: Re: Can I use a real secondary school for my book? Although I have done a lot of research I still do not know if I can use a real secondary school in my book. Can I do this? Are there precautions

@Cody1607638

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I don't know the reason why you want to use the name of the real place (unless it's such a famous place that not doing so would seem strange).

But you should be sure to include a prominent disclaimer on the title page that it is a work of fiction and any resemblances are entirely coincidental. (You may be subject to invasion of privacy lawsuits if someone can demonstrate that you based it on a real event at that school). If you are doubly-paranoid, you could include an additional note --"obviously, the school here is a real school, but none of the events actually happened as described."

It sounds possibly like you want to have the best of both worlds. You want to use the inside information about the school to provide verisimilitude while at the same time you want to deny that it is based on reality. Or: you want to use a well-known school as a way to draw attention to your work while not wanting to say anything truthful about it.

I have encountered the issue in a significantly smaller way. I mentioned characters as attending two or three universities that I knew fairly well (although I had only attended one). I needed a concrete name of a university rather than just making one up -- also, I needed the university to be tied to a specific city which was the setting for my story. At the same time, my story is very obscure -- nobody would find it, and the setting itself wasn't that crucial to the story. Also, these were short narratives. If I were writing a longer narrative, I would carefully consider whether I wanted to use a real university in a particular city, or whether I wanted to disguise it somehow.

Finally, my advice would be to ask whether it would be easy or likely for a potential reader to misunderstand the aim of the literary work or to interpret the plot as having to do with an actual school. Also, would people find these references to be inflammatory or offensive? Is there a possibility that the events in the novel could come true at some later point -- and provide notoriety to the book? If you describe a murder at a school, and then 5 years a murder takes place at the school with similarities to the fictional murder, that would complicate your life. What if someone read the book and staged a copycat killing?

By the way, one of the universities I used in a story was a university I despised -- and I portrayed it somewhat negatively in the story. On the other hand, I don't think most readers would think that the author was criticizing the university -- even if the character didn't like it for some reason.

Finally, I would generally not contact the school for permission. That sounds a little too creepy.

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