When is it not okay?

By Jenny Hilborne
Author of Mysteries and Thrillers

I love to eavesdrop. While some people might find it creepy to listen in on the conversations of others, I don't. It's not like I position myself to engineer it and secretly listen in to private conversations. People talk in loud voices and air their personal business in public places. It's true, the juicy snippets make me prick up my ears, and I always have a notebook and pen handy to jot useful tidbits down. It's also true I sometimes ride the bus and sit in busy cafe's for research, to watch people and listen to what's going on. Public transport is a fantastic way to pick up ideas for great plot lines and interesting scenes.

On a recent twenty minute trip into town, I learned about one male passenger's whole life including where he grew up, his failed marriages and the causes behind them, job losses and divorce. Everyone on the bus heard his story. Fair game to use any interesting bits, as far as I'm concerned. He doesn't know me. If I used anything he said, and if he ever reads any of my books, he will never know he contributed. And he clearly didn't care who heard him.

What I struggle with is using elements from the stories I'm told by people I know, people who've shared parts of their lives with me. If I have their prior permission, or if they've unloaded for this purpose - for me to tell their story - no problem. But sometimes I don't want to ask for their permission. I don't even want to suggest I might like to use what they've told me in a plot line because it feels unkind and tacky, as though I've lost my compassion as a friend and think about them only in terms of how I can use them in my work. The thought that a situation so troubling for them might make compelling reading for someone else seems insensitive, and I wonder if by asking permission to use it, I'm somehow making light of their struggle. To use it without their permission seems wrong, yet I hate to let an opportunity for a great story slip by. I'm not looking to benefit from anyone's personal tragedy, more I'm looking to write a good story I believe readers will find believable, compelling and be drawn to. As journalists always look for good stories to report, writers always look for good plot lines and most of our (best) fiction is ground in the truth.

My upcoming release, Stone Cold, is a psychological thriller. Part of the idea for one of the plot lines is born out of a real-life tragedy. I can't ask the person's permission to use it because they are dead, but I wonder if I should have discussed it with their family. It happened a long time ago and it never occurred to me back then that I'd ever want to use it in a novel. Over the years, the tragedy and the facts surrounding it nagged me. I believe my friend would have encouraged me to write it. I don't have direct contact with the family members, and they don't know me, so maybe it doesn't matter, yet something about it still tugs at my conscience. In real life, it didn't turn out okay, and that's the source of my dilemma. In fiction, I can give it a fitting ending and give the bad guys what they deserve. Fictional justice. I hope my friend would approve.

Some people argue that it isn't necessary to use real life tragedy to create good fiction, but I find movies made out of real life tragedies stir the strongest emotions within the audience. I'm sure there are many examples, but the two I want to use are the Titanic and The Impossible; the latter being a new release based on a true story of a family's survival of the 2004 tsunami that struck Thailand. I enjoyed both these movies and never felt the fictionalized aspects detracted from the real life tragedy or demeaned those who lost their lives. The devastation of the real life events were immense, yet pleasure was gained from the story itself - from the survival, the triumphs, humanity and the way people pulled together to survive - not from the real life tragedy. I came away from both movies with empathy for the real life victims, people I don't know. If using real life tragedy, whether on a large scale or from a personal event, in a movie or a novel can move us and make us care about what happened, I don't see it as wrong or unnecessary. To me, it's even more compelling because aspects of the story are based on real life events. Real life events create believable fiction, and it makes me care more.

Whenever we fictionalize the truth in our novels, writers twist the facts and alter the identities of anyone upon whom we base a character to protect their privacy. Wherever necessary, we also modify the circumstances to make them unrecognizable to any particular person. Ethically speaking, even with a disclaimer, is this enough? If a writer wants to use the real life tragedy of someone they know, even if indirectly, and they have protected the identity and privacy of the real life characters, should they obtain permission first? Is there a time when it is not okay to use real life tragedy in fiction? When is that time?

Book Promotion and Reader Trust

by L.J. Sellers

Authors may feel pressured to invent new ways to promote their work, but unfortunately, some tactics are less ethical than others. We’ve all heard complaints from readers about five-star reviews written by the author’s family, but now some novelists have taken Amazon-ranking manipulation to a new level by gifting books to readers.

What’s wrong with giving away books? Nothing, in theory. I’ve given away hundreds of copies of my novels, both print and digital. But when an author gifts a book through Amazon, the transaction counts as a sale, and a lot of sales all at once can push a book higher in the rankings. Better visibility then results in more sales. I understand the motivation to do this, yet it strikes me as deceptive. The practice leads readers to purchase the book based on the assumption that many other readers have already done so. If readers knew the author was the main buyer of those copies, they might make a different decision.

So what is ethical and what is not? Having a friend or two read your book and post good reviews on various forums seems fine. For myself, I rarely solicit reviews, I’ve never asked anyone to post a review they didn’t fully support, and none of my family members have ever posted reviews of my novels. (At least not that I know about. If they’re posting anonymously, it might explain a few things. :) But having friends post five-star reviews of a book they didn’t read or didn’t like is not okay. Directly giving away copies of your books in any format is great promotion and lots of fun, but buying your own books to manipulate rankings is probably not a good idea.

As a guideline, I believe anything that would make a reader feel manipulated or lied to should be avoided. A lot of book promotion falls into a huge gray area of social networking and doesn’t have clear boundaries. For example, it's typically okay to talk about your books if someone else brings them up, but readers hate it when writers sidetrack a discussion to talk about their own novels. They get annoyed when writers anonymously start discussions about their work. Writers can openly start discussions about their work...if they've been participating in the forum long enough to make friends. It's a delicate social balance.

Some readers have become super sensitive to this trend. Last month, a reader started a thread about my Jackson books, just because she loved the series and wanted to share her discovery. Another forum participant immediately assumed I, or someone connected to me, had initiated the thread. I’ve never done that and the participant had no reason to believe I would, but clearly, enough authors engage in that sort of thing to make all of us look bad. I was delighted when other participants defended both me and my series, but the incident made me aware that writers as a group are developing a problem with reader trust.

Here’s another gray area: When is it okay to add someone to your email database? I’ve always assumed that if readers contact me about my novels or enter a contest to win a book, they'll expect me to add them to my newsletter file. Once they receive my mailing, which only goes out to announce new releases, they can immediately unsubscribe. Yet, this is not a clear area, and some readers may not want to be emailed without explicit permission. I’m still grappling with the ethics of this tactic.

This subject could be endless, so I’ll only bring up one more point. Writers who use Facebook and Twitter to exclusively promote their work do themselves more harm than good. It’s spam. Sending people you don’t really know invitations to read your work is also spam.

I’m not perfect, and I’ve made mistakes along the way. This post is intended to not only encourage authors to be ethical in their promotion but also to let readers know their trust is important to me.

Readers: What else do you consider annoying or unethical?
Writers: What has been your experience with these situations?

L.J. Sellers writes the bestselling Detective Jackson mysteries and standalone thrillers