When I started writing Journey, American one of the biggest challenges I have faced has been keeping things in historical context.
Avoiding anachronisms is hard.
World War I was not too difficult to write about because there is so much recorded history.
It still presented problems that are difficult for a writer (at least this writer) to avoid, and the most significant difference between our time and all time before 2000 is telecommunications and how it has affected the fabric of our lives and ways we do not realize.
The Battle of Catigny challenge: wireless radio communications had not been introduced to the battlefield. Writing about a military messenger is not hard, this is who Journey is at the start of the novel.
Keeping Journey within the restrictions of communicating through handwritten messages that can take hours or days to reach their destination. This can slow down a plot fast.
The Hollywood challenge: Until the early 1920s there was not much more than a Malibu movie colony in early Los Angeles.
Once the war was over and real money started to flow in - not to forget film studios fleeing New York City (where it really all began) to escape fees being imposed by Thomas Edison, the self-proclaimed inventor of motion pictures and theaters.
Edison owned but did not create. That story is here.
And still no telephone or even radio station. The first radio station appeared in 1922 and was quickly followed by several others. It took years after that for automobiles to commonly have radios.
I have constantly had to question myself as to how a person would have found out about something, how two people could meet, and the lack of background noise and distractions that are common in our world today.
Even as I write this on a Sunday morning in Santa Fe, I have an Italian proto-electronic record streaming on Apple Music. I’m outside, so there is automobile traffic. My iPhone sits beside my laptop.
I am certain I will be hunting and killing anachronisms in all of my revisions of Journey, American.
The novel winds through a scrambled time in American history. The point of Journey, American is to make events and people that we have let slip from memory live again no matter the discomfort.
I suppose that makes Journey, American historical fiction. is a literary genre in which the plot takes place in a setting related to past events, but is fictional.
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Everything you do is appreciated.
Greetings anachronism hunter. I can hardly imagine the scope and scale of research required to instill historical accuracy, bring your characters to life and propel your story forward. I’m confident you will slay this quarry. Please do forge ahead.