Is the Pandemic Affecting Your Manuscript? - Andrew Crofts
How quickly contemporary writing
can seem historical.
When I first started writing in
London in 1970, not only the fashions and hairstyles were different. We had a
coin-operated public phone in my shared flat and anyone lucky enough to own a
car could simply pull up outside and leave it there. Now when a piece of film
from that period appears on television it looks like an historical document, books
from the leading authors of the day can feel equally old fashioned.
The proliferation of mobile phones
has changed the way that the plots of thrillers and detective series work and
the progress of the MeToo movement has changed the way that we talk to one
another. The unlikely rise of showmen like Trump and Johnson to positions of
genuine power has changed our view of what is possible politically, moving the parameters
for where a reader has to suspend disbelief.
So will the Covid pandemic, and our
reaction to it, change for ever the way we view things like social distancing?
It already looks slightly wrong to see people shaking hands or standing too
close to one another on television programmes that were recorded before 2020,
so how quickly will we adapt back to our old ways of interacting – if at all?
It makes for some difficult
decisions if you are in the final stages of completing a manuscript with a contemporary
setting. If you don’t mention the pandemic and society’s reactions to it, you
risk making your story appear out of date before it has even been published,
but if you do make reference to any of these happenings there is a risk that
everything will have changed once again by the time you find your readership.
I recently worked on a novel which
was set in New Zealand because the plot required a peaceful and safe location.
During the early stage of the writing there was a terrible mass shooting in a
Mosque in Christchurch, which then had to be mentioned and consequently had an
effect on the plotline. I can only imagine how many authors are currently doing
hurried re-writes of their manuscripts to include some reference to the great
pandemic of 2020.
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Comments
My manuscript is being beaten up by political events... in 2016, the Brexit vote scuppered my gentle story set in 2007. Had just pulled out the typescript and begun to work on this again, when the pandemic struck... had thought to move it to 2019 but...
What do we do! One thing I am not doing is to w rite about this present crisis - "everyone else' is probably turning out enough of those, already...
I did manage to finish and publish it, and I must say I was quite relieved to be able to retreat to the early 19th century for my next project! It will be quite tricky to go back to the mystery series, as I feel there will have to be at least some mention of the pandemic in the next novel,