Mobile Phones in Writing
Time for another writing-related pondering over lunchtime, following on from a chat I was having yesterday evening at writing group.
The introduction of technologies into society clearly changes the boundaries of the world we live in. I recently re-read Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising sequence, and found myself wondering what younger readers would make of it. I am - fortunately - old enough to have grown up in a time when if you arranged to be somewhere at a certain time, you were there, because you had no other way of letting your friends or family know that you wouldn't be. If something happened to me, I wouldn't have been able to rely on a mobile phone to be able to contact my parents. Whether a younger readership would be able to comprehend not having that immediacy...I don't know. Rising numbers of youngsters have mobile phones these days, and communicate online. Try to imagine having never known anything else, and ask yourself if it would as easy to put yourself in the shoes of a child growing up in the 1970s, or 1870s, or in a pre-technology fantasy world.
As a writer, I loathe mobile phones. They immediately get in the way of stories - where's the urgency if you can just call someone up as soon as you find out who the bad guy is to let them know that actually, Cheerful Uncle Jamie is the serial killer and they should run away now? See what I mean?
Jim Butcher covers this very neatly in The Dresden Files. Harry Dresden, one somewhat snarksome reluctantly heroic protagonist, is unable to use modern technologies due to his wizarding capabilities. Newer cars, mobile phones, computers...they all go PHUT when he's around. But that's been done already. Jim Butcher has neatly covered that ground, more's the pity.
In City of Shadows, I got around the problem by various characters either not having mobiles (JP, the Old Man, all the assorted spirits and so forth), or breaking them or running out of battery (Fiona). It felt a bit of a cop-out in places. My current WIP (the un-named fantasy with the not!Vikings), is deliberately set in a pre-electronic technology period.
So, how do you use technology in your writing? Does it increase or remove tension for you?
The introduction of technologies into society clearly changes the boundaries of the world we live in. I recently re-read Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising sequence, and found myself wondering what younger readers would make of it. I am - fortunately - old enough to have grown up in a time when if you arranged to be somewhere at a certain time, you were there, because you had no other way of letting your friends or family know that you wouldn't be. If something happened to me, I wouldn't have been able to rely on a mobile phone to be able to contact my parents. Whether a younger readership would be able to comprehend not having that immediacy...I don't know. Rising numbers of youngsters have mobile phones these days, and communicate online. Try to imagine having never known anything else, and ask yourself if it would as easy to put yourself in the shoes of a child growing up in the 1970s, or 1870s, or in a pre-technology fantasy world.
As a writer, I loathe mobile phones. They immediately get in the way of stories - where's the urgency if you can just call someone up as soon as you find out who the bad guy is to let them know that actually, Cheerful Uncle Jamie is the serial killer and they should run away now? See what I mean?
Jim Butcher covers this very neatly in The Dresden Files. Harry Dresden, one somewhat snarksome reluctantly heroic protagonist, is unable to use modern technologies due to his wizarding capabilities. Newer cars, mobile phones, computers...they all go PHUT when he's around. But that's been done already. Jim Butcher has neatly covered that ground, more's the pity.
In City of Shadows, I got around the problem by various characters either not having mobiles (JP, the Old Man, all the assorted spirits and so forth), or breaking them or running out of battery (Fiona). It felt a bit of a cop-out in places. My current WIP (the un-named fantasy with the not!Vikings), is deliberately set in a pre-electronic technology period.
So, how do you use technology in your writing? Does it increase or remove tension for you?