Can we find deeper story themes if we put our cell phones down? by Eva Lefoy

September 25, 2014 by emilycale 11 Comments

Technology plays havoc with a writing career. Just admit it. While constantly checking one’s phone, one cannot focus all of their mental power on achieving a different goal, such as answering a story question. One cannot even begin to listen in order to access the internal part of oneself that just may hold the answer. And, more importantly, this constant to-and-fro may just ruin our stories.

I sometimes find time to read books. On my laptop or my tablet mostly, so I’m just as guilty as all the rest of being a techno addict. I read mostly ebooks, electronic books if you will, and I prefer the short ones. Shorter the better, actually. If I accidentally download a 300-pager, that sucker goes right to the bottom of the TBR pile! No kidding. I’ll go into my hard drive and sort books by size, looking for the shortest book I haven’t read yet and I’ll read that one first.

Yes, I DID make it through Game of Thrones book I, but it seemed to have cemented my hatred of giving hours of my life over to a book that in the end, didn’t make a huge difference to me. Not that many of the shorter ones do either, and that’s sort of my point.

Yes, I read short books – I even write them, too! Guilty as charged! And I see a lot of them have a sprinkling of plot, an instant attraction built in and a hurry-up-and-get-to-the-sex flavor. Again, I’m guilty of this same scenario myself. In a short work there’s not much time to work in too many elements. But that’s exactly my point.

So if we continue as a society to speak in sound bites and keep our addiction to constant social interaction and interruption going, our short attention spans might get even shorter! Soon we’ll have a one-page affair, two pages of sex and a climax. (No pun intended!) But where will the goods be?

What happens to us as writers if we don’t turn off the techno and don’t just sit and go within and try to find the deeper answer to the story questions at hand? What’s deeper than quickly manufactured love is the question currently kicking around in my brain. What does it look like? Is it a romance or something else? Is it depressing – like a post-apoc novel – or is it simply two people that don’t fall in love/lust but form a different, unique bond? And above all else, will the story sell?

I think there’s a need to writers to go deeper right now, to seek out answers that aren’t all slap-dash clit stroking and wham-bam I love you’s. I think that part of our sales woes right now (besides the fact it’s September), is that readers are keyed into the rather serious world changes happening around us and they aren’t looking for someone to tell them how great it is to fall in love and have mind blowing sex. They’re looking for more than that. Security maybe? Trust? Alliance? Reassurance? Some of those story themes can’t be unearthed in our ten free seconds a day, IMO. They require more and we as writers should give these things as must time as we possibly can.

Right after we check our email.

Thanks for reading!

Eva

Book Blurb:

Security Core agent Everett is assigned a special case—protect the daughter of Simon Gold, the father of modern mechanoid life. To ensure her survival, Everett’s given a special EMO upgrade, and can experience love for the first time. He’s soon head over heels and the super-charged sexual attraction threatens to fry his circuits while he fights to stay one step ahead of the bad guys.

Samantha Gold detests her father’s work. She’s an off-the-grid back-to-lander who wants to keep life simple with her cows and her crops. When her father dies and inadvertently transfers a secret code to a hidden receptor in her brain, it’s only android Agent Everett who can protect her. Can she ever forgive her father for creating Everett—a man so perfect for her that he even loves her cows?

Buy Links:

**Giveaway: One .pdf copy of Download My Love. Comment to enter. Contest ends 9/28 at 11:59PM EDT.**
Author Bio:

Eva Lefoy writes and reads all kinds of romance, and is a certified Trekkie. She’s also terribly addicted to chocolate, tea, and hiking. One of these days, she’ll figure out the meaning of life, quit her job, and go travel the galaxy. Until then, she’s writing down all her dirty thoughts for the sake of future explorers.

Facebook

Twitter

Blog