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D.R. Ranshaw

D.R. RANSHAW

When We Were Still Quite Young

1/25/2016

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It’s already been established that I’ve always loved to read and write. In my last post, I talked about literature that had a major impact on me when I was young... but I didn’t include fantasy or science fiction... so with this post, I’m rectifying that omission. The first two works are definitely for younger readers; the latter three, not so much. But if you’re looking for works that lit the creative fire and hunger in a young kid... well, these are certainly reflective of what did it for me.
 
The Noddy books by Enid Blyton. They came to me from my grandparents in England. I loved the imaginary world of Noddy; it was safe and intriguing, filled with self-aware toys (long before Toy Story) and the book I photographed actually figures wizards very prominently --- a prescient tale, given my follow-on fascination with Middle Earth.
 
Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne. Self-contained world, like Middle Earth, but on a much smaller scale, obviously. Book or Disney movies, you ask? Book, of course. While I do use the Disney films in class during my children’s lit unit (‘Evil in the 100 Acre Wood’ --- aha, got you wondering about that, haven’t I?), they’re a little too saccharine to really love. (And what’s with the half-naked Pooh?) There’s incredible charm and innocence to the original Milne stories --- and Shepard illustrations --- that Disney, with its crassly capitalistic corporate heart, seems rarely able to capture --- in most of its adaptations, truth be told. Sorry, Walt.
 
The White Mountains, first book of a trilogy by John Christopher. Discovered this when I was 11, and still go back to it every now and then. My introduction to dystopian science fiction, I think. Will Parker is a young boy living in a world dominated by the Tripods, giant machines that rule the Earth and keep the human population under control through the use of Caps, implants that enforce loyalty. Before they’re capped, Will and two others decide to run for the White Mountains, a haven of free humans organizing a resistance to the Tripods. These were boys my age, undertaking decisive, effective actions for themselves. Yep, I liked that. A lot.
 
Knee Deep in Thunder by Sheila Moon. I initially stumbled across this book in my elementary school library. What a terrific read, then and now. I believe it was also the first in a trilogy, although I’ve never come across the sequels. Moon did a masterful job at creating this vast, silent world that seemed empty but wasn’t, and a young female protagonist named Maris who was thrust into a bitter struggle between the evil Beasts and the otherworldly Them. But she was no pawn. She was my age, and she, too, was making mature, thoughtful decisions that could Save A World. Liked that, too.
 
The Hobbit and --- of course --- The Lord of the Rings by... gosh, what was that author’s name? Just kidding: J.R.R. Tolkien, of course. Hardly a surprise to anyone who’s read my blog before... in fact, people would be shocked if I didn’t include them. While Tolkien does have his flaws, as I’ve written elsewhere (for example, his female characters are mostly just awful, and his writing varies peculiarly from extremely free flowing to turgid), it’s hard to understate his importance in shaping my writing worldview. I was hooked on Middle Earth from the opening account of Bilbo’s eleventy-first birthday... and, if memory serves, went back to finish The Hobbit after Lord of the Rings. But here, it wasn’t the characters that hooked me in; it was the complexity and completeness of both Middle Earth and the plot. It was an Entire World. Wow.
 
These last three in particular awakened within me a reading epiphany: these are worlds of immense wonder/terror/beauty/mystery... and I Want To Create Something Just as Wondrous. As I’ve said elsewhere, it wasn’t imitation, but rather inspiration --- I had no wish to simply write stories plopped down in the worlds extant in those books, but a deep-seated desire to create something of my own that would be just as amazing. Now, at that point in my life, I didn’t have anywhere near the insight or life experience or discernment or writing skills necessary to do that, but it sure didn’t stop me from trying. Which is, I think, a good thing: feed the dream, lest it wither and die. Keep on plugging. And don’t worry overmuch about being original --- as C.S. Lewis said: “Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”
 
Right on, Jack.
 
Do you know any of these books? What were your favourites growing up? I’d love to hear your choices.


 
 

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When We Were Very Young

1/18/2016

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Someone reading Gryphon’s Heir asked a great question recently: what literature might have given me a literary background/worldview for my eventual writing? In other words, what did I read as a child?
 
I’ve implied previously that learning to read was one of the great epiphanies of my life, and I read voraciously from the moment I could do so. Many books I bought, but a lot were library books, as my limited allowance couldn’t begin to buy everything I wanted. And like many other kids, I ordered Scholastic books through school. By the time I was 12, I had amassed a pretty good library of my own. There were a couple of good bookstores downtown --- I was going to say ‘independent’ bookstores, but truth is, in the good old days they were all independent. And I could go on the bus downtown or walk to the public library on my own, because also in the good old days, nobody thought anything of a 12 year old going places by himself.
 
Today I scoured my library and chose ten (plus a bonus!) books, in no particular order, that I really loved as a child, and still return to because, as C.S. Lewis said, “A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.” I’ll focus on the first half today, leaving the fantasy/SF picks until next time. (Yes, I read more than fantasy and science fiction even when young... a true Renaissance child, that was me.)
 
  1. Freddy the Pig books, by Walter Brooks. There were more than 20, published over a couple of decades. Freddy was a talking pig living on a farm in New York state with a large collection of other talking animals, and he had all kinds of adventures. I realize that statement puts us within shouting distance of the fantasy genre... but if you looked past the anthropomorphic characters, things were pretty down to earth, in a charmingly original way. It chronicled a sweeter, more innocent time which I’m not sure ever really existed, but wish it did.
  2. The Velvet Room by Zilpha Keatley Snider. Set in California during the Great Depression, this gritty story focuses on a girl named Robin whom I thought was a lot like me: introspective and a dreamer with a vivid imagination. Her frequent escapes --- to an empty but preserved mansion with a tower chamber she called the Velvet Room --- appealed to my burgeoning love of old, abandoned, secret places.
  3. The Golden Goblet by Eloise Jarvis McGraw. Ancient Egypt? A setting for a children’s book? I think the idea was more unusual then. But I liked Ranofer, the orphan boy who was the story’s protagonist. Under the thumb of his evil half brother Gebu for most of the book, he was a plucky kid who ended up doing more than all right, although he was no Indiana Jones. But who could resist the lure of fighting Egyptian tomb robbers?
  4. Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven books. Set in England shortly after the end of the Second World War, they chronicled a group of seven young children who were amateur detectives --- the European version of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. The Secret Seven had no small opinion of themselves, and the stories were not about earth shattering murders, but they were always entertaining.
  5. Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. What’s a reading list without a little apocalyptic fiction? Pat Frank spun a tale of World War III, told mostly from the perspective of a family in small town Florida. While the book was written in 1959 and so was, in light of what we know today, laughably optimistic in terms of survivability in a nuclear war, it told a compelling story that even at 12, I could sink my burgeoning political science interests into.
     
    What made these books memorable, decades later? Well, they had several things in common. First and foremost, none talked down to the reader, as children’s lit sometimes does. They dealt with varying degrees of mature situations in believable ways, where the child protagonists were able to negotiate the twists and turns of adversity in effective and decisive manners. The plots were clever in the Goldilocks way --- not too simple, not too complex --- which was important, because I was well beyond Dr. Seuss by that time, but not ready for Tolstoy. The characters were sharply defined --- Robin and Ranofer, in particular, were kids you could really relate to and imagine being. The situations traditionally punished the evil and rewarded the virtuous, and the dialogue was very natural and believable... which is not as much a given as you might think. So... good groundings in plot, character, situation and dialogue. That’s a pretty fine start, don’t you think?
     
    Last, an important point about these stories: they stood the test of time... and I know, because in the fullness of time I hauled them out and read them to my own children. They loved hearing them... and I loved reading them. Had to, really. Because, as Lewis has also said, “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
     
     
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Plotting by the Seat of My Pants

1/11/2016

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Non-writers talking to me tend to be fascinated by what they perceive as a truly arcane process defying rational thought and explanation: “Really? You’ve written a novel? How long is it? What’s it about? I could never do that.” It’s not unlike people’s reactions when they discover I’m a teacher; either it’s the most difficult, most important profession on the planet and they couldn’t begin to do what I do, or it’s the shamefully easiest and my-it-must-be-nice-to-get-all-those-holidays-wink-wink.  
 
Sigh.
 
Their perceptions are heavily influenced by the completed book they hold in their hands; their perceptions about teaching are heavily influenced by dimly recalled, rose-coloured or angst-ridden memories of being students, and neither really provides an accurate perception of the writing or teaching experience.
 
But as they reverently or nonchalantly hold the 360 pages (in rather small type, I admit, but there’s a reason for that) of Gryphon’s Heir, one of the first things they ask is whether I had the plan for the entire plot when I began. If they’re more knowledgeable of the writing process, they ask whether I’m a plotter or a pantser (as in a compulsive planner, or flying by the seat of my pants --- I certainly didn’t invent the terms), and my answer is simply, “Yes.” Because successful writing needs both.
 
Now, I should note this is coming from an extremely organized individual: I spend my entire professional life planning carefully, because 31 years working with teenagers has shown that leaving things to the vagaries of fate is asking for trouble. However, a little spontaneity now and then is not necessarily bad. Like most things in life, it’s all about timing. And context. And successfully gauging your audience.
 
You also have to be prepared to be fast on your feet and Seize the (Teachable) Moment, because if you can run with it, your kids will love you for it... and maybe learn something unexpected and valuable into the bargain.
 
But you also have to be aware of and okay with the Life Truth that, no matter how much and how hard you plan, things probably won’t end up as you envision --- in fact, many times, the end result doesn’t resemble the original plan much at all.
 
You know, the writing process is a lot like that too, in my experience. You can certainly plan your story arc, although doing it for the entire story is probably a waste of time.
 
I did not plot the entire story arc for Gryphon’s Heir. As I have said, it started as a very small incident I wrote solely in response to an unhappy time. Then it grew. And grew some more... some more... and then, kind of like in the film Frankenstein, I screamed, “It’s alive!” Well, maybe not quite. But I was definitely writing by the seat of my pants for a longish while. And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that, because that’s really how life tends to work. Look at our daily lives: somebody says/does something to/at you; you respond. They say/do something else, and you respond again, or initiate something yourself. And because things happen in real time (i.e. the fraction of a second it takes to say/do something really stupid, which seems how most of us spend our days) we mostly don’t sit down and ponder our next words or course of action. We can’t. Life happens too darn fast. Life is frequently a pantser situation... so writing often is, too.
 
Now, I do plan some sequences ahead of time. (In my naiveté, I used to try and plan four or five chapters in advance. Then I discovered material I thought would take maybe one chapter had ballooned into two or three.) There is comfort in having an outline, thinking you know how things are heading for a while, because nature abhors a vacuum. So I do still plan (although sometimes it feels curiously like being on cruise control, which in writing, I find uncomfortable). But I don’t plan too far anymore, because I was discovering, curiously enough, I wasn’t really in control of the situation (rather like real life --- which is a very countercultural idea in a society like ours, obsessed as it is with the idea of control). Characters suddenly decided to do something different than planned; events suddenly turned out differently than planned.
 
And you know what? It was great. Because it made my characters, and the world I’d created for them, real.
 
What more could a Creator ask for?

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Throwing Rocks

1/4/2016

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Shirley Jackson’s famous short story The Lottery ends neither well nor happily: the central character actually gets stoned to death by dear friends and loving family in a macabre ritual (no, no... by having actual rocks hurled at her until she dies from injuries). None of the characters quite understand the rationale for this act anymore (if they ever did, which Jackson cleverly leaves unclear), and that’s really where at least part of the true horror lies: in this tiny village where everybody knows everybody, the yearly custom of killing one of their number for no particular reason --- other than ‘there’s always been a lottery’ --- is carried out with a grisly mix of equal parts automaton-like behaviour and psychotic bonhomie. How could such a terrible thing occur? Eww. ‘Couldn’t happen here, could it?’ we all ask nervously, knowing perfectly well deep down that yes, it could.
 
We do awful things to the characters in our stories, don’t we? We throw rocks at them all the time... literally, sometimes, as mentioned above. Other times --- perhaps more often --- it’s a little more metaphorical. Shakespeare talked about ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,’ and my gosh, we lay some outrageous fortunes on characters. Sometimes, those fortunes are justified. Other times, well, perhaps not so much. (‘How could he do such a thing? That character was just so sweet!’) But we have to, of course. A story where nothing bad ever happens to the protagonist or other characters would be pretty damn dull. Additionally, how a character responds to adversity says an awful lot about him/her.
 
So today, I’m telling you to throw rocks at your characters (a phrase originally given me by my editor). Especially your protagonist.
 
More often than not, protagonists don’t tend to die on us, and with good reason: if the author has done his/her job properly, we’ve become emotionally invested in those protagonists, and although it happens distressingly routinely in life --- the loss of people in our lives in whom we’re emotionally invested --- there’s at least a tacit understanding on the part of both author and reader that the author gets to play God in a way none of us get to in real life. So really awful things can be avoided, or at least fixed by story’s end --- sometimes long before.
 
However, even if you can’t/won’t kill off your protagonist, you can, and should, throw lots of rocks at them. Make your readers feel there’s at least a chance something truly lethal could wander along and off the protagonist. Or at least, if your protagonist leads a charmed existence and doesn’t seem to die no matter what, make your readers feel that life still cheerfully hurls crap and vomit at him/her the way it tends to do with real people. Why? Because that’s what we can all relate to (some more than others, admittedly), and that’s how we identify/empathize with people, and that’s what you want your readers to do.
 
How to do this? Two ways: externally and internally.
 
External crap is perhaps in some ways the easier of the two, because it’s what life obviously does to all of us: throw the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.’ Unrelentingly. Implacably. Unendingly. (Again, some more than others.) It’s what life does. Natural disasters, illness, injuries, family crises, and, especially in stories (hopefully more so in stories than in real life), meddling by malevolent personalities, mortal or otherwise, often with lethal intent (yikes!). External crap doesn’t always have to be lethal, either... it can range from merely annoying setback to potentially life-threatening disaster.
 
But internal crap should be easy, too, because we’ve all got that to some extent, but too many writers want their protagonists to be perfect. We like putting people on a pedestal. Especially our heroes. Problem is, heroes invariably have feet of clay. So give your protagonist an internal bugbear or six to deal with. For example, I bestowed on my protagonist in Gryphon’s Heir --- Rhiss, his name is, a fine upstanding young man --- a sense of doubt about his own worth varying from mildly irritating to himself and others to nearly incapacitating. And... possibly one or two other neuroses as well, because most of us have several, don’t we?
 
So... to paraphrase Will, cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of chaos on your characters.
 
Or, as Shirley Jackson might say: here, have a rock... and throw it at that nice person over there.

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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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