by Jamie A. Richardson from the October 31, 2022 issue
Tagline: Trick-or-treating with her granddaughter, Cathy gets a shock when her old crush opens the door and gives her the sweetest treat of all.
Apology: I'm sorry I've been MIA, but my subscription lapsed without my knowledge! LOL I only just got this Halloween issue. Rest assured, I'm back at my keyboard with my red pen ready.
Observations: This was a darling story that shone a light on the generation gap in regards to communication. I truly enjoyed seeing the granddaughter learn how to trick-or-treat. Adorable! However, I'm old enough to have a granddaughter that age, but writing an actual letter to someone to tell someone I was going out of town is not something I would ever do. Maybe Cathy only said that because she was flustered by John's presence.
Regardless, let's all make an effort to not apply outdated stereotypes to our older characters. For that matter, give some thought to creating any character that is not in your age group. One of my pet peeves is younger characters making cultural references that aren't age appropriate. For instance, a woman in her thirties probably wouldn't be familiar with The Brady Bunch. I'm listening to Stephen King's latest book, Fairy Tale, and the main character makes references to old movies constantly and King explained it by saying the hero's father always watched Turner Movie Classics. Okay, Mr. King, you justified the historic references and I'll give you a pass because you're one of the greatest writers of all time, however, I can see that you fell back on this because you're not up on current/recent pop culture enough to make your hero actually seem like he's 18. He's like a 70 year old in a young body.
Long story short, when creating characters, keep in mind their ages and match their actions, thoughts and references to that age. Do a little research and your character will be the richer and more realistic for it.
Photo by Glen Bowman via Flickr Creative Commons License
5 comments:
I have also missed your posts. I agree about cultural references. It also bugs me when characters have names that don't match their age. If a character has a name that I associate only with someone over 80, then find out they are in their 50's, it annoys me.
Yay! I’m glad you’re back. 😀. I liked this story, too. The mention of a letter to simply inform of a trip out of town took me out of the story for a second, but only a second. Maybe she was flustered as you said, or she is just old school in her ways, which can be charming.
I wonder if you, Kate, would publish when WW mag is accepting stories for a certain holiday season. I cannot access the facebook page for WW writers.
Welcome back, Kate.
I also loved this story. Loved the little girl learning about Halloween.
As a long time letter writer, I agree it was odd for her to say that. E-mail I would have bought though. Good catch.
Thanks for the welcome back, everyone! Sandy, yes, you aren't going to find too many 20 somethings named Mildred. LOL
Nanci, I envy you your ability to jump back into the story. I think, if I weren't reading for analyses, maybe I could develop that skill more.
I will try to remember to post about calls for holiday stories, Anonymous.
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