Paul Whybrow
Full Member
My WIP is the third in a series of psychological thrillers featuring a Cornish detective. I chose to set the action in the present, the summer of 2016. I did so, for various reasons, including verisimilitude, but it's thrown up some unexpected problems.
Fiction can be oddly disconnected from the time that it was written. This is good, in that it gives the story a timeless quality, but strange if the author totally ignores world events that would have an impact on the protagonists. I once read some hardboiled detective stories set in the 1940s, where WWII wasn't mentioned at all.
Of course, if the action hinges on warfare, the refugee crisis or economic recession then how they affect the novel's characters will be integral to the writing. My WIP has two murders that turn out to be linked, with subplots of livestock rustling and the Beast of Bodmin Moor—a legendary big cat that takes sheep, and does much for the selling of the county to tourists as a spooky place to visit.
The recent referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union would affect the farmers in my novel, so I mentioned that—daft not to, as Cornwall is the poorest county in the country and heavily dependent on grant aid. I was drawing on anecdotes told to me by farmers for the threat posed by a puma or lynx being on the loose. But then, to my amazement, real life intruded with a lynx escaping from Dartmoor Zoo, (60 miles away), and then, the owner issued a statement declaring that a previous owner deliberately released three pumas into the wild!
Beast of Dartmoor mystery solved after famous circus owner Mary Chipperfield 'set three Pumas free in 1970s'
I didn't know whether to feel happy that my storyline wasn't far-fetched or annoyed that real life was intruding into my fictional world! I'm glad that I'm sane, for an unstable author might think he was a Literary God creating the news by writing it....
How do other Litopians handle pesky real life entering their fictional world?
Fiction can be oddly disconnected from the time that it was written. This is good, in that it gives the story a timeless quality, but strange if the author totally ignores world events that would have an impact on the protagonists. I once read some hardboiled detective stories set in the 1940s, where WWII wasn't mentioned at all.
Of course, if the action hinges on warfare, the refugee crisis or economic recession then how they affect the novel's characters will be integral to the writing. My WIP has two murders that turn out to be linked, with subplots of livestock rustling and the Beast of Bodmin Moor—a legendary big cat that takes sheep, and does much for the selling of the county to tourists as a spooky place to visit.
The recent referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union would affect the farmers in my novel, so I mentioned that—daft not to, as Cornwall is the poorest county in the country and heavily dependent on grant aid. I was drawing on anecdotes told to me by farmers for the threat posed by a puma or lynx being on the loose. But then, to my amazement, real life intruded with a lynx escaping from Dartmoor Zoo, (60 miles away), and then, the owner issued a statement declaring that a previous owner deliberately released three pumas into the wild!
Beast of Dartmoor mystery solved after famous circus owner Mary Chipperfield 'set three Pumas free in 1970s'
I didn't know whether to feel happy that my storyline wasn't far-fetched or annoyed that real life was intruding into my fictional world! I'm glad that I'm sane, for an unstable author might think he was a Literary God creating the news by writing it....
How do other Litopians handle pesky real life entering their fictional world?
