Series Timelines and the Real World

[Lifestyle66]

Just food for thought or discussion:

Another thread asked how much research we do in our stories. And in looking at my series of a couple becoming swingers, I sometimes inject a song title or movie reference. I will look up the date those came out to ensure they track with the character ages or other events.

In thinking about when my series would have started or how I might improve the first chapter with a thoughtful flashback-style beginning. I created a timeline for those stories and future episodes. I thought of starting with a reference to the MC seeing a poster for "Star Wars IX - The Rise of Skywalker" and thinking back to when the MC was younger. But that movie came out in 2019, just months before COVID with the lockdowns less than a year later, while my swinger series would span multiple years.

COVID put a damper on non-monogamous sexual encounters and drastically curtailed swinger activities. Has anyone else had to rewrite story plans? Or do you merely ignore such reality time limits?

 

[KeithD]

COVID put a damper on non-monogamous sexual encounters and drastically curtailed swinger activities. Has anyone else had to rewrite story plans? Or do you merely ignore such reality time limits?

In writing a story recently, I had to section out one part and make a separate story of it, because it introduced a fully transitioned character, and such operations weren't being done in the time of the original story.

 

[soflabbwlvr]

I started writing a story in 2013 involving an immigrant couple. Central to the story is US immigration policy. I put it down and did not pick it up again until 2018. By that point the policy had changed. I revised the story, worked on it some more, then put it down. I picked it up again this year. The policy had changed again. And then last week a judge struck down those changes. I'm giving up on trying to make the story conform to current law.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

In 2020 I wrote a few paragraphs that turned into a novel. It was meant to be around 2015 but once I got into checking legislative changes it turned out the story had to be in 2010 at the latest, or I'd have to make the characters older. I went through sorting out the timeline (some recently-built buildings had to become planned buildings) but left one anachronism in the first chapter. I did a prequel series this year which is 18 years earlier - but I wanted them to have mobile phones, so it's a generic mid to late 90s, unspecified.

It's not that mobiles are crucial to the plot, just that if they didn't have them I'd have to spend time making clear why not and what the alternatives were, which wasn't a thing I felt like writing.

I'm now doing a story where two of my established characters meet, and have to figure out how old they are (the younger is definitely 18...) which I suspect means a one-line description in another story is inaccurate, but I'm not paid enough to care.

 

[oggbashan]

I had trouble with two timelines.

In one part of the action takes place in the 1930s depression but involves multiple generations. After my first draft I looked specifically at the timing of marriages and births, Part of the story was the disgrace of an unmarried mother in the 1930s. To fit with Lit's guidelines she had to be over 18 but under 21 at the time of the birth. She could have married with parental consent but her father wouldn't give it so she couldn't marry until she was 'of full age' i.e 21 and the baby was born before then.

So far, so good. But then her child had a child, the narrator. But internal evidence in the story as first written suggests that she was born when the mother was 13 - not possible on Lit.

I had to chart out the timeline very carefully to get it to work and fit with Lit.

The second one was set in the Second World War. I had the date of the Battle of the Coral Sea slightly wrong but as it wasn't significant to the story I just left it.

 

[tenyari]

My abandoned story here on lit was more or less abandoned because of this one line:

UC Berkeley, Auguest 20th, 2002. Marya Proudfeather sat outside of Sproul hall going over her class schedule.

The moment I put a date on things, my story was stuck. I got 4 more chapters before I realized it - like an inmate on death row - the fate of story was sealed before I fully grasped that fact.

In all my other writing both way back then and to this day, things always take place on a nebulous 'near future' or far future date. Even if it's not sci-Fi, it's usually something like "not too long from now, Marya Proudfeather sat outside of Sproul hall going over her class schedule"

In the story above, given that date, I just put in too much that was way too timely. And then I tried to write to local slang - but the slang I wrote was more 'what I grew up with", making it about 15 years out of date for the very date I'd picked... which at least one reader noticed.

Without a date, I could have made up some fitting slang, and been vague on some props and locations.

For a short story setting it on a specific date can work. And for a story taking place in the past it can work. But if your goal is to be current, then you can wall yourself in if you set a date.

 

[MelissaBaby]

My Mary and Alvin series spans the course of about sixty years beginning somewhere around 2015. In 36 chapters, there is one reference that can be nailed down to a specific time, and that is a fairly obscure reference in a flashback scene.

I was finishing the series during Covid, and felt that I really wanted to address it, although where I was in the storyline, it would have been in the distant past.

So, I wrote a stand alone story that Laurel very thoughtfully listed on my author's page with the series.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Just food for thought or discussion:

Another thread asked how much research we do in our stories. And in looking at my series of a couple becoming swingers, I sometimes inject a song title or movie reference. I will look up the date those came out to ensure they track with the character ages or other events.

In thinking about when my series would have started or how I might improve the first chapter with a thoughtful flashback-style beginning. I created a timeline for those stories and future episodes. I thought of starting with a reference to the MC seeing a poster for "Star Wars IX - The Rise of Skywalker" and thinking back to when the MC was younger. But that movie came out in 2019, just months before COVID with the lockdowns less than a year later, while my swinger series would span multiple years.

COVID put a damper on non-monogamous sexual encounters and drastically curtailed swinger activities. Has anyone else had to rewrite story plans? Or do you merely ignore such reality time limits?

As I've mentioned in other messages replies, I maintain an Excel file that contains several "sheets", with one of those being an overall timeline for all my inter-related stories, another "sheet" with a list of all character names I have used in my various stories, and of course separate, sheets for each story. This allows me to create a digital storyboard for each story that provides for my ability to move characters, plot ideas, time frames, research data, and other key components of the story around as I write.

I ignore Covid in all of my stories. It holds no relevance now or in the future events that take place within my stories.

 

[gunhilltrain]

As I've mentioned in other messages replies, I maintain an Excel file that contains several "sheets", with one of those being an overall timeline for all my inter-related stories, another "sheet" with a list of all character names I have used in my various stories, and of course separate, sheets for each story. This allows me to create a digital storyboard for each story that provides for my ability to move characters, plot ideas, time frames, research data, and other key components of the story around as I write.

I ignore Covid in all of my stories. It holds no relevance now or in the future events that take place within my stories.

Novelists keep track of things by writing - what is it called? Not notes or a summary. Stephen King uses the term at the near the beginning of Misery - when Paul realizes that Annie Wilkes doesn't understand anything about writing - but I can't remember the word for it.

 

[Voboy]

I’ve run into the same sort of thing, although my stories are not “series” for the most part. They are interrelated, though. I don’t worry much about it.

 

[tenyari]

COVID put a damper on non-monogamous sexual encounters and drastically curtailed swinger activities.

You could actually explore this specific angle to a swinger story.

The people in such a community might just choose to become insular and made a 'COVID bubble' of people they deemed safe to still visit. People actually began doing that a few months into the pandemic back in 2020.
These friends are safe to still see, those acquittances are not.

During the height of AIDS - before there were any treatments to make it survivable - smarter people in high risk communities formed units like that.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Novelists keep track of things by writing - what is it called? Not notes or a summary. Stephen King uses the term at the near the beginning of Misery - when Paul realizes that Annie Wilkes doesn't understand anything about writing - but I can't remember the word for it.

Concordance.

 

[Lifestyle66]

You could actually explore this specific angle to a swinger story.

The people in such a community might just choose to become insular and made a 'COVID bubble' of people they deemed safe to still visit. People actually began doing that a few months into the pandemic back in 2020.
These friends are safe to still see, those acquittances are not.

During the height of AIDS - before there were any treatments to make it survivable - smarter people in high risk communities formed units like that.

Stories such as swingers during COVID may come into play later. But for newbies into that world, they require more flexibility.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Concordance.

Yes, thank you, I couldn't remember it or find it. Now I'm trying to remember if Paul actually mentions it to Annie or not. That's when she is forcing him to revive the Misery Chastain series. (She should be doing reader's comments on Lit.) One nice detail: how the typewriter keeps losing its keys and Annie fills in the missing letters (at least the "Ns") in ink instead of just buying a new one.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Yes, thank you, I couldn't remember it or find it. Now I'm trying to remember if Paul actually mentions it to Annie or not. That's when she is forcing him to revive the Misery Chastain series. (She should be doing reader's comments on Lit.) One nice detail: how the typewriter keeps losing its keys and Annie fills in the missing letters (at least the "Ns") in ink instead of just buying a new one.

Yes, he does mention it, though she's not interested:

At last he said, “I’ll need all the Misery books, if you’ve got them, because I don’t have my concordance?”
“Of course I have them!” she said. Then: “What’s a concordance?”
“It’s a loose-leaf binder where I have all my Misery stuff,” he said. “Characters and places, mostly, but cross-indexed three or four different ways. Time-lines. Historical stuff …”
He saw that she was barely listening. This was the second time she’d shown not the slightest interest in a trick of the trade that would have had a class of would-be writers spellbound.

I grumble occasionally about how "write what you know" leads to way too many writer-as-protagonist novels, but I'll forgive "Misery" because it has interesting things to say about the process and about the author-reader relationship. In some ways, it's a better how-to than "On Writing", though obviously one shouldn't try to emulate Paul Sheldon's career too closely.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Yes, he does mention it, though she's not interested:



I grumble occasionally about how "write what you know" leads to way too many writer-as-protagonist novels, but I'll forgive "Misery" because it has interesting things to say about the process and about the author-reader relationship. In some ways, it's a better how-to than "On Writing", though obviously one shouldn't try to emulate Paul Sheldon's career too closely.

You obviously have a copy of the novel which I don't have! I think I get what you're talking about with the "write what you know/writer as protagonist" novels, but I can't think of too many of them off-hand. (You can tell me about any that you grumble about.) I'm guessing that King didn't intend to present Paul Sheldon as a role model, but in any case, the biggest thing he did wrong was getting drunk and crashing his car. So he made money writing the Misery Chastain books - well, what is wrong with that?

 

[Bramblethorn]

You obviously have a copy of the novel which I don't have! I think I get what you're talking about with the "write what you know/writer as protagonist" novels, but I can't think of too many of them off-hand. (You can tell me about any that you grumble about.) I'm guessing that King didn't intend to present Paul Sheldon as a role model, but in any case, the biggest thing he did wrong was getting drunk and crashing his car. So he made money writing the Misery Chastain books - well, what is wrong with that?

I think we do have the book somewhere around, but with a book that successful there are often excerpts available online. I found that passage conveniently posted in somebody's blog, less trouble than skimming the book for it.

King has several others with writers as protagonists or major characters - The Dark Half, The Shining, The Tommyknockers, quite a few more. TVTropes has a list of other King examples, and other authors: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MostWritersAreWriters

Aside from the "write what you know" angle, I expect part of the popularity of writers as characters is that it's a conveniently flexible occupation. An author's income and hours can be whatever their writer wants them to be, and the character can go almost anywhere in the name of "researching/writing the work in progress".

With "don't emulate Sheldon's career too closely", I was mostly referred to the "getting kidnapped by a murderer" bit ;-)

 

[gunhilltrain]

I think we do have the book somewhere around, but with a book that successful there are often excerpts available online. I found that passage conveniently posted in somebody's blog, less trouble than skimming the book for it.

King has several others with writers as protagonists or major characters - The Dark Half, The Shining, The Tommyknockers, quite a few more. TVTropes has a list of other King examples, and other authors: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MostWritersAreWriters

Aside from the "write what you know" angle, I expect part of the popularity of writers as characters is that it's a conveniently flexible occupation. An author's income and hours can be whatever their writer wants them to be, and the character can go almost anywhere in the name of "researching/writing the work in progress".

With "don't emulate Sheldon's career too closely", I was mostly referred to the "getting kidnapped by a murderer" bit ;-)

King did say that his own struggles with "addiction and alcoholism" have influenced many of his works. That is obvious in The Shining, which, once you get past the supernatural stuff, is a vivid depiction of the effects of alcoholism.

stephen-king-addiction-struggles-

 

[Duleigh]

I found that if you're going to span some timelines, leaving technology details out of it lets the reader fill in the gaps in their own minds and that solves some headaches if you're just writing a short story. I had a WWII vet take his wife on a picnic in 1972 and they wanted to listen to some of their music, some Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw... what did they take with them? Were there portable 8 track players? 8 Tracks were still the rage in 1972, Were cassette players widely available in 1972? Were there still radio stations still playing that in 1972? I couldn't find a reliable source in time, so my veteran "brought the music" and other than naming a few songs, I left it at that and was never called on it.

Another longer story had old telephones that I remember from my youth, rotary dial phones that were mounted on the wall in the kitchen with the long cord that can reach the living room and princess phones in the girls' bedroom, however things changed and I wanted the characters to land in the here and now in their mid thirties, so I had to take the cool old phones out and people just used their phone to call someone, no details on the phone.