s a good thing characters do make terrible calls and bad judgements; if they didn’t, if they were all calm, rational, objective folks who do and say the right things all the time… well, aside from the fact they’d be irritatingly perfect, pretentious, and tremendously boring, it would make it harder for us as writers to craft interesting stories. Internal conflicts arising because of various emotional states --- that roiling cauldron of human feelings --- is often far more interesting than merely outside forces casting, as Will says, the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ at our characters.
 
I find it really amusing when readers/viewers say characters in this or that tale are behaving unrealistically because their actions are too unbelievable, too ridiculous, too stupid. Folks, I’ve got news for some of you: ain’t no such thing. People are stupid. Humanity routinely makes terrible decisions, really, really bad calls. All. The. Frigging. Time. Individually and collectively. Where’s my proof for that, you ask? Shucks, how about five thousand years or so of recorded history? There’s one unbelievably big-ass catalogue of stupid decisions right there at your fingertips… for your perusal, as Rod Serling might say --- a writer who was a keen observer of humanity’s foibles. And that’s before we heard about people eating Tide detergent pods or drinking battery acid. Like, come on, people.
 
Some years back, the popular musical group The Arrogant Worms wrote a hilarious song entitled “History is Made By Stupid People,” and all humour aside, they make a pretty valid point. I guess that’s what writers do: we revel in people’s stupidity, their bad decisions.  
 
So… yeah. Revel on, writers. Cultivate the cruelty. Encourage the enervation. Illuminate the idiocy. Massage the mendacity. Your characters have nothing to lose but… well, nothing to lose but their common sense and quiet good judgement.
 
Which makes for more interesting stories.

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Decisions, decisions...

3/27/2023

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So… here’s a thing (a stranger thing, one might almost say, although Eleven and Mike aren’t even remotely involved):
 
At great personal risk, you’ve just spent several terrifying, freaking months ferrying a package --- on foot, to boot, if you’ll pardon the pun --- across a plague-devastated United States, full of mutant infected who slaver and want nothing more than to messily devour you at every opportunity --- while theoretically non-mutant survivors want to do the same, more or less simultaneously. You started off loathing this package --- a snarky, sassy, foul-mouthed, 14-year-old girl named Ellie, by the way --- who detested you right back, with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns.
 
But along the way, another thing, even stranger… well, maybe not, given shared tribulations and such: the two of you actually started to like each other, care for each other… to the point where, by the time you finally deliver her to the consignee, a resistance/terrorist group (everything’s a matter of perspective, isn’t it?) quaintly named the Fireflies, she’s kinda become your de facto daughter, and you’re kinda her de facto dad. (Aww. How sweet, even though it’s not a particularly original trope. Then again, as I’ve noted before, nothing really is.)
 
Now, you’ve long known Ellie is the key to resolving this plague, because (gasp!) she’s immune to it. So… the plan has been to get her to a Firefly lab and a team of specialists, and hopefully, they can synthesize from her a vaccine to stop people from sprouting repulsive fungal growths and going crazy. (I was going to make a smartass reference about our current, real-life society, but I’ll let you read between the lines.) But… both you and she naively thought that would involve nothing more than getting a few blood samples, and then you could both be on your way, smugly aware you’ve Just Saved Truth, Justice and the American Way. Oh, and Humanity, too, by the way.
 
However, before we can all join hands and sing a touching round of Kumbaya, it turns out, to nobody’s great surprise… there’s a slight problem. Saving humanity is going to require a little more than a few vials of Ellie’s blood. Matter of fact… it requires a good chunk of her brain, which is likely to ruin her whole day.
 
And yours, daddio.
 
So… You Have A Decision To Make. You can choose Door #1: leave quietly and gratefully, reflecting, with tranquil, Spock-like wisdom, that sometimes, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (or the one) and that, doubtless, the universe is unfolding as it should. Or you can choose Door #2, saying, “Not my kid, you @#$%^!” and do everything in your power to prevent Ellie from going under the knife… even if that means a certain amount of carnage involving understandably upset Fireflies i.e. a veritable bloodbath as you grimly carve your way to an unconscious Ellie, already lying on the operating table awaiting the aforementioned knife.
 
But here’s the Real Thing (and the crux of today’s epistle): you don’t have days, or hours, to quietly meditate and reflect on the correct course of action, sipping herbal tea, munching a biscotti, and calmly weighing the pros and cons of these alternatives. You. Have. Seconds. Tick tock, tick tock, with the Angel of Death at your elbow, murmuring quietly in your ear, “Well? What’s it gonna be, Joel? ‘Cause I haven’t got all day. And neither do you.”
 
We all make scores of decisions, some good, some not, each and every day --- though most aren’t the emotionally searing kind, determining life and death, like Joel has to make above (thank God). Because the truth of the matter is that most of us are really terrible at making good decisions under pressure. We want to be able to sit down, take some time, and calmly analyse the alternatives. We hate being put in the pressure cooker. Because, like I said, when we are, most of us tend to screw things up badly. Now, when the above scenario played out in the climactic season finale of the TV show The Last of Us, and Joel unsurprisingly chose Door #2, my wife turned to me and asked how he could possibly rationalize that choice, knowing he’d just condemned humanity to the dark hell of the plague’s possibly endless continuation. Or words to that effect. And because I’d spent over two hundred hours on the PlayStation game of the same name prior to watching the series on TV (gee, thanks Sony, for that really helpful system update which now accusingly informs me how long I’ve played each game on my console, he said sarcastically), I was able to approach the matter rather more calmly and philosophically, having long had opportunity to reflect on the same question.
 
This is a really important question for writers --- and readers --- to consider: why do story characters make unfortunate, and at times, really stupid, decisions? Well, there are a whole raft of reasons --- maybe I’ll make that the subject of my next post --- but one of the more important ones is what I’ve gone to some length to sketch out for you today: time. Every once in a while, the cosmos confronts us with a split-second, life-altering situation, and calmly tells us it needs our response within the next couple of seconds, and no extensions or refunds. So… we have to decide. Fast. And as I said, most of us aren’t good at choosing the best choice. In Joel’s case, he really doesn’t have time (or inclination) to consider the needs of humanity’s future. His baby girl is about to be vivisectioned, and his totally understandable (if possibly egocentric), emotional response, is, “Not on my watch!”
 
As real-life humans… we fervently hope such scenarios never occur, or at least are few and far between. As writers… well, bwahahahaha! We present those scenarios to our characters as often as we possibly can, because they make for great drama, and conflict, and readers/viewers tearing out their hair, screaming, “What? Why? How can they do that?!”
 
So, the next time you read about a story character making a really stupid split-second decision… cut ‘em a little slack.
 
And blame the writer. Bwahahahaha!
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Enemies to Friends (or Lovers)

2/13/2023

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Let me start today’s epistle by telling you a delightful little bedtime fairy tale, boys and girls (and it comes with plot spoilers, too, so… you’ve been warned):
 
Once upon a time, in a broken world all too similar to this one, except even more broken --- and yes, Virginia, lest you gesture in disbelief at the dumpster fire which is currently our little rock hurtling through the inky vastness of space, let me assure you such a thing is all too possible --- there lives a broken man. He’s one of many, surviving in a dystopian world he hasn’t made and doesn’t like, but that changes nothing, so he wearily makes his way through it day by day.
 
This broken man --- Joel, his name is --- has a partner Tess, and together they’re pretty passable smugglers, managing to get by in this broken, dystopian world… which is that way because there’s been a devastating fungal plague outbreak some 20 years prior, which killed off a goodly portion of the world’s population, turned another sizeable portion into shambling nightmarish things wandering the landscape, and reduced what was left of  so-called civilization to a dysfunctional, hard-scrabble, subsistence-level shadow of its former self.
 
One day Joel and Tess are approached by a nice lady named Marlene, the leader of a resistance/terrorist group --- like so many things related to the human condition, it always depends on your perspective, you know --- called the Fireflies. Marlene has a job for them: to transport a young girl named Ellie across devastated Boston to meet up with another group of Fireflies who’ll take Ellie on to some undisclosed location out west. Marlene doesn’t specify why she wants this done, and Joel and Tess don’t ask, because they couldn’t care less. What does interest them is the payment. So they accept the job.
 
Along the way, just outside the protected Quarantine Zone, Joel, Tess, and Ellie run into some trouble: they’re confronted by the nice security forces, who check them for the fungal infection. What do you know? Ellie tests positive. As you might imagine, this dims the festive atmosphere somewhat, with Ellie attacking the nice security man, forcing Joel and Tess to do the same. When the dust --- and blood --- settles, the security people have gone to the great checkpoint in the sky, and Ellie explains that, by gosh, she’s a pretty valuable asset, because she’s *immune* to the plague.
 
Joel’s a teensy bit sceptical, but Tess is more trusting, so they continue to their destination. Unfortunately, on arrival, they find the receiving Fireflies dead. Bummer. And more nice security forces are outside, and they’re understandably a little ticked off. Joel is all for leaving and returning Ellie for a refund, but Tess says, no, that’s not possible. Somewhere along their little jaunt, she’s been bitten by an infected, and her long-term prospects aren’t. But… she plays the old relationship card, making Joel promise to take Ellie out west to find the Fireflies, so they can find a cure and heal all the hurts of this broken, dystopian world. Like so many hapless males before him, Joel rolls his eyes and agrees.
 
Problem is, Joel and Ellie don’t like each other very much. She thinks he’s, to quote Star Trek, “a swaggering, overbearing, tin-plated dictator with delusions of godhood.” Or words to that effect. And he regards her as an unmitigated nuisance, insubordinate, wilful, and several other likeminded things. Doesn’t sound like the most promising foundation for any kind of relationship, does it, boys and girls?
 
However… in one of the more enduring literary tropes… Joel and Ellie bond with each other. No, no, not in any icky kind of way; get your mind out of the gutter. But by the game’s end --- and yes, this story comes from the deathless images of the video game (not the TV series, which is showing some differences, some minor, others more major) The Last of Us --- they’re pretty much father and daughter. Ta da! The ol’ enemies-to-friends trope. Someone asked me recently why this has been and continues to be a thing. But when it’s handled properly, it isn’t something to do that aforementioned eye-rolling over. Why? Several reasons:
 
First, it happens all the time IRL (in real life). I’ve said before that yeah, much of our collective lives seem governed by clichés. And they are. Because humans are not nearly as original and creative as they think. We’re walking clichés (oy). But that sometimes makes the job of writers easier, so there’s that. So the next time you’re tempted to roll your eyes at a writer’s machinations… stop and think first.
 
One of the biggest things to remember about the enemies-to-friends (or lovers) trope is our first impressions of other people aren’t always completely --- or even partially --- accurate. We tend to put a great deal of stock in physical appearance, for example, which isn’t necessarily misleading, but certainly can be. More fundamentally, many of us are just not great judges of human character. (Don’t agree with me? Just look back over our dismal human history. Oy again.) Some of us --- a small number --- are remarkably keen assessors of people. But an enormous percentage of the population is also appallingly bad at it. So it’s quite easy to start off with one superficial take on a person, only to realize later, as you get to know them on deeper levels, that you need to revise your initial assessment… which assumes one has the emotional maturity and humility to accept that unpleasant realization; most of us really don’t like to have to admit we’re wrong. But that’s what the enemies to friends/lovers trope is really all about: people who start off their relationship with one mindset, then change it as their relationship evolves and understanding and empathy replaces prejudice and trite assumptions.
 
Yep. Happens all the time, folks. “I hate you… no, on reflection, actually I like/love you.”
 
After all, everyone wants to be liked. As Will would say, ‘tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.

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The Job's The Thing

1/30/2023

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There’s a hoary old cliché about characters in TV sit-coms who never seem to have jobs --- or apparently bills to pay, either, for they just sit around in coffee shops all day and zing each other with pithy one-liners. The rest of us working stiffs must, however, toil in the sweatshops of first-world capitalism to put food on the table and pay for the kids’ braces. (Oy, he said in a pained voice, vividly recalling how he financed the Monte Carlo villa of his kids’ orthodontist.)
 
What gives rise to this cynical observation, you ask? It was a Twit, asking one of those faux-interested questions on everybody’s favourite social media platform. (Well, Elon’s favourite platform, anyway.) The actual question ran along the lines of, “What’s your protagonist’s job? And what was their first job?” Aside from the fact that I doubt the Twit really wanted to know --- I highly suspect the ultimate goal was merely engagement stats --- I thought it useful grist for the blog mill. Hence, here we are today.
 
Employment (aka indentured servitude) is just one of those necessary things we must all engage in, once dearest mama and papa toss us fledglings from the comforts of the nest --- sometimes before, too. For most, I suspect those first jobs don’t tend to have a helluva lot to do with what we ultimately wind up doing --- in my case, I fervently mutter, “thank God” --- and while writers don’t necessarily need to go into copious backstory about a character’s first job, it can be a useful exercise in character development.
 
Case in point: my first job was as a car jockey at a Ford dealership, back in the Dark Ages. I was newly 18, it was the summer between high school and university, and I was desperate for a job, because yes, Virginia, even then, universities charged tuition. No, I don’t particularly want to hear boomer jokes about how cheap it was and how easy I had it. Yes, he said wearily, tuition was a helluva lot less back then, (though wages were also a lot lower), and yes, I’m aware the fact my summer pay was enough to cover my tuition for the following year isn’t something which routinely occurs nowadays. But it was still a lot of money to fresh-faced little ol’ me.
 
Yes, you heard me right: car jockey at a Ford dealership. Pretty much the lowest rung of a very blue-collar ladder. Like, we’re not talking periwinkle blue here… more along the lines of whatever shade of blue is closest to… well, black. Car jockey was a dignified name for a job that entailed just about anything and everything, including the shitty stuff nobody higher in rank than me (read: everyone) wanted to do. I was, as I said, 18, sheltered-ish, sensitive-ish, nerdish, bookish and a whole bunch of other ishes… and it took me until about morning coffee break on the first day (I was going to say ‘lunch,’ but nah, that merely confirmed what I already knew) to reach the conclusion I was terrifyingly waaaay past the archetypical fish-out-of-water scenario. But I stuck with it for the whole summer. Didn’t have a lot of choice, really, if I wanted to keep that date with academe in the autumn, because jobs were scarce, and I got mine the old-fashioned way, by nepotism: my dad took pity on me and called around his list of business contacts to see if anything was available. This was. End of story, son.
 
Looking back on it now, close to five decades later (excuse me while I go and scream into a pillow at that anguished realization), it really was one of those what-doesn’t-kill-you-makes-you-stronger situations. A real crucible. Character development, like I said. In fact, if I wanted to take a cheap shot about my eventual career, I could say it was rather like teaching… except that educating 30-40 hormonal adolescents at a time for 35 years was, if you’ll pardon the awful pun, child’s play in comparison.
 
So. Your protagonist’s job. I’m thinking the Twit referenced above must’ve been thinking ‘day job,’ because as we all know, our protagonist’s primary job, at least as far as the plot goes, is ‘hero.’ No, no, no… that doesn’t necessarily mean the traditional concept of hero, complete with bulging biceps and/or more magical abilities than you could shake a stick/wand/staff at. Hero is just someone who’s prepared to sign up for the booby prize. They can be the most unlikely candidate for hero-hood in terms of skills and abilities.  Like Frodo. (I mean, really… this dude’s ostensible qualifications for an all-expenses-paid, one-way trip to Mordor are essentially… well, nil. As Peter Jackson has him say --- because it’s not in the book! --- he doesn’t even know which direction he’s supposed to take.) But on Ye Olde Official Hero-Candidate Qualification Checklist, there’s one box, and one box alone, which needs to be checked: willing. Once that’s done, we have a winner, ladies and gentlemen!
 
But day jobs… yeah, protagonist day jobs can range from the utterly irrelevant to the uncannily prescient, according to the author’s peculiar whims and twisted sense of humour. I’m not sure one is any better than the other, from a writer-creator’s point of view, except that ‘utterly irrelevant’ does introduce much greater possibility for surprise and uncertainty --- not to mention humour, gallows and otherwise --- which is pretty much always a good thing, story-wise.
 
It’s worth some thought, when you’re sitting down to flesh out your protagonist: what do they do to pay the bills? Because what they do for a living does say quite a lot about their personality. Or, if they’re sufficiently wealthy to be divorced from that mundane reality… what do they do to pass the time? Though that, paradoxically, can be a rather tedious situation to place a protagonist in. For example, Mr. Darcy’s life seemed to revolve around endless, mind-numbing balls and social visits to a lot of simpering women searching for a wealthy husband… though it ended pretty well for him… and Lizzie, all things considered. But for most of us, that isn’t an alternative. Toiling away in the salt mines for a good portion of each day is mandatory. If we want to eat, that is.
 
So, remember, folks: the job’s the thing, wherein you’ll catch the conscience of the… schlep who’s your protagonist. (Sorry, Will.)

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Literary vs. Real-life Misery

12/19/2022

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Hello, my name is Everyman, and I am a newsoholic. (There, that’s my major personal admission for today. And it does relate to today’s literary thesis, although that may take a moment or six to become clear.)
 
I have a lifelong, apparently incurable, insatiable need to be informed about the murder, madness and mayhem which nightly ‘graces’ the video and written news platforms I consult. I’m not really sure why, and believe me when I say, I’ve given the matter a certain amount of personal reflection. My wife, who’s smugly not afflicted by this curse, blithely continues on her merry way with little more than an eloquent roll of the eyes when I put the news on… and, really, who can blame her? It’s not uplifting stuff, by and large.
 
I’m not sure the news has gotten any worse, he said thoughtfully… I mean, sure, nowadays, there’s climate change, and the sixth extinction, and similar cheery stuff, but When We Were Very Young, there was the very real spectre of nuclear war and its resultant unpleasantness (and some of the nastier side effects, like nuclear winter, weren’t even understood at the time). And, of course, corrupt, amoral politicians, and wars… well, they’ve always been around, unfortunately. Although, on reflection… I will say that since… oh, 2016 and the rise of The Donald (when every whackjob hiding under a rock was given carte blanche, or at least the secret activation code, to crawl out into the world and start spewing their particular brand of hatred or rebellion or lunatic conspiracy theory or scientific denial or whatever), followed quickly by the pandemic-that-people-got-tired-of-so-decided-it-was-over-or-never-happened-in-the-first-place… well, things seem to have gotten exponentially worse. Or maybe it’s just my tolerance for the crazies, the incurably narcissistic, and the deplorables has reached a nadir I wouldn’t have thought possible in the sunnier days of my youth. And I have noted my desire to remain informed is, more and more, coming into intractable conflict with my desire to remain sane. So, the question is, why do we remain morbidly fascinated by the dumpster fire which is the daily state of affairs for so many unfortunates on this rock?
 
And that (ta da!) is where the link to today’s literary thesis comes in, from a Tweet I saw recently, where the Tweeter asked why writers need to make characters’ lives so miserable. So, let’s work backwards and see if we can’t use a question with a rather obvious answer to provide insight into something deeper and more puzzling.
 
Back in the dark ages, when I was working on my first novel, my editor urged me to ‘throw rocks’ at my protagonist, which, on the surface of things, sounds incredibly cruel, but then again, we writers seem to major in hurling the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune at characters, cackling maniacally as we do so. In fact, it’s almost a job requirement. The reason for this (and the answer to the Tweeter’s question) is, as I said, fairly obvious: it’s the protagonist’s struggles against the vicissitudes of life, and how those struggles are handled, which make his/her story interesting. Unfortunately, at least from some points of view, a story with no conflict, no struggle, no arbitrary/unfair/cruel hurdles to overcome, a story which just contains sweetness and light and peaches ‘n cream, is… well, boring.
 
If we want to be noble/charitable about it, we could say this is because we want to be instructed in the finer points of life, or we want cautionary tales to show us pitfalls to avoid, or perhaps feel a sense of ‘there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I.’ But as you might suspect from my earlier rantings in this post, I’m not feeling particularly charitable about human nature these days, so I’d say a large part of our interest in reading about characters’ literary misfortunes is we just like to see other people dealing with shit… perhaps more sinister shit, more soul-crushing shit, than we’re experiencing ourselves. At least I don’t have to go traipsing over hill and under dale to throw a piece of antique jewellery into an active volcano, we can mutter to ourselves. It’s a weird characteristic of human nature, rather like when we’re driving along and come across the remnants of a motor vehicle accident. Most of us just have to slow down and gawk. We have a morbid fascination with wrecks of any kind, mechanical or flesh and blood, particularly if we can see them in slow motion on the TV news replay later. The more spectacular, the better. I’m not sure this reflects very favourably on us as a species, but there it is.
 
But wait! There’s more! as the old Ginsu steak knife ads used to say. We also want to read about literary misfortunes because… wait for it… we want to see our beloved protagonists come through those slings and arrows… to make it to the other side of the abyss. We’re rootin’ for them… possibly because, if they can make it to the frigging Cracks of Doom and survive… well, then, dammit, maybe we can, too, at least insofar as whatever pile ‘o poop life is flinging at us this week. Even if they/we need a good ol’ deus ex machina, like an eagle swooping in to make a very convenient and timely rescue, to do it. Because deus ex machinas do happen in real life, just like they do in stories… just rather less frequently.
 
So… does any of this really address my obsession with the news? Well… perhaps not as much as I thought it would before beginning today’s ramblings. For me, it’s not about watching blood and circuses, or other gloating/tsking over other peoples’ misfortunes. It’s more just a deep-seated need to know what’s going on around me, even if there’s very little I can do to change most of it… and I’m not entirely sure where that comes from. I think it’s a fairly common writerly trait.
 
But thanks for putting up with me while I ruminated through it. Oops, gotta go… the network news is starting.

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    Author of The Annals of Arrinor series.  Lover of great literature, fine wine, and chocolate. Not necessarily in that order.

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