Plots Ruined by Technology
I sort of think the author of this piece in the Guardian misses the point in a few places, particularly in regards to the “James Franco character” in 127 Hours (psst! Joe! That was a real guy who tragically did not have a handy cell phone – it really happened and everything). But it is a real, and annoying, issue for the likes of me. The cell phone, in particular, causes me no end of trouble when I want to have a character just be off and out of contact somewhere for a while, or unable to summon help, and it is hard to do plausibly. Mind you, I often don’t have my cell phone on me and when I do it is dead half the time. But I’m just not believable as a fictional character. Just last night, in fact, I was driving along and happened upon someone who’d just hit a deer with his car. Neither of us had a cell phone with which to call the police, or the deer police, or whomever one is supposed to call under those circumstances, but try to get that past a beta reader.