I’m about 10,000 words through the third draft of Libriomancer. The scene I wrote yesterday introduces one of Isaac’s colleagues, a fellow magic-wielding librarian. I ended up basing the character on a librarian friend of mine (with permission), one who routinely used to kick my butt at Trivial Pursuit back in grad. school.
I’ve got another character who will be based on the winner of a fundraising auction from earlier this year. That’s two Tuckerizations in one book. (Tuckerization being the practice of inserting real-life people into the book as minor characters.)
I’m also writing a protagonist who’s a SF/F fan, meaning there will be inside jokes aplenty. He quotes Star Wars at one point. He has a toy TARDIS hanging from his rear-view mirror. He makes quips that some readers might not get…
…and that’s where I run into a dilemma. Because with everything I’m doing here, it would be too easy for the book to become self-indulgent. Especially when you add in the fact that I’m bringing Smudge back for this series.
So I’m falling back on the same rule I use when writing humor:
The story comes first.
Years ago, I was reading one of Robert Asprin’s MYTH books, and there was a scene where our hero meets a green-scaled taxi driver. The driver proceeds to talk about this convention where he won the chance to be written into some author’s next book…
Bam. Just like that, I was flung out of the story. I loved the early MYTH books, and I thought it was pretty cool that Asprin had done that, but I was thinking about Robert Asprin instead of the story. It felt like he had paused the story to squeeze in this scene.
With Libriomancer, I could easily work in all sorts of details and backstory about my friend, but she’s not a primary character. It might be fun to work in that puma joke from ‘98, but it wouldn’t add to the story.
On the other hand, it would be in character for Isaac, who prides himself on his brains, to mutter something about a Trivial Pursuit rematch when he sees her. It’s not that such things can’t work; they just have to fit the story.
The same holds true for Smudge, and for the inside SF/F jokes. My agent has already suggested I trim the Smudge scenes in chapter one, because while they might be appealing to me and to my goblin fans, they slow down this story. Likewise for Isaac’s Star Wars quotes, or references to other SF/F books and films.
In the end, I believe Tuckerizations, inside jokes, and humor in general should all work the same way:
- It should fit the story.
- It should add to the enjoyment of the story for readers who get it.
- It should not detract from the story for readers who don’t get it.
Easier said than done, especially with the rather meta premise of Libriomancer. It’s a book about SF/F books and magic, and it would be so easy to pack it full of geek references and insider humor … but I don’t want to restrict my readership like that. So in general, if I think something will bump a reader out of the book, it’s getting cut.
What do you think? Any examples of effective or ineffective Tuckerizations or inside jokes? For the writers, what has your experience been with writing (or avoiding) them?
Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.
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(August 2013)
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Comments
That makes sense, because it sounds like a story where the inside jokes would actually *fit* with the story. It's set at a SF/F con, right? In which case a flood of inside jokes would be a part of the setting. And filtering things through an outsider is a time-honored way of letting the reader find out what's going on.
The people who found and got that one loved it. But lots of people never saw it, and it didn't kick them out of the story in any way.
I mean, I suspect he'd still make them on occasion, but either would refrain from offering an explanation (because it's not necessary at that moment in time) or the other character, like whichever readers don't get the references, will just let it go.
I've always felt like, as long as there's a character that represents my line of thought as I'm reading, I don't get drawn out of the story-- I've found this method to be used very successfully when it's Exposition Time(tm), especially if I'm afraid I missed some information when a character says something I don't follow.
I also think that, as long as the quips and quotes and references are presented in a way that indicates that they don't really matter (throwaway lines), people are less likely to get caught up in them. I'm not entirely sure how to explain this, something like...
1) "Oh, so we're going to Mos Eisley, then?" he asked, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth, "Scum and villainy sounds like just what we need."
vs
2)"Sounds like a fun place," he replied, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth, "A wretched hive of scum and villainy? Count me in."
Just like there are clever and forced-sounding ways to insert fan-jokes into normal conversation, how they're presented in the text will not only affect the mood of the scene, but also how the character is presented (is he clever, or is he trying too hard?). Either way, the readers will probably grok that the character is a huge fan, even if they only grasp a handful of well-known quotes or references.
Some of it might be audience, too. Anthony's stuff was fun to read when I was younger, but I doubt I'd enjoy it as much these days.
Well, for a given value of "you" that = me in this instance:)
So my rule so far is that the story and the writing has to be more than a sum of it's parts. You can have all the references you want, as long as, if I don't get them, I don't *notice*. Does that make sense?
This is a cool, thinky post. Thank you.
Now I just have to make sure Libriomancer actually *works* that way when I'm finished :-)
Now I have to dredge my brain, there was something I read recently that leaped out at me, and not in a good way.
Because you're right, the story does have to come first. The banter and jokes I include in my books mean something to the characters and fit their personalities, and their relationships, but they are also transparent to the readers. They have to fit what is going on in terms of plot, etc. I do my best not to stick stuff in just because it makes me feel clever. I always end up cutting those bits out.
Same here. In my case, it's an even mix of "This doesn't actually add to the story" and "Oh crap, rereading this makes me realize I'm not as clever as I thought I was..." :-)
The last bad one I read was for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (admittedly a cesspit of writing mistakes). An otherwise solid book was so intent on showing off the author's SFnal knowledge that literally over forty characters were named for SF greats from Asimov to Lem. In a more humorous book, it might have worked, but in a serious action-oriented novel, it kept disrupting the story.
OTOH, I loved the entire metafictional notion of George Alec Effinger's Zork Chronicles, in which a member of the Supernatural and Fantastic Wayfarers Association tries to win a (Joseph) Campbell Award. That's a book that basically is all about the in-joke, and thus can't be disrupted.
Like you say, I could see the flooding of SF tributes working in a different kind of book, but not one that's trying to be serious. It completely snaps suspension of disbelief to accept that all of these characters just happen to share the same names as various SF greats...
I need to pick up one of DeCandido's books one of these days.
I, on the other hand, fell into a fit of laughter and proclaiming that was the funniest damn thing I'd ever read. :p
I think you can also get away with a bit more of this in books that are more humorous or satirical...
In a less nerdy context, I also felt like Jasper Fforde fell prey to this problem.
I also think there's a connection here with how people work nerdy references/injokes into conversations in real life. If references are too aware of themselves, are used too overtly as a "hey, look at this awesome club we all belong to, gang!" signifier, and/or are otherwise poorly integrated into the conversation, they become less funny and more awkward.
Robinson's work always felt to be much more firmly anchored at the center of fandom. The ones I read worked for me, and I enjoyed them, but I don't know how many of his books would be able to reach a broader audience. (Which, depending on who you're writing for and what your goals are for the book, might or might not be a problem.)
re: your second rule
The one that gave me the full on flung-out-of-the-story vertigo feeling was one that I did get, and wished I hadn't. In the otherwise seriously fabulous Boneshaker by Cherie Priest there's a dirigible named after an LJ handle. I know I'm part of some utterly tiny percent of readers who'll catch the reference, but man was it jarring. I kept hoping for an in-story explanation, some throwaway line about why in this world it had that name, and it never came, so I never managed to repair my mental continuity; it just yelled out 'LiveJournal! Your world! The Internet!' every time it sailed into the story.
Edited at 2011-08-11 03:49 pm (UTC)
That's an interesting example. People who aren't aware of that LJ handle should be fine, since they won't realize there's an inside joke there. But if you do ... it's kind of like when I read about the heroic death of Captain Frank Wu in a Julie Czerneda book. Fun, but also a little jarring since I know that guy... I don't know if there's any way to do that and not have it be at least slightly jarring, though. It's the dissonance of real world and ficitonal world colliding.
And now I have typed Dirk Pitt® so much that the words are losing all meaning...
So, no author inside jokes for me, but in-character jokes are always fine. Just gotta keep the line separate.
I will name characters after people I know, but not use any other characteristics of those people. That's my line, but I don't expect anyone else to draw it in the same place. :)
Seconded!
But yes, they're also good about not losing sight of the story for a gag or joke.
Not helpful, I know, given the setting of Libriomancer. :)
In one of the K&V stories, Charlie tuckerized me for the third major character, and it was peculiar to read it. She's not like me--she's her own character--and yet there were things about her that I knew Charlie had built in because they were things he knew about me. (Also, we had like a two-hour phone call discussing the logistics of the climax/ending, because it depended on something about me that he was putting in the character.)
I think the important thing was that there were no inside jokes. Anything drawn from the real-life counterparts was incorporated into the characters as part of their personality or personal history, appropriately genre-shifted to make them sword-and-sorcery characters instead of contemporary North Americans. It was all to serve the story, not to be nod-and-a-wink with people in the know.
Edited at 2011-08-11 06:44 pm (UTC)
Tanya Huff is an author who I think uses them very effectively. Her "Keeper Chronicles" series is my favorite example, but there's a thread of it running through all her work and it's one reason why she's a favorite author of mine.
Oh, and then there's Hardison on Leverage. They've used his geekdom to throw in nods to Doctor Who, Star Trek and Star Wars ever since the show started. Things that fans would pick up on but non-fans wouldn't even notice, like using the name of Doctor Who actors for fake IDs.
I guess it's all in how obvious it is to people reading who aren't in on the joke that they're missing something? I don't know. :-\
I said above that I disliked Bimboes of the Death Sun, but that doesn't mean having an outsider protagonist is a bad technique. Like any technique, though, it can backfire, and I think it did there. I mean, she got to present information that the outsider wouldn't have known, but with such a sense of smug, "we are so much more balanced" superiority that it made everything worse.
P.