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When writing fiction, are there any conventions about setting your story in a specific real place? Do you need expressed permission? Is it OK to call a location imaginary and change its name, even if it's obviously based to a large extent on a very distinctive and real place?

Havoc

If youd have to ask permission to use every real location u use in a book, it would be impossible to write a book.

Go ahead and write, don't let stupid questions like that ruine your writers mind.

Nazareth

The only hting that Might* crop up is if you make mistakes & people get upset because you didn't mention their particular house or a store they're in love with or something- But like the man said- :"can't please all the people all the time"

If you get published, you'll no doubt have a disclaimer in the book stating not everything is factual anyways-

safari invasion

No question is a stupid question. I would say just don't worry so much about the legal junk that can get invovled. Like Havoc said, just go ahead and write.

Nazareth

Another thing- if ya go with an agent- they'll work out all the legal poo for ya- well, most of it anyways

Spudley

Every story has to have a setting, and the majority of them use a real place for it.

If you're writing about any sort of public place - a city, a town, a famous building, or whatever - I think you're on pretty safe ground.

If you're being more specific than that - say, if you're describing a specific house in your street - then you might cause problems with the person who actually lives there.

In a fictional story, I can't see any reason for doing that; if you really need to give an address in the story, you might as well make it up. Same applies to people (with the possible exception of world leaders, and so on, that might affect events in the story).

In a non-fiction work, you obviously need to use real events and real places, but you should be careful to only be specific about those that directly impact the story you're writing about.

With any use of real people, events or places, you do need to be scrupulously careful that your facts are accurate, to avoid any legal problems later on. It is also a good idea to talk to anyone likely to be affected by your writing if at all possible.

Hope that helps.

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Airborneguy

Like they say: Write what you know! I like to have everything start around somewhere I have been to, lived in, etc. I let the story go from there!

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DL Ferguson

Write your story and worry about that later. That's a technical thing that can alsways be fixed later in rewrites. The main thing for you now is to TELL YOUR STORY