Yesterday we discussed defamation. Today we’ll cover two related concepts that can also expose a writer to liability, as well as some defensive strategies that writers may wish to adopt. “Right to Privacy” simply refers to the right of an individual to be left alone in her personal affairs. As with defamation, privacy laws vary…
Author: RMFW Guest Blogger
A Study in Scarlett (Or: Can I Be Sued For Writing That?) Part 1 of 2 . . . By Chuck Greaves
You’ve heard the horror stories. Scarlett Johansson sues acclaimed French author Grégoire Delacourt for invoking her name in describing a fictional character. A jury awards Jesse Ventura $1.8 million against the estate of American Sniper author Chris Kyle over Kyle’s account of an alleged barroom brawl. Novelist Haywood Smith suffers a $100,000 jury verdict for…
Should We Write About What We Know?: Experience versus Research … by Mariko Tatsumoto Layton
How often have you heard that you should write about what you know? At the same time, you might hear that we can write about anything we want, we just need to research the subject matter. This debate of personal experience versus research is like nature versus nurture. I write middle-grade multicultural novels with Japanese…
Tips and Tricks to Surprise and Delight … by Suzanne Young
Do you ever sit down to a blank page and hope an idea will flow from your brain to your fingertips like magic? Then do you simply stare at all that white space as your mind shuts down? I am currently working on the sixth book of my Edna Davies mystery series (Murder by Decay)…
Returning to the Horror of it All … by F. P. Dorchak
After I released Voice last year, my thoughts once again turned to something I’d been considering for a while… Short stories. Now, I’m not an award-winning anything (I’d always wanted to be some kind of a William F. Nolan— who at one point claimed to have published everything he’d ever written—but I’m not…), rarely known…