wednes | Let's talk straight for a minute.

Is it wrong to take someone else's personal tragedy and turn it into gripping fiction?

Is it a question of intention? Like, if I'm doing it to purge myself of the horror it's okay; but if I'm doing it to exploit a tragedy for profit, it's not? I'm not entirely sure if it's as black and white as all that.
I'd been trying to think of a tragedy so I could give one of my characters a back story. And then, as many of you know, I heard about something horrible that happened to someone I used to know. Is it disrespectful to make this tragic part of the story into fiction? Does it depend on the handling of the subject matter? Is it a question of how recognizable the real perosn is?

Frankly, I'm still really fucked up over this and need to work through it.

I know many of you write and almost all of you read regularly (books I mean, not street signs and menu's and shit). With that in mind, I would love to hear as many perspectives as possible.

In disappointing news, my computer will not be in a usable state until Monday. So I shall be resorting to the pre-analog system of writing things by moving a pen across notebook paper in loops and lines until it makes words. Yeah...I guess you can do that for other things besides a grocery list.

Did I mention that U of M has a 2-year MFA in creative writing (poetry or fiction concentration) and I wouldn't even need to take the GRE to apply??? I also learned recently that for educational purposes, bi-polar counts as a disability and I can get help paying for grad school. Not to mention, the program offers at least a 70% tuition waver and a stipend for teaching like, freshman comp and stuff. Could you imagine me teaching college freshman? High-Larious!
I daresay I'm almost ready for some hardcore schooling. I've wanted to go back to school for a while but didn't really feel ready. And of course it can be very expensive to start graduate studies and then fuck them up. In the last year or so, I think my overall craziness has lessened greatly. My ups and downs are less severe and actually working on writing projects has given me a lot of perspective and a greatly increased sense of self-worth. Being less manic and less depressed has been very, very nice.

And just so you all know, I went to Mworks for the pre-employment screen.
Let's hope that rumor about cranberry juice is true. ;-}

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Many (if not most) fiction writers keep a book of clippings, with an emphasis on the weird and tragic. It comes with the territory.

I think it spills-over into inappropriate territory, if it does one of the following things:

If the way it is handled leads the readers to have contempt for the fictionalzed characters...for instance, I have been used as a character in other peoples' writing, but it would only bother me if someone, having read those works, would then think I was a total bastard.

If the fiction is really no more than a thinly-disguised attempt to capitalize on an actual incident (without having to get the facts straight, as one would, if it were non-fiction,) and nothing additional to offer.

If the real-life circumstances are so well-known that the reading public cannot read your work on its own merits as fiction, but instead impose their own interpretation, based on what they know of the real-world case.

The third situation is actually fairly common, in fiction, but has so many pitfalls, I recommend against it. If the "Jack the Ripper" case were occurring Today, I would be very unlikely to want to write a work of fiction, based on it. People would be more likely to quibble with whether I got the "facts straight" than they would to just enjoy the writing on its own merits.

So, I think you should be safe to just go right ahead!

Wow...you clearly put some thought into this, and I appreciate it. You are right on all counts, and have validated pretty much what I was thinking about this. I'm also comforted to know I'm not the only one who saves fucked up news articles. I only have a few, but they are Cah-Razy!!

While I really think it's something I need to write about, I would hate to do anything that would defame her memory, or that of her son. Plus, I had to think of a tragedy for someone who needs a horrible backstory. I almost wonder if that is why the universe let me know about this incident now instead of soonafter it happened.

But you know, I think everything is about me... ;-}

I agree with Amy's caveat, that it's best to change as many details as possible, (without losing the underlying basis of the anecdote)...in fact I presumed that, from the things you said earlier.
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Probably the all-time King of incorporating bizarre newspaper clippings into even-more-bizarre novels was Harry Stephen Keeler, a writer few people would emulate, but whose works are wondrous strange, and worth sampling, at least once.

Let's talk straight for a minute.

Sounds entirely valid, to me...

Re: Sounds entirely valid, to me...

Re: Sounds entirely valid, to me...