can you write about a famous person without being sued?

[strange]

Hey guys and gals, I've reccently had an idea for a short story which to me, will be a sort of horrorific satirization of writers, especially of those like me who are brillant and extremely handsome , nah seriously its about young guys like me who want to be writers, really the satirizing how we want to do things and how we go about it. Anyway the idea involves a young struggling writer, just finished college who believes he can make himself the greater writer ever by extracting the essence, life force type of thing from dead writers he admires. He's got a collection with essenses ranging from Dickens to Poe but he decides to kidnapped his favourite author, who so happens to be a horror writer also, with the intention of killing him so he can steal his essence...some of you may have figured out where I'm going with this, although the author is never really named fully he narrates the story, his nam is Steph .

My question is does anyone know if you can write a story from the point of view of someone famous like
a writer who's still alive or it something that I could be sued for. I heard of something similiar with the author Darren Shan who used a name similiar to the author Anthony Horowitz in his book and Horowtz considered suing, however, apparently it was a joke. If anyone has an idea let me know and also what do people think of this idea of mine or just about writing fiction about famous people.

[fushingfeef]

I believe you have some protection if it's satire, you are allowed to write about celebrities and such. But if you wrote a malicious slam-piece you should expect to be sued.

I wrote a short story many years ago which boldly featured Stephen King as the main character, but I never attempted to get it published. I showed it to a few friends and family members and that was it. I'm sure Steve would get a kick out of it but he's a lot bigger than me and he's really rich so I'm not going to push the matter.

[Wayne C. Rogers]

This is touchy ground. It's one thing to mention a live celebrity in a story, but to use him/her as an actual character can lead to all kinds of problems. I recently wrote a horror story about the experiences of a U.S. Army tunnel rat in Vietnam and used the most famous and most decorated tunnel rat of the war, Tom Wergen, as one of the secondary characters at the end of the novella. After I finished the story, I sent it to Tom. Fortunately, though he's not a big fan of horror fiction, he loved the story and my depiction of what a tunnel rat actually experiences in the underground tunnel systems built by the Vietnamese. He gave me thumbs up on the story and approval on his character. However, it could just as easily gone the other way, and I would have had to rewrite the story without him in it. So, you take a chance when using an actual person (who's still alive) in a piece of fiction.

[Sundrop]

You want to be really careful before you use any real person as a character.....famous or not.
There are all kinds of license infringement laws out there....and believe it or not, every person owns the legal license to his or her own name.

[JohnDalglish]

Hi,

Hmmm, yes, it's a very tricky area.

But no publisher will take a chance and print it, so don't be looking for a publisher to take the risk.

I gave the matter a lot of thought and investigation while working on my current 'book, 'Erocktica', which includes anecdotes of my experiences working with the likes of Bob Marley, David Bowie, Lynryd Skynyrd, the Beatles, the Stones and the Who etc, but I decided only to publish electronically since the situation regarding yer Interwebs is a good deal 'greyer' than print.

Good luck!

Long days and pleasant nights

[strange]

I know, the main thing I'm looking at isn't actually parodying the King, the idea came to my head about parodying writers and especially thoses desperate to become famous, the main reason I thought of hinting the author he kidnaps is Stephen was because, well, i thought it would be so ironic, a man who's wrote about horror actually fines himself experience something similiar to what he's writes about...I don't know, thanks for the advice, I'll take a chance writing it but I wouldn't publish it without consent.

[Bryan James]

Just call the kidnapee "Sherman Kane" and twist the details a bit. Make sure to use the standard "This book and all derivatives are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, etc. are the deluded perceptions of the author, and any resemblances to anything in the known universe are coincidental."

[jcadams]

I think the idea is a great one, but agree with the others about using totally fictious names. Any King fan would realize he was the inspiration anyway. Good luck with your project, if you ever get it published let me know so I can get a copy.

[Christiane17]

I mentionned actor Noah Emmerich in one of my stories. Luckily, I have contacted him by writing him a letter, asking him if he felt ok I mentionnend his name as a reference in my novel He kindly e-mailed me not more than a few weeks after that I was free to mention his name in my novel, and he even wished me good luck with it. It's not been published yet. But if it does get published, I got Noah mentionned in it. A very nice guy he is by the way.