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
Very nice post, C! I completely agree with you (though that kind of diminishes the element of debate...lol).
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)
thank you Scarlett! I agree about songwriting, thank you so much for the comment
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
Thanks for sharing!! Those are very good points (and we love a nice, long comment ;)