Inspiration or Infringement?
Debate of the Week
Salutations, and welcome all.
My name is
, an author wannabe finishing the first draft of my novel, and I will be bringing you this week’s debate. So, grab a mug of tea and sit back in your favorite armchair, because today’s debate is all about writing. Specifically:“Can authors base their characters off of real people without their permission?”
There is a lot to dive into here.
I love gathering inspiration from real-life events, real people and their life experiences, etc; many authors do!
But how far can you go? There is a lot of gray area around this topic, and as I was researching, I found a lot on plagiarism, which is important but a different subject.
First, there are two terms I want to shed some light on: Identifiable figures and Public figures.
Let’s start there. The main concern is, do we as writers need permission to include things from others’ lives, experiences, names, backgrounds, etc. in our writing? Unfortunately, there’s no short answer, so here’s my take on the subject.
How would you feel if someone you trusted with private information, wrote about it without your permission?
We need to keep common courtesy in mind, if someone tells you confidential information (in the case of something harmful, alert a trusted adult) do not include it in your writing without their consent. If you do it without permission and the character is easily identifiable or is that person, it is a breach of trust, and while it is not illegal, it is not respectful of their privacy.
We also need to consider how identifiable the character is. If you are writing a biography about yourself, you can’t include your siblings’ secrets and personal information without their permission. Never exploit someone in full public view who has confided in you.
However,
If you are writing a character that is nothing like the person, and you are inspired by a secret, you could get permission anyway—that is the respectful thing to do. It’s also not limited to bad things; you should always ask when you want to write about a significant detail that someone in your life might not want to be in your latest novel for the world to see. I don’t ask permission for small non-negative information, such as something funny someone said, a first name, or someone's hair color, you have no obligation to ask permission for those types of things because the person doesn't “own” those things.
There is 100% a difference between copying a character from real life and taking inspiration from someone in real life for a character. You are allowed to take small things from others as inspiration, combine them, add a twist, etc. As long as you aren’t writing about an easily identifiable person, in which case, ask for consent.
This brings us to Public Figures, which at times crosses into the lovely world of plagiarism, some names are trademarked or copyrighted, and you might need to source where you get your information about a celebrity. Things celebrities, politicians, etc. do in the eye of the public technically are public, so you are free to use things they say, what they look like, etc.
But of course, there’s a “However”.
I say these things assuming you are using them as inspiration. You can write about a celebrity in a nonfiction book (or even fiction) But very well might get sued if you portray them disrespectfully or in a negative way that can harmfully affect their reputation. You can’t defame and harm a deceased person's reputation, so you are allowed to write what you want. Living public figures are a different story.
Let’s say your character has a connection to the very well-known celebrity Taylor Swift. You can’t portray her disrespectfully or cruelly or use untrue things about her, even if she was like that in real life (I have no idea since I don’t have personal connections to Taylor Swift, but I doubt she is). It’s perfectly legal to use public truth, always do thorough research and if worried about it, seek a second opinion.
So where do you think the boundaries should be drawn? Do you think authors should have to ask? Or do you think they can use resources without permission? I’d love to hear your opinions, please argue away and have at it in the comments (or vote in the poll ;). Thank you for having me,
! Farewell and happy writing!— C. L. Mullikin
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ok firstly cassie that was amazing i love the points two. i also love your example.. thridly my take....
(so disclaimer i mostly write songs....)
ok so i say of course you can...i like weaving real ppl in to all my songs i often dont name drop them (hehe tulips) but if a worte i song abt you you probably would know its abt you.. for books and storys i think its fine......... (pardon the typos)
Fun topic, thanks for bringing it up. I might sound a little blunt and my comments end up being long for some reason haha. But I liked how you brought up how we create characters "inspired" by people we know. I have several characters like that, but sometimes they do end up being very different fictionalized verses who they are in real life. However, I believe it's infringement if we create a character and never request permission from that inspired person. For instance, I recently wrote a novella with a recreated version of someone from my family. I explained all of the details with her about this character, to ensure that she would be okay with this type of representation. Especially because I was openly sharing with the public that this character was someone I personally knew. On the other hand, I had a friend write a story with me as a character (and did not tell me about it) along with using my name for the character. As soon as I found out about it, I quickly told my friend that I was not comfortable with myself as a character, simply because I may not like how someone is representing me as a person. (Side note**I had little to no details about how she was creating my character either...) What's worse, it was a story genre I absolutely did not want to be associated with, which increased my worries of how exactly I was being represented in her story. To sum up, creating and writing about characters inspired by people we know or have come across, is completely acceptable and expected of us as writers (how else will we find ways to make different characters?) However, I think it's important to consider that these people we use as inspiration, we are representing them in our writing. They are still people (no matter how much we fictionalize them) and care about how they are shared with the world. As far as creating characters inspired by "public figures" I don't think that's a problem. Mostly because we don't know full details about those people most of the time. Our representation of them most likely will be just as shallow as the media depicts them. And, as long as you mentioned, we don't create something totally false that potentially could get us sued--then we are in the safe zone.
Thanks for the topic! I didn't mean to be super long about it xD Ironically, it was something I was thinking about this morning so I'm glad I was able to dump my thoughts somewhere lol