Saturday, September 3: Mississippi Mud
A HELPFUL DISCUSSION?
by John M. Floyd
“Fat, dumb, and happy” isn’t a good description of me, but that’s only because I happen to be skinny. The other two adjectives are a good fit — I’m usually content and carefree. My wife is the worrier.
She’s the one who’s always concerned that we’ll make an accidental and innocent mistake on our tax return and spend the rest of our lives in prison, or that she’ll be tracked down and arrested for driving through the tail end of a yellow light, or that the Anti-Terrorist Task Force will get their street addresses wrong and break down our door in the middle of the night. I’m the opposite. I stew a bit when the stock market bobs up and down the way it has lately, but otherwise I’m fairly easygoing. And as far as the long arm of the Law is concerned, I’ve always held the probably naïve belief that if I’m honest and try to do the right thing, nothing’s going to jump out of one of the dark alleys of our legal system and drag me away.
I feel pretty much the same way about the rules and ethics of writing fiction. I don’t plagiarize and I don’t write harmful things about real people or products or corporations, so I don’t worry a lot about the possibility of litigation. But something in the news recently has added a little fuel to my wife’s already overactive imagination.
You’ve probably heard about it. Kathryn Stockett, the lady who wrote the bestselling novel The Help, was sued by a woman who claims that one of the book’s (and the movie’s) main characters was based on her. Stockett denies it, even though the two names are similar, and the question might be moot anyway—I heard the judge dismissed the suit a few days ago because it was filed past the one-year statute of limitations. But the incident does serve to remind us writers that it’s not only the nonfiction guys who run the risk of a lawsuit.
If you’re a fellow writer of short stories or novels, what do you do to make sure you don’t run into legal problems? Personally, I usually Google my characters’ names before I submit a story to try to ensure that I haven’t inadvertently referred to a real and identifiable person, and I sometimes (though not often) go so far as to invent company names and set my stories in fictional locations. Otherwise, I don’t worry about it much. The chances that I would be sued are slim anyhow, since I’m a guppy in a small pond—lawyers want bigger fish to try. I think it’s significant that Ms. Stockett was sued only after her book hit the bestseller lists.
I also think it’s interesting that there seems to be almost as much discussion about the lawsuit as about The Help itself. If it’s really true what they say about there being no such thing as “bad publicity,” the suit and its aftermath were probably a gift straight from heaven. In fact, if I were writing a fictional account of a situation like this, I’d probably have the author character plan the whole thing beforehand. In my story, I’d have the author find someone and say, “Look, I’m writing this book, and if it’s published and does well, you pop up and say I wrote about you without your permission, and sue my pants off, and the controversy will sell even more books and I’ll make a gazillion bucks and I’ll give you such-and-such a percentage.” I’m not saying that’s what happened, because it didn’t, but that’s the way I would plot it.
One final word: The Help is one of the two best novels about the South I’ve read in a long time—the other is Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, by Tom Franklin—and I think it deserves every bit of success and recognition it’s received. I’ve not yet seen its film adaptation, but I plan to.
Meanwhile, I’ll continue to write, and I’ll continue to try to avoid any contact with lawyers. Maybe if I do get sued, it’ll mean I’ve finally hit the big time.
John, I believe we’re related. Your wife is a member of my family, all of whom except me suffer from what we call the “anxiety gene.” If there are two possible outcomes to a situation, most of my family fear the worst will happen. I, however, assume the best. It’s fine though because we carefree souls sometimes need the input of the worriers to keep us in reality.
I’ve never given a lot of thought to naming characters. Mine seem to spring on my keyboard with names. Of course, that is why (unconsciously) the first person I murdered in print had the first name of my first boyfriend. (Lots of “firsts” there, including his sister being the first to emailing me to point it out when the book was published.)
I agree with you about The Help.
Oops! Did it again. Sent the comment without proofreading it carefully. Last line of second paragraph drop the “ing” on email. By the way, not only did I use the first name, the last name was very close. At least it wasn’t a brutal death.
I really liked The Help and Crooked Letter.
Regarding inadvertent name usage, in my Ellery Queen story The Mad Hatter’s Riddle I wanted to come up with an outrageous name for a failed Hollywood actor. I hit on “Rand Canyon.” After the story was accepted for publication by EQMM, like all stories utilizing Ellery as a character, it had to be reviewed and okay-ed by the Dannay and Lee heirs. During that process I got an unexpected email from Manfred Lee’s son — Rand! He said “I wonder what my father would think of naming that particular character “Rand?” I immediately offered to change the name but Rand Lee graciously replied that in his view any publicity was good publicity.
I knew that Manfred Lee had a son named Rand, indeed I had read some of his reminiscences about life with his father. But it never occurred to me, while writing the story, to put two and two together!
Fran, I envy you — my characters’ names are something that don’t come easily to me. (But now that you mention it, I might kill off a couple of early girlfriends in future works . . .)
Dale, I think Rand Canyon is a perfect name! Glad they allowed him to stay in the story.
Another reason I’m eager to see the movie The Help is that it was filmed here in Mississippi. Shooting was a year ago this summer, and in recent interviews the actors said the heat almost did them in.
A few years ago I heard W.P. Kinsella speak about his book Shoeless Joe which became the movie Field of Dreams. In the book his hero kidnaps J.D. Salinger. In the movie Salinger is replaced by a fictional author, played by James Earl Jones, who was apparently popular ten years later than Salinger.
Kinsella explained that they felt it was safe to include Salinger in the novel because the famously introverted author would have had to appear in court in person and sue on the grounds that he had been falsely portrayed: i.e. the character in the book was wise, kind, generous, etc. and he was nothing like that.
But he and the studio agreed that if they showed Salinger being kidnapped in a movie that would give the man more impetus to take action. Hence the change.
I do Google the names of bad guys before I submit manuscripts. I figure the good guys can take care of themselves.
Alistair Maclean sometimes deliberately used names to sound like real people and places. For example, MacLean’s fictional Greek island of Navarone shares more than a little common geography with the real Greek island of Navarino. A primary character, the famed New Zealand mountain climber Mallory (working from a WW-II boat) bears more than a passing resemblance to famed New Zealand mountain climber Hillary (who worked with WW-II boats).
That’s a great story, Rob, about Kinsella and Salinger. I love that kind of behind-the-scenes info, and I hadn’t heard that before. As for Googling character names after the fact, I’ve sometimes found myself using a name that I really thought I’d imagined, when in fact it was a name that I’d actually heard before and stored someplace in my subconscious. Even more evidence that I’m probably losing my marbles . . .
Leigh, others have done the same as Maclean, in occasionally using names of people and places that sound like the real thing. I’ve always wondered why — maybe they think that those “in the know” will feel good about recognizing the similarity. And I think that does happen. Personally, I enjoy picking up on a vague reference that not everyone might be familiar with. Maybe it’s one of the many ways authors have of “relating” and getting closer to the reader (?).
Another note about fictional names sounding like reality: In James Ramsey Ullman’s novel Banner in the Sky, the plot centers around a sixteen-year-old boy’s ambition to be the first person to climb the Citadel, a fictional mountain based on the actual Matterhorn, in the Swiss/Italian Alps. The boy’s name is Rudi Matt.
I always figured Ullman was making sure (in a not-so-subtle way) that the reader knew the real setting of the story.