Another question from NaNoWriMo forums:
[quote=purplejaz]For those of you who are using real cities
and towns as settings in your novels, will you be using actual businesses and such in your story? I'm setting my novel here, in Rapid City, South Dakota, and I wasn't sure whether I should use the actual bars and stores and restaurants or make up fake ones for the purposes of the story. To be honest, I'm not sure that it even matters, but I'd love to hear how everyone else is approaching this. Do you use them as is, or create entirely new
ones? Or do you use the businesses that exist and change their names? I suppose if you're going to go so far as to manufacture fake businesses you might as well just create an entire fictional
town, huh?
Anyways,
enough over-analyzing on my part...tell me what your
plans are!
-Brianna
----------- Brianna
[/quote]
I write local for about 98% of all my books, articles, and stories. Very local. Most of my stories never leave the tiny 7 mile long, 3 mile wide beach-strip town I live in. And in most cases, they never even got 100 feet away from my front yard: I actualy dismissed the fact that my house was there and stuck a big manor-house in the same spot! Because I live here, real events... like Ice Storm '98 and the ravenges of Hurrinaine Bob in '91, actualy make it ito my books. I end up writing entire stories based on local events. In my stories you'll often find the OOB Pier, Palace Playland, and Bill's Pizza . . . let's not forget the beach itself!Rarly do I write a story that does not include Old Orchard's Old Orchard Beach. Odd thing is, some 400 miles to my North is Arcadia National Park and it's famous Thunder Hole, and yet, in my stories, I've got the Thunder Hole note more than 500 yards away from the OOB Pier! And the White Mountains of New Hampshire? Yeah, I moved them too.
Now to answer your question: How to handle writing about real places:
A lot depends on one question:
- Are you planning to publish this story, or is it just for your eyes only?
This is a very tricky area, that the best answer for is:
- when in doubt -leave it out.
Why? Because while a few places may be glad for the free publicity, just as many will be quick to slap you with a lawsuit. I know that sounds silly, but it is a sad true fact that many writers learn this the hard way, the same day the sheriff knocks on their door and tells them they must appear in court. This type of lawsuit is far more common than a copyright infringment lawsuit, and rarly goes in the author's favor.
Now you are asking: "Why would they sue me? If I owned their busines I'd love to be in that book!" ...hhhhmm... step outside of yourself and think about it for a minute: Would you? Would you REALLY like it if you were reading a book one day and suddenly found that your home was in the book, and everything from sex to murder was going on in your kitchen?
A lot depends on the nature of what you write.
For example: If you MC says to another character: "I eat at Moe's Pizza on Third St, rwice a week . . . you should go there, they make the best pizza!"Than the two go there and remanice good times over a mushroom and cheese deep dish. Foor something like this (which was actualy done: read -'Mystic Pizza') You are not going to have any problems. In this case you may even wish to give the business owner a copy of the book and ask if they'd sell copies of it off their tables/counter. In a case like this, your book is good publicity for them, and they'd love to ppromote it.
Let's consider instead this example: While eating a Moe's Pizza and remaniscing about good times, a masked robber comes in, blows Moe's brains out, steals the cash drawer, and runs out shooting five more people on the way out the door. This is what would be considered bad publicity, and well get you in a 3 to 5 year slander lawsuit, that could end up in you oweing for "emotional damages and loss of customers", which usualy is a number well over half-a-million US dollars, and nearly all judges and juries answer in the business owner's favor. In a story like this, you would want to change the name of the business to something fictional.
The worst case synario would be if you wrote about a shooting and than a shooting actually did happen. There was a case a few years back when such a thing occured and the court found the author "guilty of neglagence". (Said he should have used some common sence before useing a real place-setting to set a murder in.) He got suspened prison time and owed not only the business owner, but also the murder victim's family. (Family accused author of putting the idea in the murderer's head and the court agreed.) While these type of lawsuits are not as common, they do happen, and the author is usualy found guilty.
[quote=katiemorton]
Since it's fiction, that means there are no rules.
Run with it!
[/quote]
This is the kind of attitude that will get you in court quicker than you can blink. Remember, people are still people and most people do not like to be talked about behind their back and they hate it even more if you talk about them in the media. Remember too that every business has an owner, and anything you say about the business is taken as if you said it about the owner.
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Wendy, I found your post quite thought provoking and well reasoned. I am writing a novel, Marital Property, set in Martha's Vineyard. My reference to places in the Vineyard were all quite positive. I can see your point about the type of local references an author makes. In my recently completed novel, The Pastor's Inferno, I was quite careful about the setting. While it is in Western New York, I used a composite locale and no real names in light of the subject, priest sexual abuse. Good column.
ReplyDeleteJoe Langen