Something never seems to be included in time travel novels is that a person will look entirely different than a person in the past society unless one’s appearance and clothing styles also change as they travel back in time. I think of Somewhere in Time where the traveller attempted to fit-in by dressing as he thought his attire should be. Found he was not quite correct. Period cultural differences are not generally approached either. I do like the philosophy of work though in Looking Backward, 2000 to 1887, by Edward Bellamy.
Right. Even a pair of denim overalls is going to look different based on period.
I also wrote a whimsical poem a while back that points out how time travel can be a privileged genre. Taking my cue from Octavia Butler, I’ve made my protagonist black. 1940s Boston might not be 1940s Birmingham, but racism would still be prevalent. He is going to face all kinds of attitudes from outside and inside the black community, never mind the idioms of cultural language. Furthermore, let’s say he wanted to prevent a historical tragedy, is anyone going to believe him, and what social institutions does he have access to? Same goes for a female protagonist.
I was at first excited at the prospect of writing a time-travel story for Cold Hard Type III, but now I’m not as certain. The problem, in my mind, is one of suspending the laws of physics for just this one plot point, while maintaining as real of a scenario in all other aspects – making the impossible seem probable.
I’m leaning more toward the time travel scenario being either entirely accidental – a fluke of nature – or it ends up being a dream. Hmm, not sure that last idea would fly with the critics!
Yeah, I bet the dream scenario would not work, since that is imagination rather reality based. Octavia Butler does a great job in Kindred. The instances of temporal transport matter less than the real historical struggles. The reader just suspends disbelief.
Jack Finney and E. L. Doctorow do the best at believably portraying the cultural differences between past and present, and writing characters who are of their time and not simply modern people in vintage clothing. Believe it or not, Stephen King also did a credible job in his novel 11/22/63.
I haven’t thought much about whether to use dialogue in my story, albeit I set it in Boston to make my life easier. I’ll probably go with indirect dialogue and simply provide the protagonist with my own speech/thought patterns. (It’s third person anyway.) He is African American but did not grow up with any obvious cultural dialect. Now, he might come off as “uppity” to the 1940s residents of Roxbury (a product of the Great Migration). I’ll have to figure that out. He works in Cambridge anyway.
Sorry. You don’t need to know this stuff, but writing out these thoughts certainly helps. Reading Doctorow also helps!
It’s fascinating, actually. I don’t know much about the regional idiosyncrasies of Boston speech and culture, but I do know that parts of the Northeast had a subculture of African-Americans who prided themselves on an unenslaved heritage stretching back to the 18th century, and who modeled their public presentation on the white upper middle class. Maybe your protagonist would fit in there.
Then again, in parts of the US cultural south, the dialects haven’t changed much. The Cajuns I served with have a language that hasn’t changed much for a hundred years or more.
Sure, there are a lot of dialects in America. Speaking for myself, I don’t want to mess with imitating any idiom beyond my own, at least insofar as a main character is concerned—and you definitely don’t want to hear me mimic creole!
The Untimely Typewriter:Daily Writings Against the Tides of Distraction 
Something never seems to be included in time travel novels is that a person will look entirely different than a person in the past society unless one’s appearance and clothing styles also change as they travel back in time. I think of Somewhere in Time where the traveller attempted to fit-in by dressing as he thought his attire should be. Found he was not quite correct. Period cultural differences are not generally approached either. I do like the philosophy of work though in Looking Backward, 2000 to 1887, by Edward Bellamy.
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Right. Even a pair of denim overalls is going to look different based on period.
I also wrote a whimsical poem a while back that points out how time travel can be a privileged genre. Taking my cue from Octavia Butler, I’ve made my protagonist black. 1940s Boston might not be 1940s Birmingham, but racism would still be prevalent. He is going to face all kinds of attitudes from outside and inside the black community, never mind the idioms of cultural language. Furthermore, let’s say he wanted to prevent a historical tragedy, is anyone going to believe him, and what social institutions does he have access to? Same goes for a female protagonist.
LikeLike
I was at first excited at the prospect of writing a time-travel story for Cold Hard Type III, but now I’m not as certain. The problem, in my mind, is one of suspending the laws of physics for just this one plot point, while maintaining as real of a scenario in all other aspects – making the impossible seem probable.
I’m leaning more toward the time travel scenario being either entirely accidental – a fluke of nature – or it ends up being a dream. Hmm, not sure that last idea would fly with the critics!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah, I bet the dream scenario would not work, since that is imagination rather reality based. Octavia Butler does a great job in Kindred. The instances of temporal transport matter less than the real historical struggles. The reader just suspends disbelief.
LikeLike
Jack Finney and E. L. Doctorow do the best at believably portraying the cultural differences between past and present, and writing characters who are of their time and not simply modern people in vintage clothing. Believe it or not, Stephen King also did a credible job in his novel 11/22/63.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I haven’t thought much about whether to use dialogue in my story, albeit I set it in Boston to make my life easier. I’ll probably go with indirect dialogue and simply provide the protagonist with my own speech/thought patterns. (It’s third person anyway.) He is African American but did not grow up with any obvious cultural dialect. Now, he might come off as “uppity” to the 1940s residents of Roxbury (a product of the Great Migration). I’ll have to figure that out. He works in Cambridge anyway.
Sorry. You don’t need to know this stuff, but writing out these thoughts certainly helps. Reading Doctorow also helps!
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s fascinating, actually. I don’t know much about the regional idiosyncrasies of Boston speech and culture, but I do know that parts of the Northeast had a subculture of African-Americans who prided themselves on an unenslaved heritage stretching back to the 18th century, and who modeled their public presentation on the white upper middle class. Maybe your protagonist would fit in there.
LikeLike
Then again, in parts of the US cultural south, the dialects haven’t changed much. The Cajuns I served with have a language that hasn’t changed much for a hundred years or more.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sure, there are a lot of dialects in America. Speaking for myself, I don’t want to mess with imitating any idiom beyond my own, at least insofar as a main character is concerned—and you definitely don’t want to hear me mimic creole!
LikeLike