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D.R. Ranshaw

D.R. RANSHAW

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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Villains Ultimately Triumphant?

11/28/2022

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Just for fun, let’s start today’s epistle by running a few literary speculations past you:
 
What if…
…Sam didn’t take the Ring from a supposedly dead Frodo after Shelob’s attack, thereby making it quite likely it, along with ye olde mithril shirt, was delivered via express orcmail to a certain Dark Lord shortly thereafter? Methinks that little conversation with the Mouth of Sauron would likely have had a rather different flavour.
…at the end of the seventh book, the one numerous people maintain should’ve been more appropriately titled Harry Potter and the Enormous Royalty Cheque, Harry decided to take that train ‘onward’ rather than heading back to our own mortal, rather drab world, thereby handing Voldemort game, set and match? (‘Onward,’ Jo? Really? Onward? My gosh, the painful contortions a thoroughly secular writer undergoes trying to discuss the afterlife without really discussing the afterlife. Sheesh.)
…those severe burns Katniss suffers at the climax of Mockingjay turn out to be a little more severe than thought, and she dies? President Coriolanus Snow (Coriolanus, Suzanne? Really? Yeah, I got the reference… though I bet most of her readers didn’t) winds up defeating the rebellion, setting us up for continued jolly rule by the Capitol and the eventual centenary of the Hunger Games… hosted by an elderly Caesar Flickerman whose now-white hair remains dyed a determined cerulean blue.
 
I could go on --- political/military/social/literary what-ifs are always entertaining to generate, kind of like erudite versions of It’s a Wonderful Life --- but you get the point, which was brought up in a Tweet I recently saw. (Yes, Virginia, I’m still on Twitter, along with several others --- and not all of us are whackjobs, either, BTW. Just a goodly chunk, it seems. But that’s a discussion for another day.) The Tweeter asked about the concept of the literary villain ultimately triumphant, yea or nay? Now, like many Tweets, this is a discussion virtually impossible to condense to 280 characters --- at least, not while generating any kind of thoughtful analysis --- and I have a distinct loathing of threads, which I’ve likened previously to trying to read War and Peace on the backs of multiple cereal boxes. (Ever noticed how social media comments tend to fall into one of two categories? Either they’re hopelessly banal, or hopelessly complex. Oy.) However, the good news is it provides grist for a longer forum i.e. today’s post. Ta da! You’re welcome.
 
My answer to the question is, actually, quite simple: Nay. Firmly. And, you know, I think most readers fall into that camp, too. Check out that Poe quote above, for example. Never mind its uncomfortable relevance in this, our third-going-on-seemingly-hundredth year of the-pandemic-which-the-aforementioned-whackjobs-have-decided-isn’t-a-pandemic, it’s just such a major downer. Most of us don’t want our stories ending that way. (There are times it seems, if we want gritty and depressing, all we have to do is step out our front doors.) Bittersweet is about as far as most are prepared to go… I mean, if you don’t have a heart of stone, just try staying dry-eyed at the finale of The Lord of the Rings, as Frodo and the elves skip town. Go on, try. I dare you.  So in this broken world of ours, most of us seek at least a little redemption in the literature we read, and that definitely doesn’t include villains ultimately triumphant. It may not include the tired old cliché ‘and they lived happily ever after,’ because most of us learned --- probably somewhere between elementary and high school --- such drivel belongs on the ashpit of literature, but that’s not to say the vast majority grooves on the success of evil ascendant.
 
Off the top of my head, about the only time I can recall the villain-triumphant trope actually working was, unsurprisingly, a riveting Stephen King teleplay entitled Storm of the Century. It follows the travails of a small-town sheriff in coastal Maine. When his village is cut off from civilization by a monster blizzard (pun intended), strange and horrific things begin occurring, as they are wont to do in Mr. K’s stories. Gruesome murders and disappearances and cryptic scrawlings in blood on walls, oh my! Eventually, we learn (plot spoiler) all the nastiness is caused by an ancient --- hmm, well… evil sorcerer, I suppose we’d call him --- who seeks an heir. He proposes to obtain a kid by having the townsfolk gift him one of theirs. ‘Give me what I want, and I’ll go away,’ is his ominous tagline, and it leads to a pretty agonized climactic discussion among the townsfolk, as you might imagine. Sheriff Mike, our intrepid protagonist, is against giving in to this monstrous evil… but he’s the only one --- even his wife, Molly, is against him --- and he’s forcibly subdued by the terrified townspeople, who cave to the demands of the sorcerer, Linoge. (It’s an anagram, folks, and not especially rocket science… work it out.) So, yeah, villain triumphant. And in a dreadful bit of dramatic irony, guess whose kid winds up being given to Linoge? Yep. Talk about twisting the knife once it’s in. Sheriff Mike’s final monologue, which comes years later when he gets a momentary, heartrending glimpse of Linoge and his/their son, is a masterpiece of hopeless raillery at the prevalent evils of our existence: “It’s a cash and carry world. Sometimes you pay a little. Mostly, it’s a lot. Once in a while, its everything you have.”
 
It is, as I said, a riveting tale. But is it the sort of heartwarming narrative making you want to burst into song alongside Julie Andrews, climbing sun-soaked meadows with flowers blooming all around, proclaiming the hills are alive with the sound of mucus/music? Umm… nope. Not even remotely. It’s much more in keeping with Ed’s gloomy pronouncement about death and decay and assorted yucky stuff holding infinite dominion. Yay, Ed.
 
I guess we could conclude, then, that even when the villain-ultimately-triumphant trope works… well, it doesn’t, not really. At least for me. Now, I’m not looking for a treacly Hallmark-Christmas-movie ending liable to cause type 2 diabetes from all the surging sweetness (ack!), but I do want a story that’ll encourage me to go forth and meet the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune with a little stamina and courage, not nihilistic feelings of impending doom.
 
So stuff it, Ed… or go listen to Julie.

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A Hatchet to the Back

10/31/2022

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The other day, I saw an image on social media from the 2013 (Yikes! Has it really been that long?!) video game Tomb Raider, and it sparked an interesting question in my fertile little writer’s mind.  Now, before you roll your eyes in disgust and think to yourself, we’re just discussing Another Fricking Video Game for Prurient Adolescent Males, let me disabuse of that you right now: the game is a reboot of the franchise that, yes, was originally targeted at hormonally charged teenage boys, what with the character’s --- ahem --- large pixilated breasts, which her skimpy clothing constantly struggled valiantly to contain. But the reboot did away with that tired crap; while the new Lara is still attractive, she’s far more intelligent and the game is much less focused on her winsome charms. Anyway, the point of today’s epistle isn’t to muse on the male gender’s near-ubiquitous fixation with female mammary glands (especially large ones), or the weird pathological/psychological ramifications thereof. As this post’s title reveals, it’s about a hatchet to the back, or, more specifically, one of those diamond moments in life we all fervently hope never to have to face… and, of course, the writing question, which, rest assured, I will get to in a moment.
 
First, though, allow me to back up a little. There’s two characters in the aforementioned image. One is, naturally, Lara, budding adventurer extraordinaire --- and kick-ass strong female protagonist, BTW. The other is Conrad Roth (kind of a Dr. Smoulder Bravestone sort of name, if you get the reference, which I modestly think is pretty apt). Roth is a ruggedly handsome older man --- his backstory reveals he’s an ex-Royal Marine --- so he provides the perfect mentor trope for a young Lara fresh out of university. She’s blissfully unaware of the extreme crisis situation her research is about to thrust her entire group of adventurers into: shipwrecked on a remote, unknown island in the Pacific, unable to leave because a vengeful entity destroying all ships or planes trying to do so, surrounded by a bunch of Crazed Cultist Castaways (CCC) bent on sacrificing Lara’s BFF to said entity while messily murdering Lara and her other compatriots. In other words, just a Sunday afternoon stroll in the park. Much of the game revolves around Lara attempting three things: (a) staying one step ahead of the CCC; (b) keeping her friends alive --- probably not much of a spoiler to say she’s largely unsuccessful on this goal; and (c) unraveling the mystery of the island so she and her surviving friends can get the hell off it and return to civilization.
 
Now, late in the game, remorseless fate finally catches up to Roth --- a character whom players have erroneously assumed to this point to be well-nigh indestructible. Fleeing with Lara from their latest cataclysmic engagement with the CCC (complete with plenty of pyrotechnics), no less a personage than the CCC’s doubly crazy leader, a psychopath by the name of Matthias, pursues and catches up to them. A wounded Roth uses up the last of his ammunition vainly attempting to save him and Lara, and then… Matthias throws a hatchet. At close range. Too close (I guess) to dodge. And so, Roth…
 
…without hesitation, instantly turns to shield Lara…
 
…and, in so doing, takes the full force of the hatchet in his back… thereby saving Lara’s life but, as you might imagine, rather spoiling his entire day.
 
(Yeah, he dies heroically a few minutes later, after providing a devastated Lara with some pithy encouragement. Cue the violin section.)
 
And this (finally) is where the writing question comes in:
 
What extraordinary things are going through a character’s mind in such an instant that they know, with complete, icy clarity, that they must and will sacrifice their life --- their life! --- for someone else?
 
You know… the realization that This. Is. It. That we’re about to voluntarily take a one-way trip through that old portal to, as Will refers to it, “the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.” Wow. A deep, metaphysical moment, don’t you think? I mean, dying is a moment we intellectually know we must all come to, but one which, emotionally, we delude ourselves into thinking never will. And the Roth example involves an act of free will in approaching that portal.
 
His action isn’t about sitting down in peace and quiet with a cup of tea and rationally weighing pros and cons for an hour or a day, either. It’s at once. It must be an incredible moment, full of love, loyalty, commitment, pathos, regret, despair, wonder, and about a thousand other emotions, all rolled into one split-second. A moment which simultaneously lasts an eternity and as much time as blowing out a candle. Like I said, a moment I’m sure every last one of us fervently hopes never happens to us… because, well… you know… they say the survival instinct is the paramount imperative built into just about every living organism. To consciously, deliberately decide to override that imperative --- again, within the space of a nanosecond --- man, what an awful decision to have to make. And yet humans do it, all the same. It’s a deeply sentient, sacrificial moment.
 
It’s also a moment of extraordinary clarity I think few of us ever come to… and I’m not sure whether or not that’s a good thing. It is, I think, undoubtedly a great moment for a writer, watching from the Olympian summit of his/her author’s perch/perspective: all the things one could cram into such a moment in time!
 
In reality? Not so much.
 
Extraordinary.

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Worldbuilding 101

9/26/2022

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Gazing at a blank canvas/page/screen/stage/potter’s wheel (or any other creative medium, come to that) is something that likely generates one of several possible emotional states --- euphoria or terror being two contrasting ones that immediately come to mind. As a retired teacher and active writer, I’d say I place myself firmly in the former. (A large number of my students were, unfortunately, in the latter, though I did my level best to help them conquer that terror.) But I’ve always thought there’s something magical in building a fresh creative project with something new.
 
Many creatives --- not only writers --- love acts of creation like worldbuilding. Because artists of all stripes of love to create anyway… it’s what we do. And once we’ve created, we want to share the fruits of our labour. Think of Tom Hanks in the film Castaway, having finally succeeded, after being shipwrecked on a deserted island and engaging in hours of backbreaking work, finally igniting a freaking giant bonfire. As he dances around the flames, celebrating his small triumph after having the universe shit all over him, he gestures to the silent stars shining above and shouts “Look what I have created! I… have… made… FIRE!” Yeah. Worldbuilding can be like that. I think acts of creation fill a basic, primal need that so many of us seem to have. In fact, that primal need is one of the few things about humanity giving me hope nowadays: that want to build and create, not just tear down and destroy.
 
There’s a definite art to worldbuilding; it needs to manifest in drips, not a flood. A fire hose of information in the middle of your narrative just turns readers off, so, unless you’re writing appendices that follow the end of your story, and it’s made very clear that they aren’t part of the story per se, limit the details you throw out. They should just appear as part of the landscape or a character’s actions.
 
Setting is part of worldbuilding. To say that setting the "when" and "where" of a story may satisfy a basic definition, but it doesn’t delve into the kind of detail authors can, probably should, and often do go into when plotting stories.  After all, setting isn’t, and shouldn’t be thought of, as a static or non-moving picture.  In the best stories, it’s a richly woven tapestry providing not only background for the plot itself, but can rival the plot in interest and ignite in the reader an intense desire to learn more about the world in which the story takes place.
 
When authors fashion the world in which their stories take place --- and J.R.R. Tolkien, creator of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion is among the most famous writers ever to do so --- they engage in acts of Creation.  Consider:  to build a world; put landscapes upon it; fill those lands with plants and animals; people those lands; build cultures, cities, and languages --- these are all acts of Creation which can ultimately be hugely rewarding and enjoyable.  I use the word "Creation" with a capital "C" quite deliberately, because, if time and care are taken in generating details like those mentioned above, the parallels between an author's acts of Creation and God's acts of Creation are very real (if not perhaps on the same scale!).
 
The act of creating setting and worlds for stories is a vital one and shouldn’t be dismissed as an afterthought or just a necessary nuisance, a "peg" on which to hang the "coat" of the plot.  While this is true of all literature, one has only to look at some of the great fantasy works to see that this seems especially true for it.  A prime example is The Hobbit, Tolkien's other best-known work taking place in Middle Earth, and which, unlike The Lord of the Rings, was written for children. The "magical" places (not necessarily in the literal sense) of so many fantasy stories really almost require a richness and depth to their settings that many other types of literature don’t strictly need in order to succeed.
 
Worldbuilding doesn’t belong only at the beginning, or the middle, or the end of stories.  Great authors constantly give readers more information about the worlds in which their characters interact.  Such detail isn’t only setting; it’s texture. Stephen King calls it chrome --- the details which take something very ordinary and lacklustre and give it glitter and interest. (And he should know.)
 
So build on, worldbuilders! You’ve nothing to lose, and rich, fulfilling environments to create and savour.

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The Jabbertrope

8/29/2022

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'Twas late in the day, and the desperate writer
   Did squirm and stare at his trusty laptop;
All flimsy and miserable were his thoughts,
   As he struggled to generate something startlingly original
(Not to mention reach his self-imposed word count for the day -
  Dude, what had he been thinking?)
 
"Beware the Jabbertrope, my son
   The clichés that bite, the stereotypes that catch!
Beware the Triteness bird, and shun
   The frumious Banalitysnatch!"
                -with sincere apologies to Lewis Carroll
 
I hear the lament constantly, from writers and non-writers --- yes, Virginia, there really is such a group; in fact, the funny thing is, it actually includes quite a few people who fancy themselves writers but aren’t, based on objective observations concerning the lack of literacy skills on their social media accounts. (Ooh, look: aggressive snark manages to rear its ugly head in my introductory sentence. Aren’t I clever.) The lament? Why, as you should be able to discern from my pathetic parody of Jabberwocky, it concerns tropes and clichés (T&C). So… several thoughts about them in today’s epistle. Written for your entertainment and edification in conversational list form --- just like Rabbit’s Plot to Kidnap Kanga, he added helpfully.
 
First: they’re like cockroaches: widespread and almost impossible to kill, he says, shaking his head despondently. I’ve especially noticed this lately on many Netflix/Crave/Bravo/Amazon Prime/Disney+ shows (and so on… the list seems virtually endless), where my wife and I occasionally make a kind of amusing game out of guessing the next line of dialogue or plot point, then turning to each other triumphantly when (not if) we’re right, exclaiming, “See? I could write for this show!”
 
To be fair, it’s not only TV --- for example, let’s briefly touch on three epically successful modern franchises which should remain nameless (one filmic from the get-go, two originally written before becoming monstrous film sensations which demonstrated annoyingly varying degrees of faithfulness to their source material): young, male, plucky protagonist (PP) who’s nobody’s idea of a hero (Frodo/Luke/Harry), needs to kill cosmically powerful villain (Sauron/Emperor/Voldemort) bent on killing him because of what he is (Ringbearer/Chosen One/Boy Who Lived). PP, surprisingly willing to accept the booby prize AKA quest, is aided along the torturous way by an ancient, crusty male mentor with magical powers (Gandalf/Obi-wan/Dumbledore) who ultimately gets offed --- an event which, strangely, doesn’t seem to possess the ultimate finality one might be forgiven for assuming it would. PP is hindered but eventually saved by a loathsome quasi-villain who actually turns out not to be (Smeagol/Vader/Snape). Also along the way, PP is accompanied by various sidekicks played for either earnest loyalty and smarts (Aragorn/Leia/Hermione) or silly, buffoonish comic-relief potential (Pippin --- in the films, it’s Gimli/C-3PO/Ron).
 
Second: but why are they everywhere? you query plaintively. Well, here’s the thing, boys and girls: tropes and clichés exist because human behaviours are chock FULL of them. We’re essentially walking clichés, folks. Human behaviours are depressingly repetitive and (mostly) depressingly predictable, because we do the same kind of things over and over. And have done for the last… oh, five thousand years or so of recorded history. Give or take. In addition, we rationalize those behaviours. My gosh, do we ever; humans are past masters at the art of rationalization. (Then we pretend we’re not rationalizing. Oy. Oh, the humanity.)
 
Third: however… is this a bad thing? he asks rhetorically, in his best expository teacher-voice. And the answer is… unsurprisingly, no, not necessarily. Those three franchises I just trashed are beloved by millions. (One of the franchises I actually like a lot --- the other two are… okay. No, I’ll let you guess which is my literary daddy. Besides, if you’re a regular here, you should already know.) Another thing about T&C is they appear in all types of story-telling because… they work. They are us. We recognize ourselves and our life situations and stories in them. We have met the enemy, and he is us. Sad, kinda pathetic at times, but true. Yep. Truth often hurts. And it may set you free, as a certain book claimed, but it will frequently piss you off in the process.
 
Fourth: hmm, well, can we avoid them, then, at least a little? you whisper hopefully. Ay, there’s the rub, as Will said. Well, I have an answer, and the good news is I think we can, at least somewhat. It’s a more difficult thing to accomplish in this modern day and age, when the vast majority of us are pretty jaded and world-weary, having read, watched, and heard all kinds of situations in different genres, but… still possible, I think. As a writer, you help to avoid T&C by asking yourself this question and its all-important follow-on:
-what does the reader expect will happen next?
-so, what do we give ‘em instead?
 
Returning momentarily to one of the franchises, for example: how would things have been different if Gandalf had been female? And admittedly, all three make the attempt --- some more successfully than others --- to ask the ‘instead’ question by providing at least one pithy revelation emerging from the situation-that-turns-out-to-be-not-what-we-thought-it-would-be (“I am no man”/ “I am your father”/ “Yer a wizard, Harry”). (Riddles are always good for that, because they’re usually written so as to be ambiguous and capable of various interpretations: “not by the hand of man will he fall.” And who among us wasn’t initially blown away by Vader’s declaration of paternity? Whoa, dude. Granted, they were simpler times. The Harry one… well, not so much.)
 
Have I used this pair ‘o questions in my own writing? Why, yes, constant reader, as a matter of fact, I have. To good success, too, in my humble opinion.  I’m not saying it’s a silver bullet, one-size-fits-all solution, panacea, or any number of other hoary old clichés I could employ. I’m not even saying you’ll be successful every time using my magic elixir. After all, as I’ve said, we are walking clichés. But it is something you can do to avoid the dreaded Jabbertrope. At the very least, it will force you to consider other, possibly fresher, avenues to explore… to take the path less travelled by, as Bob said.
 
And that might make all the difference for you, too.

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An Eggsellent Question

7/25/2022

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Twitter-mining noun [personal colloq.] The semi-automatic process of sifting through Tweets posing all sorts of interesting questions the person asking them has no real interest in seeing answered (see Engagement Tweets [pejorative]), but which make interesting, if inadvertent, fodder for blog posts and other less savoury solitary activities.
 
Okay, there’s really no such thing as Twitter-mining --- at least, not officially, not to the best of my knowledge. I made the term up. (A good one, don’t you think? Regular ol’ Webster wannabe, that’s me.) But I can’t be the only person using Tweets to generate material for blog posts. Like this one.
 
(Engagement tweets, on the other hand, apparently are a thing, but not a good one. They’re shallow attempts by shallow people to bolster their engagement statistics by asking questions of other Twits. Why would they do that, you ask? Because one of the (innumerable) Quirkily Depressing Things [QDT] about humans, bless our black little narcissistic hearts, is this: people tend to be obsessed with numbers. Big numbers.  Impressive numbers. Now, as I said, people doing the asking have no real interest seeing their questions answered --- which are frequently, and laughably, deep philosophical issues no one in their right mind would even dream of trying to answer in 280 characters, anyway --- but here’s another QDT: most of us can’t resist when we believe someone else humbly seeks our erudite opinion… even when it’s transparently obvious they aren’t, not really. That’s a third QDT, by the way: humankind’s capacity for delusional rationalization is almost endless.)
 
Anyway. End of rant. What was the Tweet in question you mined? you ask impatiently. Well, simply this: which comes first, the character or the plot? (See what I mean? In 280 characters? Are you kidding? Yes, of course, it’s answerable in 280 characters or less… but it’d be kind of like explaining that the cause of the Roman Empire’s decline and fall was carelessness. Gibbon would have an apoplexy… except he’s already dead.)
 
The question is, at its core, obviously one of those chicken or egg conundrums. So allow me to be really annoying and begin my answer glibly saying: neither. At least, as far as my own experience goes. (Your own test results may vary. Semi-professional writer working on a closed computer. Do not try this at home, kids and other cautionary notes.)
 
I self-published my first novel, Gryphon’s Heir; its sequel’s status for the last two years has been: almost-done-but-temporarily-on-hiatus --- much to the annoyance of at least one faithful reader (my long-suffering, variably patient wife). I can truthfully tell you I began it with no character and no plot; it began with a situation, to wit:
 
Slightly more than halfway through my 35-year public school teaching career, I found myself at a school where I was desperately unhappy. Let’s throw at least a modicum of professionalism over the answer to your next question (“why?”) by simply saying the school’s administration and I had fundamental, irreconcilable differences of opinion over what constitutes a rigorously academic, well-organized, well-run school. It didn’t take long to realize I’d made a horrible mistake coming there. One evening, after a particularly frustrating day, I began writing out those frustrations, as Writers Are Wont To Do. (It was either that or turn to alcohol, and as a devoted, if rather harried, family man, that wasn’t really a viable option.)
 
Instead, I wrote of a dissatisfied, demoralized school teacher suddenly confronted by an ornately carved wooden door in a blank wall of his classroom. Impulsively, he steps through that door… to be greeted by a quietly comfortable, deserted room between worlds. After the visceral shock and very natural what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here reaction as he flees back to his own mortal and rather drab world, he ventures forth again when the door reappears, this time meeting the room’s occupant.
 
Now, at this point, I had about 10,000 words --- pretty good words, I thought as I reread them, false modesty be damned, even though the premise is not the most original idea ever --- and I had a decision to make: (a) chalk it all up as an interesting experience, carefully file it away, and forget the whole thing; or (b) keep going and see down precisely which rabbit hole it led, and how deep.
 
Well, you can probably guess which alternative I chose… yep, I wound up with a 186,000-word novel that was obviously only the beginning of a much longer epic fantasy. So again, there it is: I began with a situation. I’d no particular idea who this guy was (besides me, obviously) or what the plot was. But that, I found, was no problem. As I wrote more of his story, either he got immeasurably better relating his tale, or I got immeasurably better hearing what he had to say --- probably a mix of the two --- and we had ourselves a story. Quite a good one, if I say so myself.
 
The sequel --- currently around 178,000 words and change --- simply takes up where the first left off. But a funny thing happened on the way to the epilogue, as they say: a couple of years ago, I envisioned another situation: lying in a bed in a castle, ill almost to the point of death, nursed back to health. (Not autobiographical this time, thank goodness.) I wrote it; felt compelled to write it. And then, as before, had to discover several things: who was this person? (Turns out she’s a feisty 19-year-old named Areellan… which, I must say, is an interesting challenge for a male of a certain age to write.) What’s she doing? Why should we take note of her? And so on. I don’t worry about plot or trying to chart things out; as before, I’m quite good listening to her while she tells her tale, and she’s generally quite good filling me in on details. Trying to dictate actions to her is pointless; she refuses to do what I tell her to do, insisting on following her own path. But it’s a joyous journey, nevertheless.
 
And thereby, as Will says, hangs a tale.
 
 

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Around the World in 80 Chapters...

6/27/2022

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It’s true confession time, folks. A thing I have rarely shared with anyone. But, at long last, I felt it was time to come clean and make an astonishing revelation. Are you ready? Sitting down, not holding any hot beverage that could spill and cause injury when you involuntarily gasp and leap out of your chair at my news? Okay, then… here it is:
 
I loved the voluminous appendices to The Lord of the Rings (LOTR). Every. Damned. Convoluted. One. Always have, always will. Even at the (ferociously precocious) tender age of 12, when I first read Professor T. (I know, right? Major revelation! Shocking! Bet you didn’t see that particular plot twist coming in my narrative.)
 
Okay, well, in reality, the idea of that being a major revelation --- at least, to anyone possessing the slightest acquaintance with me --- is laughable, not shocking at all. But I bring it up because it speaks to the idea of world-building, which some anonymous little gnome was inquiring about on my Twitter feed the other day, and I thought the idea worthy of exploration.
 
World-building --- which I define as the concept of crafting details about worlds we create, details which include people, places, events, etc. --- isn’t just confined to the fantasy genre, though that’s where it tends to get most of its press, both positive and negative. Mystery writers populate their worlds with the aforementioned details. So do horror writers. In fact, so do writers of just about every genre. But world-building seems to have a rep nowadays which is often most politely described as dubious, especially in a society as obsessed with hurry as ours. I see editors constantly exhorting writers to ruthlessly cut every detail except those absolutely essential to the story, and to that, I say, “Whoa, folks. Throttle back and let’s just think this through a minute.” I mean, look how Peter Jackson cut out the entire Bombadil sequence from LOTR’s film version, AND the scouring of The Shire. Big Mistakes, Pete. Big. Huge, as a pretty woman once said.
 
I clearly recall the late Roger Ebert, film critic extraordinaire, describing Tolkien’s books as proceeding at the leisurely pace of a Victorian travelogue, employing a style testing our capacity for the declarative voice. Which isn’t always true, of course, but I see Ebert’s point --- though we must remember authors write for, and of, their times, and Western society in the 1940s-50s was vastly --- almost unrecognizably --- different than today in outlook, values, pace --- and, sadly, literacy.
 
But Stephen King makes the case for world-building (clearly but not intentionally) in the preface to his revised/expanded edition of The Stand. In it, he amusingly talks about how you could strip all the so-called ‘extraneous’ details (he calls them ‘chrome’) from the story of Hansel and Gretel… but the resultant limp excuse for a narrative wouldn’t be worth the bother of reading. It’s the details which make the story, he says… and I say, right on, Mr. K. Which brings us back to world-building.
 
Now, I totally get the fact not everyone reading LOTR is enamoured with, or even the slightest bit interested in, those mammoth appendices. That’s fine. They’re present for nerds like me who love a story so much (warts and all --- and in the interest of fairness, I’m prepared to admit even LOTR contains warts, yes, precious, it does) we want every imaginable snippet of obscure background information (things like the fact King Argle-Bargle XXXV or whomever, living hundreds of years before the freaking story even takes place, reigned from this date to that and died of dropsy), and yet comfortably removed from the main narrative for those preferring their literary experience to be… well, LOTR-lite. But what those appendices do is provide colour, chrome, structure, and logic to a completely imaginary world, a framework from which the author can hang the plot. They’re evidence the author has given some --- or a great deal of --- consideration to making their world real, populated by totally believable people, cultures, societies, etc., and in LOTR’s case, realistic languages, too --- though, to be fair, that was Professor T’s specialty.
 
So… without resorting to nearly book-length appendices, and in the interests of attempting to satisfy both ends of the literary spectrum I referenced (nerds-versus-lite-crowd), how do we strike a happy medium with world-building?
 
Well, the first and great commandment is: Avoid Information Dumps; they’re messy, pedantic, boring… and, frankly, folks, as far as putting info dumps in dialogue go: nope. Big Nope. People just don’t talk like that --- except tedious, know-it-all jerks who love to hear the sound of their own voices, jerks we either tune out or smite and banish.
 
The second commandment is like unto the first: Don’t Get Carried Away. Most people want to know the whys and wherefores of an issue or event --- try actually listening next time you’re engaged in a conversation with someone, and hopefully you’ll realize this --- but they don’t necessarily need or want Every. Last. Freaking. Detail. So, yeah, contrary to what some authors and editors maintain, backstories are important, and allowing some details of those backstories to seep into the narrative’s thread can be important, too… just not usually a character’s (or culture’s) complete life history and curriculum vitae.
 
One good way to weave world-building into your tale is to include a character who’s an outsider i.e. someone from a different country or culture. They can legitimately ask questions on behalf of themselves and the reader which other characters likely already know the answers to, but the explanations are a legitimate didactic device. The main thing to keep in mind is, any information the author provides which falls into the world-building category should be presented as a natural, logical part of the tale, not as some omniscient, pedantic, thundering Voice From On High. That bogs down the narrative’s pace… not to mention in this sad era filled with attention-deficit-plagued readers, it’ll lose you the ‘LOTR-lite’ crowd quicker than an elf can skewer an orc.
 
So build on, world-builders! You’ve nothing to lose but your vapid, chrome-less storylines.

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Not Necessarily Fairer

5/30/2022

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My last post dealt with famous literary betrayers, and it wasn’t long after posting it that I was (rightfully) taken to task for a singularly glaring omission: it discussed exclusively male characters. Where, my detractor demanded, were all the famous female betrayers? Or did I think there weren’t any? Well, I’ve been accused of labouring under a delusion or six in my time, but I don’t think that particular piece of naivete can be included in my Catalogue of Infamy. I mean, for starters, all children who are read to are exposed, from appallingly young ages, to a veritable cornucopia of Nasty Women. (Why is that? I’ve always wondered the reason for there being so many wicked stepmothers and other assorted femme noirs and such in classic children’s lit. Must’ve been a whole lotta little Grimm and Andersen boys out there being psychically wounded and wanting to strike back or something.)
 
So, in the spirit of equality… five Really Nasty Female Literary Characters who prove, beyond any doubt, that women can be every bit as revolting as men:
 
Julia Agrippina (AKA Agrippina the Younger… no idea who the Elder was, but if there’s a Younger, there’s gotta be an Elder. Them’s the rules.) – Robert Graves wrote a two-volume tale (I, Claudius and Claudius the God) about the eponymous Roman Emperor, and I discovered this gem when I was but a tadpole, after watching the BBC TV series in the late 1970s. Agrippina appears quite late in the tale when she becomes Claudius’ fourth wife --- which, given she’s his niece, is definitely icky. But the marriage is political, and there’s no love lost between the two… she merely wants her son by a previous marriage, a fellow who will one day be notorious as the emperor Nero, to supplant Claudius’ own son in the line of succession. Which she accomplishes. Once that little task is taken care of, she doesn’t need Claudius anymore… so she murders him, feeding him a dish of poisoned mushrooms. Turns out the joke is ultimately on her, though, as Nero doesn’t particularly want mommy dearest bossing him around, and, though historians’ accounts conflict, there are suggestions he eventually murders her.
 
Morgause of Orkney – the Arthurian saga --- which evolved/expanded a great deal over a period of 1000 years or so --- employs different names for King Arthur’s scheming half-sister, depending which version of the story one consults. Any way you slice it, though, she’s not a nice person, to put it mildly… while married to another dude (King Lot), she seduces Arthur and becomes pregnant. Which is bad enough, but as I said, she’s also Arthur’s half-sister. Eww. He doesn’t know… but she does… and doesn’t care, because she’s a gal looking for power. Their son, Mordred, eventually grows up to kill Arthur and destroy his accomplishments. Two betrayals for the price of one.
 
Lady Macbeth – I’ve mentioned Lady M numerous times before, because I can’t help it: she’s such a great example of a purely evil female character. She’s also, really, the brains and more importantly the force of will behind her dithering husband’s dastardly plot to murder Scottish King Duncan and assume the throne. When Macbeth has second thoughts about betraying Duncan, who’s a guest in the Macbeth castle, it’s Lady M who goads him on, insulting Mac’s courage and dismissing the betrayal. She even says she’d be prepared, if she had a baby, to dash its brains on the ground if it meant gaining power. Okayyyy, then. Oh, yeah, she’s a piece of work, all right… though ironically, she eventually can’t live with the knowledge of what she and hubby have done: she has a mental breakdown, then kills herself (prompting a shocked Macbeth to launch into one of the great Shakespearean monologues about life’s futility).
 
Jadis the White Witch – C.S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles, which definitely qualifies as children’s lit, serves up this sterling example of betraying evil. Jadis, who freezes all of Narnia in a hundred-year-long winter, has murdered the population of her original world, Charn, killing her own (unnamed) sister in the process. She’s aware of the prophecy that four human children will ultimately overthrow her, so when disgruntled Edmund Pevensey shows up, she knows she’s got her work cut out for her to confound the prophecy. She masquerades as a much nicer version of herself to gain Edmund’s trust, then ruthlessly turns around and betrays him the moment he’s of no further use. Tilda Swinton does a masterful job playing her icy cruelty in the 2005 (yikes, is it really that long ago?) film version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
 
Mildred Ratched (that’s Nurse Ratched to you, bub) – when Ken Kesey wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1962, I doubt he’d any idea of how Nurse Ratched’s face, in the form of actress Louise Fletcher from the 1975 film version, would become synonymous with cold, calculating, emotionless evil. (Fletcher went on to play another great female villain/betrayer, the venomous Kai Winn of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.) The betrayal aspect of her personality arises because, as head nurse of a hospital’s psychiatric unit, she should be the gentle, nurturing type, and she’s anything but. She tyrannizes/terrorizes the unit’s patients without qualm or mercy, and is ultimately responsible for one patient’s suicide and another’s lobotomization. The film’s ending is bleaker --- Kesey has her losing her grip over the unit at story’s end, but in the film, there’s no suggestion of that.
 
Well. There we are. A coven of calumny. A haven of harpies. A klatch of kooks. A verity of villainy. (Sorry… I’ll stop with the alliterative fest now.) But these are not nice ladies, and you certainly wouldn’t want to meet them on a darkened street at night. They don’t do anything particularly worse than their male equivalents in other stories, but because of the hoary old literary cliché about women all being life-giving, wholesome, maternal types --- a cliché, thankfully, on its way out --- their behaviours can strike us as more shocking. 

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Why Characters Do Bad Things

4/25/2022

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You know, I was happily discussing/pontificating about the concept of literary betrayal in my last post, just rolling along, when bam! I ran smack up against the barrier of my (admittedly self-imposed) 1000ish word limit on blog posts. (I sometimes get asked why I’ve erected that arbitrary fence around them, so here’s my answer: shut up, he explained. Actually… now I think about it, other than being a nice, round number, I’m not entirely certain where it came from. In fact, when I started blog posts, back in the dawn of time, I distinctly remember my then-social-media guru reacting with horror on hearing I intended to write so much per post, because people’s attention spans just don’t run to that length nowadays, and… I haughtily cut her off and informed her of one of my basic Teaching Tenets, gleaned from, lo, nearly 35 challenging but mostly rewarding years in the hardscrabble trenches of public education: your students will --- by and large, anyway --- rise to meet your standards. Especially if you’re entertaining. So. QED. You’re welcome.)
 
Anyway… yes. Betrayal. The major questions I wanted to address last time before said arbitrary fence reared up were: why? Why do people betray? And who are these awful examples of execrable humanity? So let’s to it.
 
Before writing this post, in what qualifies as quasi-research for me, I jotted down a lengthy list of literary betrayers who came to mind. Man, there were a helluva lot more than I thought. (And that was just in the space of a couple of minutes. Whew.) And I came up with five primary reasons --- though I’m sure there could be many more --- as to why they betray other characters in their respective novels/plays. But they’re enough to go on, because, yikes, the list kind of reads like some dark catalogue of human depravity: greed, jealousy/spite, ambition, compulsion, and revenge. And that’s just before breakfast. Who are these individuals of infamy? I chose from my list five ignominious pricks… err, that is, picks… for your perusal:
 
Judas Iscariot, the Bible – betrayal doesn’t get much bigger than this… I mean, betraying God Himself? Two thousand years later, the name of the disciple who betrayed Jesus Christ to the authorities, identifying him with a kiss (which is where the concept of the Judas kiss, the ultimate symbol of betrayal, comes from), remains synonymous with Betrayal with a capital B. Judas does what he does out of greed, because he’s a pragmatic, petty criminal who doesn’t really believe Jesus is the Messiah and sees an opportunity to make a few bucks. The fact he later kills himself from remorse at what he’s done does nothing to rehabilitate his memory.
 
Iago, Othello – who can ever forget this great Shakespearean villain’s declaration to us: “I hate the Moor!” Iago feels himself slighted by his boss, Othello… but even though he admits he’s unsure if there’s been any conscious injury done to him, he decides to crank up his best Game of Jealousy/Spite anyway… and boy, does he ever. I used to tell my students Shakespearean tragedies never end well for title characters, but Iago doesn’t fare too nicely by the bloody conclusion, either.
 
Macbeth, Macbeth – what did I just say about title characters in Shakespearean tragedies? That they… oh, never mind. Macbeth, who’s really a bit of a tool for his harpy of a wife, gets swept up in ambition after the ‘Wyrd Sisters’ (aka witches, though ‘wyrd’ in Will’s time related to Fate, not strangeness) make several highly misleading prophecies to him and his BFF, Banquo about Macbeth becoming king of Scotland. Trouble is, there’s already a king --- Duncan --- so for Macbeth to get the job, Duncan must meet an untimely end. Which he does, at Macbeth’s dithering, bloody hands, when he’s a guest at Mac’s castle overnight. The Elizabethans shared a really strong conviction that hosts placed guests under their absolute protection, so for Mac to kill a guest in his home --- any guest, let alone a king to whom he’s sworn fealty and loyalty --- is an especially heinous betrayal.
 
Winston Smith, 1984 – you’ve got to feel sorry for poor Winston: he’s more pathetically hapless victim than villain. Surviving in a hellish totalitarian world he didn’t make and quietly loathes with every fibre of his being, we’re happy for Winston when he finds (forbidden) love and happiness with another rebellious sort, the lovely Julia. Of course, this being a book by George Orwell, not Jane Austen, there’s no happy resolution for the two lovers. They’re caught by the authorities, summarily jailed, and Winston is tortured until he’s compelled to betray Julia --- not because his betrayal will lead to any momentous convictions or societal convulsions or whatever, but simply because it is, to paraphrase Orwell, the Man’s stamping his boot on the face of Winston’s spirit.
 
Smeagol, The Lord of the Rings – my obligatory Tolkien reference for the day. Smeagol is just nasty and commits his nastiness for one of the most common reasons of betrayal --- revenge against those damned hobbits who Stole His Precious. To be fair, however, he’s been through his own private hell in being psychically ripped apart, first by the Ring itself, and later by Sauron the Dark Lord’s minions when he’s captured and tortured by them. It’s really no wonder Smeagol’s mind has splintered into two distinct and equally unstable psychotic halves, dubbed Slinker and Stinker by Sam Gamgee. As Frodo notes, it is possible to feel sorry for Smeagol --- even in full-on revenge mode, he’s a victim, too. And, of course, he’s absolutely vital to the Ring’s destruction at the tale’s climax, so he performs a heroic act, however unintentionally.
 
Man, quite a catalogue of calumny… an index of infamy… a posse of perdition, a --- well, you get the general idea, I think, without further need of alliterative allusions. (Sorry. Couldn’t resist.)
 
And a good thing, too, because here we are, crossing that magical 1000 words…
 
So I’m done for now.

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When Characters Do Bad Things

3/28/2022

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Traitor – one who betrays another's trust or is false to an obligation or duty
                       
Betrayal – to lead astray; to deliver to an enemy by treachery; to fail or desert, especially in time of need; to disclose in violation of a confidence.
            -both, Merriam-Webster Dictionary
 
Today’s cheerful topic is courtesy of one of humanity’s most ancient and… well, awful, really… yeah, that’s the word… character traits: our propensity, as trusted colleagues/friends/spouses etc., to turn around and stab those we work with or care about in the back. Annnd where’s this coming from? you ask, some of you less charitable types in probably hopeful fashion. Any dark skeletons popping out of the closet? Well, no, not particularly. But after screening most of its first season at the behest of my youngest son, I can’t watch the Lost in Space 2018-2021 reboot TV series anymore… which is not really the non sequitur it first appears to be, and raises some interesting thoughts about my current frame of mind.
 
The Lost in Space reboot --- which is more intelligent than the witless 1960s TV show of the same name, by the way… though I admit that’s not saying much as a ringing endorsement --- features the intrepid family Robinson (they’re not Swiss, however) in the near future who, along with many others, leave a devastated Earth on a colonizing expedition to a nearby star, literally seeking greener pastures. Naturally, things don’t go quite as planned --- there’d be no story if they were wildly successful and everything went swimmingly --- and our heroes find themselves crashed and… well… lost in space. But the item in the narrative that, interestingly and unexpectedly, rattled my chain was one particular character: a petty career criminal named June Harris. She starts by making her way aboard the expedition’s starship through deceit and almost literally throwing her sister under the bus. After killing one of the crew, followed in short order by the disaster which crashes the ship, June, who assumes the identity of someone else to conceal her sordid past, begins hatching all sorts of underhanded and undermining plots while obviously remembering Lady Macbeth’s sinister advice to her clueless husband… yep, June is clearly a Shakespearean scholar, all right. I’ll save you the bother of asking: in the eponymous play, Macbeth is early on told sharply by his harpy of a wife to ‘look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it’ --- in other words, smile cherubically and openly to put ‘em off their guard, while performing evil deeds quietly, out of sight. You’re welcome. (Yeah, I know: Lady M is a piece of work, all right. Don’t get me started.) It’s not long after the initial crash that June goes into overdrive with misdeeds, some small, some pretty large, against her fellow survivors. Why? Well, that’s one of the simultaneously repelling and compelling things about villains of the traitorous vein, isn’t it? We’ll get to that discussion, too, a little later. In the meantime, let’s just say June certainly qualifies as a traitor as defined above… and she’s obviously read SF author David Gerrold’s works, too: in one of his novels, a character offers up a suitably bleak definition of the concept of trust, saying it’s the condition necessary for betrayal. Ouch. A pretty damning indictment of human nature if I ever heard one. Especially since it’s so accurate.
 
You see, one of the maddening things about literary traitors is they typically cruise along with varying degrees of serenity --- some of the more psychopathic can calmly look you in the eye and convince you all’s well, while others possess a certain high-strung, neurotic mania --- all the while looking like harmless magnolias or something, but in reality, being cobras coiled beneath. And in the process, writers take fiendish glee in letting us, the readers, know what the traitors are doing, but ensure, through various machinations, that the story’s characters have no clue as to what’s going on. (Sometimes these machinations are credible, other times they make us want to tear our hair out at the Absurdity Of It All. By the way, folks, don’t be one of those latter type of writers. Please.) This can be a good thing… or not. I think we’ve all been there, frantically flipping through a book’s pages, or hollering in horror at the screen, watching the protagonist walk straight into the traitor’s trap: ‘NO! DON’T ENTER THE @#$% TUNNEL, FRODO! THERE’S A SPIDER THE SIZE OF A HOUSE IN THERE, AND IT’S GONNA MESSILY DEVOUR YOU!’ Or, you know, words to that effect. Yep, it’s maddening, all right: we know what’s going on, but our characters don’t, and there’s no way of warning them.
 
Which is why I just can’t watch June plot her dastardly deeds anymore. I’m not sure whether this is me being unusually hyper-sensitive in an environment fostered by two years’ worth of pandemic that’s left just about everyone a little paranoid and on edge, or superb writing on the part of the series writers. I think, quite honestly, it’s the former rather than the latter. June’s antics are often made possible by the stupidity of characters around her, who first of all, should (and do) know better, and second, seem to be really poor communicators for a bunch of people who’ve theoretically had all kinds of training in catastrophe scenarios, working in an endeavour where excellent communications skills are not only absolutely vital, but can mean the difference between life and death.
 
Damn. I’m fast approaching my self-imposed 1000-word-ish limit for blog posts, without even touching on a number of things I wanted to discuss regarding literary traitors… so consider this the first of at least a couple of posts regarding this interesting/maddening aspect of writing, and stay tuned for more… traitorous… musings.
 
I won’t betray you… I promise.
 
 
 
Post-script: youngest son, who’s seen the series already, has convinced me to give the series another try, saying June’s character has been (mostly) defanged as the second season begins. So (sigh) I will. Not that I’m expecting any great epiphany from her which will transform her into some paragon of virtue, you understand. Villains, in particular, aren’t always the kind of characters to undergo major redemptions. But you never know. Would a villain’s redemption be a betrayal of all they hold dear? Oh, the humanity.

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    D.R. Ranshaw's Blog

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

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