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Unoriginal?

1/30/2017

It is how the tale is told, not the tale itself.
-D.R. Ranshaw

Okay... I can well imagine you thinking I’ve reached a new personal low in narcissism today: I’m quoting myself. But before you judge, let me explain...

I was thinking about a particular writing issue recently, in terms of a couple of quotes from two other authors, both of them famous: Stephen King, and C.S. Lewis. (I was originally going to say far more famous than me, but looking at those two names, and given that my fame extends only to members of my family --- on good days --- and maybe, very occasionally, to a few of my students... well, I’ll leave that sentence as it is. You see, there are limits even to my own personal narcissism.)

Anyway.

Quite some time ago now, Stephen King wrote a very fine novella entitled The Breathing Method. It was published in a volume of four of his novellas, a volume called Different Seasons. That title came about, if I recall correctly, because he felt the four stories in it were a little different than his usual Things-That-Go-Bump-In-The-Night writing persona --- although Stephen King being Stephen King, he couldn’t resist including at least some of the paranormal/macabre elements for which he is justly famous. The Breathing Method certainly contains those elements, but what relates it to my quote is the fact that his story takes place in a private men’s club where there is a massive fireplace, a fireplace that has engraved in the stonework this aphorism: It is the tale, not he who tells it. Which I have no quibble with, I hasten to add, but it did lead me to concoct my own version. See above. (C.S. Lewis’ contribution to this epistle, we’ll get to momentarily.)

What I’m really going on about today relates to originality. Most of us have probably seen various articles about how every story ever written falls into a very finite number of plot premises. To prove my own point, I just Googled “basic plot premises,” and there it is, thousands of entries assuring me that all stories feature one of seven basic plots. Yep. Seven. So the uncounted/uncountable millions of stories told since the dawn of human history are, really, all variations on an extremely small number of themes. (Which, on one level, is rather depressing when you think about it: Really? Our human interactions are that limited? Oh well... a topic for discussion another time, perhaps.) However, the good news --- particularly if we factor in my own quote --- is that we can heave a collective monumental shrug and loudly declaim So What?

Why? Because I’m suggesting that the tale itself doesn’t matter; it’s how well the tale is told. We can add all sorts of whistles and bells to any of those limited number of premises, so that, for example, whether the story takes place in Middle Earth or Narnia or at Hogwarts, the end result is the same: we’ve got a quest to complete --- whether it’s destroy a piece of jewellery that tends to have rather unfortunate effects on people, or get rid of a nasty lady who likes it really cold, or put paid to a megalomaniac wizard who wants to do all sorts of evil things. But the fact they all involve similar quests in ridding the world of evil is unimportant; what is important is that they’re all told so well, so imaginatively, so cleverly, that they are great and magical (no pun intended... well, okay, maybe...) tales. And very different tales, with very different endings.

And so where does Jack (C.S. Lewis) fit into all this? His contribution today is as follows: “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.”

I often end posts with something from Jack, because he can be relied on to have something pithy and true pretty much most of the time. And so it is today: he instructs us that, as writers, don’t worry about being original. Because, if you go for the truth, you will be. No matter how many times the story has been told before. Because, in the words of another (largely unknown) writer, it is how the tale is told, not the tale itself.

(Okay... now you can accuse me of being narcissistic. Although I was saying it with my tongue very firmly lodged in my cheek. But as Kingsley Amis said, there’s no point in writing if you can’t annoy someone.)

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Tsk, tsk...

1/23/2017

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You sure can’t, Truman... which actually sounds rather paradoxical to many people, particularly those who aren’t writers or have any kind of creative bent. What do you mean, you can’t blame a writer for what the characters say? they say indignantly. Of course you can! Writers create their characters! Put words in their mouths! Pull the strings! The writer is the god of his/her world!

Well, yes and no.

Some people maintain that writers do create their characters --- although others maintain that said characters have always been there in the writer’s imagination, dormant, waiting to spring to life when the right stimulus rears its shaggy head. But even if a writer does create a character, the writer is not god of his/her world. Far from it. Not if it’s any good at all. Why not?

Because, if this world, first fuzzily envisioned in the fecund depths of a writer’s imagination (which sounds filthy, but isn’t), is to be anything more than just a miserable cardboard cut-out or a half-hearted crayola picture, it has to come alive. Which means it has to have the ability to get up off the Frankenstein-type slab of the writer’s imagination where it’s been assembled, stand up on its own two legs, and go lurching off into the night. At that point, the writer, once he/she is done screaming triumphantly, “It’s alive! It’s alive!” can follow this shambling creation and record its doings, but he/she is really no longer in control of it.

And that goes for the characters inhabiting the world, too. It’s an amazing thing when a character you’ve been pulling the strings for suddenly looks at you and says, “I’m not going to do/be/say that!” and marches off in a completely different direction than the one you plotted, leaving you slack-jawed with amazement and, truth be told, the same kind of parental pride as when baby takes their first steps unassisted.

It’s also why I always tell other writers that if they want to be plotters --- writers who carefully craft/script events out well in advance --- that’s all well and good; just don’t expect that things are necessarily going to go exactly --- or even loosely --- as they’ve planned. In fact, I would suggest that things shouldn’t go as the writer has planned... because our lives sure don’t, do they? This is really hard for many writers to come to terms with, because our culture is completely hung up on the issue of control. Perhaps I should amend that by referring to it as the myth of control. Because, as I frequently tell my students, this control we like to think we have in our lives... is a myth. Doesn’t happen. The truth is, you really don’t have much control over anything in your life --- except the choices you make, and even there, the success or failure of those choices are pretty much dictated by events outside your control.

So getting back to Mr. Capote and his statement... characters in our stories frequently say (and do) some pretty despicable things. Especially the villains, of course, but not just the villains. Even our protagonists can do and say awful stuff, and when that happens, it can be more shocking than when the villains do or say villainous things. After all, villains do and say bad stuff because that’s their stock in trade; it’s what they do, twirling their moustaches in maniacal glee while the heroine is tied down to the railroad tracks and the train is coming. But somehow, we often don’t expect our heroes to have feet or clay, life’s truth and experiences to the contrary. Either way, please don’t hold the author responsible for the terrible words or deeds of his/her characters.

After all, it’s really as C.S. Lewis said: “I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say.”
Which perfectly describes a great and wonderful and mysterious creative process. Thanks, Jack.

And Truman, too, of course.

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Why, Will?

1/16/2017

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For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd...
                -William Shakespeare, Richard II, Act 3 Scene 2

                I’m a news junkie. I have a compulsive need to watch/listen to local, regional, national and international news. Every day. So I do, although my “newsfeed” is primarily a reflection of my hopelessly dated generation: radio and TV, with magazines (yes, those obsolete piles of compressed tree pulp) thrown in background information rather than up-to-the-minute-news.
                My wife hates this constant parade into our home (particularly the dinner hour television edition) of death, destruction, malfeasance and chaos. She points out, quite rightly, that there’s not a damn thing I can do about most of it. She also points out, again, quite rightly, that it tends to be depressing as hell to watch or listen to --- except for one segment at the end of our local television news program: it focuses on mostly light-hearted, occasionally humourous or ridiculous things that the man in question (I’m afraid I have a hard time calling him a journalist, which probably reveals all sorts of things about my own news prejudices) parades for us just before the final look at the weather forecast and the signoff. It’s a segment I pretty much universally turn off, with a muttered admonition to the man to “get a real journalist’s job.”
                When people pass by a car accident on the road, what do many of them do? Yep, that’s right: they slow down and gawk at the carnage. Or when we want to talk about watching some facet of human behaviour that is unbelievably destructive, self or otherwise, the simile we often use to describe it is that it’s “like watching a train wreck in slow motion.”
                Curious. Very curious. Mildly disturbing, too.
                And it’s really the same with the stories we write or read. Why do our stories --- even those supposedly written for children --- pretty much deal with the darker side of human nature? Look at the ogres, the horrible animals, the wicked stepmothers (there seem to be a lot of wicked stepmothers in traditional fairy tales... makes you wonder what kind of family dynamics were going on back when such stories were being written), the Creatures That Go Bump In The Night --- it all makes you wonder why we raise our children on such a literary diet. And then we continue with it when we leave the dark forest of children’s lit behind --- as evidenced by Will’s comment above.
                Why, Will, why? Why do we want this constant parade of sad tales of broken lives and evil deeds?
                Well, I think the surface answer is simultaneously deceptively simple and weirdly contradictory: because such tales make way better stories than tales of sweetness and light, of kings ruling wisely and well. Curious, but true.
                Going a little deeper, the argument can be made that such children’s lit stories were didactic --- instructing children on what to do and what not to do (like don’t listen to your woodcutter dad when he proposes a pleasant stroll in the woods to give stepmom a little time to herself, perhaps).
                Also, many people like being frightened, whether on midway rides or in darkened film theatres. I don’t, but I’m clearly in the minority as far as that is concerned. Again, an argument is often made that people like being scared when they know that nothing bad is going to happen to them.
                But I think, ultimately --- based on my own reading preferences and writing experiences, anyway --- most of us want to read about characters we can identify with and like dealing with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and overcoming them. In other words, we want to witness the ongoing struggle between good and evil --- with good coming out on top, although invariably it does not happen without cost. But it makes us feel better about our own struggles, be they the daily problems and irritations we all deal with, or the truly titanic battles against organized evil we hope never to be confronted with. The protagonist of my novel Gryphon’s Heir falls into that latter category: he really doesn’t feel like he’s hero material, but he’s handed a pretty big sling/arrow of outrageous fortune. Like all of us, he has a choice: he can either back off, saying, “Nope, show me the exit,” or he can square his shoulders and say hoarsely, “Okay. I’ll try.” (Bet you can’t guess which option he takes.)
                Finally, these sad tales of Will’s quote make us feel we are not alone. Each of us deals with the toll life exacts every day. Sometimes, that toll is remarkably, mercifully light; other times, it’s almost unbearable. But we’re not alone. There’s a world of literature out there to confirm that.
                So go and read it.

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Xmas Mortality

1/9/2017

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I took our Christmas decorations down this last weekend. It’s a process I usually aim to do at the closest point to January 6th, which is traditionally when such things are done. Who says so? Well, all civilized people, of course. And it’s usually a fairly melancholy occurrence.

What’s that? You say you take your decorations down right after Christmas? For shame, you Grinch. Haven’t you ever heard of Epiphany, or at least Twelfth Night? (That would be the event, not the Shakespearean comedy, by the way.) The Twelve Days of Christmas were the period between Christmas and Epiphany when the Elizabethans, among many others, celebrated the Whole Darn Thing, and they celebrated it well, although somewhat differently than we mostly do. Epiphany, traditionally recognized as the baptismal date of Christ in the Christian calendar, marked the end of those Christmas celebrations.

Okay, in any event, enough with the history lesson. All I’m saying is that if you’re one of those people who strike the holly a day or two after Christmas instead of striking the harp and joining the chorus, you’re flouting a long and grand tradition. (And if you start putting up Valentines’ Day stuff at that point, I’m sorry, but we can’t talk anymore.)

Uh huh. So why is Christmas takedown a “melancholy” occurrence? you ask patiently, suspecting (correctly) that this is the real point. Well, for starters, it seems to mark the ending of a bright spot in winter’s otherwise bleak nature, and we’re back to the cold and dark of January... which, actually, seems like a good enough reason all by itself. (Pop quiz! Q: What’s the purpose of January? A: It makes February seem better.) But this year, it was rather especially poignant for me: those of you who read this journal of my thoughts regularly know I lost my father last autumn. He was 96, and so yes, he’d had a good and long run, but please don’t say that to people who have lost an elderly parent or relative as if it’s supposed to somehow mitigate their grief. Loss is still loss. I agree it’s sharper when the person passing is very young and hasn’t had that opportunity at a “good and long run,” and we all know intellectually that every last one of us, even those elderly parents who seem indestructible and just keep chugging along like the Energizer bunny, are going to leave us some day. But we’re never really prepared when it happens, regardless of whether the passing is shockingly swift or agonizingly slow. And both those endings present their own uniquely specific set of difficulties to those left behind.

Beginning the process of going through Dad’s things, I came across some of the family Christmas decorations, practically all of which I remembered, fondly and vividly, all the way back to early childhood. My sister and I divided them up, and then I brought my “new” old decorations home, determined they would once again grace the boughs of a Christmas tree. Dad couldn’t be bothered putting up a tree for the last few years of his life, so it had probably been quite some time since those decorations had seen the light of day. (He did have a miniature wall-mounted artificial tree, with pre-applied lights and decorations, that could simply be taken out of the Christmas trunk in the basement storage room and put on the kitchen wall, and I rescued that too, to put up in my study, where it twinkled back at me.)

So this Christmas, there those decorations were again, on our tree, representing a part of the Spirit of Christmas Past.

It wasn’t until this last weekend, as I was taking down those decorations --- and the ones my wife and I have accumulated (well, okay, mostly I’ve accumulated) --- that I got particularly reflective about mortality and such (oh my gosh, you’re thinking, he’s got to be a writer with that kind of melodramatic outlook). We’ve got quite a few ornaments and things, and truth to tell, it’s mostly me who has accumulated them. In fact (he admitted sheepishly), we have three Christmas trees at our house: the “main” one... and two smaller ones that house the overflow of all the ornaments I’ve collected over the years. My kids refer to them as “dad’s Star Trek trees.” Yeah, that’s my nerd confession of the day. (My wife just mostly rolls her eyes and says nothing. Most of the time, she’s remarkably tolerant of my... endearingly quirky nature, let’s call it.) And I got to thinking... one day, those ornaments of mine, the ones I have lovingly collected, will have to find a new home, hopefully, with one or more of our kids, just like Dad’s had with me...

Now, look, let’s be very clear: I’m not always this morbid. Honest. But a writer of any kind must needs be a specialist of sorts at examining speculative scenarios... it rather goes with the territory, I think. Besides, my melancholia only lasted for a short while, because I soon realized, like the Grinch, that “perhaps” the Affair of the Christmas Ornaments “means a little bit more” than I at first thought. It’s nothing very complicated, but it did bring me some comfort. It’s this:

There aren’t any endings, not really, not in the most profound sense of the word. The Grand Tale goes on as it always has and as it always will in some form or another that’s likely far beyond our limited understanding. The cast of characters changes constantly --- as Will said, we are all actors who have our entrances and our exits --- but the story continues. And until it’s time for you to make your exit... well, as C.S. Lewis says, you are never too old to set another goal or dream a new dream.

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Arbitrarily, Again

1/2/2017

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Rat: What are you doing tonight?
Goat: I’m gonna get into my warm bed and read this new book I got for Christmas... Or instead of doing that I might go out in the cold and stay up late with strangers who are fighting and throwing up, so I can stare at the clock at 11:59 pm and pretend that midnight changes everything.
Rat: (donning a pair of gag glasses fashioned into the numeral 2017) You left out the funny glasses.
Goat: Oh look, it’s bedtime.
-Pearls Before Swine by Stephen Pastis

Ah, New Year’s Eve --- as seen through the delightfully acerbic cartoonist Stephen Pastis.

I have to say, I’m with Goat on this one. (Not, I hasten to add, that I’m really ever with Rat, whose misanthropy is exceeded only by his egocentric arrogance. Hilarious to watch from a fictional perspective, not so much if you have to actually deal with a Rat-type character in real life.) I’ve never really been into heavy duty celebrations of New Year’s Eve. It just seems so... so... arbitrary --- one of the most pointless celebrations our culture has. The earth made it around the Sun, yes. One more time, yes. But January 1st looks remarkably similar to December 31st when you look around.

If we’re looking at new beginnings, New Year’s just doesn’t seem to me to quite fit into the same category as, oh, let’s say, an academic graduation from secondary or post-secondary schooling; a wedding; starting on a career; the birth of a child; leaving the hospital cured from some terrible accident or illness; publishing one’s first novel. Those all seem like far more significant beginnings.

And yet, every January 1st, it’s a whole new world to many people. We make all kinds of resolutions about this next 365 days. Once in a while, we even manage to keep some of them for more than a few days or weeks.

Oh, come on, I hear you muttering, stop being the Ebenezer Scrooge of New Year’s Eve/Day. Keep it up, you miserable old curmudgeon, and Jacob Marley is going to come calling, haunting you with the Spirits of New Years’ Past, Present and Future.

Actually, I will confess that I’ve been known to make a resolution here or there on January 1st, too. In the absence of any of the earth-shattering (at least to us) events I mentioned above, I do understand the need, every once in a while, of at least feeling like we’ve got a new start. A clean slate. The tabula rasa and all that. Even if it comes in the purely artificial format of one calendar year ending and another beginning. And what do I resolve?

Well... I’ve given up trying to make quantifiable resolutions that implicitly assume I’m in control of the events in my life. Because, folks, the brutal truth is, we’re not. It’s all very well to say, “I’m going to write 50,000 words a month and have Gryphon’s Awakening (the sequel to my novel Gryphon’s Heir) finished before the spring flowers are in bloom,” but the problem is, life has this rather cruelly cavalier habit of getting in the way and throwing all sorts of slings and arrows of outrageous fortune at us, slings and arrows that make a mockery of most of our well-intentioned resolutions. Which leads us smoothly into today’s OTR (Obligatory Tolkien Reference), when Gandalf tells Frodo that “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” (And even there, we need to understand that just because we decide on a certain course of action doesn’t actually mean that we will be able to carry it through.)

Okay, you say sceptically, so what DO you resolve to do? Well, how about the thing we have control over? Our outlook on life.
I’ll try to --- and by the way, I’m sorry, Master Yoda, but there is a try. Because for virtually all of us pathetic humans, the lamentable truth is that we do not more than we do. So if we eliminate the try, we automatically condemn ourselves to failure. At least with a try, we can keep on making the attempt... and even sometimes succeed. Allow us to have our small victories, please.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes... I’ll try to:

Look for the positives in situations, rather than default to the negative, so that I can also laugh more, complain less.
Understand, as Jack Lewis says, that my time is really not my own.
Approach each day with compassion and patience, not getting swept up in the world’s insane hurry and irritation.

I was going to make a lengthier list, but on rereading those three things --- really rereading them --- I realize I’ve already set myself a fairly daunting task.

So maybe that’s enough to be going on with. I’ll let you know how it goes.

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D.R. RANSHAW

Unoriginal?

Tsk, tsk...

Why, Will?

Xmas Mortality

Arbitrarily, Again

D.R. Ranshaw's Blog

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