Nostalgia is subjective, yes. But there has to be some sort of a universal piece of nostalgia anyone can relate to.
For example: Middle school things (sorry about that, my homeschooled friendos)- Hating maths, trying not to sleep after lunch, trading trump cards with friends, gushing on and on about obscure things like who has the coolest backpack and who has the best lunch.
But that’s just very concentrated around school.
Is there a universal nostalgic memory everyone shares which isn’t specific to a particular group of people?
More specifically, How do you bring about that in fiction?
Sidenote: Yes I do understand that we are different people with different experiences, but that doesn’t mean we always experience different things. Maybe there is this one memory we all know of (that isn’t school or sports or parents or anything of that kind) that shoots us with nostalgia.
That’s what words like stereotype, trope, cliche are trying to cover and convey.
Either we have experienced it or we’ve seen it enough to relate to it.
For example, I never had a high school sweetheart, but it’s universal enough that I’ve seen it. My parents, my aunt and uncle’s, several cousins, my brother’s first wife. Growing into adulthood together with a lover is a real phenomenon, and I remember those who have had that very fondly.
It’s supposedly dying out, no longer making sense, so it’s becoming this generations’s “looking back at the 50’s family unit”. We laugh at it, deride it, secretly cry for it…
But as far as far simpler things go: dunking cookies in milk. Most everyone has done that, once.
There is no such thing as a universal nostalgia because everyone experiences life differently. Not even everyone has dunked cookies in milk because there are some countries where that is a luxury most can’t afford. You can’t even go back all the way to birth and say we have all experienced being born the same because some people are born in hospitals, some at home, some through c-section, etc… The one and only memory we might all remember is the actual in the womb experience of developing into a human, and that is not something anyone is even really going to remember because we were not conscious then. I’m afraid what you are looking for is impossible, because there is simply no such thing as an absolute and no two people on this earth will ever experience it the same way.
I think it would be impossible to find something that fits every single person on the planet because experiences differ across the world. You could possibly argue that collective experiences is what has us in groups- we might relate to something on an ethnic, cultural, racial, gendered, class or religious level and so in a way humans are a venn diagram of these different groups… Nostalgia also is dependant on a person’s perspective of a situation, so yeah I don’t think there’s a singular experience that will fit every single person in the world.
I’d call it Mass Nostalgia. Just because some things I have fond, nay, very fond memories of, many do not.
I was a Star Wars Kid (and still am), at four years old it was a film that blew my mind. You see, it was not just because it was one of my first Cinema Experiences… But still to this day, the one that had not been equalled, nor over took over since, which does also include my fave Authors films, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. They, the LotR films, are great, even fantastic films, in both exercised movie techniques and achievements of historic movie making (like SW back in the day). But still to this day I have that connection with SW so much more… Maybe it’s just child orientated love, but it has lasted a lifetime… And it always will. Even now, and I’m edging 50yo…
" 1. Of, relating to, or affecting the entire universe.
2. Including, relating to, or affecting all members of the class or group under consideration; applicable in all cases: synonym: general.
3. Done, produced, or shared by all members of the class or group under consideration."
1 is impossible. There’s people that preexist the invention of the sandwich. Theoretically humans who never saw a fire built by man’s hands. Of course, there’s plenty of babies that never see the light at the end of the tunnel.
But for people who read English novels, milk and cookies (or their analogue) is pretty damn accurate.
I’m never going to worry about relating to someone who physically cannot read what I wrote via a basic set of understanding. Someone like that, I’d have to reach through other means. It certainly as hell wouldn’t be writing.
Frankly, if I’m trying to relate milk and cookies to someone without the ability to grasp my book, I’d just give them the damn milk and cookies and let them form the concept for themselves. Be a better expense of my time, at that point.
I’ve watched this video maybe a good seven to ten times. Maybe it is the chords, maybe it is probably the way it is played, but I get a serious sense of nostalgia from this. And I guess people feel the same way in the comments too. I’ve never been on late-night car trips, let alone know how to drive a car and I’ve never punched or exerted violence on anybody like the girl in this song. But why is it so damn nostalgic for no specific reason?
I think a better question would be: What do you provide the readers/listeners/viewers with, that creates a sense of nostalgia, despite them living in different parts of the world?
I guess this should be my question(??)
I agree, people have a bunch of different experiences. Nostalgia to you differs from what I think it is. Rather than talk about collective experiences survey-style, I think it would be best to talk about what these ‘milk and cookies’ or I think, totems of nostalgia are. You have nostalgic music and movies and all that and they’re not made for everyone. But they market themselves as such and people still watch it.
For example, Stranger Things has an all-powerful soundtrack and an impeccable set. It isn’t wise to translate what happens on a screen to paper, but you can definitely build a scene in both. I’m not an 80s kid, nor did I wear tie-dye clothes and punch some monsters and listen to stuff on the radio, but it still gives me a sense of nostalgia of a time before I was born.
The question would be: If the screens can cleverly use tools to pawn their works off as ‘nostalgic’ when they don’t have a common element that everybody can relate to, then how can writers use the same style? Would you have to change your writing style for that?
Ah, I think I see what you mean. For me it was the soundtrack for the Zelda games. Even though I grew up with a play station console and never played the zelda games growing up, when I did play them as an adult, the music and sound design made me fell very nostalgic for some reason. It’s hard to explain.
If you are looking to recapture that in writing, it’s going to be very difficult, but I think focussing on the emotions rather than circumstances, places, things that make the characters feel them, is your best bet. We can’t all relate to sitting in a cozy chair with a warm fireplace, wrapped up in blankets, sipping hot coacoa and reading a book. But most of us can relate to feeling safe, comfortable, warm, and content in some way or another, at some point in our lives.
Ah yes, feelings.
It all boils down to them and I’m terrible at that!
But thank you! I think emotions are a good starting point.
I didn’t play Zelda growing up, but I played a lot of Need for Speed on my PSP. For some reason, a cityscape with thousands of neon lights and a narrow alleyway with cars just whizzing past through gives me a lot of nostalgia- kind of a sense of collective belonging as a person brought up in a city. It is tough to explain that precise feeling because I’m often like, “Oh yeah, uh… it makes me feel kind of happy and excited…?” and I’m at a loss for words.
Maybe I can take it to a meta-version of it or something, like being at a loss for words transcribing to nostalgia.
I would say sense of adventure that time you got a bit too far from home during the school break (alone or in company) and then probably got home too late and your parent(s) just were losing it, but you really had fun. It might not be 100% universal, but it is quite typical and a recognizable feeling.
There is also likely a specific food that tasted different and better during your childhood and you just never can get it exactly the same.
That night you actually paid attention to the stars as a teenager.
I kind of answered this in my first post, a bit. Which is why the objection threw me for a loop.
I made it VERY clear I didn’t have a highschool sweetheart. We’ve (in general) been talking the whole ONC about highschool sweethearts because Mini Moo is a highschool sweethearts story. I’m VERY nostalgic over something I’ve NEVER experienced.
The idea that I have to have a yearning for a lifestyle only if I’ve experienced it before just isn’t real.