What do you do when you’ve written a contemporary novel, but then it takes you 15 years before you’re ready to publish it? Do you update the manuscript for current events, technology, etc.? Leave it as-is, despite the fact that it’s now dated? Make everything as vague as possible and hope no one notices when exactly it’s supposed to be set?
This is the issue I faced with my first novel, Even Heroes. Although the initial draft was completed around 2007, the editing took place in spurts over more than a decade. All throughout the process, I flip-flopped between updating the time period and keeping it the way I originally had it.
At various points during revisions, my main character was listening to music on either a Walkman, a Discman, an mp3 player, or a smartphone. Social media platforms changed as they went in and out of style, seemingly with the direction of the wind. Current events were mentioned, taken out, then added back in again.
As I came close to a blessed final draft, the setting dilemma got settled once and for all, much to my relief.
Here’s where I landed:
The original 2004-2005 time period stayed put, however, many of the more dated references to technology were eliminated.
In the end, I hoped for something that would feel almost timeless, like a kid could pick the book up in 5-10 years and understand that it was set in the past, but not be stumbling over outdated references every five minutes.
I decided not to update the setting for several reasons.
1) Technology changes too fast! Even if I made all the references current at the time of publication, it would be outdated within a year or two anyway.
2) Political climate. Parts of my book take place in Detroit, which was going through a really hard era when I was writing the book. Some of the issues the citizens were struggling with back then fit with the story I needed to tell, so it made sense to stick with that very corrupt, dark period in the Big D’s history.
3) Social climate. This is just a purely personal opinion, but I feel like we, as a society, have fundamentally changed in the last 20 years. We are harder, we are meaner, and there is no longer any such thing as “sacred” or “off limits.”
Remember when The Sixth Sense came out back in 1999? There is a twist at the end of that movie, and there seemed to be a conscious effort by most viewers to preserve that secret for others, rather than spoil it. We wanted other people to have that same moment of surprise that we felt.
There was something magic about that–the unified effort to keep a secret, the basic consideration people were showing for their fellow man.
I think that magic is gone now. If The Sixth Sense came out today, people would be vying to be the first to spoil it for as many viewers as they could in the splashiest possible way.
In my book, the main character is a superhero. Despite his precautions, someone could manage to follow him home one night and blab his secret to the whole world. Back in 2004, in that kinder world where “good” secrets were still something precious, someone would be much less likely to do this.
There is one element of my book that I actually wish had become outdated, but sadly it hasn’t come to pass.
I began writing Even Heroes in 2004, a mere 5 years after the tragic events at Columbine High School. My book deals with a similar tragedy, aiming to look at bullying, school shootings, and youth in crisis through the lens of a superhero story–something I didn’t think had been done before.
At the time of writing, I could never have even imagined that school shootings and mass shootings would become so commonplace over the next two decades that many are not even deemed newsworthy.
Four months before my publication date, we had the worst school shooting in our state’s history.
As much as I want my book to be timeless, this is one way that I would absolutely love for it to become a relic of the past. I want kids in ten years to read it and wonder how such a thing could’ve been possible–a phenomenon so heinous, it’s shocking that it was ever allowed to happen.
If we ever get to that point with school shootings in America, where kids are reading about it in history books, rather than living it in the form of practice drills (or worse), I will gladly welcome in that new era.
In the meantime, if my book–even with its slightly dated references–provides hope for even one kid out there who’s struggling, then it has more than fulfilled its intended purpose.
as the HERO flies... 