Exchange of Realities

In the games I play, and sometimes in the stories I read, I often see references to things: pop culture, prior events, earlier portions of the same piece. It’s clear that the reference is a ubiquitous tool in storytelling—so what does it do, and how do we use it without breaking suspension of disbelief? (Note: the below riff assumes a serious story/game. Humor has a bit more leeway.)

The short version is that the reference is a way to get across a message or create a mood by calling up a shared image and its existing associations. Essentially, it’s a sort of narrative shorthand. The good news is that it can say in a few seconds something that might otherwise take a paragraph (for instance, there are very few people who don’t get a full image from “Looks like we’re not in Kansas/in-world equivalent anymore”); the bad news is that if it’s too obviously from a universe that doesn’t fit with the one you’re working in, it can be jarring, and throw people out of their suspension of disbelief. Moreover, if someone doesn’t get the reference, it might just frustrate them. I’ve seen a lot of both sides of this, particularly in a sociology class I had a few years ago; the professor was explaining the current concept with a string of Matrix references, which worked for everyone…. except for me. (I have since fixed that little hole in my cultural education, but at the time it was blasted frustrating.)

So what determines whether you’re going too far with a reference?

One factor is how all-consuming it is. Most people familiar with gaming have heard one of the inevitable rants about new players going immediately for clones of existing characters. While nobody will deny it’s good shorthand, it’s often seen as getting rather old very quickly, particularly when the world is expected to behave like the inspiring character’s original environment and/or the referentiality extends to doing or saying things that are nothing short of anachronism. This is particularly dangerous when the reference is all of the characterization; it can come across as a lack of effort, an overall disinterest in engaging with the world itself, or a likely source of conflict as the player insists on sticking to the template regardless of circumstances. The big question is: If this character were not a reference to an existing character, would he be able to stand on his own? Are there situations in which he would respond to a situation with a certain behavior, but the main reason why is “Because he’s [Source]”? If you’re answering no to the first question, and yes to the second, there might be a problem.

Another is how many people know it, particularly if the reference is being played for humor. When you’ve got a reference that is clearly there for being the sake of a reference—for instance, someone replicating word for word a line or scene from a movie, or someone else making a joke about something that happened in school the other day that most of the characters were there for. References-for-humor are the worst time for someone not to get what’s being referenced; they confuse the uninitiated and create a feeling of out-group, and that’s really not good for dynamics in a game, nor wanting to keep reading a writer’s work in a story.

It gets even worse when the reference is extremely obvious, as that both sounds like a plea for attention and defeats the purpose of referencing. A really nifty reference is something you find, not something that finds you; this, for instance, is the difference between introducing a clear clone-character and one who just happens to show one or two of the distinctive traits of their source.

One last thing to be careful of—most references will have multiple interpretations. Try to make sure your references specifically cue one interpretation and not another.

Really negative in this one, I know. I’ll be putting up a riff on references done right in the near future, though. This is not a prohibition against referencing things, just a warning of the major hazards.