If you have characters and incidents based on true events in your story, how do you adapt that for fiction publishing? You risk angering friends and family IF and when it does get published and also all fiction works have a disclaimer that the characters and incidents are imaginary. Somehow, I can't believe that is true, as many must write about what they know (part from fantasy and horror and such genres). So how do you adapt non-fiction incidents and characters for fiction? Please advise as I am finishing the edits to my Fiction which is 'based on true events'.
That's a tricky one, Sonya. All I can suggest is that if there is anyone in the story that is based upon someone you know, in all fairness, I think you should bite the bullet and ask their permission.
I have a cousin who is a top fleet street journalist and he published a family memoir and upset many family members by not disclosing to them first. However, this was not fiction as in your case, but I think the results could end up being the same.
I too am writing a fiction novel that is set in and around factual time and events. But unlike you my characters are total fiction. Yet I can't say I haven't come across people that are like my characters, and I have probably used certain aspects of their image and character to create my characters. I suppose we are all guilty of doing this but this is where we get the first glimpses of inspiration from. We all have to start with some outline which we tend to choose from someone or something we know. The key piece of advice I was given when I started down this path of writing. Write about what you know, and this can apply to fiction as well. If you know about a certain historical time frame very well, then you could set your fiction novel in this time period but using fictional characters. This would add to the feel of the story, as the reader would be transported back in time. I,m not sure whether this is of any help to you, but I do think all characters and some events that are fiction have been originally taken from non-fiction in some way or another.