Here’s your next sci-fi story idea: what if humans only interacted with one another electronically, never face to face? Conversations would be held via video forums. Doctors would examine you through a desktop robot. Business transactions would be performed completely online. Delivery of foodstuffs and other essentials via drone. Even reproduction could be performed through artificial, drone-delivered insemination after meeting the perfect donor on YourMate.com.

Most of you are, no doubt, thinking that we’re already there. Well, except for the drone-delivered one night stand. I expect that to show up on Amazon soon.

Are we heading in that direction? More specifically, are writers heading in that direction? I dare say most critique groups now meet online if they meet at all. We enroll in continuing education via books downloaded directly to our Kindles. Those who have agents have likely never met them, or their publishers, in person. We belong to more Facebook writer groups than we can remember. And every Thursday night we meet with our favorite mentors via Fuze.

I may be premature in sounding the alarm, but writers are in grave danger of losing their most important resource: human interaction.

We’ve heard it aplenty. Even the best plot-driven stories fall flat without great characters. And great characters are a beautiful tapestry of everyone we’ve ever met, stitched together with the author’s experience and personality (we call it “voice”).

While we are not exactly hiding in dark attics, tapping away at our Amish Zombie Romance novels, our only conversation with a cat that may or may not have died several weeks ago, we are certainly lacking the social interaction of those writers gone before us.

If not for our churches, most of us would talk to a scant few dozen people per week. And most of those are the quick greetings at the checkout line. Before the days of electronic interaction, the average human would spend hours per week engaged in stimulating conversation. Yes, with other humans.

All the social problems this type of inactivity conjures aside, as writers we are inadvertently removing colors from our palette. One lost conversation at a time. How memorable will our characters be should we only have a dozen or so models from which to choose? We can mix and match thoughts, quirks, and body parts all we want, but eventually we’ll be like a small production company with only a few actors on staff.

So here is your mission, should you choose to accept it. Get off the social media for a few hours per week. No writing, either. Step away from the keyboard. Go to a park, accept a dinner invitation, join an RC airplane club, even go to a pub. Engage.

It’s research. Start filling that palette with all those vibrant character colors. Oh, and make a few friends whose names don’t start with @.

See you at the pub.

~*~

Ron Estrada is a young adult author of the Cherry Hill Series, supernatural stories with a touch of romance. Book 1, Now I Knew You, is now available on Amazon and book 2 will be out this month. You can find out what he’s up to at RonEstradaBooks.com.