Why the Edwardians?
Published by on November 17th, 2007
A quetion I was asked a few days ago: why set Table Rappers in the Edwardian era as opposed to any other?
The decision to have my characters play out their adventures during the formative years of the 20th Century was not entirely too difficult to make. One might assume that as my stories are dealing with mediums and spiritualism, the latter part of the previous century might be more appropriate as the obsession with such things near saturated the late Victorians. But, quite frankly, the Edwardian period is a far more interesting setting.
It was rather unique in that is feels almost like an adolescent to the Victorian toddler. A period of rediscovery, of looking ahead and forging new ideals and a new society. Queen Victoria was dead and the industrial revolution had completed its meteoric surge. Change at the top meant change everywhere else, and that change created ripples through the fabric of everyone alive at the time. The Edwardian period and the start of the 20th Century, was truly a brave new world. The Victorians were a little too dark and brooding - at least that is the general image in most people’s minds, it seems. While the Edwardians, at least those who could afford it - certainly knew how to enjoy life, even if there were less than perfect undercurrents.
The Suffragettes were on the rise to give women the right to vote, even clashing with police several times and throwing themselves under horses. There were strikes - it surprised me to learn there were London tube strikes, just as we have had this year. There was an increasing chasm between the wealthy and the poor. Society as we know it through the 20th Century, had its foundations firmly embedded in the Edwardian era, and so it is a time which has been often been captured in movies and TV dramas.
Above all is one key element contributing to the setting. The stories are centred around spiritualism, the paranormal, and a bunch of other surprises I’m not going to mention just yet (no spoilers!). What intrigued me as a mechanism to create drama and tension was the gulf of knowledge on these subjects you would have as a reader, particularly in this post X-Files world, in contrast to the knowledge of the Edwardian characters you will be following. There is a dramatic irony which is likely to be a common thread through the stories and something which, as a storyteller, is so very tempting to play around with.
As luck would have it - and the coincidence was without any design on my part - there seems to be a great interest in the Edwardian period right now. Likely because it is that magic number of 100 years ago. Whatever the reason, it means there is a flood of research information easily available, from books to TV programmes, and of particular interest are the discovered movies of Mitchell And Kenyon, shot during that time and left in barrels undiscovered for 70 years or so (see inset images for Amazon links to the fascinating movie DVDs).
The Edwardian world of my characters is most certainly coloured by the real world over 100 years ago, but is not destined to be some finely tuned historical recreation. It is a pseudo-Edwardian society where fictitious events and figures are intertwined with real, historic ones. Above all, these are meant to be entertaining romps, not starchy recreations.
Until I began developing and writing the initial TableRappers screenplays, my interest in the Edwardian period stretched as far as a Rupert Everett movie or some stiff BBC drama. I cannot truthfully say I have developed a deep personal interest in the period, though it is fascinating, but it is the ideal setting for TableRappers - and I have developed a passion for it because of my characters - and I hope you will enjoy listen/reading them as much as I have - and will - enjoyed creating them.
The first TableRappers audio episode (the prelude) is to be released on December 1st. Head over to TableRappers.com to be sure of catching it the moment it appears.
2 Responses to “Why the Edwardians?”
I love that you’ve done this. I’ve added your characters.
Interesting observations on plot v character development. I’ve always found that plot is a nightmare unless you let the characters lead.
I’m interested, too, that you’ve not built Twitter into the story - I think I would have been limited by over-awareness of the medium I was using, and had all sorts of references to the technology. Also, that awareness that we have as Twitterers of who’s reading us - the idea that there is an audience there, even if you’re twittering intimate mundane details.
One more complication you may have overlooked Neil.
Twitter is linear and real-time, so if the viral aspect of this is to work the story has to be constructed in such as way that new readers can make sense of it. That’s NOT going to be easy!
@Rupert:
One element of using Twitter which did get in the way was if each character has added the others as friends, then they can all see each others’ tweets, and therefore, nothing can be hidden from the characters = very limiting. Twitter needs to just be the mechanism, not an element in the story itself.
@Adrian:
Given that a lot of thought from day one. Although linear, with each character as a Twitter style friend of all the others (and no-one outside the characters being connected as friends - to avoid clutter and noise), viewing any of their pages means you can backtrack through the entire story. Plus, the creation of story summary pages on websites connected with each character would work too. Also, story history is stored in the database of the little php posting app I created, so that could also be used to allow full access to the story so far for any newcomers.
I’m getting 404 pages for those Amazon links
Fixed. Thank you for the heads up.