Young Writers Society

I recently saw this post on one of my favourite websites, about technology in YA fiction. It definitely has gotten me thinking about how it's included, and the extent to which I notice its presence/absence.

So what do you guys think? Is having technology in fiction something you notice? Do you despise it? To how much of an extent should it be present?

Let us know!

How often do you pay attention to your car, your tv, your air conditioner.

There is a level of care but not much, you just accept it as there, as a part of life that you might have or not have and the technology itself is considered common enough that you don't really think too far into it.

Until the protagonist is a engineer or was suddenly dumped into the future its presence should be everywhere as hints of how things go but shouldn't have any more attention given to how it works then how much attention you give to your tv.

My answer's going to be pretty typical, but I think it depends. Both on the reader and the manner in which the story is written/the time period/setting, etc. To a certain extent, I will notice the technological elements in a story.

Like, take a story where the protagonist is dependent on an array of gadgets and weapons to succeed in attaining their goal/s, or a YA story set in a sci-fi universe; things have to be believable. If a story is set in a Sci-Fi universe, I know for a fact that I would be asking a number of questions--'But how did they get inside his mind? What kind of machine was it? How does their technology differ from ours??' But again, I would ask these questions because I am that kind of reader. Say I was someone else, infatuated with the plot instead of the logistics of the book--I wouldn't care much for the technological aspect. I wouldn't notice, and so I wouldn't care.

But this is me meandering 'what if's. Each story differs. Realistic YA uses a different level of technology compared to YA fantasy or YA sci-fi. If we're talking about realistic YA, then it's highly unlikely that the average teenager will spend a day not using social networking, watching television, or texting friends. But again, this depends on the characterisation of the character; and where specificity as to the kind of technology used is concerned ... I personally prefer unobtrusiveness. A mention of Google or Facebook won't throw me off very much, but it does irritate me because it's like a red light amid a mass of grey. It feels commonplace--again, this is just me.

I've come across some novels that were entirely dependent on the use of email between characters, but these are pretty normal today--as normal as stories told entirely in journal entries. So when you have novels with technology as the linking factor, well, it would be pretty hard not to notice it, wouldn't it?

I don't particularly notice the presence or absence of technology in fiction--unless the author draws attention to it. All I have to really say, I guess, is that if a novel includes technology, it should be researched well--like everything else. That being said, we don't need to know that Jessie texted Tom using her brand new iPhone that was a model a1429 and has a pink cover--that's needless information. And like all needless information, it should be discarded in the Recycle Bin and be deleted soundly.

Are we talking specifically about electronics? Not many people think about it, but a siege engine or horse-drawn carriage is also an example of technology.

Speaking in the vein of modern electronics, I don't have a problem when it's brought up in the narrative. However, I do tend to get annoyed when a story is (non-skillfully) interrupted by a string of emails or badly-formatted texts. I mean, I understand it's realistic, but the writer could at least put some effort in to make it look less awkward.

After all, when you're texting or emailing someone, your train of thought doesn't just stop and focus entirely on the texting or emailing. You're still doing things in-between, and it's just so weird and out of place to me when writers don't include actions between texts and such.

Just a note that my reply is going under the assumption that we're talking about a contemporary setting. Mostly because genres like sci-fi use technology in a very different way to how, say, a novel set in the current day would, and most of what I'm saying is not necessarily applicable to settings where the technology is significantly different.

Personally, before reading the article I linked to in the original post, I can't say whether I thought all too much about whether the presence or lack of technology was something I noticed. On the surface it seems pretty simple, because yeah, in a modern setting, chances are you'll have characters who are using technology. There'll be mobile phones and computers and various and sundry other forms of technology. For the sake of realism, unless you have a reason for your characters not to be using said technology, these things will probably feature in some way or another, even if it is in a very brief way.

But there is the issue that arises when a book becomes a few years old - the technology can become outdated, and potentially make the book feel outdated. I remember reading a book published maybe eight years ago where characters were chatting on online IM sites, which isn't really all that likely now. In a book by the same auther as the IM one, the protagonist is going on about the features of her new phone, and omg it has a camera. ACAMERAIt's like in movies where you can instantly tell it's from a few years ago from the abundance of flip phones XD. Because technology cganges and advances so rapidly, there is the problem that getting too specific with technology can make elements and scenes of a story difficult to relate to in a few years.

On a not entirely unrelated note, mentioning things like Facebook and Twitter by name can sometimes feel a bit icky. There was one book I read recently that continually referred to 'the Tumblr', which was weird as.

As much as inclusion technology can be fraught with issues, it can also be a really interesting way of storytelling. For example, there's the novel Cry Blue Murder by Kim Kane and Marion Roberts (bit of a memory test to remember the authors off the top of my head), which is told entirely through the emails between two girls. This was using technology really effectively. Also in Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli, alternating chapters were between Simon the MC and the mysterious Blue. It was an engaging way of telling a story, with the emails linking into the story, and wanting to know who Blue is.

So there's good and bad, but I think technology has its place in fiction, for sure. Just needs to be included with a degree of awareness that tech can and will change in future.