Using Real-Life Experiences Without Getting Sued
(Or: How to Pillage Your Past, Rip Off Your Enemies, and Still Sleep at Night Without Seeing a Process Server at the Window)
Let’s just get brutally honest: every writer steals. If you say you don’t, you’re either a liar or too boring to be worth suing anyway. The greatest characters, the most jaw-dropping plots, the dialogue that actually sings—they all come straight from the boneyard of real life: ex-lovers, toxic bosses, family drama, that bartender who watched you sob into your whiskey at 2 AM. You want to write stories that matter, that bruise and bite and actually mean something? You have to dip your bucket in the well of real experience.
But if you don’t do it right, you can find yourself dodging lawsuits, hate mail, or your mother’s cold dead eyes across the Thanksgiving table. Here’s how to plunder your past for literary gold—and not end up broke, friendless, or in court.
1. The Legal Reality: What Can Actually Get You Sued?
Libel and Defamation: You can’t just say “Bob Jones from Cleveland is a baby-eating serial killer” if Bob Jones is a real guy and he’s still alive (or his kids are). If your story makes a living person identifiable and harms their reputation with untruths, you’re on the hook.
Invasion of Privacy: Publishing private, embarrassing, or confidential facts about real people—especially stuff that’s not already public—can get you in hot water, even if it’s technically true.
Appropriation of Likeness: If you use someone’s image, voice, or even catchphrases for profit without their permission, especially in commercial fiction, you’re inviting a legal shakedown.
Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress: This is a long shot, but if you depict someone in a way that’s designed to torment them, and they can prove it, a judge might not like your book either.
Confession:
I once based a villain on an old coworker who really, truly deserved it. I changed the name and job… but kept the stench of desperation. He recognized himself anyway. He threatened to “sue me into the ground.” He didn’t win, but it was a great launch party.
2. Disguise, Distill, Distort: How to Steal Safely
A. Change the Details (And Not Just the Name)
Gender swap: Turn your overbearing boss into a grumpy old lady or a mysterious teen prodigy.
Appearance: Give them a limp, a scar, three gold teeth, or purple dreadlocks.
Background: Switch up nationality, family history, career, or religion.
Personality remix: If they’re a narcissist, add an anxiety disorder or heroic streak. If they’re kind, make them secretly ruthless.
Mash-up: Combine two or three real people into a Frankenstein’s monster. Nobody can sue if it’s not all them.
B. Distill the Essence
Don’t copy a person—capture their energy. What’s the vibe? The tension they bring? The way they make you feel?
Borrow gestures, turns of phrase, or obsessions—but twist them until even their mother wouldn’t recognize them.
C. Distort the Plot
Don’t reproduce actual events beat for beat. Throw in curveballs, wild detours, extra bodies, magic swords—anything to muddy the waters.
Place them in situations they never encountered, or give them endings they never lived. (Pro tip: never kill a real person on the page. Even metaphorically.)
D. Move the Story
Set your tale in a wildly different time or place—fantasy worlds, distant galaxies, 1940s noir. The more you shift the context, the safer you are.
3. Ingredient Hacks: Plausible Deniability
Composite Characters: The more you mix, the harder you are to pin down.
Change Relationships: Make your ex your villain’s sister, not their lover. Nobody can prove anything.
Fake the Details: Deliberately insert a couple of details that aren’t true. (“I never wore a toupee!” “I’m not allergic to shellfish!”) It’s a shield.
Add Absurdity: Make the real bits surreal or comedic. If your old boss is now a lizard king with a pet parrot, good luck to their lawyer.
4. Survival Strategies: Handling the Aftermath
A. Prepare For Outrage
If you write well, someone will see themselves in your work—even if you didn’t intend it. Own it or deny, but don’t get baited into an online fight.
If you’re worried about blowback, warn your publisher (or your family) ahead of time. Sometimes, a little preemptive charm goes a long way.
B. Legal Disclaimers Actually Matter
That little “any resemblance to actual persons is purely coincidental” isn’t a magic spell, but it doesn’t hurt. Use it.
For touchy memoir or autofiction, get legal review before publishing—especially if you’re writing about crimes, abuse, or mental illness.
C. Don’t Be an Asshole
Even if you hate the person, remember: everybody’s the hero of their own story. Write them with some humanity, or at least make them entertaining.
Never, ever out someone’s private secrets. (If you have to ask, “Is this too far?” it probably is.)
5. The Dirty Reality: Sometimes You Get Caught
If you write sharp, personal, or juicy fiction, someone will always think you’re writing about them.
Most of the time, it’s ego, not legal grounds. If they call you out, laugh it off, or say, “I’m inspired by lots of people.”
On the rare chance someone really comes for you: apologize, fix future printings, and thank your lawyer in the acknowledgments.
Confession from the Trenches:
Half my characters are based on people who hurt me, loved me, or just stuck in my brain. None of them have sued. Most sent weird emails. One sent a bottle of wine. True story.
6. The Final Dare: Write Fearlessly, Edit Ruthlessly
If you want your fiction to burn, to haunt, to really say something, you have to raid your real life. Just do it with smarts, style, and a little legal savvy. Fiction is truth, twisted. Let the haters come.
Because the best stories
aren’t written by people afraid of lawsuits—
they’re written by people
who know how to steal,
how to hide the evidence,
and how to turn every grudge into literary gold.