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 |  This is a continuation of my blogging here at WdC |
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This will be a blog for my writing, maybe with (too much) personal thrown in. I am hoping it will be a little more interactive, with me answering questions, helping out and whatnot. If it falls this year (2024), then I may stop the whole blogging thing, but that's all a "wait and see" scenario. An index of topics can be found here: "Writing Blog No.2 Index"  Feel free to comment and interact. |
| Dateless Time Setting Quick one. This came from a person who I reviewed. “How do you make a person realise it’s a different time without just saying the year?” There are three ways, from what I can tell. 1. Famous people and events Mentioning who the president of the USA is can give a 4-8 year period of reference, for example. However, this is cultural. If you told my son it happened when Nixon was president, he’d have no idea who you were talking about. Same with a UK prime minister (he knows when Thatcher was the evil despot, but has no idea who John Major was) or Australian Prime Minister (my mentions of Harold Holt have received a universal, “Huh?” on WdC). But something like the Fall of the Berlin Wall, assassination of JFK, assassination of Lord Mountbatten, Hiroshima, Sep-11-01 attacks, etc. do seem to be cultural touchstones that can date a work well. “Remember two years ago, watching the Space Shuttle Challenger explode? That was the first time we hugged one another…” Yeah, it’s clunky, but we know we’re in 1988. 2. Pop culture references The music of a year, the films in the cinemas, the shows on TV, all of these things can paint a picture of the year your story is set. But it’s more than that. How many TV channels were there? Did cable TV exist? Was there a streaming service? How many? Did Blockbuster still exist? How about independent video stores? Did we have CDs yet, or was it vinyl and cassette only? Or even 8-track? Were thee 45s and 33s, or were 78s and 16s also there in vinyl? Was TV black and white or colour? Films? Talkies? What made a music show? Was there NWOBHM, poodle rock, grunge or pop-punk on the rock radio? Was there regular and popular radio? All of this can really paint a time period. One huge caveat here – if you didn’t live it, ask someone who did. Do NOT rely on Wikipedia, or else you end up with a hodgepodge of inaccuracies, as seen in Ready Player One, a series of Wikipedia articles rammed together in search of a story. I was there in the 80s; he got it wrong on too many levels. Just saying a group of kids were singing Charlene’s ‘I’ve Never Been To Me’ because you saw it was number one on the charts for weeks is stupid; kids hated it – it was bought by their parents. Kids were singing ‘Eye Of The Tiger’, ‘I Love Rock And Roll’ and some were even singing ‘Physical’. There are also hairstyles, clothes and shoe brands that marked decades, years, even months. 3. Slang, phrases and words used Make sure the characters use language appropriate to the time. An example comes from a book I read recently about Woodstock, and the term used was “bobby-soxer.” A bobby-soxer was there in the 1950s to early 1960s; by 1969 they were gone and not even mentioned. Closer to home, this was made clear to me when I read a story on WdC recently set in the 1950s and the character mentioned “snail mail.” That is a phrase that appeared in the late 1990s. Back then, it was just called “mail” and it was all they had. Some more examples: A character saying “Cowabunga, dude,” says it is when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon was huge, 1980s, and nowadays only if they are being ironic or a stoner (rarely). Likewise, “Eat my shorts,” was from The Breakfast Club, popularised to stupidity by The Simpsons in the 1990s. Calling some-one a “Karen” is very now; it would not have happened in 1994. So, how do you find out if you can’t ask someone? Old newspapers are good. In Australia we have a site called Trove where old newspapers are digitised. But libraries, etc. are a great resource. Check out second-hand book stores to get older books and magazines. Especially populist fiction, YA fiction and horror fiction set contemporaneously - you'll get a good grasp of the language people used and the things in people's minds. Re-runs on TV shows (they still show Gilligan’s Island here… at 2am on Sunday morning, but it’s there). However, do not trust Wikipedia (written, generally by people born in the 1990s and early 2000s) or Reddit. Hope that helps someone! |
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