You’re absolutely right, it can be a real fine line to tread. I know for a fact that if/when my novel is published I’m going to have to have a quiet word with someone I know. Not because they’re in the book, but because they won’t be expecting any swearing or appreciate the vicar in the football socks. But I couldn’t leave those things out.

I think the issue comes primarily when the story reflects real life or is clearly based on a friend or family member. It’s when it gets personal that potential problems really need pre-empting!

But taken to a less extreme place, there are the topics that we’re drawn to write about in which not everyone is always at their best. And while it’s one thing to reveal your own self as ugly or hateful or negative, it’s quite another to show someone else that way. Yet some non-fiction stories — even those in which the writer is the protagonist –can’t be told without all characters — and character flaws — involved.

I dunno. I was just yesterday posting a rant about lying in nonfiction (my opinion: don’t), but the difficulty of telling the truth is that the truth can be sharp and cutting. Finding a way to tell the truth from an angle that accurately represents a subject without stabbing someone else along the way — it can be tough. I’m still searching for a way to do it.

Thanks for the post.

So your friends who want to believe you write about them will believe that no matter what you say. If people who you have shared part of your life with read your book they’ll almost expect it! So you might as well publish and be damned.

I don’t think you can help but be influenced by things that happen around you – the people around you and their lives.

But what do you do if you’ve been writing something and then discover it has an uncanny resemblance to another book, or TV show, or film? I know Barthes said everything is influenced by something and whatever we write is just layers … but what do you do?

@Kelly You’re right, I think. Sometimes, you do need to reveal yourself in your writing to make a real impact. I guess the skill is in deciding when and where that happens. Good luck with the multiblogging!

@Jude As with all these things, we all have our own ways of doing things and your experience does sound rather troubling. I guess I’d argue that the problem there lies with your friend’s outlook rather than your decision to ask her permission.

Personally, I think that my copywriting has encouraged me to always pursue permission for things, because professionally, I have to. It’s perhaps one of those points where my two writing lives cross over.

Hmm, interesting. Thanks for the comment Jude, as always.

@Tumblemoose Many thanks for your kind words, your support is hugely appreciated!

I get jazzed every time I come here, mate. This really is a great post that addresses what can be a sticky wicket for certain.

I agree that you should pay attention to your gut. If you feel like this may cause any heartache, then don’t do it. Go another route.

Gonna stumble and tweet this one, my friend. Worth it.

Cheers

George

There’s one part of your (nevertheless perennially fabulous!) blog with which I strongly disagree. In fact the advice you’ve given is the exact opposite of what I’ve now learnt from experience.

“Once you’ve made the decision to write about your life in a way that might affect someone you know, be open and honest about it. More importantly, ask permission.”

The Sundance award-winning documentary filmmaker, Sean McAllister, whose brilliant doc Japan: A Story of Love and Hate was screened on BBC Four on Monday as the finale to the Beeb’s Hidden Japan season, said during a Q and A at Sheffield Doc Fest in November 08 “I find the best way to get permission is not to ask for it.” And this is a filmmaker who has filmed Japanese post office workers doing exercises en masse in an office. You can see Sean saying that quote on the Doc Fest video clip on the home page of his web site here:

ttp://www.seanmcallister.com

And you can watch Japan: A Story of Love and Hate on BBCi player until 6th April here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00jkry6/Japan_A_Story_of_Love_and_Hate/

Sean’s advice is one of the best pieces of advice I have ever heard. Don’t ask permission unless you’re forced to. Art and compromise curdle.

Back to your point. I made the huge mistake after writing my novel Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law of going to the trouble to tell someone (“X”) that I had used a fairly patronising line she was in the habit of saying to people, for a character in the book. The character, Tilly, is a patronising control freak harbouring barely concealed aggression due to family problems only hinted at in the final edited version of the novel – an obsession with her grown up children and a meek, foolish, pistol-whipped husband who has a secret life of gay lovers and fetish clubs as a way of escaping his wife’s dominance.

Now, X had asked for a complimentary copy of the novel, which I had already given her, but had admitted that she had hardly taken any notice of it as she had so far been reading it in bed at night after she was pissed. You get this, as an author, many people can’t be arsed to take your work seriously. Whatever. Water off a duck’s back by now. However I still went to the trouble to explain that Tilly wasn’t based on her and that I’d only used one line of X’s.

The result was that, behind closed doors, she’d obviously gone into a dervish-like whirl of hysterical paranoia about my book, thinking Tilly was her, and a week later, at a big convention in the middle of town, in front of hundreds of people, one of her daughters drunkenly chased me through the Millennium Galleries bawling at me that I’d misrepresented her mother putting her in my book and how they would never forgive me and how awful I was blah blah blah. In front of dozens on onlookers…and she wouldn’t let me walk away, kept grabbing me. It was quite honestly one of the most horrible moments of my life.

And X, although not appearing as a character in MILIL, has promptly written herself straight into a future book with her hysterical paranoia and trouble-making.

So my lesson is, NEVER tell people you have based anything on them because some people get very angry about your having the power to put them in your book, especially paranoid control-freaks! They hate it and will resent you for the rest of your life.

Naturally, names, locations, visual appearance etc have to be changed, but many characters in books are based on real people, including most of mine.

Only I will never, ever, make the mistake of telling anyone again.