A Few Comments About the Old Days

One of the many things I enjoy about the writing workshops I attend is the wide and varied observations I receive about whatever I bring for review. Whether it's a poem, an excerpt from a novel, an essay, short story, whatever - I get the advantage of a bunch of readers seeing it as something new and (hopefully) fresh, and providing insights I might otherwise overlook. This is even more helpful when I write stories from the deep, dark past that I call my life.

Now, you might ask yourself, "How can someone else help you write stories about yourself? You know the story far better than them, right? Maybe they should just take a seat and listen." Well, that first part is true, but while I know the story better than them, they need to be able to understand the story just from what I write. This is a difficult trick, and even more so when my job is not just to tell a story but to recall a particular era in my life and communicate it to them as vividly as possible.

Case in point: My current work in progress (WIP) involves a character going through life's challenges back in the 1990s, with flashbacks to the 1980s. Well, the storytelling is its own task. However, along with telling the story, I also need to give the reader the feeling of the 1990s in whatever way is best communicated. Do I need to talk about the Clinton presidency? Act out the Macarena? Have the characters argue about the movie, Pulp Fiction? Well, these things wouldn't hurt as long as they are properly incorporated into my WIP and don't stand out awkwardly as little timestamps for the reader. However, that's not the only complication.

With any dated reference, there also has to be a context explaining them in a way where people unfamiliar with the reference would still get the gist of what I was talking about. If, say, I made reference to the Macarena, I would have to do it in a way that tells any and every reader that this was a dance-craze in the US in the late 1990s that was a common reference even if not everyone knew how to do it. Readers who weren't even born in the 20th century would be able to understand this point well enough to incorporate the information into their understanding of the story, even if they still can't do the elaborate series of moves the dance requires.

I received this advice at a writing workshop when someone suggested I make reference in my WIP to a minor celebrity of the 1990s that everyone my age would know about (I'll leave the name out for reasons that would be obvious if I included it). Other people agreed, but some people pointed out that they had no idea who we were referring to. This was the teachable moment: If I were to include this celebrity's name, it would have to be in a way that included their claim to fame, thus informing younger readers about the salience of that reference. At that point, it gets a little tricky, and risks diverging from the story.

The reason I bring this up is as a reminder that stories in a particular era are far more rewarding when that era comes with all the trimmings and all the references of the time. When the reader not only reads about events in the late 1990s but feels the presence of that time, they engage with the writing on another level, and appreciate learning about minor celebrities who they might never have heard about in their regular life. And as I've said before, when a writer engages the reader on an additional level, they've done their job and they've won over the reader.

Okay, it was Lorena Bobbitt. The reference was about Lorena Bobbitt. Happy now?