Fixing “A Christmas Carol”

Analysis and Review
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I asked Narrova’s Story Reception agent to re-write Dickens’ classic novel using the new updated plot progression algorithms we installed into Dramatica this year.

Interesting difference…would love to hear your thoughts!

Signpost 1: Progress – Marley and “The Way Things Are Going”

London, Christmas Eve. Scrooge’s counting-house stands narrow and mean, with a blue-nosed clerk shivering over a feeble coal. Scrooge moves through the office like a man counting every step: measuring coal, timing breaks, shutting down cheer with a sharp word. Clients edge in, hats clutched in their hands, and walk out a little smaller than they came.

Fred appears with snow on his coat and warmth in his voice, inviting his uncle to dine. Scrooge waves him away with the same gesture he uses to dismiss bills and beggars. Two gentlemen with account books and subscription lists ask for a donation for the poor; he turns them back into the street with hard phrases about prisons and workhouses. Each encounter is another stroke on the ledger of “the way things are going.”

At closing, Scrooge locks up the office, snaps the key in his fist, and walks home through narrow, fog-bound streets. His house is dark, silent, and bare, a place where dust settles undisturbed on the bannister. The knocker swells and twists into the face of Jacob Marley—dead seven years that very night—its ghostly eyes fixed on him. Scrooge recoils, swallows his fear, and forces the key into the lock, but the image burns behind his eyes.

Up the stairs, every stair creaks, every shadow stretches. Inside his chamber, he bolts the door with unnecessary care, eats his lonely bowl of gruel by a low fire, and settles in a tall, grim bed with heavy curtains that shut him off from the world like vault doors. The bells in the house begin to swing without hands, then a slow, thunderous clanking rises from below, like a heavy chain dragged over stone.

Marley’s Ghost passes straight through the locked door, transparent and gray, wrapped in a chain of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, and steel purses. He drifts before the fire; Scrooge clings to his chair, knuckles white on the worn arms.

Marley shows him the Progress of a soul that never altered its course: how each selfish bargain forged another link; how every turned-back beggar added weight to the chain. He wrenches open the window and lets Scrooge see the night air thick with other spirits, wailing as they hover over the poor they long to help but cannot reach. Marley’s own chain rattles whenever he stretches his arms toward them and feels them pass through his hands.

“You wear such a chain as this,” Marley tells him, indicating the invisible weight that trails from Scrooge’s own heart. He lays out, in cold, practical terms, where Scrooge’s current way of living leads: a life narrowing to a point, a death unnoticed, and an afterlife of useless wandering.

Marley resists Scrooge’s protests with every clank of his chain and every terrible glance into the street below. He cannot change what has happened, but he can interrupt “the way things are going.” Three spirits will come, he says; their visits will unfold along the line of Scrooge’s existence.

As the bells grind toward one, Marley backs toward the window, chains trailing through the sill. The night beyond seethes with restless figures, all dragging their own histories. Marley’s form thins into mist, leaving Scrooge alone, clutching his bedcurtains, eyes fixed on the stubborn glow of the fire.

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Signpost 2: Present – Ghost of Christmas Present (First Spirit)

The clock tolls one; the room shivers with a sudden, robust light. Scrooge’s bedcurtains are yanked aside by a broad, open hand. On the other side stands a giant figure robed in green, crowned with holly, its bare feet planted on the worn floorboards as if they own the place. The Ghost of Christmas Present laughs, a sound that shakes dust from the rafters.

With a touch, the room widens into a bright chamber piled with food and evergreen boughs. The ghost’s torch scatters warmth wherever it points; cold corners melt into comfort. He orders Scrooge forward, and together they step straight through the wall into the snowy streets of London.

They sweep over markets where butchers lift heavy geese, bakers pull crusted loaves from deep ovens, and children drag sledges laden with parcels. Snow falls thickly on hats, capes, and cobblestones, but every shop door stands open and every window spills lamplight onto the street. Scrooge hears his own name snapped in half in passing conversations: “Old Scrooge, he’ll not give a penny,” the shopkeepers mutter, shrugging tight coats around themselves.

The spirit turns his torch toward a row of cramped houses. Inside one, he brings Scrooge to a halt: the Cratchit home. Bob Cratchit comes in with Tiny Tim on his shoulder, the boy’s small hand gripping his father’s collar. The goose cooks in a battered tin, the pudding steams in a pot, and the children dart around the table laying knives and chipped plates. Mrs. Cratchit stirs gravy in a pan that threatens to stick, stretches the meal as far as it will go, and still manages a smile.

Scrooge stands pressed against the low ceiling, watching Bob kiss each child and set Tim down with infinite care. Tim’s little crutch clicks against the floorboards. The boy tilts his head toward the window, as if listening to distant bells only he can hear. When the family raises a toast “to Mr. Scrooge, the Founder of the Feast,” Scrooge flinches as if struck. Mrs. Cratchit’s anger spills out at the sound of his name, raw and honest in the cramped room.

The spirit brings his bearded face close to Scrooge’s ear and forces him to listen as the family weighs gratitude against resentment, hope against worry. Bob speaks softly of the boy’s strength and good cheer; the doctor’s words hang unspoken in the steam above the pudding.

They move on to Fred’s parlor, bright with firelight and laughter. Fred’s friends crowd around a game, cheeks flushed from cold and wine. They joke about Scrooge as if he were a comical goblin haunting the Exchange, a man with a heart like a flint. Fred’s kindness strains against the jokes; he insists on toasting his uncle’s health, even as the others laugh. Scrooge leans nearer the hearth, drawn to the warmth of a circle he has always refused.

The tour stretches outward: miners gathered deep under black rock, passing around a jug and a song; lighthouse-keepers sharing a simple meal while waves strike at the stones beneath them; sailors on a distant ship humming a carol as they grip icy ropes. Each rough hand lifted in cheer seems to blot Scrooge’s name from the world.

As the night wears on, the ghost grows older before Scrooge’s eyes, beard lengthening, hands trembling. Finally, he stands gaunt and grave, robe falling in worn folds. From beneath that robe he reveals two children, twisted and starving—Ignorance and Want—clinging to his legs like thorns. They glare at Scrooge with hollow eyes, embodiments of all the neglect and miserliness woven through the “current situation” of the city.

“Look here,” the spirit commands, forcing Scrooge’s gaze downward. “This is what thrives in the shadow of your plenty.” The word your lands heavy; Scrooge sees his own business name on ledger-books that fuel such want.

The bells strike again. The room dims; the spirit’s torch sputters. As the Ghost of Christmas Present dwindles, he tells Scrooge that to understand how such a Present has taken root, he must look backward. The chamber withers around Scrooge until he stands once more in his own cold bedroom, breath clouding the air. On the floor, a faint pool of light begins to form.

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Signpost 3: Past – Ghost of Christmas Past (Second Spirit)

From that small pool of light rises the next figure: the Ghost of Christmas Past, delicate and shifting, like a candle flame seen through glass. Childlike limbs move with an old person’s certainty. A bright jet of light streams from its head; Scrooge lifts a hand to shield his eyes, but the ghost takes his wrist with a cool, firm grip.

They slip through the window into a countryside buried in snow. A thin road winds between fields and hedges; a schoolhouse stands at the end, its windows dim. Inside, a small boy sits alone at a long, bare table, reading by the light of a dying fire. His clothes are too thin, his ink frozen in the pot, but he bends over the book as if the stories could wrap around him like a coat.

Scrooge recognizes the sharp cheekbones and stubborn set of the jaw. He hears the faint laughter of other children who went home hours ago. The ghost forces him to watch the caretaker shut the door without a backward glance. The snow piles against the threshold as the boy presses his nose to the frosted pane, then returns to his seat, hugging the book to his chest.

Next, the scene jumps to the arrival of his sister, Fan, bursting through that same door days later, cheeks flushed, arms flung around him with unreserved love. She tugs his small valise, insisting he is to come home forever. Scrooge feels the echo of that joy in his own chest, then the sting as he remembers how short her life was, how quickly that warm, laughing voice went silent.

The Past spirit carries him forward to Fezziwig’s warehouse, lit by many candles and ringing with music. The stout old merchant claps his hands, and the apprentices roll back bolts of cloth and clear desks to make room for dancing. Fiddlers saw away, girls in bright ribbons spin, and young Scrooge—another Scrooge, not yet stiff—laughs as he turns his partner under garlands strung from the rafters. A simple feast waits on a long table: cold meats, hearty pies, a great jug steaming with punch.

Scrooge watches his younger self grin at Fezziwig, grateful for nothing more than a kind word and a merry night. The ghost lets the image of a generous master sink into him, presenting it like a silent question.

The memory tilts forward again. Now Scrooge stands a little apart from Belle, the woman he once hoped to marry. Her eyes reflect nothing but the glow of a small fire; no ornaments hang on the walls of the modest room. She tells him quietly that another idol has displaced her—that gold has filled the space where she used to stand. Outside the window, snow gathers on the sill; inside, the air feels thin and cold. When she walks away, the door closes with a soft final click that might as well be a vault door.

The ghost shows him one more scene: Belle, years later, surrounded by laughing children in a warm parlor, her husband coming in with news that old Scrooge sat alone in his counting-house that very night. The children clamber over Belle’s lap, tugging her sleeves; she smiles, older but content. Scrooge stands apart, watching a life that might have been, listening to the crackle of a fire that will never be his.

Each scene stitches cause to consequence. The solitary boy in the schoolroom, the deep gratitude toward Fezziwig’s kindness, the fear of poverty, the gradual tightening around money, the lost love—all of it feeds the man who starved Cratchit’s hearth and refused Fred’s invitation. The Present he has just seen now has roots.

Overwhelmed, Scrooge seizes the ghost’s cap and tries to jam it down over its glowing head. The light seeps out from under the brim, refusing to be smothered. They struggle in the darkened bedroom; he stumbles against his bed, panting, the cap dropped at his feet. The ghost’s light dwindles to a faint ember, then winks out, leaving only the hard outline of the bedposts.

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Signpost 4: Future – Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come (Third Spirit)

A chill settles over the room, heavier than any he has felt. Scrooge senses a presence before he sees it. Then a hooded figure coalesces in the corner, tall and black, its hand pointing outward from beneath a heavy sleeve. No face shows beneath the hood; no breath moves its cloak. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come says nothing at all.

Drawn by that fixed, silent hand, Scrooge follows it into streets slick with recent rain. Men cluster on the steps of the Exchange, coats buttoned to their chins, cigars glowing in the gloom. They speak of a death; they trade coarse jokes about who will attend the funeral for a free lunch. Scrooge strains to catch a word of mourning and hears none.

The spirit points to small, dark shops in a filthy alley. Inside, a rag-and-bone dealer weighs bedcurtains, silver teaspoons, and a worn shirt, all snatched from the chambers of the newly dead. The charwoman and laundress haggle fiercely over each penny, laughing at the man who lies alone, unwatched, in a stripped bed. Their greed is only a thin echo of his own.

In a bare room, under a pall that does not quite cover the body, Scrooge stands inches from the dead man’s hand, yet cannot bring himself to lift the sheet. The silence presses at his ears. The spirit’s gloved finger traces the outline of that covered form, then turns away without a word, leading Scrooge into fresher air.

They return to the Cratchit house. The room looks much as it did before, but quieter, the air heavier. Bob Cratchit comes in slowly, hat in hand, and lays his scarf across a chair as if afraid to disturb the wood. The children sit close together; Mrs. Cratchit’s eyes are red. On a little shelf stands a tiny crutch, unused, leaning against the wall like a soldier’s rifle left behind.

Bob talks about visiting a certain little grave, how green the grass was, how kind the people were who showed him the spot. His voice breaks once, and the whole family leans toward him, as if their closeness could hold him upright. Scrooge reaches for the boy who isn’t there and finds nothing but air.

Finally, the spirit leads him through narrow paths in a churchyard, gravestones jutting from the frozen earth at crooked angles. It stops at a neglected corner, where weeds clutch at a leaning stone. The spirit points down. Scrooge, hands shaking, wipes away the grime and sees his own name carved there. The dates confirm what the scenes have implied: the dead man unattended, the stripped bed, the jokes on the Exchange—all were his own future.

He falls to his knees in the cold mud, grasping the phantom’s robe. Words tumble out—promises to change, to honor Christmas, to remember what he has seen. The silent figure does not move. Only when Scrooge clings so tightly that his hands pass through the cloth does the headstone fade from view, the letters dissolving like frost in sunlight. The graveyard melts away; the black hood collapses; the church bell begins to strike.

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Resolution: A New Present, A Different Future

Scrooge wakes tangled in his bedcurtains, clutching them like a man who has just escaped a fall. The bedposts are solid under his hands; the room is real, dim, and blessedly empty of spirits. Outside, bells ring madly; light slants through the curtains, bright on the cracked plaster.

He stumbles to the window, throws it up, and leans into clean, cold air. Snow lies crisp on the roofs; the sky hangs blue over the chimneys. A boy stands below, half-buried in white, staring up. Scrooge sends him racing to the poulterer’s for the prize turkey, coins flashing in the boy’s mitten. The heavy bird soon heads toward the Cratchit door, borne on a cart that creaks over rutted streets.

Scrooge dresses in his best, though the clothes hang strangely on his changed posture. He steps out into the street and startles passersby with a sudden, booming greeting. When the gentlemen from the charity list appear, he seizes their hands and whispers a figure so generous they drop their hats. By midday, he has turned his steps toward Fred’s house, heart pounding like a boy at his first school.

At Fred’s door, he hesitates only a breath before knocking. The door opens on warmth and lamplight; Fred blinks, then breaks into a grin that wipes years from his face. Scrooge crosses the threshold and feels the invisible line he drew years ago crack and crumble under his feet. He sits to dinner, listens to laughter that no longer cuts him, joins games that make him blush, and lifts a glass as if he has never held one before.

The next morning, Scrooge stands at the counting-house window before Bob arrives, the room already bright with a generous fire. When Bob hurries in late, shoulders hunched in expectation of a scolding, Scrooge plays the miser one last time, drawing him in with a barked question—then announcing a raise and new help for the family. Bob grips the back of a chair to steady himself; the ink in his bottle tsks softly as if in disbelief.

In the days that follow, Scrooge moves through London like a man mending a net, knot by knot. He sends food to the poorhouse, keeps his door open to neighbors, and visits the Cratchits so often the children race to meet him at the corner. Tiny Tim rides easily on his shoulder, little hands clasped in his hair, laughing as Scrooge strides down the street.

The chain Marley wore still clanks in Scrooge’s memory, but its echo no longer drags at his heels. Each act of generosity feels like a link broken and dropped behind him, vanishing into snow that softens under his feet. His present alters with every choice; his future bends away from that neglected grave. And when people speak his name on busy winter evenings, they do it with a smile, not a shudder, as light spills from his open door onto the crowded street.