Brand names and names of restaurants?

Becky Writes said:

My main character is a smoker and a couple of times in my novel, I have referred to her preferred brand. Is this okay?

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As long as the novel is not about how she died a slow, horrible death due to lung cancer, I think you'd be fine. Denny's probably won't care, either. Everybody knows Denny's!

The general rule is if there is a little "TM" near the name it's trademarked and you put the name in caps.

It's Denny's or an all-night diner.

We went through the McDonald's drive-in window (or a fast food joint)

Kids sped past on Rollerblades (or in-line skates);

Coke (or Pepsi) is a drink; coke is a controlled substance.

We had coke at the party. (Druggies getting high.)

We had Coke at the party. (Fizzy drinks with caffeine.)

It's a box of Kleenex or a box of tissues.

X-Files had "Cancer Man" smoking "Morleys," a made-up brand. They were really some sort of herbal cigarette since the actor was not a smoker. Morleys have been used my Hollywood for decades as a "brand" turning up in series like Buffy and Mission: Impossible.

:cough-hack-aaack:

Stephen King is fond of Pall Mall's brand.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with using brand names in a novel, as long as you don't use them to make wildly slanderous statements about the product. If the brand names were removed from "American Psycho," the word count would drop by about a third. (Also true of many 70s and 80s New Yorker stories.)

From very large companies you may hear from their attorneys that you need a little registered trademark symbol, or at the least, as Gillhoughly says, Caps. Coke, Kleenex, and Xerox are big on this. It isn't because they have a problem with writers using the names (much the opposite!), but because they want to protect their trademark, and reminding people that it is a trademarked name is part of their due diligence. Should they allow 'kleenex' to be used generically, they might lose protection on the name, and any other company could use it.

This happened once, long ago, to a product called "Aspirin."

Actually, it's more complicated than that: Bayer lost the trademark to Aspirin as war reparations for WWI.

But companies do want to protect their trademarks. I can't recall seeing the actual TM sign in any novels lately, even ones chock-a-block with trademarked items. That's something for your publisher to worry about.

(Trademarks show up in all kinds of places -- Dumpster is a trademark. And the Day-Glo folks get upset if you call it their stuff "Day-Glow." And, strictly speaking, "Day-Glo" is the trademark for the pigment, not for the item that uses that pigment: there's no such thing as a Day-Glo hat -- Day-Glo doesn't make hats.)

Its fun, but not something to waste a lot of brain cells on. Tell your story; only use a word if it reveals character, supports theme, or advances plot.

(A better example of a trademark that became a generic is "cellophane.")

I can say two words about Denny's--"Smoke Signals." If you haven't seen it, rent it or buy it. The film made the "Grand Slam Breakfast" a household name.

James D. Macdonald said:

Tell your story; only use a word if it reveals character, supports theme, or advances plot.

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Wow. In a nutshell.

There is another couple of caveats to using brand names. First, it'll bring in a reader's baggage. It can give your scene a particular flavor, especially if there is common association/connotation, but if you mention your hero has a weakness for "Marlboro," Jane Reader might associate the brand with her abusive ex rather than grizzled cowboys. Bang - it just took a reader out of the story. Is it worth losing that one for the other four that'll get it? Only you know the answer to that one.

Plenty of your readers will know the corporate-guideline interior decor of Denny's. Most won't associate any further than that. A few might get queasy as they remember a bleak session in a Denny's stall after that epic Saturday-night bender.

The other caveat is that brand-name use can potentially date your story. If you use a brand that goes out of business, the story is going to feel obsolete when the reader picks it up. Say Joe Hero walks into a restaurant chain of So-and-So but they were sued into oblivion four years ago. Suddenly, your reader is yanked out of the story as they try and reconcile how that's possible.

It's a gamble.