Hey - what are the advantages / disadvantages, pros & cons, ups and downs of using real life famous people in a novel. My lead character knows somebody famous - is it best to use a fictitious famous person, or use a real famous person? (observing privacy, libel, slander issues and securing necessary permissions)
You don't need permission to write about a famous person. I make out with movie stars all the time in my fiction. I think it can really help your fiction seem contemporary to have references to pop culture.
I don't write about real people ever, so my choice is to make one up. The worlds I write about have no connection to ours whatsoever.
Its wise not to write anything actionable about anyone who might sue you, but beyond that do what you want... in my Battle of Britain book the protagonist meets both AVM Keith Park and Douglas Bader. If you want to just mention that your character knows say michael douglas then thats fine, but if your protagonist regularly does coke with said famous person, and once helped them bury the body of an underage escort... you are better off using a fictitious character
I agree with this. I guess a lot depends on why you want to use a specific famous person and how you approach it.
So, to take this one step further, in terms of plausibility, character development and content to write about, which might have the advantage - writing about a fictitious famous person, or a real famous person?
If you want people to understand your book in the future (which might not be the case), you can avoid contemporary references that the next generation might not have any clue about. For a historical setting, you can use people that are still well known or add a short explanation to who the person was. You can refer to celebrities like James Dean or Frank Sinatra without an explanation because a reader who doesn't know about them probably should look it up to learn some history and understand how people lived before immersing into the story.
You can satirize a real famous person with a made-up famous person, but fictitious depictions of real people always come across as fake to me. Is that really how they would act? Etc., etc.
A quick note here; the "ALL CHARACTERS DEPICTED IN THIS VIDEO ARE WORKS OF FICTION EVEN THOSE BASED ON REAL LIFE" you see in most movies (including star wars and lotr) is a precise result of this problem. It stems from a lawsuit against a 1932 movie featuring the story of Rasputin, where a former Russian prince sued the studio for damages after it depicted a fictional scene between his wife & Rasputin. So either pluck that note in or be careful what you do. Or go like 20th century fox and literally put that note everywhere, even into works of fiction that are ... well, 100% fictious.
I would just make up a famous person. You can use attributes of a actual person to make them seem more real. But if they are actually going to have any role other than just a random name drop of 'I know X' I would want the character to be fictional so I could dictate how they act.
