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D.R. Ranshaw

D.R. RANSHAW

Sidekicks, Inc.

9/17/2018

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Pooh had Piglet. Frodo had Sam. Arthur had Lancelot. Harry had Ron (and Hermione, lest you think this is turning into strictly a bro kind of thing). Peter Pan had Tinkerbelle… the list could go on and on (Holmes had Watson… Hamlet had Horatio…). Ahem. Sorry.
 
What are we talking about? Why, the sidekick, of course. The faithful friend. Always there to prop up the protagonist… sometimes very literally. (‘Come, Mr. Frodo!' he cried. 'I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you.’) The question is, why? Why do they figure so prominently in so many stories?
 
I was thinking about this the other day while chronicling my current Work In Progress (WIP), Gryphon’s Awakening. It’s the sequel to my first novel, Gryphon’s Heir. Now, in the first book, my protagonist, Rhiss, didn’t really have a sidekick… well, not a human one, anyway. He did meet up with a young female gryphon he named Aquilea --- by combining Aquila (Latin for eagle) and Leo (Latin for lion) --- and I can tell you he was mightily chuffed with himself over that little bit of linguistic legerdemain. She became a sidekick of sorts --- they’re very close, but their communication isn’t (yet, anyway) fluid enough that they can have the kinds of snappy/swift verbal conversations humans can. But…
 
There was a fellow (human) named Alistair in the first book who was best friends with Rhiss. He didn’t come along for the ride when Rhiss went off on his down-the-rabbit-hole adventure, but I liked Alistair, felt he had an interesting few tales in him so wasn’t prepared to wave him a fond farewell, and wanted to reunite them in book two. Recently, lo, the time was ripe, so I did. Boy, am I glad I did.
 
Rhiss and Alistair get along famously together. It’s wondrous to witness their conversations… they just seem to sparkle and flow so naturally, it’s like I’m not writing them, just recording them. Alistair is irrepressible and loves to tweak authority, including Rhiss. He’s funny (well, I think so, anyway) and their discussions frequently overflow with charming dry wit. (I realize I might be accused of being biased here, like any proud parent, but all this is objectively true, I swear.) Alistair brings out so much in Rhiss… but it’s not just a one-way street. Holy smokes! I’ve been thinking. Why didn’t I bring these two together sooner? They’re great as protagonist and sidekick. And from that, we can illuminate five reasons for a protagonist to have a sidekick.
 
To begin with, it’s as Piglet said: it’s so much friendlier with two. Unless you’re some kind of rugged or misanthropic individualist (and speaking of which, even Lara Croft has Jonah, although she ditches him at times), it’s kinda lonely to be loping through the landscape seeking (or avoiding) trouble All On Your Own. After all, we’re social beings, you know, designed for community --- even introverts like me.
 
Sidekicks also provide a foil for the protagonist. They may be bold where the protagonist is shy, or vice versa (see above). They ask the hard questions the protagonist may not necessarily want to. Sometimes they act as a surrogate conscience. (Pinocchio had Jiminy Cricket.)
 
If they’re from a different culture (or even race), sidekicks can ask very pointed questions about human nature that we don’t usually stop to think about. One terrific example comes from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Captain Picard had Data, an android constructed without human emotions. (And in the Original Series, Captain Kirk had Spock.) Data had a really hard time comprehending things like humour --- which, when you stop to think about it, is totally understandable. Why? Because most humour among humans comes at the expense of other humans. A great deal of humour is, really, quite cruel. Have you ever laughed at something, then in the next second stopped yourself to say, “What the hell am I laughing at? This isn’t funny --- it’s mean/sad/pathetic!” And then laughed some more anyway. As a character, Data’s puzzlement with us and what makes us tick makes us look at ourselves in ways that we don’t normally tend to do. That’s a great literary function.
 
Sidekicks also ask the questions the audience wants answered. They’re can be a means of providing the audience with information… although you have to be really careful about this, because if it’s overused it becomes the Dreaded Exposition Sequence, which is usually boringly pedantic and not at all imaginative on the author’s part.
 
Sidekicks provide a vehicle for conversation so we don’t have a bunch of Shakespearean-style soliloquies scattered throughout the text --- which can become really awkward after a while: after all, if we aren’t eventually questioning a character’s sanity when they perpetually launch into lengthy solo speeches, perhaps we ought to.
 
(Do villains have sidekicks? Well, yessss, they can, although I’ll qualify that momentarily. The Emperor had Darth Vader. Sauron (sort of) had Saruman. Saruman had Wormtongue. Voldemort had Wormtail. Screwtape had Wormwood. (Is there a theme developing here?) But the problem with villains having sidekicks is that they frequently prefer, I think, to work alone, or at least at arm’s length, because they typically have big problems with The Trust Thing i.e. true villains can’t really envision or understand a close relationship based on free choice, loyalty, trust, and, sometimes, platonic love. It’s just too alien to their natures, and most villains with sidekicks expend a good chunk of their energy either contemptuously mistreating them or peering suspiciously in their rear-view mirrors to see whether said sidekicks are approaching from behind with knives drawn. Because, quite a lot of the time, they are.)
 
So there you have it, today’s musings on a vital but frequently unsung literary giant. Let’s give the last word to Piglet, sidekick extraordinaire:
 
“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.
"Pooh?" he whispered.
“Yes, Piglet?"
"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's hand. "I just wanted to be sure of you.”
 
 
 
 

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How (Do) You Do It

9/10/2018

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“How do you do it?”
 
Last week, I was chatting with a new crop of students about writing stories, and this was one of the questions that arose. (Speaking of crops, September is, by the by, an extremely hopeful time for teachers, you know, because rather like farmers in the springtime, we’ve just got a new crop in the ground, and are really, really hoping it’s going to grow and mature into a bumper crop. Not wither on the vine, an occasional but distressing reality for farmers and teachers alike. Eww.)
 
What the student meant was: how do writers write the story? And several things came to mind almost immediately. Hemingway, of course, famously said that there was nothing to writing --- you just sit at a typewriter and bleed. Yeah, okay, depressingly accurate at times, but not a particularly encouraging thing to say to a bunch of fresh-faced, eager students who have visions of becoming the next J.K. Rowling.
 
Stephen King, likewise famously, has said you write one word at a time. Better… but that, too, despite its realistic take on the craft of writing, is a tad deflating for a bunch of newbies --- sounds rather like running a marathon after extreme exhaustion has set in and you desperately resort to doggedly telling yourself to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. (Yeah, I know writing can be like that at times, too, but again, there’s no need to be deliberately discouraging to a bunch of noobs, is there, now? If they’re serious about writing, they’ll find out about its slings and arrows of outrageous fortune all too soon as it is.) So I searched for some more uplifting thoughts. And found a couple. Yay me.
 
Now, in the model railroading world, when one is designing a layout, the choices can be overwhelming, particularly if you are attempting to model a portion of a real railway. How to choose what to model? From where to where? What to include? Leave out? And so, some years ago, one of the hobby’s better-known track planning gurus came up with what he called the LDE --- the Layout Design Element. The premise was simple: in modelling a specific part of a real-life railway, you choose a series of the most operationally and scenically interesting bits --- towns, industries, bridges, tunnels, trestles, whatever --- and string a bunch of them together in a visually appropriate and realistic way (because after all, we’re not aiming for a track plan that just resembles a bowl of spaghetti). And you leave the endless miles of bare nothingness out.
 
Writing’s rather like that, too, and recently, I saw a really good quote backing this assertion up admirably: Alfred Hitchcock, the filmic master of horror, said, “What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out.” Well done, Hitch! That’s exactly what it is, and that’s exactly what we do.
 
In our fiction writing, we chronicle a life (or lives), performing the delicate excision of the mundane, dull bits and focusing/elaborating/nurturing the interesting and the exciting. Nobody particularly wants to read about the minutiae of our days… brushing teeth, grooming, routine interactions with the people in our lives --- unless those activities are integral to setting up major plot points. Case in point: James Thurber once wrote a very clever and amusing short story titled “The Catbird Seat,” in which the protagonist leads such an ordinary, drab life that, when he consciously and cunningly deviates from that lifestyle to --- ahem --- ‘remove’ an adversary at work, no one can believe the tale of his wild behaviour… and he’s exonerated. But for most stories… we want the Bigger Events in a character’s life. And so that becomes the major challenge for the writer, choreographing a delicate ballet of what to leave out, what to hone in on, and how to skip over hours, days, weeks or whatever span of time to weave an engrossing tale.
 
And how do you do that? the student asked. Hmm. Well, I don’t think there’s any hard and fast rule, actually. At least, not one I would want to pass on.
 
(There are lots of writing rules out there, promulgated as supposedly Deep Pronouncements by Famous Writers, and while they may sound great in theory, I think the primary justification for them is so said pronouncements can be broken. My own fundamental rule of writing is simply this: write the best damned story you can, however you can. The rest is, really, just window dressing. Stephen King is very disparaging about adverbs, for example, but look in his work and you certainly find an adverb or six.)
 
What I do when writing is ensure I have at least an idea where the current situation is heading, then just… well, select the most interesting and relevant incidents relating to how we get there. (Contrary to what people who know me might think, I’m a pantser, not a plotter. The last time I wrote about that facet of writing was here if you’re interested.) Unfortunately, for anyone wanting a pedantically detailed GPS-style roadmap about what makes an interesting read (“head left for four pages until you encounter a dragon; nod politely to it, pretend you’re just passing by, then abuse its trust by skewering it where the sun don’t shine”) …well, I don’t really think there is one. You do it by instinct --- not especially helpful to say, I know, but true. You can only do it by writing what you find interesting, ‘cause that’s the only roadmap you have… and if you hope to be published, you have to hope others will find it interesting as well. Eventually, if you keep doing it (like any endeavour: practice, man, practice) the Muse will visit more often, and you’ll get better at sensing what to put in and what to leave out. Your instincts will improve.
 
And --- contrary to the hokey-pokey --- that’s what it’s all about.
 

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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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