Occasionally, a writing group friend will submit a contemporary piece they wrote a decade or more ago. What often hits me when I read their pages is the feeling that ours is a world of flux and change. Social media, technology, and society norms evolve at such astounding rates that it’s hard to keep up. That being said, it’s not surprising that those gems we pull out of our drawers, dust off, and submit to our critique groups can fall flat and feel off. So how do we freshen up our oldies but goodies and make them feel modern? Below are five tips.

1. Update or add technology to your story, and by adding and updating, I don’t mean just slip them in and mention that a character has a cell phone or a laptop. Make sure that your characters use technology the way we use it now. For example, if your protagonist is a teen, glue her to her cell phone. The same goes for social media. If your protagonist is a business owner, give him a website and a LinkedIn profile.
2. Reevaluate the social views conveyed in your story. For instance, if people in your fictional town are freaked out by two girls and a guy living together like in the sitcom Three’s Company, make your town residence more accepting. Same goes for society’s views on issues like unmarried women having babies (Murphy Brown) and gay love (remember Rosanne Bar kissing Marial Hemingway). Our beliefs about these hot button issues have changed dramatically. Make sure that your story reflects current trends. A friend of mine wrote a story about a man who threatens to shoot a crowd of people. He wrote the first draft of his screenplay pre-Columbine, before mass shootings became a regular threat. In his first draft, the shooter gets away without punishment. When he initially wrote it, his readers were OK with this. But twenty years later, he decided to change his ending and put the shooter in prison because his current readers, those impacted by mass shootings, wanted the fictional shooter punished.
3. Use current slang and avoid stilted writing. Nothing dates a story faster than outdated slang. For this reason, my writers avoid slang altogether. That’s a choice. I personally love the flavor that slang brings to a novel. I love it when an author uses slang specific to a setting, such as the Upper Eastside of Manhattan, like Cecily Von Ziegesar, who wrote the YA novel, Gossip Girl, because it ages well.
4. Consider using current writing trends to revitalize an old piece. At the last conference I attended, editors and the agents mentioned that writing novels with multiple protagonists, like Amy Tan’s, The Joy Luck Club, was all the rage. If you want to freshen up a stale piece, consider following a current craft trend, like this one.
5. Remember that nuance and subtleties matter, especially when it comes to a character’s mannerisms. Have you ever read a contemporary novel that feels outdated, but you can’t put your finger on why? If so, it could be because your female or male characters aren’t in sync with modern mannerisms. This realization hit me when I listened to an interview with someone who cast actresses for the Netflix series, Bridgerton. The casting person said it was difficult to cast the roles because most young actresses appeared too bold and confident. They stood up too tall, looked people in the eyes, spoke too loudly, and simply weren’t believable as Regency Era London ladies because of their 21^st century life experiences. Fun fact, people now stand farther apart than before the pandemic. Bottom line, subtleties matter, especially when it comes to mannerisms. Don’t overlook them.

I hope these tips were helpful and motivate you to freshen up your older contemporary novels. If you have modernized a novel, I’d love to hear what this editing/writing experience was like for you. Thanks for reading! Keep writing!