Incorporating real-life events in a story

[BobbyBrandt]

I am developing a story idea that incorporates actual events from a single calendar year into the background of the plot. However, there are a few of the events that come more to the forefront of the plot where the fictional characters will be inserted into the event itself.

I'm vacillating over morale and ethical issues of fictionalizing some real-life events where actual people lost their lives. (Think of things like a fictional couple having sex on one of the lower floors of the World Trade Center on 9/11. That isn't in the story, but just an example)

Has anyone else ever struggled with this, and if so, how did you resolve it?

 

[tenyari]

I'd be very careful about that.

On another forum there was a recent topic where someone was asking for advice on erotica stories set in the conflict in Ukraine and I looked at that the same way I would if someone told me to "hey, can you hold these plutonium rods for me for a moment while I slam this reactor with a sledgehammer and blowtorch?"

I'm working on a story myself set in Mexico, and as we all know there's a rather unfortunate conflict there that's been going on for a decade or more. So I 'moved the clock forward' a few unstated years and early in my story noted that 'recent struggled having been resolved, the natural peaceful and welcoming character of the locals was once more in play'.
- As in, I sidestepped the issue. And I have zero intention of every looking back to say how things resolved in any way. I'm just writing as if that issue was not present.

I would never set a story right in the middle of a conflict unless that conflict was far enough in the past that it was unlikely to disturb living people. If I was writing in the 'war story' genre that might be different. But in erotica, I want a different reaction from my readers.

9/11 is the kind of event though, that will stick in American's minds for generations. I would no more write a sex scene in the towers than I would one taking place on a ship in the middle of Pearl Harbor, at Wounded Knee, or in a concentration camp in Germany. Some events so traumatically scar the human consciousness, sometimes even on a global level - that you're better off just taking swim in amongst the cooling rods of a nuclear reactor.

 

[R. Richard]

If I put real life events in a story that I'm writing, I'm always very conscious of the statute of limitations.

 

[JuanaSalsa]

It all depends on how you do it, and why, and the context and the theme and...

I wrote a story set in Ukraine that was very much built on the headlines at the time when Russia first invated, and the moral and theme was that war sucks and I included an invitation to people to donate to war relief efforts.

If you feel like it might be disrespectful, then consider why you want to do it? Answer that question and you'll be well on your way to making your decision about whether to proceed.

 

[NotWise]

Has anyone else ever struggled with this, and if so, how did you resolve it?

I'm always tempted to answer questions like that with "No, you're the only person who's ever struggled with that. Good luck." But that would be flippant and annoying, so I won't.

I don't think the problem is moral or ethical. It's a question of good taste. If there are readers with personal stakes in those events who would be offended, then your work might be in poor taste.

On the other hand, if it's an erotic story then a lot of people would consider it to be in poor taste anyway, so you'd just be exercising another dimension of poor taste.

I don't know how you might handle the problem. If I were tiptoeing around that issue then I'd probably obscure details, try to avoid other details that might be triggers, and put things in as much positive light as I can.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

While I appreciate tenyari’s point of view, I myself wouldn’t be all that cautious.

I’ve written a story centring on two disabled vets following service in Iraq. I’ve done stories with characters in the middle of pandemics, some of them specifically COVID. No moral issues with any of them and nobody has objected.

Moving away from my scribblings to actual literature, consider the following: Catch 22, All Quiet on the Western Front, Slaughterhouse-Five and Doctor Zhivago. All are set in wartime, real, fairly recent wars where real people died by the millions. Consider Schindler’s List, Life is Beautiful or The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, all set in WW II concentration camps. Nobody called them immoral.

The important thing is to be careful not to be disrespectful. Merely setting a tale in a place or conflict is not automatically so.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Well, at a certain point, you can cross over to Reviews and Essays, which I have done when, for example, I described a college newspaper from forty-five years ago. I changed the name of the paper and for the names of the people, I either changed them or used first names only. But if one really knew it, it would be obvious what is was. I even mentioned the name of the building and the floor it was on.

The Past is a Foreign Country

If by real-life events, one means terrorist attacks and wars, well that is done all the time in fiction and movies. The Trade Center attacks have been used in a number of fictional and semi-fictional depictions. As for libel laws, the courts give wide leeway if it's an obvious parody. See:

Hustler Magazine v. Falwell

Now the recent Johnny Depp / Amber Heard trial is quite different. She obviously attacked him directly in print, and he claimed to have lost income/film roles because of that. And he won it.

 

[SimonDoom]

I see no problem at all with it, in theory. It might be upsetting to some people, but upsetting and unnerving people is a legitimate function of art.

You have three considerations:

1. Laurel has a rule against writing an erotic story that is described as being a "real-life" story. That doesn't mean you cannot write a fictional story for which a real event is the background.

2. The chief concern is to make sure you do not defame anyone. So be careful if or how you write about real, living people (no claim for defamation exists on behalf of a dead person).

3. If your story is too political in nature, it may be rejected on that ground.

The statute of limitations is not an issue because it does not start to run until you publish your story.

 

[gunhilltrain]

While I appreciate tenyari’s point of view, I myself wouldn’t be all that cautious.

I’ve written a story centring on two disabled vets following service in Iraq. I’ve done stories with characters in the middle of pandemics, some of them specifically COVID. No moral issues with any of them and nobody has objected.

Moving away from my scribblings to actual literature, consider the following: Catch 22, All Quiet on the Western Front, Slaughterhouse-Five and Doctor Zhivago. All are set in wartime, real, fairly recent wars where real people died by the millions. Consider Schindler’s List, Life is Beautiful or The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, all set in WW II concentration camps. Nobody called them immoral.

The important thing is to be careful not to be disrespectful. Merely setting a tale in a place or conflict is not automatically so.

How do you define "disrespectful?" Is it based on the amount of time that has passed, or who is offended? I'm trying to think of some examples.

Lina Wertmuller's Seven Beautes was made thirty years after the events, but it's partially about the sexual shenanigans of a female concentration camp commander. To me, it's mostly an absurd movie, but that is probably the point of it.

In regards to settings, Tom Wolfe has gotten some criticism, probably true, because he seems to have a "tin ear" when writing about non-white people. (Actually, they barely even appear, even in The Bronx and Atlanta.) See Bonfire of the Vanities and A Man In Full. Yet he sort of admitted to it, or satirized it, in a non-fictional form. See Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers.

 

[lovecraft68]

I want to remind people of a couple of things
1-you can write whatever you want. There will be some who see it as tasteless because you're bringing up a tragedy, but...
2- Hollywood makes movies about every tragedy in history including many Holocaust based movies, 911, even the Titanic for its day was a major deal. More than that they make endless specials and movies glorifying serial killers, how do you think the families of the victims of those killers feel? But money to be made. So why is a story any different
3-The lockdowns of 2020 were scasry times with people dying, people sick, people living in fear, forced to hide in their homes and those working(I was one of them) worried that could bring it home to their family.

Yet Literotica hosted an entire story event, let's make lockdown sexy! Yay, let's write stories about being forced to hole up because f a disease many readers may have caught, and may have lost family members to.

So if that can not only be glorified, but lit pushed it so hard they got mentioned in some over seas article which I'm sure they profited from....no one here should be telling anyone that writing about anything is in bad taste or shouldn't be written. Other than Simon's point of taking "true events' out of it to make it all fiction, you have no reason not to.

 

[KeithD]

My current story at Literotica is solidly built on a real person (named in the title) in a real place at a real time and went through fine. I'm writing two stories now that play off Scotty Bower's "Pimp for the Stars" Hollywood filling station with added services that operated in the 1930s and 1940s. Different names and situations are given (there's a stand-in for Scotty Bowers and none of the real movie stars using the gas station's extra services are named/used in the story) but it's very definitely a real setting. I don't expect any trouble in getting those through submissions here either. Years ago, I named Rock Hudson in a story that was based on real, personal events and that went through admissions here without trouble too. I'm sure I have more examples as I write a lot of "real historical events" stories. I just use the events for inspiration and launching pads; I don't pretend to be writing news reports on them.

So, it's an "it all depends on the treatment" issue on passing muster here, it seems.

 

[StrangeLife]

As long as you don't use real people in your story, I think using a real event should be fine.

 

[KeithD]

As long as you don't use real people in your story, I think using a real event should be fine.

As I noted, I sometimes use real people in my stories and they get cleared here. It's all in how you do it, when the events happened, and whether your real person is arguably depicted as they really came across in life--or could be reasonably projected to have done.

Of course if you don't know how to do it right, don't try to do it. But it's not because it can't be done here.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

GHT, ‘disrespect’ is of course subjective and will always be viewed differently by different people. I could see writing a story about two of the heroic firefighters who died in 9/11. If I wrote them as thick, cowardly and self-serving, that would probably be ‘disrespectful’ by any standard. Writing them as willing to risk their live for others would clearly not. That it was 9/11 would be irrelevant or almost so.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Moving away from my scribblings to actual literature, consider the following: Catch 22, All Quiet on the Western Front, Slaughterhouse-Five and Doctor Zhivago. All are set in wartime, real, fairly recent wars where real people died by the millions. Consider Schindler’s List, Life is Beautiful or The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, all set in WW II concentration camps. Nobody called them immoral.

The important thing is to be careful not to be disrespectful. Merely setting a tale in a place or conflict is not automatically so.

Maybe not the best example there. Holocaust education groups etc. had major issues with Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, because Boyne took huge liberties with the relevant history. See e.g.: https://holocaustlearning.org.uk/latest/the-problem-with-the-boy-in-the-striped-pyjamas/

I'd take that one as a cautionary tale of how this kind of thing can go wrong.

 

[R. Richard]

The statute of limitations is not an issue because it does not start to run until you publish your story.

If I put my real life experiences into a story, the statute of limitations starts with the real life event, actually when the authorities discover the real life event. Trust me on this.

 

[lovecraft68]

As long as you don't use real people in your story, I think using a real event should be fine.

Shit, I used Sarah Purcell in mine!
Okay, anyone who gets that joke has to be as old as me or likes classic TV shows.

 

[Acktion]

For what it's worth, most of the disbelieving comments I've gotten have tended to circle reality interjections. A Final Valentine, for example. Nobody batted an eye at any of the fictionalized elements. Nope. They focused on the snowstorm and the vast under-preparedness that resulted in quite a few deaths. The lack of insulation and working heaters that was very real. Lack of equipment of responders to actually respond. Etc. Virtually every downvote with a comment appended to it blamed it on something I could have easily proven if I'd been the sort to be bothered.

**shrug** It's the way the human animal is. It doesn't matter how real something is if it doesn't match their personal perceptions. As long as you're good with that and don't have a tendency to get caught up in handing out proofs about the shadows in the cave, go for it, Mulder.

 

[EarlyMorningLight]

For me, the benchmark for how to do this well on Lit is The Burdens of Others.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I see no problem at all with it, in theory. It might be upsetting to some people, but upsetting and unnerving people is a legitimate function of art.

You have three considerations:

1. Laurel has a rule against writing an erotic story that is described as being a "real-life" story. That doesn't mean you cannot write a fictional story for which a real event is the background.

2. The chief concern is to make sure you do not defame anyone. So be careful if or how you write about real, living people (no claim for defamation exists on behalf of a dead person).

3. If your story is too political in nature, it may be rejected on that ground.

The statute of limitations is not an issue because it does not start to run until you publish your story.

I did not hide that My Fall and Rise was more of a memoir than a novella, and I had no problems with it, even though it contained multiple descriptions of drug use and other criminal activities.

So, I don't know where the line is. I wrote it in first person and named the protagonist Melissa, for christs sake. If Laurel has some blanket objection to "true stories" she missed a hell of a lot of red flags with me.

 

[SimonDoom]

I did not hide that My Fall and Rise was more of a memoir than a novella, and I had no problems with it, even though it contained multiple descriptions of drug use and other criminal activities.

So, I don't know where the line is. I wrote it in first person and named the protagonist Melissa, for christs sake. If Laurel has some blanket objection to "true stories" she missed a hell of a lot of red flags with me.

There's nothing in the title, tags, or tagline that makes it clear that it's based on real life. The events of the story aren't publicly known. The characters in the story are not famous. The filter system isn't nuanced enough to pick up on subtle red flags. You don't have an introductory paragraph that says "This really happened to me." If you had, your story probably would have been rejected.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

In my latest story for the On The Job Challenge, 'Just One Night' I glossed over the fact that the couple get stuck at work because of the trucker blockade. It took a while to get published, and I wondered if it was because of the political nature of the protest, though I never mention anyone protesting, and had it ending overnight, instead of the three weeks it took to break up.

 

[MelissaBaby]

There's nothing in the title, tags, or tagline that makes it clear that it's based on real life. The events of the story aren't publicly known. The characters in the story are not famous. The filter system isn't nuanced enough to pick up on subtle red flags. You don't have an introductory paragraph that says "This really happened to me." If you had, your story probably would have been rejected.

Exactly so, so people needn't be paranoid about basing stories on real events. Just use your head.

 

[gunhilltrain]

GHT, ‘disrespect’ is of course subjective and will always be viewed differently by different people. I could see writing a story about two of the heroic firefighters who died in 9/11. If I wrote them as thick, cowardly and self-serving, that would probably be ‘disrespectful’ by any standard. Writing them as willing to risk their live for others would clearly not. That it was 9/11 would be irrelevant or almost so.

Firefighters are almost always heroic. I have the greatest respect for them in that regards. They sometimes mess up with other issues, just like the rest of us. There was a case here in New York where one assaulted another - quite seriously - in a firehouse over some trivial issue.

There have been some very good documentaries about them, this one from fifty years ago.

 

[gunhilltrain]

To bring it into the 21st Century: Detroit. Also, note the women who appear in these, including the lieutenant and the captain in the first segment.