As we move through 2020 and the global pandemic continues, questions arise for writers:
- Do I need to include the pandemic in my book?
- Should my characters be social distancing and locking down and wearing masks?
- Should my nonfiction book include specific pandemic-related stories and anecdotes?
We’ve been dealing with Covid-19 for long enough that we have some examples of creative choices being made, and how audiences have responded. Recently two popular TV shows, This is Us and Grey’s Anatomy, returned with new, updated episodes. They both included strong pandemic plots and situations, especially Grey’s since it takes place in a hospital. These two shows have always made a point of being rooted in the “real world,” including ripped-from-the headlines plots and situations, so this was a choice that made sense.
Viewer response was not subtle! But it wasn’t definitive either. It seems half the people liked the realism; the other half objected vociferously. The primary complaint seems to be, “I watch TV in order to escape from this reality! Especially right now — COVID is bad enough in real life, why do I have to deal with it in my entertainment, too?”
So what’s an author to do? Here are some thoughts:
Contemporary fiction
This genre will obviously be the most problematic. Here are a few ways to handle it:
- One way to avoid the question is to make sure your book is fully contemporary without any overt references that connect it directly to 2020. It could easily be 2019 or 2022. You could just ignore the pandemic.
- Another way to avoid it is to purposely set your book in a time period before this pandemic started. So maybe it’s 2017, or whatever works for you. This way, you avoid having to include real-world pandemic consequences — things that will still be with us in 2021 and beyond — because we don’t know what they are yet. Will people still be social distancing and wearing masks and avoiding large gatherings for at least another year? I hope not, but we just don’t know. Setting your book prior to all of this could be an answer.
- You could decide to write a book that includes Covid-19 as part of the premise, or simply part of the backdrop. You could include the difficulties of not being able to socialize and the misery of quarantine, if that works for your story. Just be aware that it does firmly date your book in 2020.
- You could give up contemporary and write historical! Or fantasy… or sci-fi. (Just kidding. Sort of.)
Nonfiction
There are many different kinds of nonfiction books, so I can’t be specific. But here are a few general thoughts:
- Most nonfiction books use real-life stories to illustrate points. This year is offering a wealth of stories that could serve to illuminate all kinds of topics: coping with anxiety, parenting difficulties, the challenges of cooking at home, the trauma of job loss… I could go on and on. You can decide whether it makes sense to include pandemic-related anecdotes in your nonfiction book.
- Pay special attention to whether omitting any reference to Covid-19 would feel inauthentic or incomplete in your book. If you have a book about anxiety releasing in 2022, then it probably wouldn’t make sense to leave out the coronavirus, since pandemic-related anxiety is one of the main hallmarks of this year.
- Books specifically addressing faith and church may feel incomplete if they don’t address some of the issues that have arisen this year. How does a pandemic challenge one’s faith? How does attending church in a physical space relate to our lives as Christians? You’ll need to decide what’s appropriate.
There aren’t any one-size-fits-all answers. But then, there never are, right?
What are you planning to do in your current works-in-progress?
I had originally written my manuscript set in the 90’s, but when I found out publishers want either historical or present day, I started revising to current day. Now…Covid. So, I’m setting it in 2017, book two in 2018-2019, and book three in 2021 or 2022, depending on what happens with the virus.
My WIP opens in 1959 and ends around 1995. So no pandemic, but the protagonist’s family does live through a real life historic event.
COVID witing? Uh, no; I have other fish to fry, and I’m running out of time.
The current angst really should
touch and mould my soul,
but I’m concerned with finding wood
that’s needed fo the goal
of building (yes, within my home)
an aeroplane of fine repute,
and through the World Wide Web I roam,
and no one ships the stuff…well, shoot!
Yes, I know some folks who died
of this thing, this new pandemic,
and yes, I will admit I cried,
but my writing would not be authentic
for in the daily round of things
I am obsessed with building wings.
Beautiful, Andrew! Reminds me of something in Isaiah. Blessings, my friend.
Judith, thank you so much!
I recently re-published a book I published in 2011, on US history with a heavy dose of politics and tie-in to current events. I call it historical-political. I added a “2020 Update” to each chapter. And yes, many of those updates were about the pandemic and how current politics was handling that and how we’ve been through similar things in our history.
For my fiction I’m hoping I can keep it completely contemporary and ignore the pandemic a bit.
For my nonfiction I’ll see what illustrations fit based on each chapter, whether that’s current pandemic situations or just past ones.
Thanks for this helpful post!
Interesting … since I’m writing middle grade set at a camp the answer for me is clear. No Covid references. We are closed right now. And some of the very best things about camp, playing American Eagle in the meadow, the chair game, that contest where you dip a slice of cheese in mayo and throw it trying to get it to stick to the person standing across from you … well, it is hard to make a lot of these activities Covid friendly. Although, camps in general may actually evolve in the future to be more germ-conscious as we as a people have become so very aware of the germs around us. Which sadly (or maybe not) could mean an end to having people race to feed each other gummy worms with their feet!
Someone could write a book with someone like me as a main character. I’m a Myers-Briggs INFJ, with the ‘I’ standing for introvert. According to a questionnaire, I’m 97% introverted.
I love my husband. I also love my kids, although they’re exhausting, frequently annoying, and VERY noisy. I like quiet. I like being at home in my own world. I like reading, and the occasional movie or TV show. I like working on my computer researching and writing. Having to attend social gatherings, go to a party, even meet someone for coffee, fills me with anxiety.
So not being able to socialize, social distancing, avoiding large gatherings, possibly even quarantine – this is my idea of social heaven.
As I began brainstorming my current story, I debated about setting it in 2020, but I decided the pandemic would add too many complexities to the story. So, I’m moving it back to 2019.
Out of curiosity, would it be a bad thing to have a “dated” massive event like COVID in a book? Would that affect sales?
You can’t say it would necessarily be a “bad” thing. I’m sure there will be plenty of novels coming out, set specifically in 2020 and overtly about the pandemic. We all read books centered on true events in history, whether recent or long ago. It’s only a negative if your book has nothing to do with the pandemic, but includes Covid references, which when read five years hence, might feel dated in a book that would otherwise feel timeless.
For what it’s worth, I’d pass on COVID. It’s not a war, with clearly defined good and evil, heroes and villains. There’s no drama here, other than that which we try to invent; it’ a mud-slog, the sooner over and forgotten, the better.
When we look at the two Great Wars of the 20th century, they (to some degree self-servingly, but to a greater degree not) defined our society, defined our moral inheritance.
COVID? Not so much. It defined anxiety, and the stay-at-home orers let many know how much they really didn’t LIKE spending time with immediate family. Rather an unwelcome look in the mirror, best pitched into memory’s rubbish tip as soon as possible.
There’s a precedent; Jimmy Carter tried to frame the energy crisis of the late 1980s as ‘the moral equivalent of war’. It was not, by a long reach, and who now wants to read of the emotion of those embarrassing times?
There was a War To End All Wars,
spawned evil to ignite each scene,
birthed timeless books, many score,
and films like ‘1917’.
But two yars later, Spanish Flu
laid waste unto a world gone weak,
and while stories are just as true,
they are not what the readers seek,
for illness is a faceless foe
that can never have a cause
that forces us, at heart, to know
the stength of inner moral laws
that, if we may call God ‘friend’
we must risk all to guard, defend.
Unless you write a story in which one of the conspiracy theories about COVID is actually true.
I’ve recently chosen not to read and review a split time novel set in 1820 and 2020 because it’s clear the novel doesn’t mention Covid-19. My head knows the novel was no doubt written in 2018 and contracted for publication in 2019.
But the whole premise now seems wrong given the specific setting of England in 2020 – a teenage character who is upset that her life isn’t going to plan sounds a lot like whining given the millions of teens who have had their life plans disrupted this year, not to mention the 1.5 million+ who have died. My reader brain can’t disassociate enough to make that readable.
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It seems to me that relevance is not the main thing in the book. As an experienced writer, I can assure you that when you write from the bottom of your heart, the reader feels it and loves it. I recently published my book, which has scattered a lot, and in my spare time I write reviews on the best writing services.
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