BellaOnline Forums Career Fiction Writing Dangers of libel when real life inspires fiction

Welcome Lolo

That is a tricky example and you're right, there are so many shades of grey with this sort of thing. You can never know what someone might sue over; they might be perfectly happy to have a novel written inspired by their story or they might blow up over a minor detail that you didn't think could be important to them.

A lot of fiction is inspired by true events. Some follow the facts very closely, others use the event purely as a jumping off point for studying a certain element of humanity that is highlighted by the event. It sounds to me like what you might have found interesting was not so much the actual news event, but rather the psychological impact of the son disappearing and then having to deal with rumours on top of that.

You need to ask yourself what the core of your "study" is. What can you remove and change and still retain that aspect that attracted you and made you want to dig, fictionally, for more. Is the son or the mother your main focus? Can you change the gender and ages of either, or both, and still retain your story? Do the family have to be foreign? What changes if you make them local/long term residents to the area?

The identifying features of this news event sound like the hyena involvement and the specifics of the rumours/accusations. I would think that lions would be a safer way to go, as hyenas are just a little too specific and connected to that story in particular. There are probably many stories of lions/other wild animals killing people, and it might help you to come up with more fictionalising ideas if you researched some of those news reports and try to blend some different aspects from many stories - so that your theme is about a general occurence: ie "losing a child to wild animals", rather than a specific single event.

Secondly, have you changed the specifics of the rumours? If the rumour was that the parents killed the child, then something like that is also likely to be remembered as specific to this news report in particular, along with the hyenas. If you can, try to take the family out of the story almost completely. Make the suspect a stranger whom the son/daughter meets for the first time in the book and either falls in love with, or develops a strong friendship with, or a substitute mother/child relationship, or even the biological mother he'd never met until now, etc. This new fictional character can bare the brunt of the accusations, etc, and behavioural traits that may make a real person feel like their reputation has been defamed. You could maybe make this character the POV character to show how deeply the relationship developed and how hard the death is on this person (ie, take your mother-character and make her not related to the son-character, or, in the case of the biological mother, not the person who raised the son).

Give the family only scenes that show them as having the reactions any normal person would expect (grief, worry, anxiety), plus extra dignity, honour, and respect for even the person they believe responsible. So if, for example, in real life, a particular family member was reported screaming at the suspect when they were granted bail, change that to show that person being in complete control, although upset. Unfortunately, if you try to keep one of the family as your POV character, they could feel rather flat if you're trying to portray them in an ideal light - so they would really only work as minor characters.

Thanks for posting this example. It really helps us all learn more about our craft.

(PS, I am not a lawyer and this is not intended as legal advice.)

I love the show "Law & Order" (yeah, I do have relevance here).

They are always doing shows "inspired" by reality. They often run the disclaimer that says something like this (I'm sure i won't get it exactly right)...

"Although this show was inspired by true events, no real person was portrayed." or something along those lines. Maybe by acknowledging the inspiration was true, but the bulk of the writin is fiction - that might be enough.

While it is useful to have such a disclaimer, where it falls down is where someone adamantly sees themselves in a particular character and feels it defames them. That person never agreed to the disclaimer, so they cannot be held to it. It may very well be thrown out of court, but if that person can prove that the disclaimer is a lie because the character bears an obvious similarity to them, then, the way I understand it, the writer/s could have a problem.

Also, I think what Law & Order have done with this concept is take the "theme" of the case stripped of the personal details, and then rewritten completely fictional characters to act out the story surrounding the theme.

The commercials on "Law and Order" also say: 'Ripped from the headlines..."

So, they purposely do shows like that. Take a big news item and make it their own.

LoloK, Elle is right about changing the theme basically. Make a stranger a suspect instead of a the family. You can even change locations.

Set it in Australia and have a dingo...no wait...that has been done too.

Anyway, no matter what you od with it, you may ruffle feathers anyway with anyone who thinks that something even resembles their story no matter if they are the main character or a very insignificant character in the story.

Anyone who wants their fifteen minutes of fame will take you to court and say, "I live on Oak Street and I have brown hair so obviously it is about me."

Thanks folks. I'm sad to say that if the woman in question believes that my book is inspired by her situation she would be very unhappy. In my book she is a complete psychopath who "organises" the hyenas to eat her son thinking that if her son is gone the boyfriend (who is actually gay and only with her for the moola) will marry her. (He doesn't like kids). I'm half through (28,000 words) and it pains me physically to think I must redo this, especially since I had such a good title- Hierarchy of the Hyenas- and ran the theme through with the woman as boss thing. I'm so reluctant to change the hyenas but I also don't think I'd appreciate being sued since I am a broke writer. ???? Lion just are not that interesting, and then there are those shades of alliteration I'm so proud of.

I don't know if she had a boyfriend in real life. I do know she was divorced, mine is too. In my book she is a flutist in real life I don't want to say, but not a flutist, far from it. In real life they sued the safari company for negligence (so they are the suing-type- damn it all). The rumours say she was a whack job who organised the whole thing to get her parents' big inheritance. Too close?????

I would say so but I am not sure. I think Elle could help you better with this but I would say that if the woman in real life did not organize the hyenas to kill her child, she may take offense to it if she realizes that the story is loosely based about her.

There are all kinds of news stories about Hyenas killing children and such so I would say that you would have to change the country, maybe to India or something, change the sex of the child if you hadn't already or make it a couple of children. As Elle said, change the main character to a stranger or a father or step father. Maybe he raised hyenas for a living and if the child or children die, the mother will collect a large inheritance that was supposed to go to the children.

Once she got the money, he tried to kill her off as well so he could have the money that was now sitting in their bank account and have it alone.

I think changes like that would make it fine and there is no way that the mother could sue you. Maybe they are Americans living in India raising hyenas or the step father is Indian and knows all about raising hyenas.

That is the best advice I can give without scrapping the whole novel. I hope it is a bit helpful.

As I said, elle would be better to give you advice on this as she is definitely the more experienced one for this kind of thing.

Vance, you flatter me way too much for my own good.

Lolo - how about making a change along the lines of a male character who arranges to kill off a business partner/business rival/unwanted girlfriend/rival for the attentions of a rich woman... using hyenas after he meets a "crazy" foreign woman who lives in the middle of nowhere in Africa rehabilitating injured hyenas?

No son, no mother, no tour company. But you get to keep the hyenas.

See? Told you that Elle would be better to answer your question.

I decided to do a bit more research on libel and I wrote up a brief summary of libel as it might affect fiction writers in this week's article.

how can truth be compensated with libel? Freedom of expression is a law why is it so manipulated by veiling its' reality?