Monday, March 31
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I finished reading the Updike book set in a post US-Sino war, and I'm glad I read it. I picked up a couple of tips on what to do and not to do on my current futurecast novel, as in: don't be too specific about the technology, because it'll be distractedly wrong. Vague, I think, is better. On the to-do side: stick to the story, and don't get bogged down in writing the future history in too much detail. Understand it, but I don't go around life today explaining things that happen to me in terms of the history of the past 50 years, I just live in the aftermath. So my characters don't need to 'explain' stuff; they just need to live.
Now I'm reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road, also set in a post-apocalyptic future. So far, it's bleak and brutal, much more than what I'm working on. And so far he's been focused on the story and has spent very little time explaining the history. Very powerful method.
I finished reading the Updike book set in a post US-Sino war, and I'm glad I read it. I picked up a couple of tips on what to do and not to do on my current futurecast novel, as in: don't be too specific about the technology, because it'll be distractedly wrong. Vague, I think, is better. On the to-do side: stick to the story, and don't get bogged down in writing the future history in too much detail. Understand it, but I don't go around life today explaining things that happen to me in terms of the history of the past 50 years, I just live in the aftermath. So my characters don't need to 'explain' stuff; they just need to live.
Now I'm reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road, also set in a post-apocalyptic future. So far, it's bleak and brutal, much more than what I'm working on. And so far he's been focused on the story and has spent very little time explaining the history. Very powerful method.
