First, agreed 100% on the need to research the specific time and place, and an especially big "Ugh!" to phonetically rendered accents of all kinds.
Secondly, though; I was at a British school during the American Bicentennial and while I remember it vaguely being mentioned (I think we had to paint Stars and Stripes in Girl Guides) what was a much bigger deal that summer were, in order a)The Heatwave (people still talk about the summer of '76); b) the West Indies were touring, to devastating effect; c)the birth of punk rock and d) the leader of one of the three main political parties was enmired in s scandal involving a homesexual lover, an incompetent hitman, an Alsatian dog being shot and the sinister threat, "Bunnies can and will go to France". As you can imagine, the coverage the newspapers had to spare for the commemoration of events of 200 years ago almost three thousand miles away was pretty minimal.
So, I think for British writers the Bicentennial comes under the heading of "an unknown unknown" thus illustrating the danger of writing in an unfamiliar milieu in the first place.
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Date: 2011-03-01 07:54 am (UTC)Secondly, though; I was at a British school during the American Bicentennial and while I remember it vaguely being mentioned (I think we had to paint Stars and Stripes in Girl Guides) what was a much bigger deal that summer were, in order a)The Heatwave (people still talk about the summer of '76); b) the West Indies were touring, to devastating effect; c)the birth of punk rock and d) the leader of one of the three main political parties was enmired in s scandal involving a homesexual lover, an incompetent hitman, an Alsatian dog being shot and the sinister threat, "Bunnies can and will go to France". As you can imagine, the coverage the newspapers had to spare for the commemoration of events of 200 years ago almost three thousand miles away was pretty minimal.
So, I think for British writers the Bicentennial comes under the heading of "an unknown unknown" thus illustrating the danger of writing in an unfamiliar milieu in the first place.