Should I be concerned with my fiction writing containing accidental prophecies of real world events?

The biggest problem I see is that your "prediction" will not be appreciated, and your actual creativity is lost and considered derivative.

Suppose I started writing a book about terrorists, hijacking planes and bringing down the World Trade Center Towers by crashing into them, six months before that actually happened.

Well I'm 3/4 of the way through the first draft of my novel, and suddenly it's crap: Because any publisher reading it, even if they know me, is going to say "When did you start writing this? on 9/12?"

It may not be derivative of reality, but it sure looks like it, and the surprise factor of my ingenuity is is completely evaporated: The suspense of what my terrorists are doing by learning to fly is gone, anybody reading knows exactly what they are going to do. Any suspense about how they plan to escape the crashing plane is gone; anybody reading understands they are suicide bombers.

(I'm just saying this as an example; I did not write any such thing.)

In any case, I'd worry about how the work would be received once the events you invented as your own creative fiction are perceived by others as a simple recital of recent historical events. Will they see enough merit in the rest of the plot to warrant spending money on it? Will they suggest you condense your hundred pages to five, since far less exposition and setup is needed to remind people that X, Y and then Z all happened last year?

So my answer is yes, I would be concerned about whether most of my story just got stomped on by reality.

posted about 7 years ago

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Amadeus‭

3156 reputation 2 1399 613 37

It depends what you want

"Taken from the headlines" is something that is both interesting and exciting. It allows your readers to visit a possible version of the future (and whether you got it right or not).

Sometimes, you may find the story works better with a fake or invented country or location, whether Newistan, Bogoland or New Holland... Using a physical location means you don't have to define many things: its climate, its borders, its history, or its people. Even you may even create a fake suburb of a large town, such as "Baux-les-bains" which is just north of Paris east of St-Denis...

This all depends on what you want and how much it impacts your story. If your story deals with a person looking at event but sits at his/her computer. Then whether the person sits in France, Israel, or Japan doesn't matter.

posted about 7 years ago

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JP Chapleau‭

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This depends on you. If you want it published, you should look to do so soon... The longer you wait, the more it appears to be based off real events and not your imagination. As Mark said this isn't a bad thing, but as you commented, it appears you want it to be as abstract as possible. This would mean you need urgency to keep the abstract... abstract.

Depending on how similar they are, you may end up needing to remake the story which kind of really stinks but you need to weigh out what is most important to you. If you want that unique view on the future, this is a topic that requires the story to be finished quickly. The future is constantly evolving, constantly changing. What seems crazy today is normal tomorrow, and what seems normal yesterday is crazy today. If you are okay with the story as is, then I wouldn't worry about it too much. Of course, most of this also depends if you want to publish or not.

Try not to get too hung up on it though, people care about good stories. Most stories have been re-written, re-worded, modernized, new theme same plot, 1000 times and people still read/watch. In the end, it isn't so much the content as much as your ability to deliver that content in a way that people find enjoyable.

posted about 7 years ago

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ggiaquin16‭

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@Michael made a good point about some writers being good students of history. Consider it a complement!

Consider also that stories with a sufficient amount of complexity are statistically likely to get some things right and some things wrong (e.g. see the Law of Large Numbers ). Star Trek is famous for getting a few things right (e.g. handheld communication devices and tablet PC's), while getting quite a number of things wrong (e.g. the Eugenics Wars of the 1990's). Even if you seem to "predict" a near-future event, you are still not likely to get all the details correct. Maybe you write a story about a North Korean missile hitting Hokkaido, and then real life unfolds and a real North Korean missile hits Kyoto next year.

Consider those things in your book that have not come true. What would the situation be if those things had come true and the things that actually did come true had not? Would you still have posted your question? If so, you may have a quite normal and healthy dose of being able to predict some things and failing to predict others!

posted about 7 years ago

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Columbia says Reinstate Monica‭

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Stories "ripped from the headlines" are always good sellers -- the interest in their subject matter is being actively aroused by current events. Writing a novel is a long business, so to be able to bring out a "ripped from the headlines" novel at the opportune moment is often a matter of serendipity -- events playing out in the real world that are similar to the events you have already described in your novel.

Far from being a disadvantage, then, having events in the real world parallel events in your novel is a great advantage. You can go to a publisher or an agent and say, how much would you like a finished novel about [some event that just happened]. It they can get it out before the interest in the event fades, they can sell a lot of books -- even for a book that they otherwise might not be interested in.

posted about 7 years ago

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Mark Baker‭

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