: Writing about real people - not giving offence The Spy is a Netflix series about Israeli spy and hero Eli Cohen. In a recent interview, Eli's widow Nadia expresses great dissatisfaction with

Vote Up Vote Down

You either write a biography, as accurate as you can, as respectfully as you can, or you write a clearly fictional story that is as different from its inspiration as you can make it.

Do not try to do this half way. That way lies pain and law suits.

From your question, it seemed that you want to write fiction. Then do just that. The best way is to get inspiration from multiple sources and mix them up. If that is not an option, you should at least change anything that can be changed without losing the point you want to make.

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

It's impossible to write anything about anyone at all without offending someone, potentially.

Say you're writing something positive about a person, let's call him X. Now, X has a detractor named Y who seriously, seriously, dislikes X.

She's likely to be offended by whatever you write about X that's not offensive to X himself. And maybe the reverse is also true.

And that's just 2 persons. It gets worse when religious groups are involved. Or entire countries. Write something positive about say Chang Kai Check and the PRC government is not going to like it at all.

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

By inviting the relevant people (or their families) to your creative team.

Many books and movies are made "with the cooperation of" so and so. This can mean a single interview, or just permission to to use certain materials, or it can involve multiple interviews or bringing in the person to the set (if filmed).

In other cases, the relevant person, or a representative, is actually employed by the production company. Or a co-writer of the book.

There are many ways to do this. But it's not done all that often. Why? Because you lose creative control. When Netflix made The Spy they probably really didn't want to cause offense. But they also weren't going to close down production or leave themselves unable to make the changes they felt were important to make.

This is the tradeoff:

If you go out on your own (either literally on your own or a group of 100 writers, editors, producers, directors, etc, backed by a huge corporation) you can made your work any way you choose, but you probably will upset at least some of the real life people your work is about (or their loved ones).
If you work closely with the object of the work and/or her/his family, you will get their buy-in and be less likely to offend someone (though you probably still will) but the process will take longer, will be more expensive, and you might not get the results (or the audience) you desire.

How you do it is up to you. In the case of your example, they might say they didn't want to do anything but pay homage, but they're lying. I mean, sure, that may be one of their goals. But their main goal is to make the show a success and make their audience happy. If they can do that without hurting the family, great. If not, oh well.

As a sole author, you can choose to be more collaborative with your subject (and family) and it won't necessarily cause problems. It will probably strengthen your work. But really, that's the only way to do it if not causing offense to them is your main aim. Give them a seat at the table.

(0)