One of problems I suffer writing mainstream novels is creating them in such a way that, regardless of when they are published, they stay timely. Clothing styles and cars change, climate changes, technology evolves, and these changes happen faster and faster these days.  What was cutting edge just last year is now archaic.  Problem: novels usually take a minimum of two years to get onto the bookstore shelf.  That’s if  the novel already has a publisher and a production schedule.  So what’s an author to do?

I don’t know about other authors, but what I do is never have something so concrete that it can’t be changed — updated.  Whether it’s the climate (warming or status quo), the TV, the car and its fuel, the clothing and shoes, or the movie my characters might watch, these incidental, but temporal elements are written into the story in such a way that they can be changed to match when the book finally goes to print.

Think about what goes into a mainstream novel?  Your character stops to get a cup of coffee five years ago and pays .80 cents.  He stops today to get that same cuppa, and it costs $1.80.  ”So,” you say, “don’t price it.” Right?  Okay.  But sometimes you need to.  

How about the cell phone?  How about computers?  How about the car that runs on gasoline and suddenly we’re all driving hydrogen-fueled vehicles?  Or Ford went bankrupt in 2009 and, by 2010, doesn’t exist?  Your lead character can’t be driving a brand new Ford Mustang, now can s/he? How about the weather?  Yesterday’s temperate zone has, as of last year, become a desert.  Or polar bears went extinct last year and your story happens to have an incident in Alaska with an angry polar bear mom?  Oops!

The faster the world changes, the more problematic are the details an author includes in a story.  Trying to find some balance that allows the book to stay a good, undated, but modern read is proving unlikely in our fast-changing world.  So, now, when I write, I write with an eye to being able to change the details while holding the story so that, when an editor asks for an update to “present day two years from now,” I can attempt to do it (despite not having a crystal ball)  without having the story fall to pieces.  What doesn’t change are the characters or the plot.  Just the elements of the setting.

Of course, in my books, everything except the main characters, theme, and premise, are open to change, including plot elements.   …But that’s another story.

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