The Problem in Our Pocket

I was reading a book last week that featured an event so outrageous, so unbelievable, that I nearly threw it across the room in indignation. I probably would have, too, if I hadn’t been reading on my Kindle. Those things aren’t cheap, you know.

Now, I say this fully aware that I wrote a novel about soul mates traveling through time to correct their mistakes from failed relationships of the past. And the book in question, which I’ll not mention to protect the guilty (my Goodreads followers will have no trouble figuring it out), does feature a heavy time travel component.

But that is not the source of my consternation. I will saddle up and ride out with any story, regardless of its unrealistic concepts. Time travel, sewer-dwelling clowns, telekinesis, fire-breathing dragons, and jumps to hyperspace are all fair game in my opinion.

Invent away! Set the ground rules, maintain consistency, and I’ll happily suspend my disbelief.

But what I cannot abide – and should never be asked to as a reader or movie viewer — is unrealistic handling of a character’s smartphone.

She looks how I feel when a book or film handles a phone unrealistically.

Straight to Voicemail

In the book in question, the main character, who inherited a struggling antique business, just returned from a trip into the past and is now in possession of several priceless artifacts in pristine condition. She fired off some emails to Christie’s auction house, complete with photos, and immediately hooked their interest.

One of their curators is going to drive over to “uplift” the items from her, so they can bring them in for closer examination. The items are expected to fetch well into the six- or even seven-figure range at auction. This is a life changing moment for our single, debt-laden protagonist. Not only because it means financial independence, but because we know something she doesn’t: that there’s an effort underway to steal the items from her before she can sell them.

So she goes out to lunch, leaving her phone in the store.

Not because she couldn’t find it after a protracted search. But because she didn’t even think to look for it. And not just a quick bite across the street. No, she and a friend rent a car and go driving off into the countryside to another town.

Without her phone. Knowing a life changing call was due any minute.

Nonsense.

Water, Food, Shelter, and Cell Service

The character could easily have remembered to grab her phone, gotten the car, realized the phone was low battery, and then cursed the car’s lack of a USB port. They could have driven into a tunnel when the call came. She could have muted it during lunch (which, by the way, is correct behavior) only to discover Google flagged the call as “Scam Likely”.

There are a number of ways to not only address the issue of the phone, but to use it to increase tension. Those are three ideas that I thought of in the time it took to type them.

The author instead chose the completely unrealistic option of having the character completely forget the phone’s existence. And, to be fair, that can happen when writing a book.

So I blame the beta readers. They let her down.

(See, folks, we really do rely on you to make us look good.