Who else likes Easter Eggs?

[cethklein]

Especially with caramel in them. Mmmmmmmmmmm

But seriously, I've developed a fondness for hiding "Easter Eggs" in my writing, like those you see in DVDs. Does anyone else do this?

Example, in Judgment's Hand there is a Haldaran capital ship known as the I.H.C Visaya. The captain's name is Ronda Cebu. For those who don't know, the Visayas are a region in the Philippine island chain, and Cebu is the central province of the region. Ronda is a municipality there.

So does anyone else do this in their writing?

[Toothpaste]

Almost all my names and place names have meanings. I suppose Captain Magnanimous is pretty self explanatory. But I do so enjoy my seaside town of Port Cullis. In my latest, all the captains of my pirate fleet are named after different Chinese dynasties.

[cethklein]

I like the Port Cullis thing. That is more of a pun, which is something I would like to do more of. Obviously in my current series I can't go overboard as it is a fairly serious series, but I would like to inject a few puns here and there for good measure.

My worry with puns is that I may unwittingly use something that has already been done. I don't want readers to think that I just sat down with a Piers Anthony book and started copy/pasting puns into my story.

[James D. Macdonald]

I put inside jokes in my stories all the darned time. It keeps me amused, anyway.

[PeeDee]

I do it too. Hell, I just this day named the local town drunk "Jack Kirby," and muttered about his weird ideas and crazy out-there stories. If no one gets 'em, it doesn't hurt the story any, and I have fun.

[TrickyFiction]

Yep. :) I usually write secret little homages to whatever I'm currently obsessing over.
It makes me giggle when I go back through the story and find them.

[Shadow_Ferret]

I use names of people and places from my childhood. I popped both my kids' names into the book just for grins.

[Stijn Hommes]

I was more of an easter egger when I wrote fanfic, but in my original work, I have yet to find a suitable place to fit anything like that in....

[AndreaGS]

I like making passing reference to important people or historical events that later come up in the story in a major way. Not really an easter egg, I guess, but also only something the most diligent readers would notice.

I do have one character named Aeluras, drawn from the word allure, and with good reason given her nature!

[Queen of Swords]

I don't know if this is an Easter egg, but in a fantasy novel I wrote, people believe that a dragon-god called Phreos Muet sacrificed herself to give them "the Gift of Fire". Phreos Muet is an anagram of Prometheus.

I don't think anyone will notice that, though. :)

[Stormhawk]

Easter eggs are fun to do, as are references, in-jokes and foreshadowing. ^_^

[Zoombie]

I often name incosiquential things after other things, sometimes without even noticing it. It took three readthroughs of an old story to realize the villian had the same name as my band teacher.

A more recent one would be an off hand reference to a book written by Saul Goldman, who is a propaganda minister in the fictional nazi-esque "Freedom" party. Only a Harry Turtledove nut would sniff that one out.

So, yeah, Easter Eggs are fun. Another author that uses them a lot would be Jasper Fforde, who has some of the BEST Easter Eggs, including references to books within books, special features bundled with the books, webpages built around the books, and so on.

[DeadlyAccurate]

I named an SUV in my book a Reiziger. That's about the closest I've come to an easter egg.

[Shady Lane]

Right now, my MC's dad is drinking a shot of Jack Daniel's. Because he needed to be drinking and that's what my dad always drinks. :)

[Akuma]

I think Literature specializes in Easter Eggs.

Me? Recurring characters.

Probably unhealthy.

[KTC]

I always add little personal likes and dislikes. I'll have a character who is nutty for Salinger or Cohen. I'll use a piece of dialogue I found amusing in real life. I use street names and town names from my youth in fictitious settings. I do all sorts of things like this. I had one character who drank Orangina all the time...because I do.

[Nakhlasmoke]

Yep, for my own amusement.

[donroc]

Feel free to send me some Fabergé Easter eggs and you won't be Tsarry.

www.donaldmichaelplatt.com

[AndrewB]

I love to do it. I will take something like a licence plate and have the numbers/letters be like "PL3 2I5" which would be Paradise Lost, book 3, line 215. If you read that part, you get some secret about the character ir a foreshadowing.

[JerseyGirl1962]

But seriously, I've developed a fondness for hiding "Easter Eggs" in my writing, like those you see in DVDs. Does anyone else do this?

Yuppers. :)

In my only pub credit (a short story), the female MC's first name was Brielle, which also happens to be the name of a town down the Jersey shore. (I always LOVED that name, so, naturally, I had to throw it into my writing somewhere. :tongue)

In my current WIP, the part which takes place in 1942 Los Angeles/Hollywood, I have one character working at a fictitious movie studio called Durham Studios. (I just realized this is Easter egg-like, actually.) There actually was, and I believe, still is, a Raleigh Studios located out there. As there's a Raleigh-Durham Airport, I figured I'd have a little fun and call the studio Durham. (Get it, huh, huh? :D)

I feel like Wile E. Coyote - gads, I'm SUCH a genius - and modest, too. ;)

~Nancy

[ACEnders]

I love to do it. I will take something like a licence plate and have the numbers/letters be like "PL3 2I5" which would be Paradise Lost, book 3, line 215. If you read that part, you get some secret about the character ir a foreshadowing.

oooooh, I like it!

Here's how green I am - I've never heard of an easter egg!

[cethklein]

Oh you're missing out ACEnders. The Cadbury ones are the best :)

[HeronW]

I've a char named Cienna who gets toasted by a laser, ergo; burnt sienna, a nice brown color no artist can live without. Am I evil?

[Dustry Joe]

Constantly. Though since most of mine are names and words that have meaning only to speakers of Spanish, I guess you'd call them "Huevitos Pascuales" or something.

[LeeFlower]

haha. I do this all the time--same reason as UJ (because it's amusing). In the world I write a lot of my short stories in, I've got a Cecil Forester Scott, captain of the blockade runner Lady Barbara. His cabin boy's name is Louis Troughton (see that's funny because... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Forester)). The first person narrator of one of the stories, a medic named Hal Carraway, is not actually the mc.

Really, though, the lord and master of easter eggs is probably J. Michael Strazinsky(sp?). Half the characters in B5 have some kind of in-joke to their names (reference Alfred Bester, telepathic cop, named after the science fiction author who won the first ever Hugo award for best novel (The Demolished Man, which is about (drumroll) a telepathic cop).

[David I]

I suspect that most of us do this. One reference I made was so egregious and outre that I wrote to an author to ask his permission first (permission granted).

This is a lot of fun. On the other hand, realistically, a lot of this is also what the Turkey City Lexicon defines as "Card Tricks in the Dark."

But, so what?

[cethklein]

I've noticed that George Lucas slipped in a few easter eggs in Star Wars too, long before the practice became common.

(Boba Fett, for example. Boba Fett is German for "Body Fat".)

[Stormhawk]

How about Darth Vader being "Dark Father"?

[Dustry Joe]

I always figure it was Earth Wader, but somebody missed the typos.

[HourglassMemory]

I've only put one in my story, for now.
It's a number. It's my birth date. But put there in a way you can't tell it's a date.

[Hummingbird]

I love to sit down and plan out easter eggs I'd like to slip into my stories. Not all fit, but I enjoy playing with the ideas anyway. :)

[LeeFlower]

This is a lot of fun. On the other hand, realistically, a lot of this is also what the Turkey City Lexicon defines as "Card Tricks in the Dark."

But, so what?


I think of it more as "card tricks in the wings." Card tricks in the dark are elaborate stunts the author's put a lot of effort into setting up--a story whose whole plot culminates in a joke no one will get. They leave the reader going "Wtf?"

With easter eggs, a few people can see them--just as people sitting in certain seats at a theater can usually see into the wings. If someone's performing a card trick in one of the wings while the normal show continues uninterrupted, the people who can't see the card trick don't feel like they're missing anything--the people who can see it are just getting a little something extra.

The important thing, of course, is making sure that what's going on in the wings isn't distracting people from the actual show, or drawing so much attention to itself that people who can't see the wings start to wonder what they're missing.

For instance, Strazinsky's "Alfred Bester" joke was a good card trick in the wings because if you weren't familiar with Bester-the-author, you wouldn't notice the joke at all or miss anything important to the show. If, on the other hand, another character on the show had snickered every time Bester said his name, you'd be left wondering what was so funny. It would have been a card trick in the dark if there was no mention on the show of Bester's telepathic abilities until the very end, where BAM! big plot-resolving dramatic reveal that leaves all the other characters shaking their heads and saying "Oh, Alfred Bester-- suddenly it all makes sense." That would have been lame. But as an incidental side-joke, it was awesome.

[Linda Adams]

I've noticed that George Lucas slipped in a few easter eggs in Star Wars too, long before the practice became common.

(Boba Fett, for example. Boba Fett is German for "Body Fat".)

I've seen it done as early as the 1960's. On the TV show Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, a hotel was named Dandelo, which was the name of a cat in one of the actor's films from 1958. Of course, you had to know the actor's career to catch it, but if you didn't no big deal.

Most of the ones I did in my last project were unique to me and my co-writer; if you knew us, you'd have a good laugh. One of the character names was my great-great-great grandfather, and another was his great-great-great grandmother. I might sneak some in on the current WIP, but I'll have to see where they fit.

[Devil Ledbetter]

I think of it more as "card tricks in the wings."I won't requote your entire explanation, Lee, but I thought it was eloquent.

Here's one in mine I'm sure nobody would ever notice: My MC is a big fan of The Who, even going so far as to joke that his name is Pete Townsend and paint a large replica of the cover of the Quadrophenia album. At one point, his twin sister informs another character that the MC was born "two minutes, forty-one seconds" ahead of her.

This is the length of the Quadrophenia track I Am One.

It's ridiculously obscure, yet doesn't detract or distract from the story.

[cethklein]

It's obscure but that's what makes it interesting. Had she just said "yeah, he's a pinball wizard" that would have been too obvious and thus no fun :)

[Devil Ledbetter]

It's obscure but that's what makes it interesting. Had she just said "yeah, he's a pinball wizard" that would have been too obvious and thus no fun :)Well, if Tommy had been his favorite Who album, that would be a great line. :D

[Dustry Joe]

Of if his father's name was Captain Walker. Or his uncle was named Ernie.

[triceretops]

I've honored AW by including user names in all of my books, even the ones that went to print. It serves as a reminder of where I came from when I had no ink splashed anywhere. A few favorites who are pivotal characters man/or beast.

Snarzler

Galoot

Melina

Carybell

Poppy Hullings

Tri

[AnneMarble]

Really, though, the lord and master of easter eggs is probably J. Michael Strazinsky(sp?). Half the characters in B5 have some kind of in-joke to their names (reference Alfred Bester, telepathic cop, named after the science fiction author who won the first ever Hugo award for best novel (The Demolished Man, which is about (drumroll) a telepathic cop).

I :heart:ed him for naming the character Alfred Bester.

When I started writing a fantasy novel with lots of ghosts, I got some character names from writers and reviewers of ghost fiction. It was a lot of fun thumbing through copies of All Hallows (the journal of the Ghost Story Society) to get potential character names. However, after all that, someone read the chapter and noticed that while in my previous novel set in the same land, the names tend to sound more unusual, with more "barbaric" names (Wulf, Gorok, etc.), in this one, the names had more of a British Isles feel (Blackwood, Hodgson, Machen, Dalby, etc.). :D Whoopsie. But I decided that was OK because this story was set in a different kingdom. Still, it's something to keep in mind. Easter Eggs are great, but make sure the names sound appropriate for the sending, and make they don't get in the way of readers who don't get the joke.