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D.R. Ranshaw

D.R. RANSHAW

Pantsers Unite

12/18/2017

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​‘Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.’
-Madeleine L’Engle
 
Now, there’s an argument for pantsers if I ever heard one. Although I doubt that was the argument Ms. L’Engle was trying to advance with that statement. (For that matter, I have no idea whether she was a pantser, either. Maybe she was a plotter. Does it matter? Not really. She was the highly successful author of several beloved children’s classics. That’s what matters.) It’s also a highly applicable statement to make about our lives, too, although again, I think Ms. L’Engle was making it in the writing sense. But I’ll get to that. Let’s start out with the whole writing thing.
 
Let me back up a little for the benefit of those of you who are new or unaccustomed to those two creative writing terms. Plotters are people who chart out their writing ahead of time. Situations. Characters. Events. All put down on paper (or in these latter days, screen) with the meticulousness of a medieval scribe painstakingly illuminating a manuscript. Pantsers, in contrast, tend to just go with the flow. They may or may not have an end point in mind as regards their story (hey, it does happen), but exactly how they’re going to actually reach that point --- what events are going to occur, and in what order, and which characters are going to float into the scene (or out of it, as various characters meet ends both sundry and catastrophic) remains a mystery, glorious or otherwise.
 
Neither is better than the other. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. But writing, that great solitary exercise, allows the writer to choose which works best for him/her. Sometimes, what we wind up with is actually something quite counter-intuitive as far as our natures are concerned, which is kinda cool. Take me, for instance. I’m a pretty concrete-sequential person in many areas of my life. I like structure and I’m a pretty organized person. So I thought I would naturally be a plotter in my writing endeavours. And I tried. Honest, I did. I wrote lengthy chapter outlines before writing, frequently plotting several chapters in advance. And it didn’t work. I gradually found that what I planned for one chapter was spilling over into several, or more importantly, I found that things were straying very significantly away from what I had planned altogether. And it was all the fault of my characters, God bless their contrary, independent natures.
 
Say what? Well, they were doing things I hadn’t plotted. They were saying things I hadn’t remotely imagined. But this wasn’t a bad thing… no, no, they were asserting their own realism, becoming actual people with minds of their own, and I was becoming less a puppet master and more an observer/chronicler. Which is great. The first time I realized this was happening, I was as excited as Victor Frankenstein screaming, “It’s alive!” when his newly animated creature begins to stir under its own power and volition. Although this was a whole lot less grisly/creepy.
 
So nowadays, I don’t sweat the plotting. I just watch intently from my position in front of the keyboard, keenly interested to see what this or that character is going to do or say, so I can record it. Oh, sure, I’ve got events and such in mind, but I don’t get bent out of shape when (not if) one or more characters hijacks my agenda and heads off in a new direction. Because inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it. Right on, Ms. L’Engle.
 
The same principle applies to our lives, too, you know. We can plan and plot our agendas as much as our little control-obsessed hearts like. But it’s ridiculous to assume all is going to go according to our plans for world domination. Mainly because --- gasp! --- we are not in control, much as we and our whole society would like to think we are. (I know, I know… that’s a very counter-cultural assertion to make. But it’s true.) Besides, inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it. Our days are a constant pattern of improvisation because of the myriad unpredictable and unknown factors arising each and every day. Sometimes those factors are the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, which ain’t so good; sometimes they are the results of an incredibly benevolent Providence, which is (those of us who are believers, read God for Providence). Either way, we need to be fast on our feet, looking for ways to improve our lot, insofar as we are able. Because, you know, inspiration usually comes during… yeah, well, I think you get my point.
 
For it is as Mrs. Whatsit said: “Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself.”
 
And that requires daily inspiration during the work.
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A Matter of Perspective

12/11/2017

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When I discuss aspects of writing with my students, one question that’s bound to come up pretty much every time is the use of humour in writing, specifically: to use, or to avoid? I caution them on this, because humour is often difficult to write, partly because so much of it in our lives is spontaneous.
 
Let’s start with the concept of humour itself. The character of Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation had a hell of a time trying to understand it, and with good reason. Humour is a very, very strange thing when you stop to consider it, because much of it is at the expense of others. In other words, it’s actually a rather cruel concept. It’s funny when someone does something ridiculous or stupid, for example. It’s funny when someone fails to understand or is blind to the social nuances of a situation (either willfully or through genuine ignorance). Pointing out the foibles of someone else is funny, especially if it is done with cutting sarcasm. Much physical humour is funny when it involves someone hurting themselves, particularly through clumsiness or maladroitness --- not seriously, because after all, most of us aren’t sadists. But oh yeah, that slipping on a banana peel and flying ass over teakettle? Hilarious. Black humour is even stranger: it’s something we find amusing that, by rights, shouldn’t be amusing at all. It often has a heavy dose of irony included in it --- which is another strange concept we can talk about another time.
 
So, yeah, humour is a really weird part of the human psyche that, as I said, often does not reflect well on us as a species.
 
Humour is often a matter of perspective or context. Let me give you an example from recent TV. I often watch The Big Bang Theory (BBT). It’s kind of a guilty pleasure for me in that it really doesn’t challenge or make very many demands of its viewers, and it’s really not about much of anything at all beyond the lives of these four geeks and their associated nearest and dearest. It’s nowhere near as clever or as deep as Frasier often was, for example. But it’s usually innocuous, pleasantly bland mental candy after a hard day at the office. So when the news came out that BBT was spawning a spin-off called Young Sheldon, I thought I’d give it a try. Full disclosure here: I rarely watch live TV, except for the news --- my modus operandi with BBT is to get the seasons on Blu-Ray and watch them at my leisure/convenience (yeah, okay, I’m something of a Luddite, so what?), so my exposure to Young Sheldon has been through YouTube clips. Young Sheldon, pretty much as one would expect, deals with the childhood vicissitudes of life for Dr. Sheldon Cooper of BBT. No need for a great deal of puzzling out the significance of the series title.
 
Now, Sheldon Cooper is one of the key characters on BBT. And quite frankly, as many, many people have already noted, he displays many of the characteristics of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This gives rise to a lot of the humour on BBT, especially when Sheldon is absolutely tone-deaf to the social nuances of a situation. His cluelessness is… well, it’s funny. Perhaps it shouldn’t be, but it often is (although it’s wearing a little thin after… what, 11 seasons?). So I expected Young Sheldon to be much the same.
 
Only it wasn’t.
 
Watching a ten-year-old Sheldon trying to maneuver his way through social situations he didn’t understand or appreciate at all wasn’t funny, I found. It was… sad. Painful. The last thing I felt like doing was laughing. Why?
 
Because it’s all a matter of perspective. It’s one thing, I guess, to watch the adult Sheldon, who at least has some life experience under his belt, attempt to negotiate these situations. He’s also obviously acquired some mental armour over the years to insulate himself from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. (Sigh. We all do. Unfortunately, it’s a vital survival tool in this often-cruel world.) It’s a totally different thing to watch a young child, who doesn’t have that life experience or the mental armour, do the same thing.
 
I know that Freud said that, “sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar,” and maybe I’m just being overly sensitive about a TV comedy which I’m quite sure has no aspirations whatsoever about making any kind of deep social or emotional commentary on our humanity (or lack thereof)… but it’s like I tell my students: kids, when you’re thinking about inserting humour into your writing, remember it’s a damned strange concept, completely subjective… and that means it’s all a matter of perspective.
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Making Sense

12/4/2017

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It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.
-Mark Twain
 
Ya gotta love Mr. Clemens (aka Twain) and his wonderfully dry sense of humour, because this particular aphorism is bang on for writers. Unlike the strange tale of our daily lives, where things too often seem to be without any sense whatsoever (although as Will says, things are not always what they seem), when we read fiction, we expect --- actually, demand might be a better word --- that the events we see chronicled will, by and large, make sense.
 
I’m very grateful to CinemaSins of YouTube fame (“no movie is without sin”) for graphically demonstrating this to me. I quite enjoy watching their critiques of various films, ferreting out the things that don’t make sense, and counting those sins as they go (ding!). Sometimes, sure, they get just a tad too nit-picky, but by and large, I find that the things they deal with are spot on. It’s actually made me a better writer, because when I write nowadays, I try to make sure that the things going on in my story make sense and that there are no gaping logic holes that the mellifluous voice of Jeremy Scott, the fellow who usually narrates the CinemaSins videos, could exploit. (My nerd confession for today is that I can at times “hear” his commentary in my mind as I write a scene --- complete with the occasional bleeped out obscenities he resorts to when particularly disgusted. Hey, we’re all equal and entitled to our own craziness.)
 
A long time ago (but in this galaxy, thanks very much) science fiction writer Harlan Ellison coined a term relating to this issue which I like a great deal: interior logic. Any story’s got to have it --- unless you’re into the theatre of the absurd or want to write companion pieces to Alice in Wonderland, that is… and a good part of Alice’s charm lies in its absolutely nonsensical nature.
 
What is interior logic? I look at it like this: it’s making sure that the world you create in your writing does not look like a painting by Picasso or Dali. Fine artists, both of them, but not big on logic and reality in their paintings. Or in terms of writing: you want a dragon in your world? Great. But that dragonfire it’s fond of spewing has to use some sort of fuel or something, so it can’t just belch forth flame and holocaust endlessly. It’s gotta stock up on kerosene or something from time to time. Things must make sense… or you’re going to be featured on the next CinemaSins. In other words, deus ex machinas need not apply… except maybe once in a blue moon.
 
Does this mean that the things characters do in a story must always make sense? Of course not. We wacky humans occasionally/sometimes/often/always --- take your pick, using your own life as a metric --- do things that make no sense whatsoever. (Parents are usually really good at pointing these things out to their teenagers, for example, because something appears to happen when children hit puberty, something that seems to completely disconnect a child’s prefrontal lobe from the rest of its brain so that, by and large, teenagers act irrationally most of the time.)
 
So have a critical look at what you’re writing from time to time. Are there holes in the plot big enough to drive a truck through? Better do something about them… or you may hear the dreaded faint and far off ding! of a literary sin counter.

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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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