Oct 18, 2021
Are any of your characters fans of a particular sports team?
There’s not a whole lot to do in most small towns unless you plan your own event or go somewhere else. That’s why high school sports take on an almost cult-like following. And Oak Grove, my fictional town in the Harmony Duprie series, is a true small town. Harmony may not belong to the cult, but she still keeps an eye on local teams. I pay homage to that in the books.
‘Football Coach Predicts a Winning Year.’ That one made me smile because Coach Henderson had predicted the same thing for the last fifteen years, and it hadn’t happened yet. The school was too small to field a team that matched its rivals. But there was always hope. From The Baron’s Cufflinks
Not much was going on in Oak Grove that night, with most of the high-schoolers out of town for a football game. From The Marquesa’s Necklace
I’ve explored that concept more in my work-in-progress. (I’m still playing with potential titles, but let’s call it The Thief and The Angel for now.) This is from a conversation between Jake and Harmony.
“I see they’ve hired Coach for another year,” she said.
“Is that a good thing?”
“Oak Grove is too small to have a decent team.” She closed the sports section and laid it on the stair behind them. “We haven’t had a winning season in years. But the alumni and school board don’t want to give up on it. And every year, at least one boy gets a college scholarship, so they keep the team going. In a good year, two or three boys will get scholarships, even if they are to colleges no one ever heard of.”
While none of my characters are huge fans of a particular team, many of them follow sports in general. I can use sports as a way to establish time and personality. If I write about American football, it’s fall. Basketball belongs to winter and spring, while baseball is summer.
Then there’s personality. In The Ranger’s Dog Tags, I imagined Detective Timothy Horace as a football linebacker. When I figured out that he was a golfer, it changed how I wrote him. (his physical size remained the same.) Although he was could use his size as a physical weapon, he preferred a more subtle approach to his job.
I have a coworker who can recite stats on numerous baseball players (not just one team.) so, it would be easy for me to write that into a character. I just haven’t done it yet. But I’m playing around with a new plot in my head, so who knows?
Let’s find out if any of the other authors have superfans in their books. Just follow the links below.
And, as always, stay safe until the next time.
Oct 18, 2021
Are any of your characters fans of a particular sports team?
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I guess that’s true. Small towns don’t have much going on, so small town teams provide something to do. I just never seem to be able work it into the plot except as a one-liner to show my characters had other lives.
Those one-liners can create a sense of time and place.
That’s true. If you know soccer, you learn a lot about Mike in that two-sentence exchange that he’s not even a part of. And, if you don’t, you can skip over it.
I’ve heard that exact conversation – they hired coach for another year etc.
Tweeted.
I’d never considered sports as any more than a filler piece in my Sci-fi. But I can see how it might dominate a small settled community.
Imagine s space colony on a newly settled planet inventing a sport that works with the gravity (or lack thereof) of their new world.