Comments on: The Details Matter

By: booksquare

booksquare — Tue, 10 Aug 2004 20:54:50 +0000

True, you don’t have to give me a name, but give me more than premium. In this book, however, there were brand names on top of brand names. I can now identify types of shoes I never knew existed. There’s craft and there’s shorthand. In this scene, shorthand would have worked just fine. In another? Well, I’m pretty sure I can evoke Guinness without saying Guinness.

As for crushing cans against the forehead? Well, yeah, you don’t want anyone to think your character is letting perfectly good beer go to waste…

By: David Thayer

David Thayer — Tue, 10 Aug 2004 15:44:26 +0000

The exception to this rule is Budweiser. Before a character crushes the can against his forehead it may be important to signal the reader that it’s only a Bud.

By: steve

steve — Mon, 09 Aug 2004 23:35:22 +0000

I agree that “premium” is too vague, but I don’t think the only solution is naming a specific brand. Beer can be described in such a way as to make a clear point — where it’s imported from, how much it costs compared to other beers, etc. — without actually labeling it. Frederick Busch did this well in ‘Girls,’ with a scene that highlights class difference by using a sixpack of beer without ever naming a brand.

Which raises the whole problem of branding in fiction, and at what point the problem of not enough detail becomes the problem of too much and veers toward distraction. Sometimes using a particular product seems an authorial cop-out, like relying on mention of a pop song in a scene to set a mood the author perhaps could have conjured through craft. (Oh, look, I’ve somehow swerved back to your topic!)