Gretchen again … Jenn manages to write story that transfer between periods of time without feeling dated. This means she writes about love interests who become parents who become grandparents yet the clock does not seem move. Let’s learn how she does this.
When I wrote my first book, Resolutions, I wasn’t planning on writing any others. So I wrote it as if it was happening in 2013. There are references to “The Bachelor,” and Emily has what is clearly an iPhone. Time wasn’t an issue in the next few books because I was dealing the same generation in each one.
It wasn’t an issue until Just Breathe – Kenji’s book- that there was a “future” story, given tha the was the child of a couple who got together in Resolutions. I can’t tell the future, obviously, so I kept the details of that story in line with the same generation that came before. I’ve had one reader express frustration over this – that we’re getting into stories about the Huntington GRANDCHILDREN now and it’s all still modern day – but no one else seems to be bothered. (And that one reader has kept reading, so she’s not too bothered!)
I try to refrain from mentioning anything that will clearly date something – like historical events – but in the book I’m working on now, the main character is going to mention being a teenager in the spring of 2020 and how he did social isolation. I’m only doing that because it’s going to help drive the plot. But it’ll be the first time that any of my books will include something that will give a definite time.
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