[JimmyDimples]

This may be aimed at the older folks around here, but I think the younger ones might want to take note:  Some of us have done writing a while back, and I'm beginning to have some wonders on the typical age of a story protagonist.

Now, let's take someone like … oh, I don't know Les Safer from my Tetsuko fanfic "Like a Weed."  He's roughly 19 or 20.  Now by my math, and on the date that I write this…

1. There has always been cable and satellite TV.  None of this 13 channels on the knob/rabbit ears nonsense.
2. The oldest media he knows is the cassette tape. ("Turntables?  8-Tracks? What are those?")
3. The Cold War was over since he got out of diapers.
4. MTV's always been around.
5. He's only seen black-and-white TVs on movies and old TV shows.
6. Atari was always obsolete.
7. The Vietnam War is only history book stuff, like World War II.  And Operation Desert Storm was done while he was in preschool.
8. All cola bottles have been non-returnable.
9. All gasoline has been unleaded.

There are oodles of other stuff, but you get the idea.  And if five years down the track, Lord willing, I have to write this as a screenplay or teleplay, I gotta reformat the whole thing again and recalibrate his mindset.  I'm wondering how authors manage to stay current with their writing.

Have you guys ever had to work with that?  (And younger writers, had you ever had to wrestle what goes through an older aged character's thinking?)

Addendum:  To help emphasize this, here's a little something that's a bit famous… the Beloit College Mindset List.

http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2012.php

[Hunter S Creek]

Interesting topic!  Timelessness is difficult to achieve in any story where characters live and interact in a "real world" because of the plethera of items and events that we take for granted.  I suppose the more limited our life experience; the less we know about what we do not know.

I never gave your subject much thought until recently. 
Once was when my eldest sister's teen son encountered a rotary dial phone at a friend's beach house.  He did not know how to use it.  While growing up we never had one in our house but I had encountered the occasional rotary dial pay phone at school, Little League, etc.  Of course this was before ten year olds were all issued cell phones.
The other was when I was watching an old episode of "Batman" while babysitting some neices and nephews.  One of them wondered aloud as to why the opening credits included the phrase "In Color".  "Isn't it obvious that it's in color?"  She was shocked to learn that when "Batman" first came out the vast majority of American families had only one television in their homes and that it only showed black and white images.  Therefore, they would not know whether a program was broadcast in color or not.  She was relieved to hear that that monochromatic period in our history was actually before my time.
Finally, an example of historical perspective gone awry: Sen. Joe Biden recently opined that President Bush should do what President Franklin Roosevelt did during the economic crisis of 1929 and get on television to calm the people.  Of course there was no television in 1929 and Hoover, not Roosevelt, was President.  Sen. Biden was born in 1942.

Tschuss!
Hunter

[AlexG]

This may be aimed at the older folks around here, but I think the younger ones might want to take note:  Some of us have done writing a while back, and I'm beginning to have some wonders on the typical age of a story protagonist.

Always nice to have a guest host for Inside the Writer's Studio, not only do you not know what they're going to come up with, but it gives me a chance to answer, too.  😉

1. The Cold War was over since he got out of diapers.

The way things are going vis-à-vis USA vs Russia, it seems to me this one is on its way back into our current day reality.

Now, speaking of alt-realities, that nationalistic rivalry is a main element of two of my Mulitverse stories (the first story and its sequel) where the Cold War never ended, but continued into the current era of the 21st Century.  There’s far less third world in their case created a more stable political environment then what we have experienced here.

The thing is, no matter what the time setting of a given story, if your characters and plot capture and then captivate the reader, they'll enjoy it regardless of the setting and the conditions of the civilization(s) you've placed them in.  As for any technological idiosyncrasies (gee, they play LPs, there's no CDs) either they'll quickly appreciate the retro elements, or simply ignore that factor.

“I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.”
~ Mark Twain / Samuel Clemens (1907)

[Lingster]

I actually have a rotary phone in my house.  It's from about 1950 and rewired for a modular jack.  My little nephew thinks it's the craziest, most fascinating thing.  I only actually dial it a few times per year – I use my mobile for nearly all calls.

[Robert McNay]

I guess my writing skirts this by a lot of it being set in the 1930's or in an alternate universe I've created. Otherwise, it's something you only really need to deal with if you are going to dabble in pop culture as part of the story.

Actually, if you are doing action/adventure, it's a pretty universal concept that cuts across ages. That's why Batman and Indiana Jones can still make a fortune at the box office.

[David C. Matthews]

Let me tell you my situation: When I first published Satin Steele as a small-press Xerox-zine back in the early 1990's, my backstory for her had her as a high-school student (named Janet Steele) and gymnast, slated to be on the US Olympic women's gymnastics team going to the 1984 Games in LA.  (A tragic traffic accident on the way to the airport would inflict a broken leg on Janet, and take her father's life, preventing Janet's participation in the Olympics.)

Now that some 15 or so years have passed since those days, I'd have to update her "history" to make it the 2004 Summer games in Sydney, or something.  😮

[cpbell0033944]

Now that some 15 or so years have passed since those days, I'd have to update her "history" to make it the 2004 Summer games in Sydney, or something.  😮

Er, Sir DCM, 2000 Olympics were Sydney, 2004 was Athens.

[David C. Matthews]

Er, Sir DCM, 2000 Olympics were Sydney, 2004 was Athens.

Oops!  :-[  Thanks for the correction.

[cpbell0033944]

Oops!  :-[  Thanks for the correction.

No problem – my mind stores junk information, one such being the dates and venues of Olympic Games since WW2. ::) ;D

[g-man]

As one of the younger ones (born in '85), I'll take exception with some of this:

– There has always been cable and satellite TV.  None of this 13 channels on the knob/rabbit ears nonsense.

What's old is new; I've currently got rabbit ears plugged into my TV… a 37" flatpanel LCD HDTV. My families first television (during the era of Me) needed a cable box, because the TV itself was of the knobs variety. When the cable was out, we'd pull the rabbit ear antennas out and use the dials. But it was high-tech! You could program each button with a little knob to tune it into a certain frequency.

I get something like four channels, two in English, and only one of those comes in clear. From outside the country, ABC is audible, but barely visible.

– The oldest media he knows is the cassette tape. ("Turntables?  8-Tracks? What are those?")

I owned several turntables and an 8-track player. Just because cassette tapes existed didn't mean they had completely displaced everything else.

– The Cold War was over since he got out of diapers

I'll admit that I was a bit older than Les. I vaguely recall the end of the cold war. I was 6 at the time.

– MTV's always been around.

MTV has never been around, and I've never seen it. There was MTV Canada, but you had to pay extra for that, and we didn't. The only things I know about MTV is what I've read about it.

– He's only seen black-and-white TVs on movies and old TV shows.

Almost. A few of my favourite movies are black and white, and my grandmother's TV was black and white. Oh colourburst, what a wonderful invention you were.

– Atari was always obsolete.

Obsolete, or retro? Growing up, my cousins had a 2600. I recall suffering through ET. A lot. I don't know why I kept trying to play it. Anyhow, the NES (which was all that was out at the time) was indeed a big leap forward, but not by such an incredible margin. The PS2 might be obsolete today, but it still gets a lot of attention from gamers. And the PS2 -> 360 shift is perhaps analogous to the 2600 -> NES shift, although perhaps not as large.

– The Vietnam War is only history book stuff, like World War II.  And Operation Desert Storm was done while he was in preschool.

Worse still, I didn't even hear about Desert Storm until well after it ended. Then again, it was a foreign war fought by foreign countries.

– All cola bottles have been non-returnable.

All cola bottles, glass or plastic, and metal cans, have always been returnable, and still are to this day… Is this not the same everywhere? Why wouldn't they be returnable? Does the government not require this to be the case in the US?

I've many memories of taking garbage bags full of soda cans and plastic bottles to stick into the crushing machines to get the 5 cents per bottle/can refund. My parents would let me keep the refund for the task of recycling them, and trust me, that was big money when you could by Swedish berries for a penny a pop! Videogame rentals and CCG cards were a frequent way to spend that money too.

– All gasoline has been unleaded.

Except for diesel, sure.

I'm only 3 or 4 years off Les, surely not that much changed in 3-4 years that you'd go from my experiences to what you describe?

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