: Re: Is it ok to reference something modern to give the reader a better idea of what something looks like if the book is set in the Middle Ages? This is a random example but would it be bad

@Sarah872

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If you do this, it will have a very specific effect --it will create distance between the narrator and the setting, which will tend to remind the reader of the artificiality of the writing. You may want to do this, particularly if you are writing postmodernist fiction or meta-fiction, where you want to deliberately call attention to the writer. Another usage is if you want the readers to experience this work primarily as something modern --if you don't want them to be absorbed into the historical setting.

Some writers have used anachronism very effectively --T.H. White's The Once and Future King is probably one of the best examples. The Princess Bride and The Last Unicorn also use the technique (apparently it's a bit easier to pull off in a fantasy narrative, which is intrinsically located in a kind of timeless, mythopoeic realm). Others have gotten away with it accidentally, when the mistake doesn't call attention to itself. If you are writing a conventional narrative, however, where you don't want to call attention to the writing as writing, then you should avoid this, since it will tend to break suspension of disbelief (and come across as an amateur mistake).

I note from your comments that your main character is actually a modern time traveler, alien to the historical setting. This is certainly one way to begin cuing or foreshadowing that fact, but it's a pretty blatant one, so if you really want the reader to be surprised, you'd have to go easy on it. Assuming you are writing from first person or close third-person perspective with this character as the viewpoint character, it will be very difficult to pull of a deception of this magnitude --at least if you play fair with the reader.

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