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How To Write a Book: Dating 

No. I don't mean the romantic type of dating. I mean setting your story in an era or time. Sometimes it's critical to do so, and other times you may want to leave the era as timeless or vague. When setting your story in another era, you'll want to research what inventions were in use and strive for accuracy because you don't want readers to catch mistakes and ridicule you for it.*


In this day and age with technology evolving at a dizzying pace, have a care about naming an app, a device or service. I'm old enough to remember rotary or button-dial phones that were tethered to wall outlets and we had to perform actions like dialing and hanging up our calls. You Gen-Alphas (or Zoomers) can find an old movie online to see what I'm talking about. But I found myself wondering how to write the interaction of a phone call in my first book. Now the actions performed are scrolling and tapping or ending or disconnecting. Now with Alexa drop-ins, I'm writing characters who simply call out "AI drop in on Sarah." I don't want to use the name Alexa because it's so specific and if I don't want to say "AI" I can find another way around it by being vague like, "Raising my voice loud enough for the device to pick up I called "drop in on Sarah!" 

If you want to ground your story in today. You'll have a regular time capsule on your hands if you reference mask mandates, Door Dash delivering everyone's food, Amazon drone-dropping your toilet paper and Purel and everyone jamming to Bo Burnham's INSIDE soundtrack.

-- Anna Erikssön Bendewald 

*That being said, there were experts watching Downton Abbey's set during this photoshoot and still mistakes happen. 


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