Can you be sued for writing a fictional story that is based on real people?

  1. Rock_nj profile image82
    Rock_njposted 11 years ago

    Can you be sued for writing a fictional story that is based on real people?

    Does anyone know if you write a book, short story, or any written story that is offically called "fiction", but in reality is based on the lives of real people (with names changed and a lot of made up pieces of the story that take it into the rhelm of fiction), can you be sued by those people, if they figure out that you were writing about them?

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  2. LennyP profile image71
    LennyPposted 11 years ago

    You can be sued for anything. Whether or not the case will have any merit is a different story. I am not a lawyer so  I can not give legal advice. However, all characters ever created are at least partly based on someone in real life, whether the author realizes it or not.

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  3. profile image0
    sheilamyersposted 11 years ago

    As Lenny said, you could get sued for just about anything. Even if the story is pure fiction with everything made up, there are people who might try to sue you and claim you based it on them. Anyway ... I believe the answer to your question is "no". Many television dramas today are based on real life events and, as you said, the names are changed and stuff added to make it "fictional". As they always said at the beginning of the old "Dragnet" series - "The stories are real. The names have been changed to protect the innocent."

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