Tonight I watched a documentary that broke the hearts of most of my characters simultaneously. I could hear the disbelief, the anger and upset of each of them as I watched. It's a very strange thing when events in the real world take their toll on your invented characters. It's happened to me a couple of times, but never with such a blow. My story line will have to be altered to accommodate as there is no way this could pass by without their mentioning it.
Has this happened to you? Did you happen to be writing about Woolwich in 2013? Or further back did anyone suddenly have to remove a certain trade center from their story? Perhaps you wrote about a clear sunny day in downtown New Orleans in late August 2005!
Do you consider your reflection of social history when writing about the present day? Think about your understanding of Dickensian Britain and where it comes from. Does and should fiction written in the present day reflect the reality or do your characters exist in a bubble to maintain the reader's escapism.
Hmm, that's more than one question. Sorry!
World events no, personal events yes. I try to not allow the real world to effect how my books work since they aren't based in the real world. If things do effect my story it would be things like family issues that can and will work in my books.
Hi Victoria, Its happened to me twice and both time I have been into the third or fourth chapter. With characters created and a background to the stories all underway. Then it gets launched as a blockbuster film. Not once but twice and I decided to shelve both stories as unfinished projects.
I did this because my storylines would have just looked as if I'd copied the films because they were that close. If there had just been snippets of similarity's in the stories then I might have changed them and proceeded with the stories. But that wasn't the case so I had to put a hold on them. So to your question yes I have had to make a change to the whole story.
Nothing in the real world affects my characters because they exist in a completely different reality.