Writing in the Past, it's a Blast
I was clear from the off that my David Good books would be set in the past. When you’ve made a decision like that it can be easy to ignore the potential pitfalls that face you. But just what pitfalls I have had to negotiate my way around, so far?
The reasons I wanted to set these books in the past were technology focused. I was adamant that I wanted to write about a time before the internet and the wide availability of the mobile phone. On the other hand, I very much did want to write about a time that I was fully familiar with, mainly so that I could deliver authenticity and do so without the need for endless hours of meticulous research. This has though presented me with both opportunities and difficulties.
One area that I have particularly enjoyed reliving is the clothes that people wore. Women flaunted often over-sized hair-dos along with ridiculously enormous shoulder pads in jackets and even blouses. Make-up was, how can I say, often liberally applied and often worn by the blokes as much as it was the girls.
Of course, music, films and TV not only differed in terms of what we watched and listened to, but also the channels available to us. For anyone born in the last twenty years or so this might seem barely believable when options now are almost limitless.
Another interesting area has been the built environment. My recollection of south London is not photographic and I am never going to be able to recognise every change that has taken place over the decades in between then and now, but changes there will of course have been.
This problem I have in part overcome by giving myself a free hand to manipulate the built environment in any way I see fit. So, I might move a pub from one street to another and re-name it along the way, or site a cafe where there never was one etc. But the overall result must always deliver a true sense of what it was like to be living and working in that part of London at the time.
Perhaps the hardest challenge of all has been the language. In part this is making sure I recall the correct ways of talking, any words or phrases that were common at the time but not now. However, it has in some ways been more difficult to avoid falling into the trap of using words and phrases that hadn’t appeared at that time.
There is one final challenge in writing about a period in your past and that is the tendency every once in a while to feel old. At the time of writing this, the 1980s came to an end over 25 years ago; such a key period in my own life can occasionally seem like a very, very long time ago!
For the full version of this post please see http://www.benwesterham.com/a-writers....
Get a free copy of ‘Good Investigations’ here http://www.benwesterham.com/.
Crime fiction with attitude and humour from 1980s London.
The reasons I wanted to set these books in the past were technology focused. I was adamant that I wanted to write about a time before the internet and the wide availability of the mobile phone. On the other hand, I very much did want to write about a time that I was fully familiar with, mainly so that I could deliver authenticity and do so without the need for endless hours of meticulous research. This has though presented me with both opportunities and difficulties.
One area that I have particularly enjoyed reliving is the clothes that people wore. Women flaunted often over-sized hair-dos along with ridiculously enormous shoulder pads in jackets and even blouses. Make-up was, how can I say, often liberally applied and often worn by the blokes as much as it was the girls.
Of course, music, films and TV not only differed in terms of what we watched and listened to, but also the channels available to us. For anyone born in the last twenty years or so this might seem barely believable when options now are almost limitless.
Another interesting area has been the built environment. My recollection of south London is not photographic and I am never going to be able to recognise every change that has taken place over the decades in between then and now, but changes there will of course have been.
This problem I have in part overcome by giving myself a free hand to manipulate the built environment in any way I see fit. So, I might move a pub from one street to another and re-name it along the way, or site a cafe where there never was one etc. But the overall result must always deliver a true sense of what it was like to be living and working in that part of London at the time.
Perhaps the hardest challenge of all has been the language. In part this is making sure I recall the correct ways of talking, any words or phrases that were common at the time but not now. However, it has in some ways been more difficult to avoid falling into the trap of using words and phrases that hadn’t appeared at that time.
There is one final challenge in writing about a period in your past and that is the tendency every once in a while to feel old. At the time of writing this, the 1980s came to an end over 25 years ago; such a key period in my own life can occasionally seem like a very, very long time ago!
For the full version of this post please see http://www.benwesterham.com/a-writers....
Get a free copy of ‘Good Investigations’ here http://www.benwesterham.com/.
Crime fiction with attitude and humour from 1980s London.
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