Characters and Technology

Last week I talked about pop culture references in fiction and one of the things that came up as I wrote about it was how characters interact with technology. That's something I wanted to delve into a little more deeply.

Technology is part of our everyday lives, woven deeply into the fabric of our worlds. I see people all the time in real life who are surgically attached to their cell phones. This seems to be more usual than my extreme aversion to the telephone in all its forms. :-) Although, if I had a smart phone, I'd readily be addicted to the internet portion of the phone. I just hate the talking part.

Anyway, with paranormal romance, I feel like I have a bit more leeway. My Blood Feud stories have featured vampires and demons mostly and not very many humans. I have no problem with a 500-year-old vampire not having a cell phone, but in stories like my Light Warrior books, these characters are magical people who are living human lives. They have cell phones. And other technology.

Which leads to the question I asked last week: How can a writer keep references she/he makes in their story to technology or other pop culture things from dating the story?

It colors characterization, too. I have a hero who is ex-Special Forces. I actually had to find out why he doesn't play video games. That he doesn't goes all the way back to his childhood, but this isn't a subject I normally quiz my characters about. But everyone plays video games now, so I need to know why he didn't. At least I don't have to worry about his choice of games or gaming systems dating the story!

I also have that same hero receive a voice mail from his heroine on his cell phone. I spent time thinking about why she called him instead of texting him because she didn't want to talk to him live and had planned to roll to his voice mail.

It could be worse. There are authors who've been around a lot longer than ten years and they're talking about old books they wrote where the entire plot would fall apart if the character had a cell phone. Some of them talked about putting a note up front to tell readers the story was written before phones were everywhere.

One of the things that was so hard when I wrote one of my futuristics was computers. In the research I'd done, there'd been speculation on where keyboards were going. There were a lot of different options to pick from and I deliberately stayed very, very vague about how my heroine accessed the computer system. And even making that choice, I had to revise the text more than once to take out a stray reference to typing.

I have an idea for a story involving computers and a heroine who works in the field. Now granted, it's an idea that's down on the To Do List a ways, but I'm already worrying about the technology and how fast the story would be out of date.

The other day, I read a story about Generation Y (AKA the Millennials) and how so many of them don't own cars! That they're buying houses, renting apartments on subway lines or bicycling into work. Of course, geography plays a role in this. I'm guessing Los Angeles is still auto focused and in Atlanta, you'd take your life into your hands riding a bike to work down here, but now this is another factor to consider in stories. Characters and cars and that a lot of 26-year-old men and women don't own cars.

I'm not sure it ever ends--the things writers need to know and worry about--because it's all about making the characters real and that means knowing what music they listen to and how they get around town. But these very things put a book solidly into a time frame.

So basically I haven't figured out how to balance grounding a story and making it and the characters real versus dating it quickly as being from a certain time period. I hate being in a quandary like this.

Pop Culture References In Fiction

I've been thinking about pop culture references in stories off and on for the past few months and wondering how much is too much. I'm not sure I've reached an answer yet because there are two competing forces at work.

On one side, pop culture can ground the story and make the characters seem more real, and sometimes, easier to relate to. Also trying to make every reference to music or cars or technology generic isn't easy to do and it can lead to some odd sentences, things that just jar me out of a book when I read them. Even when I'm the writer who did it.

On the other hand, things change and these pop culture references can date a book badly. There's a book I bought used a long time after its release and the mention of a velour top and wrap-around skirt stopped me cold. I hadn't checked out the copyright date when I bought it, but when I read that, I couldn't help but flip to the front. That's really not something I want to have people do with my stories.

When I wrote In the Darkest Night MySpace wasn't dead and the rise of the blogs that were created simply to post pictures that make fun of people hadn't gained traction yet. So in the story, my heroine is worried about the pictures of her scared face being posted on Facebook or MySpace. Ouch! Now, I wish I'd just said internet or something.

And to flip back to the other side again, I like being able to put cars or music groups in the story. In Blood Feud it means something to say my heroine drives a Aston Martin DBS. If I'd just said expensive sports car, the reader might go with Ferrari or Porsche or Lamborghini which gives a completely different picture of the heroine than the car she did drive. And thanks to James Bond, I was comfortable that most people would know what the car looked like.

Of everything involving present-day culture, though, the thing that worries me the most is technology. As fast as that's racing ahead and evolving, it won't take long for something to be dated. This goes beyond the MySpace misstep I made. Cell phones versus smart phones. Tablets versus laptops versus desktops. All the tech getting added to cars.Video games. And how all these things relate to the characters.

Just wow.

My first book was released in Nov 2002--ten years ago. Go to Google Images and put in 2002 cell phones. Now enter 2012 cell phones. Look at how much change has happened in just ten years.

Of course, there were no cell phones in my first book--it was set in the future on a planet light years away from Earth--but that's a good example of how quickly things could get dated from one casual reference. It actually would have been dated in about five years because the first iPhone came out in 2007 (per Wikipedia).

I think I'm going to have to write part 2 of this because I haven't even touched on characters interacting with technology. So Part 2 coming on Tuesday.

Pop Culture and Fiction

I've been thinking this week about pop culture and how it's used in fiction. I will admit that I absolutely loathe brand name dropping (especially designer name dropping) when I read a book. Every time I see a heroine in Bruno Magli shoes, I cringe a little. There are other shoe brands besides this one.

And here is where I confess that I did, indeed, mention a brand of shoes for a secondary character in one of my books. But she wore Amalfi pumps and the only reason I named a brand at all was because the rhythm of the sentence screamed out for one.

Pop culture references, though, go beyond designer names. Characters don't exist in a vacuum--or at least they shouldn't. If someone is writing a contemporary story, these people need to use computers, cell phones, and watch television and movies. They should text their friends, listen to their iPods, and know about major forces in the society. For example, is there any adult (or kid for that matter) in the United States who hasn't seen at least one episode of The Brady Bunch? Or maybe seen one of the movies?

So when I write I have characters who are Cubs fans, who drive Ford Explorers or Aston Martins, characters who have seen the blockbuster movies, and who own computers, cell phones, and send text messages. Not only does it define the character, but it also makes them more real.

This was something that came up while I was writing In the Midnight Hour. I had references in there to Bewitched because the heroine is a magic-wielding troubleshooter and the hero is a human who's just been introduced to such a person existing in the world. If he didn't know Bewitched, there'd be something wrong with him. But one of my friends called my attention to Charmed and felt that the hero and heroine would be familiar with that show, too. She was right.

Ryne, my heroine, would be interested in the human portrayal of magic users--for a good laugh if for no other reason. It's also fair to assume with the show going into reruns before it went off the air, that Deke, the hero had seen it, too. And that he would base his knowledge of magic on Hollywood representations because he knows nothing else.

IMO, there's always a need to balance the pop culture references. Too many and it's annoying. Too trendy and it dates your book. And this is especially hard with music. Groups come and go so fast now.

When I needed music for In the Darkest Night, I knew Kel wouldn't listen to the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. He was 29, not 59 and he's listening to current music (not that I might not have a hero or heroine in the future who's really into classic rock, but Kel wasn't). I went with Korn because they'd been around for a little while and took a stab that Seether would still be around in five years. I hope I gambled right with those choices. :-)

I still remember picking up an old Silhouette Desire. I remember the story being awesome, although I can't remember the author or the title. But as I was reading, I hit a description of what the heroine was wearing--a velour top and a wrap-around skirt. That jerked me out of the story quickly because it was so dated.

This stuck with me for years and it's part of the reason why I go with very classic styles for my characters. My heroes and heroines generally wear jeans and T-shirts, sweatshirts, polo shirts or I'll just say she was wearing a black skirt. My big foray into more specific clothing was In Twilight's Shadow. I tried to give enough for the reader to picture the dresses Maia wore, but not so specific that it dated the book. I hope I succeeded, but since I'm not a fashion maven, I don't know.

So yeah, balance. It's not always an easy line to walk, but I think it's one authors have to tread or their characters become less real. I'm not going to reference a TV show like My Own Worst Enemy in any of my books (even though it was a totally awesome show that more people should have watched so that it didn't get cancelled), but shows that ran for a while, or that have lived forever on TV Land? Yeah, those get mentioned.