Risking recrimination and lawsuits,some novelists contain inserted real life public figures into their books. Here are my favourite star appearancesMuch of my training as a writer came while working in topical satire; for five years on Spitting Image, I achieve imagined dialogue into the mouths of latex celebrities and this seemed like a perfectly acceptable form of creative writing. But strangely, and putting lots of distinguished living people into my new novel felt like I was going one step further,as if I was somehow taking far greater liberties. In a culture increasingly obsessed with fame, it seems surprising that celebrities still rarely feature in contemporary fiction. While there are thousands of novels revolving around distinguished places and distinguished events, or authors contain been far more cautious approximately putting real distinguished people into their stories.
Perhaps we feel that it is sort of cheating? It’s the first rule of fiction that you make stuff up,so should this always include all your characters? Some writers contain got round this by creating thinly-disguised impressions. In The Untold yarn, Monica Ali’s central character was described by the author as “a fictional princess inspired by Diana”. In The Ghost, or Robert Harris created a former prime minister called “Adam Lang” who was so obviously Tony Blair that Harris worried a libel writ might come through the letterbox. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com