Thread: A question of ethics

In your opinion, would it be ethical, in a work of fiction, to fictionalise details about real people who died only 70 years ago in a battle encounter during World War Two?

In other words (and this is only by way of explanation, not what really happened) could I transform a real life Canadian pilot - killed when his bomber was shot down over Germany in a famous and well-documented raid - into, say, a fictional English pilot?

Thank you.

I would see no problem with it unless you kept the name the same and presented it as fact. Either of those might be seen as presenting fiction as truth, that would be what would make something unethical.

There were two girls I once knew. The first one I dated for a while, and when we split, it was mostly because I was the idiot in the relationship. In the fictionalized romance that this inspired, the male was the victim, and the girl who was based off my ex a complete and utter villain (with redeeming qualities, of course.)

The other girl was one I was attracted to and desperately wanted to have sex with. I never slept with her. In the fictionalized sex scene this inspired, I railed the ba-jeebus out of her fictional doppelganger.

Morally, I suppose it's unsound, because it's very clear to anyone who reads these scenes (and knows these women) who I'm writing about.

But I changed their names, so everything is A-Okay.