Technology in Contemporary Fiction

 

Contemporary fiction is often defined as fiction that is set in the current time period. It’s a tall order, but my goal is to write my contemporary fiction in such a way that it will seem as current ten years from now as it does today.

This is a fast-changing world, and many things will be different in ten years. Even so, I’d like to minimize the references that date my contemporary fiction. Unless the political scene is important to the story, which it hasn’t been yet, I can avoid that issue. Unfortunately, there are two other constantly changing matters that affect everyone’s lives, and I can’t avoid them. I talked about slang last week, and this week’s post covers technology.

Lately, I’ve been working on two contemporary novels. One is women’s fiction, and, as you would expect, the protagonist has a cell phone that she uses for long conversations with her sister and for texts to and from her business associates. Since she makes her living as an author, however, she also needs a laptop.

Sending a text drives me crazy because it is much slower than typing or even writing something out in longhand. As a writer, using a virtual keyboard would never work when I am in the throes of inspiration and the words come flowing out. I need a traditional keyboard or paper and pen to keep up with my thoughts. I also prefer a larger screen, so a laptop is a must-have for me, and it makes sense that my author protagonist also uses a laptop.

My other contemporary work-in-progress is middle-grade fiction with a seventh grader as my protagonist. She uses a laptop for her schoolwork and has recently gotten her first cell phone.

With technology permeating our society, the only way to eliminate all mention of it is to create characters who are isolated from the world. Since that wouldn’t work with either of my plots, I can’t expect the story to ring true unless the characters make use of the technology that every reader knows they must have. So my characters have laptops and cell phones, and there isn’t much I can do about it. I’m hoping both will still be in use ten years from now, but you never know. The cell phone might turn into a wrist communicator, and the laptop may be replaced by something that takes voice dictation and recites it back. It may even be the same wrist communicator that does it all.

For now, however, that technology isn’t in common use, and the story would be unrealistic if I imported it into novels that take place today. If I want authenticity, I have to go with the technology that people use now.

Sometimes you just have to work with what you have and hope it will be good enough.

Evergreen Dialogue

 I just finished the first draft of a contemporary children’s novel, and one of my biggest challenges was writing the dialogue. I know it seems counter-intuitive, but it was even harder than writing dialogue for my historical fiction. That’s because my historical books are frozen at one particular point in time, while contemporary fiction should normally be timeless.¹

There are exceptions, of course, such as contemporary fiction tied to current events. I’ve also read books where the writers are so intent on showing how well they understand the current generation that their fiction is outdated by the time it gets published.

Most contemporary fiction aims to stay current as time passes, however. This means that the language choices must be evergreen.

This is particularly important when using slang. I checked several sources and they aren’t entirely consistent about the specifics, but they all agree that slang means words that are used in a casual setting but are avoided in a formal one. For example, people often use “okay” or “awesome” in everyday conversation but you rarely find those words in an academic paper or a formal speech.

So why not avoid slang altogether? Unfortunately, that isn’t an option for a writer who wants to present a realistic picture. Take the book I’ve been working on as an example. The protagonist and her friends are preteens, so they would naturally use slang. If they didn’t, the story would become stilted and lose all authenticity. However, many of the slang words in use today are passing fads and would date the book. Even worse, they might not even be understood by my readers five years from now. The trick is to find slang words that have been part of the language for a long time and continue to be used and understood today. While there is no guarantee, this proven slang is more likely to stay evergreen than new words are.

In the graphic at the head of this page, the girl on the left is using current slang of recent origin, while the boy on the right is using evergreen slang.² I can’t predict what will happen with language in the future, of course. Maybe some of the words on the left will catch on and become evergreen, while some on the right might soon fall out of use. Still, if I don’t want my fiction to become dated, I’ll stick with the ones on the right.

Even so, I’m worried that limiting the dialogue to evergreen slang will make my characters sound too grown up. I’ll see how that works itself out in later drafts.

Next week I’ll talk about another issue that can date contemporary fiction.

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¹ For a discussion of slang in historical novels, see my blog posts from January 25, 2021 and February 1, 2021.

² “Adulting” means acting like a grown-up and doing things a real adult would do; “sus” is short for “suspicious”; “fire” is the same as “cool” or “awesome”; and “cooked” means exhausted or overwhelmed. Hopefully I don’t have to define the words on the right.

"Lonely Rock"

 

Twelve-year-old Jessie enjoys living in small-town Maine in 1925, but then her father takes a job as an assistant lighthouse keeper and moves his family to a remote island. Forced to face her fears and deal with loneliness, illness, shipwrecks, and stormy weather, can she survive the storm in her own heart?

That’s the plot summary for my newly-published middle-grade historical novel, Lonely Rock. I rarely use this blog to promote my own books, but this is one of the few exceptions.

Lonely Rock is primarily aimed at girls ages 8–12, but I hope that it will appeal to an older audience, as well. I am one of the many adults still enjoy reading middle-grade fiction, and, if you are too, give it a try.

With Christmas coming up, consider buying Lonely Rock for your daughter, granddaughter, niece, or anyone else on your list. The novel is available both in paperback and for Kindle, and here is the link to it on Amazon.

Lonely Rock: Page, Kaye, Camp, Kathryn Page: 9798990089129: Amazon.com: Books

If you read Lonely Rock and like it (or even if you don’t), please leave a review. Honest reviews are the best way for readers to decide if a book is for them.

Thanks for allowing me this blatant self-promotion.

Michigan's Eastern Upper Peninsula

 

As I mentioned last week, Roland and I spent several days last month in the eastern part of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. While staying at my brother’s cabin, we took excursions to Tahquamenon Falls and Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Then, on our way along U.S. 2, we visited Fayette State Park. The first two were mainly for my research, although we enjoyed them, too, and the last was solely for fun.

One of my works in progress is a women’s fiction novel about a writer who is burned out. To get the rest and relaxation she needs for her recovery, she takes a trip to the U.P. and ends up deciding to stay there. The story is not a travelogue, but I am adding some scenes at local tourist areas for authenticity and variety.

Jo gets better acquainted with people in her new community during a church picnic at Tahquamenon Falls. The photo at the top of this post shows the Upper Falls. The one below shows the Lower Falls, which wind around an island that is connected to the parking lot, concessions, and picnic area by a foot bridge.

I wanted to get all the details of that visit right, but my primary purpose for our trip to the falls was to see if the picnic area at the Lower Falls is large enough for a small church picnic. It is, as you can see from the next photo.

There is also a large picnic area at the Upper Falls, but one advantage of having the church event take place at the Lower Falls is that there are greater recreational opportunities there. Roland and I did not wade in the water at the Lower Falls, but, like the people in the next photo, my characters do.

The next day we went to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, known to locals as “the Soo.” As a child, my family went there every other Saturday so my father could visit parishioners in the hospital and the rest of us could exchange our books at the library. My father loved watching the lake freighters from the window in his office at the church in DeTour, and we never went to the Soo without heading to the locks and watching the boats go through.

So of course that is one of things my protagonist does. Her companion checks the schedule and times it so they are there when a freighter goes through. I didn’t think to do that, so we were fortunate to arrive while the Presque Isle was going through on its way upbound. The next photo shows the ship leaving the Soo Locks and heading into Lake Superior.

Another research reason for going to the Soo was that I wanted to get a feel for the Meijers superstore where my protagonist would go when she wanted to shop for groceries she couldn’t get nearer to her fictional village. Unfortunately, it made me jealous because it was larger and had more variety than my nearest Meijers or any of my neighborhood grocery stores.

As I mentioned in last week’s post, I’m placing my fictional village on U.S. 2, which runs along the northern shore of Lake Michigan. As we were following U.S. 2, we took a side trip to Fayette State Park, which we visited purely as tourists.

From 1867 to 1891, Fayette was a company town that produced iron for use in the steel industry. Roland was interested because he spent the first half of his working life in an East Chicago steel mill, and I was interested in how the families lived. I did learn something, but unfortunately it wasn’t enough to set a story there and I haven’t found any other good resources, either. So don’t look for a book about Fayette.

The final two photos show the town’s business district and the furnace complex where the iron was smelted.

The trip to the U.P. was both informative and fun, but next week I’ll have an announcement about a different book.

 

Researching Setting

 

Last month Roland joined me on a research trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, which is the setting for a women’s fiction novel I’ve been working on. During the first few days we stayed at my brother’s cabin in DeTour Village, where I grew up, and took excursions to several places that my protagonist visits in the novel. That’s the cabin in the picture at the top of this page. I’ll tell you about the excursions in next week’s post.

DeTour Village lies on the St. Mary’s River between Lake Huron and Lake Superior, and it is as far east as you can go in the U.P. without falling into the water. I wanted to set my novel slightly farther west, though, along the northern shore of Lake Michigan. That’s still in the eastern part of the U.P. that I’m familiar with, but I haven’t been there for years. So after we left DeTour, we drove along U.S. 2.

I’m placing my fictional town along U.S. 2 somewhere between St. Ignace and Manistique, and I wanted to make sure that my memory coincided with the actual landscape. Fortunately it did, at least for the most part, and the adjustments I had to make were minor. I took these photos through the front windshield. (With Roland driving, of course.)

Many people think of the U.P. as mountainous, but, as you can tell from the photos, it isn’t all like that. The mountains are in the west, and the eastern part is mostly flat with some gently rolling hills (although they didn’t seem gentle when I rode my bicycle up them as a kid).

A writer who doesn’t know better might easily place a novel in the eastern U.P. among the mountains, but that would be wrong. It’s better to check out a setting before writing about it.

Even if a writer thinks he or she knows the facts, it’s important to check them. That was the purpose of my research trip, and it was worth the effort.

A Great Egret Sighting

 

My walks frequently take me along Schoon Ditch. Aside from the exercise, it’s always a pleasant walk because I don’t know what I might see.

So on two of my walks in June (about a week apart) and another in early July, I was pleasantly surprised to see a large white bird standing in the water. It isn’t the first time I’ve seen a similar bird along that trail, but it has been several years, and the sightings are always rare.

Although I’m not any better at identifying birds than I am at identifying flowers, I think it was a great egret. My internet research says they aren’t common in Indiana and are mostly seen here in late summer or early fall, so I don’t know what this one was doing here in June. It might have been resting but is unlikely to have been searching for food since, as far as I know, there are no fish in Schoon Ditch. Still, there are plenty of ducks if it was looking for feathery companionship and couldn’t find it among its own kind.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have my Canon camera with me, and the zoom on my cell phone isn’t as good. It takes great closeups, but whenever I got too close the bird flew away. Not far, and it seemed pretty nonchalant in that very public spot between a high school and a hospital, but it didn’t stay in one place long enough to give me a good photo op.

Next time, maybe it will pose for better pictures.

Hunting Dragonflies

 

Back in June, my camera club took a field trip to Oak Ridge Prairie with our resident dragonfly expert. I hadn’t previously had much luck capturing dragonflies with my camera, so I was thrilled by the experience. I felt as if I was in Fort Knox except surrounded by dragonflies rather than gold.

The photo at the top of this post shows a Common Whitetail, and it is the only female in the group. I forgot to ask our resident expert why there was such an imbalance between the sexes, but Google’s AI says the males are aggressive and the females tend to stay away to avoid harassment. Maybe they need a “Me Too” movement.

The rest of these photos are all males, and I have included them alphabetically. In the order they appear, they are: Banded Pennant, Calico Pennant, Eastern Pondhawk, Spangled Skimmer, Twelve-Spotted Skimmer, and Widow Skimmer.

Some of the dragonflies melted into the background and were hard to see. Next week’s post talks about a bird who stood out and didn’t care who saw him.