Is Reality in Fiction an Oxymoron?
The social media bully and how to tell a great story
Welcome to my new subscribers! I’ve just returned from the Writer Unboxed Unconference in Salem, Massachusetts - Witch City - their name, not mine.
I had an incredible week of workshops and meeting other writers. Though gotta say, a week of writing workshops is a lot to take in. However, I’m fired up from this community and I have (I think) what I need to move my latest WIP forward. If you are not familiar with Writer Unboxed, head to the website and sign up for the daily craft emails. You won’t be sorry. Thank you Unboxed for a dynamic week. Now on to the newsletter.
My lastest WIP (work in progress) is a contemporary post-COVID story. I won’t say more than that as I’m in the early, ugly drafting phase. This story timeline is a switch from my debut coming in May, 2024. The Pelican Tide (yes, shameless name drop) set in 2010 during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. I spent considerable time researching cell phones and other forms of technology to assure that my story was accurate to the year. But now, I’m here in the present and considering modern methods of communication and lifestyles and that includes social media.
What Makes Contemporary Fiction Authentic?
I just finished a page-turning book, Weekend Friends by Bella Ellwood-Clayton. The story is about a mother and daughter who move from Alaska to Florida after the somewhat cryptic death of the husband/father. The daughter enrolls in a new school, and they both meet new friends where social media plays an important part in the story.
For girls, middle school is practically The Hunger Games- for their mothers, it can be even worse.
Bella uses social media as a way to build authentic teen behavior, to advance the plot line, and as a pseudo source of dialogue. I say pseudo because people are communicating but through text and emojis, not face to face. This is a twisty story where the tweens are using social media in plain sight. Girls are mean! and Bella captures this in rich detail on the page.
I often wonder how writers create authenticity in their stories (asking for a friend.) I reached out to Bella to talk about social media and story. Bella lives in Australia and we connected one evening her morning - thank you Bella for waking up for me.
It’s easy to forget that writers have lives beyond their books and Bella is no exception. She has a PhD in sexual anthropology, she’s actually Dr. Bella Ellwood-Clayton. And, yes, I will be speaking with her in the future about sex in stories.
Her research into human relationships and behaviors makes her curious, and like all writers, she connects data points. She says three elements came together for her to write Weekend Friends, her PhD research in the Philippines about young women’s sexuality and use of technology; being the mom to two tweens; and disturbing research she has been following on suicides in younger children linked to social media use.
Bella says, social media is both vicious and embracing and combines technology, friendship, emotional pain, and teens exploring their identities.
From that crucible her story was developed.
However, social media is constantly evolving. Facebook is for older people, Twitter has devolved into “X” even Tik Tok is changing and all the cool kids are on Discord. I asked how changing social media products and use is influencing kids. Bella says that now more than before people can measure their social engagement through likes or the lack of them. A high liked post can create euphoria and low social engagement posts can lead to depression. It’s a 24-hour can’t escape world where kids can see their friends at parties that they may not have been invited.
Parents are no better!
One of the plot points in Weekend Friends concerns body positivity issues and girls and women. The main character is careful not to talk to her daughter about dieting and eating yet the daughter is caught in a peer pressure situation and bullied about her weight and eating through her phone. The mother realizes this but she too constantly has her phone in hand and engaging in her own bad phone behaviors. Bella says this is our reality, though phone useage differs from culture to culture. She calls it digital nutrition where we don’t pay attention to what we’re taking in or modeling to our children. The old, do as I say, not as I do. She says many of the most dangerous things you can do or see on social media become great book ideas. As a mom, she needs to be hyper vigilant about checking in with her kids and monitoring what they access. As a novelist, it’s a never ending hot idea file. It horrifies her and fascinates her.
Bella balances the social media parts of the novel, the texts and the emojis and uses it seamlessly to illustrate modern teen lives (modern in the Western world sense.) We see teens sitting side-by-side texting instead of interacting. We’ve gone from notes passed in class, gossip shared in the bathroom, to social media memes and cyber bullying.
What about the Boys?
Weekend Friends is a novel about women and teen girls but what about boys? Boys are also using social media but their social interactions are different. Bella references the work of Rachel Simmons author of Odd Girl Out, The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls. Simmons says that boys tend to bully acquaintances, yet girls bully within their social circle and practice outcasting, keeping a girl or girls out of the tight social circle. This is the idea of a girl having a best friend or group of friends one day and not the next. It’s about power and self-esteem. Again, horrible to watch as a parent, but inherent conflict ripe for a story.
For this story, Bella was interested in exploring the social hierarchy of girls, those controlling the social status at the top, the hangers on in the middle, and the ones excluded at the bottom. This social exploration is typical for any novel, find an interesting problem and make it real and more interesting. She chose to make it “more” by layering in social media. In the future it may be something else.
My take away?
For my current story, I too need to find the interesting problem and then layer in the aspects that make it real. I won’t use social media the same way, or as seamlessly. However, YouTube videos are part of my character’s world and Weekend Friends serves as a great model for how to build this into a story as a feature and make it more. Bella’s book is a great contemporary novel of today’s culture and how we are plugged into technology and how it plugs into us.
Here are some resources for using social media to make your next work authentic.
Give Away!
As an early holiday present I’m giving away 2 copies of Weekend Friends!
Want to win? Leave me a comment with your name and tell me what future research topic you’d like me to dive into. I’ll select 2 random winners and contact you for all the details. Thanks.
I too am fascinated yet irritated by the dependence on social media. It’s impact on social interactions and the lost art of eye contact is distressing. And as you point out, the weight on a persons self esteem is unimaginable--but it’s not just likes and followers, an entire relationship can be destroyed if God forbid you don’t respond to someone’s text! (P.S. ignore the fact that I’m attached to my phone while commenting)