Author: James Lewis
Date:   09-28-02 10:58

Hello all.
I'm writing a novel (almost finished -- yippee!) but I'm kind of stuck on a particular part.
This stoy is based in San Diego and I'm trying to capture the surroundings as much as I can. One major part of the story is set in a nightclub.
I'm getting all the details about the club as accurately as possible, but I'm purposely leaving out one thing: the kind of music they play on Friday nights.
In reality, they play disco on Friday nights; in my novel, I use comtemparary R&B.
Question: writers alter real settings and events with fiction all the time (ala Titanic, Pearl Harbor). Would this be the same situation? Do you think I should call the owner of this club for permission to use a different kind of music described in my book?
Reason why I used this club is because I believe it's the perfect setting.
Weird question, I know. Thanks in advance!

Author: Kaz
Date:   09-28-02 12:35

James, if your setting is in a real nightclub, you may need permission to depict it in your novel. Otherwise, you could consider changing the name to a fictional nightclub.
Regards, Kaz

Author: BrianH
Date:   09-28-02 12:43

I don't know the answer to the night club music question, but I have a question of my own.
In such a book as you describe, is it equally 'valid' or useful to write about a real night club or a totally fictional one?
Does it matter if a book is set in a real city at a real time period but the night club, for example, is totally an invention of the author?
Do the night clubs, hotels, incidental places in a work of fiction, even when set in an identifiable time and place, have to be factual?
You can't have scenes inside the Empire Sate Building when the action is taking place in Chicago, of course. And you can't have scenes in the Marriot Hotel in Miami if there is no Marriot there.
But can you legitimately have scenes in The Empress Plaza Hotel in NYC...even if there is no such hotel in NYC?

Author: Bob Kellogg
Date:   09-28-02 12:46

I have more detailed answers to your question. In general, I agree with Kaz that you should describe a real place, but change the name. That way, you're in charge of the kind of music they play; whatever fits your story line.

Bob K.

Author: Karen Dionne
Date:   09-28-02 13:03

In my novel, I refer (briefly) to a high school quiz bowl program which is televised from the campus studio at Georgetown University. In reality, this is based on a program my son participated in at Northern Michigan University. Georgetown University doesn't sponsor such a program, as my agent's reader, who happens to be a student there (!) pointed out. I asked my agent about this specifically; how important was it to stick to the truth, and where does literary license come in? He told me to feel free to keep it as is, but know that readers would indeed call me on it, and suggested I just stick something in the author's notes about it if I wanted to forestall that.

Along those lines, here's something from the authors' notes from the book "Reliquary" by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child which takes place in the tunnels below New York City: "It should also be noted that in certain important instances the authors have altered, moved, or embellished what exists under Manhattan for purposes of the story."

Karen

Author: Pamela Taylor
Date:   09-29-02 22:35

Robin Cook typically used a hospital which so greatly resembles Mass General that one might believe it actually was called Mass General in his books, but (for obvious legal reaasons?) it is something different. As a reader well acquainted with Mass General and the Boston hospital scene it didn't faze me that it was a fictional hopsital, nor that it was clearly a simalcrum of Mass General.

Guess that means I don't think it matters too much. On the other hand, I was writing last night and debating if I should use the name of this real town in Spain or if I should make up a fictitious one. I've been to the real one and the fictitious one is similar, but I thought to myself, hmmm, what if my memory of this place is faulty and people who live there or vacation there every summer get kind of pissed off because I changed their town around! So it's a new name.

That helps a lot doesn't it?

Pamela