Odd-sounding topic, I know. But this is something I have trouble dealing with. I've heard you should avoid having characters communicate via cell phones/texting etc. as much as possible. I find this is difficult given how much socializing, business, etc. is now done in this manner.
Right now I'm working on a short story where my narrator makes reference to her cell a couple of times, which seems necessary to the plot, but feels a bit unwieldly. She only makes one actual call though.
Does anyone else notice this? It sounds like I'm overanalyzing but I can't avoid this. It's one of those things that just doesn't look right one the page, ya know?
I've never heard this and have no idea why it should be avoided. If texting were a temporary fad rather than something that will continue to be used in the future, then avoiding it would make sense since writing "timeless" fiction is preferable to writing fiction that would seem dated to future readers. Also, it "looks right" on the page to me.
I have heard it as advice for making a more "timeless" piece that won't end up feeling "dated". I think it WAS good advice, but it's hard to avoid in modern writing without dating your writing to a period before now. Cell phones are ubiquitous, and I think a piece with NO reference to modern tech would feel older than it is, if that makes sense.
I do keep it to a minimum, just because I focus on human to human interaction, but if a character needs to make a phone call, I am not going to write in a rare and mysterious pay phone if they aren't at home.
The cell phone has made writing much easier, particularly with movies and TV. But it has also created the "no cell phone reception during a moment of danger" cliche that's often used in horror movies. I assume before the prevelence of the cell phone, characters in shows and movies about the police communicated with dispatchers on the radio and with others through walkie talkies, but it was a bit more difficult for characters in other genres to communicate when there wasn't a phone around. I guess "no cell phone reception" is the new "not having change for a pay phone."
If your story is set in the present, I don't see why cell phones and texting would be a big deal considering all the other pop culture references that will seep in there unnoticed anyway. I haven't written any texting, or cell phones, into my work because for some reason they all seem like it's the 80s unless I make a point to set it in a particular timeframe. I would like to write them into something though, only to see what I can exploit from characters communicating without sensory details. Over the phone you don't know what a person's doing or what's in the room with them, only the inflection of the voice and muffled background noise. Texting, there's even less than that. You don't even know if it's who you think it is on the other end. Lots of things to work with dramatically there. Another thing about cell phones, instant access to 911, GPS, camera, a slew of other conveniences that could help or hinder storytelling.
I recently read Infected by Scott Sigler, pretty decent book. But there were several scenes in it where the characters communicated using Instant Messenger and I thought he did a good job with it. In my own writings, I tend to shy away from things like IM & texting because I have a hard time portraying it in a way that it doesn't screw with the pacing of the story, but I felt Sigler did it in a way that it actually added to the story and made it more realistic.
I know what ya mean about it not looking right on the page, though. In my opinion, I think it would look better to weave the text message or cell phone dialogue into a paragraph instead of just a direct exchange of dialogue. That's just me, though.
I'm probably one of the younger ones in this thread but I use cells in my stories all the time. Not generally for talking, but to check the time, send an email or send a text. I've also had mysteries where a character will snap a picture of something with their phone.
At this point, omitting technology would date a piece more than making a reference to a phone. Cellphones aren't a fad. I think the reason people say they "look wrong" on the page is because the works we look to for quality standards are older and so of course they don't have those references. But imagine if earlier writers had expressed the same hesitation about mentioning electricity or film or radios.
Cell phones have been around for 30 years. Safe to say they aren't going anywhere.
Can anyone think of examples of literary fiction that includes a lot of email/texting (characters communicating via these means). Maybe even an epistolary novel that's email-based?
I wouldn't call it literary fiction, more genre fiction, but the Millenium trilogy by Stieg Larsson has quite a few instances of e-mails (and I think text messages) being sent and received, especially in the second novel.
.... thanks. People keep telling me to read those. Probably a good example.
The book "Where'd You Go Bernadette" handles all email and chat exchanges very well, and there are a lot since a major character is a developer for Microsoft.
I would love to read a book that was solely modern epistolary in email, chats and text messages.
Personally, I enjoy that because we rarely talk anymore. I never pick up the phone to communicate. Everything's texting and GChat.
Give it 30 years, and no one will bat and eye!
thanks, Kendall. I will check it out. I personally loathe texting (except for "be there in ten minutes"-type-stuff) and think it's partly responsible for the general decline in attention spans. But email is a great thing, in my opinion, and I think it's got to have some kind of place in contemporary fiction.
Dracula is largely told through journal entries and letters. There really isn't much different between how you would handle emails and how Stoker did those.
My experience is that emails are shorter and less personal. Reading a whole novel full of them would be a drag, in my opinion. Interspersing them amongst other stuff could be okay.
I think it could be really interesting to throw in some spam-type emails that are connected in some way to what the protagonist goes through. It would be a little less expected than regular emails.
In my experience, emails can actually be more personal. They allow a person to say whatever they want without worrying about the immediate repercussions. I've seen people say things in email that they never would have said to someone's face.
Feed by M.T. Anderson deals with spam and stuff like that, but computers are implanted in people's mind, so they come through like thoughts. There's a page or two of these types of things at the end of each chapter -- bits of news, TV shows, advertisements, etc. that bleed through into the narrative.
Also, the infamous TTYL series is in AIM-style instant messaging, but got some key things fucked up (like the ability to completely rewrite what you're going to say before you send it, so you can be sure that it sounds perfect; the inability to see what the other person is typing, so there's no interruption; stuff like that) and was infantile to even my 13-year-old mind, so yeah. That's what you're fighting against when writing modern epistolary.
That actually was a feature of AIM.You could set up a direct connection so you could see each other typing. It also allowed you to drag and drop images in to the conversation. It didn't last long. That actually points out another problem with the using of emails or chats. Stuff changes so quickly these days you are bound to be dated.
Letters (pre-telegraph) were the only way to communicate without person-to-person contact. Today, in the world of email, we also have phones, text messages, video/text chat, etc, therefore it'd be pretty artificial (unrealistic) to limit an entire novel to nothing but emails. It might work for a short story.
Holy shit, when was that added?! I remember a crappy connection where all you could do was attach photos and couldn't even leave an IM unless the person had an away message up; if they were logged out, you couldn't do anything. Oh, and "going invisible" made you look like you were logged off, but if someone IMed you, it still went through.
Honestly, an entire story through email feels outdated to me, like the person is writing from the 90s.
It wasn't a feature for very long. I actually had to look it up to make sure I was remembering it correctly. It was added in 2008.
http://tap.gallaudet.edu/text/aol/
Craig Clevenger's The Contortionist's Handbook demonstrates how you can throw in reports and emails between chapters pretty easily. But I don't think that's what you're asking. I gather you mean more like... trying to get people to have dialogue that way. And I generally think that's an easy way to do things badly unless you have a good idea about how to make it work.
Communication is about action, physical subtext. They say that 90% of communication is nonverbal, and that's why so-called "lean" channels like texting and email are considered lean to begin with. Because they lack any sort of nonverbal stuff either in sending or receiving. You can't gauge someone's response to what you've said by whether they raise their eyebrows or stiffen their shoulders, nor can you understand that someone is saying one thing but maybe meaning something else (though their words are sweet, their expression is not, etc.). That doesn't mean you can't use those methods, but think of it like a movie or something on TV; in a book, you're still picturing everything in your mind's eye. Unless you have a good reason for doing things in that more distant fashion and a good method for conveying it in an interesting way (Bradley Sands, for instance, had a clear method for his story in Nova Parade, but having that method and knowing what he was doing with it is what made the story work), it's probably best that you avoid relying on it too much. A little here and there is fine, especially if you have the focus on a character who's sitting in front of the reader doing things like scowling and throwing things or rubbing his temples as he reads the texts or emails, hopefully making up for the fact that the other character can only communicate in the lean channel, but if you've got multiple long scenes where communication happens this way, it's going to get old fast unless you're doing it cleverly.
My two cents. Wish I could think of something specific I could recommend where this was done well. I've used text messages any number of times in my own work, but basically as above: with the main character getting texts from someone else and responding to them with emotion meant "for the camera". And those scenes are usually short, punctuating something else in the story or acting as a transition.
That makes sense, Jack. I stopped using it around the end of 07, and came back mid 08, so I wouldn't know about any new features added then. I'm glad it didn't. That would suck.
Michael's right -- communication is near impossible with these methods because so much is lost. In my Comm class this semester, we had to learn stuff like talking without raising our hands and giving the floor to someone else when they wanted to talk without seeing them raise their hands. It was damn near impossible, because we're (a group of 18-20 year olds) so trained to ignore non-verbal communication by texting, phoning, and emailing.
In my opinion, phone calls are easy dialogue. Choose whether you want the reader to hear the other side of the conversation and just write it like regular dialogue. Texting is a little more difficult, because you have to capture the essence of texting rather than talking -- efficiency, practiced lines, etc. are more prevalent in texting than in regular speech.
I rarely include the actual content of a text in my writing. I deal with texts like this:
My cell beeped with a message. I read it.
"What's up?" Damien asked.
"They set a date for the funeral," I said.
See? I completely circumnavigated the issue by having the content referred to, not read.
