| Author | Message | ||
     Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
Tuckerization is the custom of using real people in stories, usually after changing their names slightly (generally in an absurd manner). This isn't the same as using real-life historical figures in historical fiction, or famous living world figures in contemporary fiction (as J.G. Ballard did). Tuckerization is on a smaller scale and is more concerned with in-jokes (naming a character after one of your friends rather than inventing a name from scratch). I have been Tuckerizing for most of my writing career, though I didn't realise that was the official name for what I was doing! I have started to compile a list of real people I have Tuckerized. I'm adding to this list all the time, though it's still very far from being complete: http://mantoucan.blogspot.com/2010/07/tuckerization.html My most recent addition is: Gary Z. McFry I needed a new character for a recent story. In the story this character defines everything he perceives in urban horror terms: so the most innocent activities are seen as bleak or horrific. Crack addicts are forever hunching in sodium shadows. That sort of thing. Anyway... Do you Tuckerize? Have you Tuckerized? Hve you ever done it and regretted it? Has it ever been misinterpreted? Do you believe that Tuckerization and other in-jokes detract from the believability of a piece of fiction? Your views will be most welcome. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
My most recent addition is: Gary Z. McFry I needed a new character for a recent story. In the story this character defines everything he perceives in urban horror terms: so the most innocent activities are seen as bleak or horrific. Crack addicts are forever hunching in sodium shadows. That sort of thing. Genius. Utter genius.  | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
What's the story, Rhys? And where can it be found. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.108.128 |
Hahahahaha. | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
It's not written yet, Gary. Don't even have a title for it yet. It'll be a sort of Don Quixote tale -- i.e. the protagonist who redefines the world around him according to a predetermined set of inner values. I've come to the conclusion that this is the only plot I actually do. Everything I've ever written seems to be a variation of Don Quixote...! | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.108.128 |
>>>the protagonist who redefines the world around him according to a predetermined set of inner values Isn't that just the human condition, Mr Heidegger? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.108.128 |
Though I'll concede that some people are more willing than others to adjust their 'mental maps' in responce to experiential invalidation, Mr Skynner. | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
Sorry, Gary, you're right of course. I meant to say a deluded set of inner values, though we are all deluded to a greater or lesser degree. But most of us try make some adjustments to our inner values in reponse to what seems 'normal' around us (purely for practical purposes), whereas Don Quixote (and Gary Z. McFry) make no adjustments at all -- they persist in seeing what they want to see no matter how great the external pressure to adjust. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.108.128 |
Indeed. The very definition of a mental health issue. ;) | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.108.128 |
Basil Fawlty is a great example here: the way he perceives everything according to his neurotic preoccupations and responds in the same way (with rage) each time he gets frustrated. Arthur Koestler has claimed that the heart of comedy is rigidity, the way inflexible behaviour meets any situation. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.108.128 |
Oh, and Zed: he's calling us mad. Let's kill him!  | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.108.128 |
Tilting at windmills, there. Sorry. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
"Anyway... Do you Tuckerize? Have you Tuckerized?" No. "Hve you ever done it and regretted it? Has it ever been misinterpreted? Do you believe that Tuckerization and other in-jokes detract from the believability of a piece of fiction?" Believability - well, I don't know. Lovecraft's in-jokes about his friends never undermined his tales for me. And there's a great joke inThe Moving Toyshop, referring to the book itself and its publisher - for a moment we're in the world of the Goon Show, it seems, several years before that programme existed - but I didn't feel it detracted from the suspense. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Ah! I'm in your list! Thanks, Rhys! I ought to admit that characters in my tales have been drawn to some extent from life, but only aspects of the real people - the story tends to transform them. Probably the closest I came to putting real folk bodily into a tale was "Napier Court". | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
Do you believe that Tuckerization and other in-jokes detract from the believability of a piece of fiction? It can be pretty self-indulgent but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I suppose like anything it's a fine line. If you're in on the joke it's loads of fun to read. However, if there's obviously some in-joke you're not privy to, you can easily feel excluded. I find it hard not to Tuckerise to some extent (writing what one knows and all) but I generally have to make the person unrecognisable for them to cooperate with the story. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
"However, if there's obviously some in-joke you're not privy to, you can easily feel excluded." That's something I try to avoid in my stuff. If there's an in-joke, I don't want any reader who doesn't get it to feel left out, and so I do my best to make sure it works as an integral part of the narrative - then it's a bonus for those who spot it. There are quite a few scattered through my output. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.108.128 |
Yes, in my forthcoming novel 'Canted Steps, I put my partner Michelle in walking our dog on the beach, but she prompts a relevant issue in the mind of the book's two central characters. | ||
| Skip (Wolfnoma) Username: Wolfnoma Registered: 07-2010 Posted From: 216.54.20.98 |
I know of several American authors that "Tuckerize" and I always found that, as a reader, it actually helps to connect me to the story. Especially if I have heard of the characters or know them personally. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
Harper Lee tuckerized her childhood next door neighbour into Charles Baker Harris aka Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird. Her childhood next door neighbour was one Truman Capote... | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
I've found that once you start to Tuckerize it's difficult to stop -- at least that's true for me! > Arthur Koestler has claimed that the heart of comedy is rigidity, the way inflexible behaviour meets any situation. That's an interesting point, Gary. Certainly the comedy of Don Quixote comes precisely from that source -- and yet there's an extra depth there too, in the sense that although Don Quixote is deluded and inflexible, it's only his perceptions that are awry, not his essentially noble heart. It might be said that he fritters his fine qualities on chimeras, but at least he does have those fine qualities... > If there's an in-joke, I don't want any reader who doesn't get it to feel left out, and so I do my best to make sure it works as an integral part of the narrative - then it's a bonus for those who spot it. That's exactly it, Ramsey. The idea of the bonus. It's good to know that some writers are still willing to offer a bonus to readers -- for some bizarre reason the bonus is often derided by modern critics, who if they spot it often tend to focus on it to the exclusion of all else. They will, for instance, condemn Cabrera Infante for his puns as if his puns are the point of his work, or as if they are the main meal, whereas they are only ever there as a bonus, as a side-dish, like the pickles. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
I try to put other bonuses in where I can, Rhys - The Grin of the Dark has some, for instance, and the Just Behind You book - even Inconsequential Tales has, though lord knows it doesn't offer much else. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
I'm on that list - how splendid! I have indeed 'Tuckerized', most obviously in my collection Wicked Delights, which features Messrs Fry & McMahon in the first story and a number of personal acquaintances who were delighted to know they were finally 'in one' in the final story in the book, 'Some Must Suffer'. These weren't done so much as in-jokes - no-one is meant to 'get' it other than the person concerned | ||
| Skunsworth (Skunsworth) Username: Skunsworth Registered: 05-2009 Posted From: 92.16.46.5 |
Apart from my obvious two in Traffic Stream - although I'll hasten to add here that neither character was based on the real people, I just used the names - I Tuckerise quite a bit. It's mainly because I'm crap at devising character names!! My best mate Steve appears (and is eaten by a shark) in The Derwentwater Shark, all three main characters in the story Scale Hall (in Where the Heart Is) are named for me and Wendy and our son Ben (does it count as Tuckerisation if it's you, incidentally?) and I kill my friend Andrew'a boss on the story Last Option (well, technically, I kill two of his ex bosses- he was having a terrible time at work as I was writing the story, so I merged his two boss' name into one character which was then eaten and crapped out by the main monster - which made my mate laugh, cheered him up and quite made my day). Curiously, quite a few of my friends have asked to be killed in my stories now they know I'm prepared to do it... S | ||
| Ian Alexander Martin (Iam) Username: Iam Registered: 10-2009 Posted From: 64.180.64.74 |
The best ones certainly are when they add some humour to the story without anyone needing to know who the character is based upon. If one happens to recognise the name, then it probably adds to the joke, but it's still a good bit of wit without that knowledge. That's the ideal, certainly. If the editor recognises the characters, then they get to put little comment balloons in the margins to that effect, as I did with JLP's "At Midnight...", although I initially guessed wrong and thought the slobbering, incomprehensible beast outside the asylum was Mr. Zed... turned out an even more accurate portrayal was inside the building, complete with fascination for some of the weirdest horror films imaginable. [insert Ridley Scott joke here] | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
I once Tuckerised Tucker Jenkins out of Grange Hill and Tucker's Luck. He was crap. | ||
| Ian Alexander Martin (Iam) Username: Iam Registered: 10-2009 Posted From: 64.180.64.74 |
Me, I'm just plum tuckered out. | ||
| Thomasb (Thomasb) Username: Thomasb Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 69.236.188.73 |
I have a friend of mine who I portrayed (together with myself) in my very first short story, published 20 years ago ("Fast Friends"), changing his name from John to Jack . . . . . . and then I killed him . . . I recently cast him in a very minor role in my novel "Dragon's Ark," renaming him "Johnny" . . . . . . and then, of course, I killed him . . . . In case you're wondering how he took all this, he--John-Ivan Palmer--briefly used my name for a law firm in his novel "Motels of Burning Madness." Now THAT'S an insult! |