I’m writing a novel. I’m not going to say much for fear of jinxing myself, but I have a couple thoughts.
1. It’s set in the present, so the characters text each other, chat on Discord, look at videos on YouTube, and so forth. It’s all perfectly reasonable; it would be weird if they didn’t text, and I do so myself all the time. But it still feels very “hello fellow kids.” #genxproblems
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2. On the other side of the coin, I sometimes have to rewrite because I forgot about modern technology. For instance, one character was hiding from another in a dark parking lot, and I suddenly remembered that everyone now carries a flashlight with them at all times.
3. Also, I now have to go to a parking lot at night to see how effective phone flashlights are.
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4. Other things I remembered mid-writing: You can reply to mysterious messages if they’re delivered via email. You can call 911 and be driven to a hospital at the same time. People around the age of 30 don’t all know what Usenet was, even if they’re tech-literate. Or what Usenet is; I guess it’s still technically around.
5. If I reference music or TV, I should probably do some research instead of making the characters fans of Pizzicato Five and Space Ghost Coast to Coast.
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Just to throw another log on, I don’t forget that phone flashlights and e-mail replies exist in real life, just when writing. So I don’t think it’s that I’m out of touch with tech, I think it’s that growing up without the Internet, I saw tropes like “mysterious note from a stranger” and “manhunt in the dark” so many times in earlier incarnations that I use them without considering that I’m going to have to update them.
Come to think of it, have I ever seen someone use a phone flashlight on TV?
@loresjoberg Funny that you are trying to write a novel in the 'Modern World' since most written fiction tends not to be modern because if you include a website, even one that is major and currently popular, you might end up with something like 'They all met on MySpace' and people won't even know what you're talking about.
Why not world build a fantasy world that is very similar to the modern world just with a few differences that come around when you write them?
Lore Sjöberg
jharish