Writer Sanctum
Writer's Haven => Quill and Feather Pub [Public] => Topic started by: okey dokey on September 20, 2018, 09:13:16 AM
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Authors have used brand names for a long time to give a sense of reality to their stories.
James Bond had his favorite brand of cigarettes, pistol he carried, etc.
Ditto John O'Hara, and a lot of today's top sellers.
But there's another side to the brand name coin.
Erle Stanley Gardner (Perry Mason) shunned brand names because he felt they would become outdated. He wanted his stories to always feel like they' happening today, even if they were written years ago.
So instead of having a character driving the latest mode Studebaker (what's a Studebaker), he had the character driving a new speedy red sports car.
So how long will Pizza Hut be around?
Does your character drop in to Blockbuster to rent a VHS video tape?
Or hurry to the airport to make the Pan Am or TWA flight to Japan?
Perhaps his favorite mode of travel is the Penn Central train.
Brand names can become tricky. Nothing lasts forever.
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The flip side is that there are probably going to be a number of other details that are going to date a story anyway.
So instead of having a character driving the latest mode Studebaker (what's a Studebaker), he had the character driving a new speedy red sports car.
Five or ten years from now, it may not matter if the car was described as a Studebaker or a speedy red sports car. The fact the character is driving it himself may date it as self-driving cars become (maybe) more popular and commonplace.
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Very good, Dan.
A character using the latest electric typewriter could date a book.
Or the hero uses a plastic shirt pocket shield because the new ball point pens are always leaking.
By the way, why do we still use the old "dial" the phone number.
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By the way, why do we still use the old "dial" the phone number.
Because "I Siri'd an old friend up last night" gives a bad impression.
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Books are of their time and get dated regardless of what we do. Technological and political change, changing social attitudes and yes, brandnames, will eventually catch up with our works. And that's okay. Jane Austen's novels are full of dated references to the fashions and popular culture of her day and we still read them 200 years on. Indeed, there are some late 18th/early 19th century authors who are only remembered, because Austen's characters discuss their books. Or in the case of August von Kotzebue, he is mainly remembered because he became the victim of a political murder and because Jane Austen's characters perform one of his plays.
Meanwhile, authors desperate not to date their works often turn out stories set in a curiously bland world, where everybody only listens to classic rock in the radio, all the men wear jeans and plain t-shirts, nobody ever mentions the brand of their car and everybody's favourite movie is Casablanca. This was a real problem with contemporary romances for a while, probably because writers were told not to use any specifics for fear of dating the books. Usually, something dated them anyway, e.g. the heroine desperately looking for a phone booth, a news headline about Cold War peace talks or the heroine wearing clothes that no twenty-five year old ever would have worn either now or whenever the book was written and that even her grandmother would reject as too frumpy.
So if you want to include brand names or pop culture references, knock yourself out. Though you should make sure that the story is still understandable to someone who has never heard of the brand in question. It also helps to remember that if you're writing for a global audience, a brand may mean very different things to different people. Coca Cola can be the symbol of the American dream or of American imperialism, depending on who you ask. What is a luxury brand in one country may not be so in another. For example, I got a good laugh out of the fact that Christian Grey tribes to bribe Anastasia with an Audi in Fifty Shades of Grey, because I'm German and Audi ranks below Mercedes, BMW or Porsche here. So basically, to me that scene said, "Christian Grey, who's supposedly richer than God, can't be bothered to buy a Porsche or a Ferrari or even a Mercedes for the woman he wants to seduce, but instead tries to impress her with the sort of car her parents are probably driving."
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Good points, Cora.
Suppose you have the main character chew Red Neck tobacco because that says something about who he is.
Your novel is bought for a major movie.
The producer sells product display rights to Sweet Magnolia cigars.
Or rights to Crystal Spring water.
Now your character is going around smoking a mild, socially acceptable cigar or is instead constantly swigging Crystal Spring water.
Has your character changed?
If the answer is no, then you wasted creative time by thinking up a product and a speciic brand name to help identify your character.
Or have you?
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If Hollywood buys your books, they'll probably end up changing more about the character than just the brands he/she prefers so at that point the character is already changed so you still might as well write your novel the way you want. ;)
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Dan, your comments remind me of what happened to Grand Master mystery writer Lawrence Block.
He has written about 50 novels under his name and 11 pen names.
One of his most popular characters is the burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr.
When Hollywood produced the movie Burglar, Bernie was changed into a black woman portrayed by Whoopie Goldberg.
Author Erle Stanley Gardner got fed up with the way Hollywood kept messing up his character Perry Mason.
So he formed his own production company for the popular Perry Mason TV series.
You can't get more control than that.
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I'd say it's fine to drop brand names, but don't overdo it. I've read books were every little thing was specified to a brand name (shoes, watches, water, take out, car, coat, everything). Practically entire sentences and even paragraphs were filled with proper names to the point I couldn't find the actual action in it. If I have to wade through your "relevance" to get to the plot, you've lost a reader.
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And sometimes, using a brand name that dates the period you're writing about is exactly what you want. What period comes to mind when I say Lucky Strikes, Space Food Sticks, or Tang?
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The "glitz" novels of the late 1980s (?-early 1990s?) were littered with upscale brand names. Also, personalities I wasn't interested in reading about.
Phone booths were a thing. Hats were a thing. I'm still trying to track down when the average American woman stopped wearing a hat when she went grocery shopping (and I'm discounting the Deep South, where wearing full makeup at 10 p.m. just to buy beef jerky at 7Eleven may be common even today).
The reason I bought an iPhone was to start using cell phones beyond merely making calls, the way so many younger people do. Maybe I should buy a Life Alert necklace and add that to one of my novels. grint
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I'm discounting the Deep South, where wearing full makeup at 10 p.m. just to buy beef jerky at 7Eleven may be common even today).
Those days are gone, I'm afraid. I think the hat wearing went out in the sixties, even here. Except for church. Head covering was a thing until maybe the 90s? I'd have to ask my sister, who was still attending church in those days, but I've seen older women as I was driving by, and they had their modest hats.
I have a family picture somewhere (ex and the kids with me) where I'm wearing a hat, I think that was taken in 1984. Somewhere along there. We moved back to NC in 1983. But that was a fairly brief resurgence of hat wearing, due to Princess Di being really popular.
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When I first started I was worried about using brands that would date my work as well. Then I realized you would also have to start watching what your characters say, the expressions they use. I did a series that was based around prohibition in the United States in the 20s and 30s and they had their own way of saying things that dated them. Giggle water =liquor. Handcuffs = engagement ring. Noodle juice = tea. Ossified = drunk. And then there's how they swore (no I won't quote anything here grint). The 80s had their own words like bad, superbad, eat my shorts, gnarly etc., etc. Search on any decade/slang and you find its own expressions. I figured I might as well write my way and let the Frito-Lay chips fall where they may. :icon_rofl:
I figure if I'm alive in 100 years I'll just say "Computer...replace all references to Tim Horton's coffee shop with xyz" and I'm up to date again :icon_biggrin: