by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
“I gave a smartphone to my dumb cousin. Now he’s average.” – JSB, channeling his inner Steven Wright
Instead of my usual craft post, I’d like to open up a discussion. Here’s the question: How do smartphones impact the way we write thrillers?
Let’s say your hero is out in public and has to take down a thug. Maybe he bends the law a little as he does, though he is morally justified.
In today’s world, a dozen smartphones will capture the encounter on video. And then, boom, the hero’s face and actions go viral.
Now every cop, friend of the thug, past enemies, and thousands of social media jockeys know who he is, or at least what he looks like.
Heck, you can’t even have a bar fight anymore without the world finding out about it.
So: How do we thriller writers deal with this?
- What are the consequences of such a scenario in a stand-alone thriller? Must it become a major plot complication?
- What are the consequences for a series? Will the viral notoriety follow the hero from now on? Must it be dealt with in each subsequent book?
- Or can you pull a retcon? What, you may ask, is a retcon? It stands for “retrograde continuity,” a fancy term for when material in past books is “adjusted, ignored, supplemented, or contradicted by a subsequently published work that recontextualizes or breaks continuity with the former.” (Wikipedia)
- Or should we do whatever we can to avoid these scenes? Would that be realistic?
- Or would the large majority of readers not care that much if smartphone recordings don’t happen in a scene such as I’ve described? Maybe you get a few emails or are docked one star in a review. But if the scene works in all other aspects, is that a big deal?
Give this all some thought and let’s start a conversation!
In today’s society, people are relatively self-absorbed. If you have any doubts, try extending a greeting to a passerby on the street and observe how many act like they never even heard you. Manners are becoming quite the thing of the past. In addition, we are bombarded by so many sensory inputs that while there may be some who would catalog the face they’re seeing on viral video, many more will forget it right after they’ve seen it, so it probably doesn’t have an impact on recognizing the person later.
You bring up an interesting question. I can see how an enemy would surely take note of a viral video and catalog it. But as noted above, I think it’s fair to say some people wouldn’t remember it after seeing the initial media exposure. I’ll be very interested to see the discussion that ensues on this question.
For myself, I happily write books in time periods that occur long before cell phones or surveillance cameras came into use so it’s an issue I haven’t had to deal with. I love to escape modern day and its entrapments. 😎
Or, you could do what the writers of Yellowstone do – just pretend smartphones and modern surveillance devices don’t exist. The protags can kidnap a prominent citizen on the main street of town in the middle of the day, and not only does no one notice the excitement, no security cameras pick it up either.
There is a certain comfort in historical fiction. It’s frozen in time.
M.C. brings up a point that might work…a few readers might get jarred, but like I say in the post, if the scene works otherwise…
I would suppose, even in a city like Los Angels, it would be possible to contrive a setting where cell phones or CCTV would not be an issue. It would take some forethought, however.
The other option is to simply not mention it and hope no one notices. Or, like BK above, write stories that take place when that technology didn’t exist. 😉
That said, there is also the problem of mentioning current technology, then having it laughably out of date by the time the book comes out. This is what makes me hesitant to even mention cell phones, but in this day and age, that is becoming harder to justify.
Yep, the “hope no one notices” is one way to go about it. But the scene I have in mind is one that I’m considering starting off the book with, and there is no way it wouldn’t be captured by several phones…do I scotch the scene? It’s too good…
When I wrote Finding Sarah, cell phones were new and expensive. No smartphones. When rights reverted to me, I added a little disclaimer that the book had been written back then, and requested that my readers “go back to 2005”.
What’s hard for me is finding ways to justify a character simply not making a phone call to get help, check in, etc.
In the current WIP, my character is hoping for a viral video after she’s accosted by two men on the street. But that’s as far as I took it, as the story went in a different direction at that point.
OK, you got out of it this this time…but it lurks!
Terrific questions, Jim. We can lean into the reality of smartphones, or as BK plausibly suggests, lean away by setting our stories before their appearance. I don’t have all the answers about leaning in, but my first thought is that the formidable antagonist must plan for the presence of smart phones and other forms of surveillance in our present day. So, we writers must adapt to by imagining crimes that have happened (Mystery) or epic crimes that are planned (Thriller) where the antagonist’s strategy centers on video recordings in the same way that our esteemed pulp villains of the past centered on stealth and muscle. These imaginings are ironically a melding of the classic Mystery/Thriller with speculative fiction.
Yes, I think the villain clearly has to be aware, and plan. My issue is with the hero acting in public out of some sense of justice. That’s the sticky wicket, as they way.
Truly a relevant topic, Jim.
As Brenda notes, people are often too self-absorbed to notice and/or there’s a mad, brief flurry of notoriety, then it’s gone.
In the 1960s, Andy Warhol predicted everyone would have 15 minutes of fame (although that may be an erroneous attribution). Nowadays 15 SECONDS of fame is more accurate.
The news cycle keeps steamrolling forward to a new war, scandal, catastrophe. People’s memories are short and precious little history is taught in school. Some years ago, I mentioned JFK to a young woman and was shocked when she said, “Oh, yeah, wasn’t he the president who got killed in a car crash?”
Uh, no.
Even when a world figure/celebrity is caught on video, the attention is like a magnesium flare, intense but relatively short-lived. Additionally, often society’s collective memory of an event is not based on what actually happened but how it was spun in the media.
As far as using the smartphone in thrillers, I built my latest book, Deep Fake Double Down, on the concept of how viral video can convict an innocent person in the court of public opinion. In this case, the videos are deep fakes, which is an even greater injustice.
If I ever happen to stumble into Mike Romeo dispensing a little righteous street justice, don’t worry, my phone will be turned off!
Thanks, Debbie. Oh yes, street justice is coming. I just have to deal with the doggone phones!
Or, how about a genre set in the present, but 1984esque surveillance does not exist? Garry discussed slipstream on Saturday. How about a “Thriller-max Zone” genre where the author establishes at the beginning of the first chapter what technology has been hacked and taken down?
“It is the middle ground between good and evil, between science and apocalypse, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears, and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of the limitless thrill. It is an area which we call, The Thriller-max Zone.” (with a few changes)
I wish I could co-write with Rod Serling, for sure.
Smartphones and other tech like CCTV are a legitimate hurdle that writers of modern thrillers must clear, but there are ways and means to do that which can enhance the story, rather than limiting it. For example, set your takedown scenes in places which aren’t mined with CCTV (Instead of central London, perhaps Watford, on its outskirts, which helpfully explains it only has 53 CCTV cameras, and how they work: https://www.watford.gov.uk/CCTV). I’ve found the Orphan X series by Gregg Hurwitz does a great job with handling the perils (and advantages) of tech for the protag.
Right about choosing an advantageous setting. The scene I have in mind to start a book, however, necessarily take place in public…a subway station. Ack! I really want to write it, too.
I agree smartphones are making it harder to construct a good story, and not just thrillers. It’s difficult to create a mystery in an era when everybody is connected 24/7. I like what Louis said — that we should find ways to lean in to the technology and use it to our advantage. Debbie did that beautifully with Deep Fake Double Down.
Maybe it’s time for somebody to write a guide on ways to thwart technology.
Maybe we should ask A.I. (speaking of tech!) I’m actually not kidding. That just occurred to me. A.I. for research and brainstorming is okay by me.
Since I am a tiny child who grew up with cellphones/smartphones, I just take it for granted that somewhere someone is filming. I just finished writing a series where superheroes film their antics for HeroTube, or livestream it as it goes down. There are parts where the heroes (and enemies) film something they shouldn’t and post it, and it gets the attention of enemies (and friends). One character’s reputation is completely ruined on HeroTube and he has to duck and cover whenever the cameras come out. So yeah, I love using smartphones and the possibility of video as plot complications. The girl seeing damning video of her boyfriend, for instance.
That sounds all too real, Kessie. There are kids who have changed lives forever because of ill-considered use of what is so easy to use. Kind of scary, actually. And when Big Brother is part of the watchfulness…
Consider the court’s dilemma when AI photoshopping becomes so rampant that video is no longer admissible as evidence. “My face, not that place” could become a defense if the defendant can produce video evidence s/he was elsewhere at the time in question. Either side could produce photo-manipulated evidence that an assailant was/was not at the assault scene or even performing the assault.
A digital image file contains metadata about the precise time and GPS location it its capture. That data can be altered today with ordinary software. What is the legal recourse if the validity of a video segment cannot be established?
You could create a whole novel centered on the arguments pro and con for introducing smartphone video as either prosecutorial or defensive evidence.
You’ve got that right, Dan. A legal thriller for sure. In the real world, this whole fakery business is insane and chilling, coupled with the gullibility of people and their confirmation biases.
There’s a mystery series where an EMP destroyed all computers, etc., and the heroine earns her living as an old-school detective of the Sherlock Holmes variety. If you can’t beat them, kill them.
Now that’s a tagline!
Interesting discussion, Jim.
There’s a meme making the rounds of SM which shows George Orwell with a frightened expression, reading a book entitled “2024”. Kinda says it all. If he’s scared, so am I.
Can’t wait to take a peek at that scene, my friend. 😉
Make Orwell Fiction Again.
MOFA – spread the meme. I like it. It may be too late, though.
Well, Jim, if you really want to write that scene and your protag is halfway smart, he/she will ensure that the cameras are pointed elsewhere during the assault on the baddie. How about dropping something flammable in a garbage can? Smoke obscures what people see, and all the phones will be capturing the fire. If your hero choreographs it right, he can claim that the baddie tripped in the confusion and he was trying to help the guy up (while actually pummeling the guy when he’s down).
Real-life crooks work around (or even usurp) modern technology. As writers, we’re at least as smart as they are, aren’t we?
That’s a good thought for future reference. But the scene I am contemplating takes place instantly, spontaneously. I have to give it more thought, clearly.
That was a very real problem for me in my novel. The solution was to set it is 2012. Of course I had toy do a lot of research on what phones at the time (iphone, Galaxy) were capable of and plot accordingly. Also YouTube was around but TikTok wasn’t. Instagram wasn’t big and twitter was limited to 120 characters. I made it work in my mind but I know there’s a twelve-year-old out there some where that’s going to blow me out of the water.
As has been said, settings in the past are comforting on the tech level because they’re frozen. In my contemporary thrillers, I always have to be ready to look at the latest innovations, which sometimes happen just as my MS is ready to publish!
What a great discussion, Jim. I was on the road all day yesterday. Glad I backtracked today.
In modern thrillers, I don’t think we can ignore smartphones, but I also don’t feel the need to continually make them a problem for the MC unless the scene needs a little speed bump. Especially in a series. If cell phones are a major obstacle in one book, including that same obstacle in another two or three might start to feel repetitive. I’d rather switch it up with other technology. For example, because my characters are in rural settings, I may play with WiFi issues or the lack of cell towers.
Yeah, it can be a burden, Sue, in a series. To keep having to deal with it. As you say, it may start to feel repetitive to readers…in which case, the retcon idea becomes more attractive.
This has been a good discussion, and a lot to think about.