If you're in a 1v1 as a ranged squishy vs someone like Irelia or Xin then you're screwed and will be zoned. Your best solution is to switch lanes with someone else

Early game? That's easy.

Stand with your minions.
This forces them to use gap-closers to get you in the first place and makes it difficult for them to escape.
Additionally, if they hit you, your minions will aggro on them. Early game, minions can hurt more than they realize.

Focus on last hitting.
This will hopefully allow them to push the lane into your tower. Try to keep the minion waves at the edge of your tower's range. This allows you to stand within the protective cover of your tower, while not losing many last hits. If they use their gap closer, they'll take turret fire.

Harassing them whenever they are in range.
You're ranged, you can harass them whenever you want really. They have to wait for their gap closing ability to refresh before they can harass you.

Depends on the MU, Ashe and MF react to melee completely differently so does Malzahar and Annie also the difference between meeting Cho and Xin is huge.

To be quite frank, I do believe ranged/mages get the short end of the stick in LoL. There has actually been suggestions as to the fact some Riot persons wanted flash removed... because it provided an escape route. In this game with so many very low CD gap closers, I don't find this trifling and pitiful; I find this a horrifying indication of what someone views as "balance".

For instance, Jax. Jax oh, Jax oh, how I hate your gap closer. It seriously has such a low CD, I seriously doubt a real "need" for the speed Ninja Tabi on Jax. It doesn't matter how fast your traveling when he has a "2 mile gap closer, with 5 second cooldown" (or whatever it is.) I could care less if they doubled his jump damage and lowered the CD!

I am happy with Trynd's gap closer, I just think he's too well rounded. I mean seriously, his Ult, plus a slow, AND a gap closer? I'd rather see him have something other than BOTH gap closing AND slow. I don't want to hear the "look back at tyrnd and it won't work imbecile". There's this thing called lag. No one plays in perfect conditions. If you do, call a scientist to investigate why your ISP is so awesome.

Akali.... similar problem to Jax imo. Except for one thing; I have burned into my memory, the following approximate values: 2200+ damage, in 2.43 seconds... Wow really?

I can't think of any other things that I think of as BS atm as far as gap closers, except for a "minor" thing with Yi; if your being chased down, your dead. He has unslowability in his ultimate. I mean sure it's supposed to be ultimate, but his Q is rather ultimate. I view his Q to be the power of an ultimate X2 when used with his actual ultimate. He becomes something like Jax or Akali, minus 50% leap, and give 50% speed. I consider speed very fair! I love speed.

I want to see more speed rather than instant gap closings. I cannot count the number of times ranged carries I played, I shot first yet because the projectiles of any sort actually take MORE time to travel that melee carries, I die first! Whether this be Ashe's ulti, Gangplank's Parley, or anything else there is. In fact, I was playing a Katarina which I almost wished to accuse of a bug because of her abuse of gameplay mechanics; she would use a gap closer, I would ulti before she reappeared or even used gap close, and she would end up behind me and use her Death Lotus.

Some of the game mechanics are outright despicable when it comes to prioritizing of things.

ranged squishies need to hug turrets in this kind of situation... you're never going to beat a melee with a gap closer 1v1, and if their gap closer outranges your harass you can't really do anything to them. Just keep your distance.

Characters like xin-zhao or irelia seem op at first if you play someone like say, ashe, but they do have some glaring weaknesses which a lot of people overlook: For example, xin can't defend towers from serious attacks because he has no way of harassing from range or killing the minions quickly. And once he gets into a fight, he's 100% committed --- He has no harass ability aside from trying to kill his opponent, which means he's completely unable to fight on unfavorable terms, unlike ranged chars which can harass and kite a bit from the safety of either range or a tower even when outnumbered. He's squishy enough that in team fights he'll get focused down like he's nothing.... ranged carries even if they're squishier you still have to catch them out of position if you want them dead-- xin on the other hand can't do anything unless he's in your face, so he's always out of position so to speak. He'll also get destroyed by melee chars with better sustain or power, the ones that don't bother the ranged carries as much because they don't have as good of a gap closer.