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This is a continuation of my blogging here at WdC |
| Setting The Time Youâve written a great story set in the years you were a teenager. Youâve used your memory to fill in the gaps and add colour to an era that some readers might not have lived through, or might have been too old to see from that teenaged perspective. Your beta reader has a look and says, âWell, itâs sort of that year.â What? Youâve spent all this time! Whatâs wrong with it? Okay, first, donât rely on your memory! Memories are not infallible. What you think happened in 1992 could well have happened in 1999, and that changes everything. I thought they played Wilson Phillipsâ song âHold Onâ at our year 12 formal and I danced with Mel to it. Well, they couldnât have; it was released 2 years afterwards. So, just check with some research. But donât just rely on research. The book Ready Player One was clearly written by someone who lived in the 1980s, but who was not actively involved in the pop culture. It reads like a series of Wikipedia articles, not like a natural memory of someone who was involved. Itâs all well and good to state certain things because they were popular, but who were they popular with? âIâve Never Been To Meâ was huge in Australia; none of my friends liked it â it was bought by our mothers! It would be like someone in 2040 writing about 2010 and saying Susan Boyle was on every kidsâ mp3 player. She was popular, yes⌠but with older people. The kids were listening to Ke$ha, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga, not an older woman from a singing TV show. In places where hiphop was more popular, they were probably listening to other artists. But Susan Boyle? Mum music. You cannot fake a recent time period! You need to have been there or know someone who was. Now, adding colour is all well and good. Pop culture references, clothing references, political references are all ways you can make the time seem realistic. Make sure you are being area and person specific, though. In Australia, disco was niche; in the 1970s, the kids were listening to pub rock, glam rock, Kiss and AC/DC. In 1981, girls across Australia had their hair cut in the âLady Diâ style; in the US they were doing the Farrah Fawcett big hair thing. In the 1990s, the US was really delving into the urban music scene and post-grunge; in the UK, Europop was taking a firm grip; In Australia, we stuck with last remnants of grunge and discovered local country. Ronald Reagan being president of the USA meant nothing to us in Australia. Having Bob Hawke be our prime minister, a man with a beer-drinking record, did. Now, some things were world-wide turning points. The Berlin Wall coming down in 1989, the Y2k bug fear (and, yes, it was real, they just got on top of it early) in 1999, COVID in 2020 â these are touchstones. Know what wasnât? Woodstock in 1969, the Challenger space shuttle explosion in 1986, the events of September 11, 2001. Why? Because they might have been in the news, and some fallout might have come the way of the rest of the world, but they were localised to the USA. That is something that needs to be remembered â the USA runs the media, but that does not mean the events in that country affect the rest of the world in the same deep, meaningful, cultural manner. This does make it difficult to write to a time period, but it does mean that when you are authentic, it will show through. Or you could simply have a character say, âI never thought 1988 would be like this!â |
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