Product and place names in your prose…
I use them: liquors, hotels, and so forth. They’re all part of the plot, unlike the Starbucks cup in a recent Game of Thrones episode. The reason? They go a long way in satisfying Tom Clancy’s maxim that fiction must seem real.
Mystery and thriller writers often avoid this because they don’t want to be accused of endorsing or criticizing something real (both can lead to negative reactions from readers; the latter can lead to lawsuits). Avoiding them and using only fictional names goes a bit too far, though. The reasons given aren’t valid if the author is neutral or positive, although a positive remark might upset a reader who hates the product or place. Tough!
I say that because characters who express opinions about real products and places are human beings who have a right to express them (even I might disagree with them!). And the products and places are there in the real world, so why can’t characters refer to them like everyone else?
In The Last Humans, I never mentioned the country responsible for the apocalypse. I focused more on main character Penny Castro’s post-apocalyptic struggles. In the sequel, the reader will find out what that country was, but it has been changed by the apocalypse too. That’s part of the story.
You see, real products and places evolve too, just like characters. There are some places that are static for many years, or even throughout the characters’ lives—Yosemite Valley, in the case of Penny Castro’s adventures. But even those evolve, especially considering the characters who frequent them.
Most fiction has a mix of real and fictional. Rembrandt’s Angel contained places I’ve been too, for example, and places I made up. It even featured a real, missing painting! We satisfy Clancy’s maxim if it all seems real. Much of the sequel to that novel, which follows Sandro Botticelli, the Renaissance painter, and St. John the Divine, moves between real places but fills in the history of what the characters did there, which is fiction. It also creates new old places in the sense that I took liberties and created them within the real historical settings.
Products are a bit trickier than places. There’s no problem when I write about havenberry wine (from the planet New Haven in the 82 Eridani system)—see the new book Mind Games—that’s sci-fi, and a reader has no idea whether he would like it or not. And the ETs who make it won’t time-travel back to sue me if they don’t like what I say about it!
Contemporary products can present problems, though. I adopt the same policy as I do with real characters. If I am neutral or say something good about a product, the company that makes it won’t sue me. Why would they? And readers will just have to live with what the character who expresses her or his opinion about that real product states in the prose. In fact, the latter ties in nicely with minimalist writing because, if the product is real and well known to readers, they become participants in the story, whether they like the product or not. Minimalist writing is all about involving the reader.
With the caveats mentioned above, I can see no negatives for using real product and place names in your prose. So use them in your fiction to make it come alive. If you worry about legal repercussions, consult a lawyer!
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Comments are always welcome.
Mind Games. You know A. B. Carolan as the writer of The Secret Lab and The Secret of the Urns. Those novels are sci-fi mysteries for young adults (and adults who are young at heart). In Mind Games, A. B. tells a new story that’s set a bit farther into the future than his first two books. Della Dos Toros is a young girl with psi powers living in the Dark Domes of the planet Sanctuary. Her adopted father doesn’t let her use those powers, but she must do so to find his killer. This story about ESP and androids adds another action-packed novel to the ABC Sci-Fi Mystery series. Available in both print and ebook versions.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
