Jane Davis
Mar 16, 2015 | Editors' Blog
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Or were they?
You know that text you find at the beginning of every novel? The bit that reads, This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously? Let’s explore that.
Pitfalls of Writing Fact-based Fiction
I hold up my hands. I am guilty of being a scavenger of facts. There is nothing more flattering that when, after reading one of my books, people tell me their extraordinary stories and say, ‘I’d like you to write about it’. As with An Unknown Woman, sometimes I borrow elements from personal accounts, a snap-shot here, an emotion there, a potent and heart-felt line, but never the whole.
Two main areas of the law should be considered by any writer who wishes to stay out of court.
Libel
Libel is a false statement presented as fact of and concerning a person that causes damage to their reputation. Unfortunately, pointing out that yours is a work of fiction may not be enough to protect you.
John Green added an ‘author’s note’ at the front of A Fault in Our Stars: “This book is a work of fiction. I made it up. Neither novels or their readers benefit from attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species. I appreciate your cooperation in this matter.”
But not even this carefully-crafted statement would protect Green were a court to find that he had:
- Included detail about a living person which enabled people who knew that person to recognise him or her, and
- People who read what he had written about that person believed it to be true
- The person suffered damage to reputation as a result
In 2009, a plaintiff was awarded $100,000 by a US court for a fictional portrayal that was recognisably her. The ‘Red Hat Club’ presented the plaintiff as a sexually promiscuous alcoholic.
But even a case that doesn’t reach court can be hugely damaging, as author Amanda Craig discovered. In the mid-nineties, the publisher who had commissioned Vicious Circle – a satire that had been four years in the writing – pulled the plug. An ex-boyfriend Craig hadn’t seen for fifteen years (then a literary critic) had claimed that one of the book’s characters was based on him. All parties breathed a sigh of relief when the libel specialist consulted concluded that only ‘a lunatic’ would claim to be the character. But, when proofs were circulated, the ex-boyfriend sent the publisher a list of the similarities between him and the character, down to a pair of shoes he used to wear. Craig’s character was based on a number of men, one of whom was the ex-boyfriend. I am sympathetic. It is impossible to avoid writing what you know. A borrowed facial expression here, a quotation there. Dumped by her publisher, Craig again took legal advice, which thankfully only involved a handful of minor changes. A new deal negotiated and the novel was published, but for some time Craig lived with the worry that she might be sued.
The Right to Privacy
So, you avoid falling into the trap of writing something potentially libellous by researching your subject thoroughly and only including events that you know to be true. You’re protected, right? Wrong.
Maria Bento Fernandes has been ordered to pay 53,000 EUR to her husband’s family (including her mother-in-law), after she revealed intimate details about their family life in her novel The Palace of Flies, published under a pen-name. When she appealed to the European Court of Human Rights on the grounds that hers was a work of fiction, they disagreed. A number of characters in her book were ‘exact replicas’ of her in-laws. However, rather than uphold the original decision, they ruled that the award should stand as the author had ‘failed to respect her in-laws’ right to a private life’. Christmas at the Fernandes will never be the same again.
“But it’s MY story to tell”
That may well be true, but few of us live in isolation.
When I saw Esther Freud speaking about her autobiographic novel Hideous Kinky a few years ago, she admitted that she’d been surprised by her sister’s hurt reaction to some sections of the book, which she had felt to be about their relationship with their mother.
I have a sister who is less than a year older than me. As I know from her accounts of events from our childhood, my experiences were totally different from hers. She disputes my versions. I believe each of us has our own truth. Memory is both subjective and can be affected by things that happen in between. As J M Coetzee is quoted as saying: “How can one even vouch for the truth of memories that are shared with no one else?
Hilary Mantel said of telling her mother that she had written her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost: “What she heard was `I've written a book about you'”.
So if you must borrow from life, please be nice.
Author Biography
Jane Davis lives in Carshalton, Surrey with her Formula 1 obsessed, star-gazing, beer-brewing partner, surrounded by growing piles of paperbacks, CDs and general chaos. She spent her twenties and the first part of her thirties chasing promotions at work, but when Jane achieved what she’d set out to do, she discovered that it wasn’t what she had wanted after all. In search of a creative outlet, she turned to writing fiction, but cites the disciplines learnt in the business world as what helps her finish her first 120,000-word novel.
Her first, Half-truths and White Lies, won the Daily Mail First Novel Award and was described by Joanne Harris as ‘A story of secrets, lies, grief and, ultimately, redemption, charmingly handled by this very promising new writer.’ She was hailed by The Bookseller as ‘One to Watch.’ Five self-published novels have followed: I Stopped Time, These Fragile Things, A Funeral for an Owl, An Unchoreographed Life and now her latest release, An Unknown Woman. Jane’s favourite description of fiction is that it is ‘made-up truth.’
Website www.jane-davis.co.uk
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/jane.davis.54966
Twitter @janedavisauthor
Pinterest https://uk.pinterest.com/janeeleanordavi/
By An Unknown Woman from Amazon.
Nov 15, 2014 | 1st pages, Historical, Women's
1 – Sir James’s Story
Beginnings
I grew up motherless. That is not to say my mother was dead. ‘Conspicuous by her absence’ was the phrase I heard my father use as I listened at keyholes in hope of answers. Theirs was a lengthy marriage. The fact that she chose to take no part in it didn’t detract from his sense that she was his wife. Yes, he had frequent lady friends, perfumed, interchangeable. None replaced her. My mother remained the love of his life – except, that is, for racing cars, an open stretch of road and, of course, the lure of speed.
I couldn’t help but feel I must have done something terrible to cause her to go, but my father frequently assured, “You were hardly capable of anything more ghastly than crying too loudly. Or too often. No, it was me your mother left.” But he failed to provide an adequate explanation of his crime, claiming to have bought her the best money could buy, even allowing her to pursue her career – against his better judgement. What was I to think?
“Think of the boy!” I shrank into my seat at the sound of my grandfather’s bullish proclamation over the cut-glass and cruets. “I can’t understand why you don’t divorce her.”
My father slowly applied a napkin to one corner of his mouth. His response was measured, dry: “I wouldn’t expect you to.”
“Frankly, I never understood why you had to marry her in the first place!” Never one to waste time listening to the other side of an argument, the older man forked food into his mouth as if his was the last word.
“I know you’d have preferred me to throw in the towel with some obedient little debutante, but,” and here my father turned his focus to me, exaggerating the width of his cow-brown eyes, “your mother was exciting. And very beautiful.”
My grandfather inhaled his Claret, spluttering, “Excitement! That’s not what one looks for in a wife!”
“‘Til death us do part was the promise I made. And I haven’t managed to kill myself yet.”
“Despite your confounded tomfoolery! Look here, in my day a man would have taken a woman like her -”
My father coughed a loud protest.
“Do you dare censor me? One can only hope,” my grandfather’s eyes singled me out, flashing terror into my soul, “young James here will learn from your mistakes!”
“Son.” I found my hair being ruffled, my father’s voice assuring, “Don’t listen to anyone who tells you it’s a mistake to marry for love.”
I Stopped Time on Amazon US
or I Stopped Time on Amazon UK
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Nov 13, 2014 | 1st pages, Literary
With growing unease, Elaine put the telephone receiver back in its cradle. Opening the front door, she stepped outside into the porch, absorbing the wail of sirens that passes for birdsong in a London suburb. It had only been a small white lie: something to put her husband’s mind at rest.
“How’s Judy?”
“Oh, you know. Buried in her homework.”
Their daughter had been doing her homework – would have finished it by now – but for the small matter of the postage stamps. And stamps were one of the few things Elaine hated to run out of.
“Why don’t you eat?” Graham had suggested. “I’m going to be stuck in this meeting for another hour.”
She tried to put a smile in her voice. “Well, if you don’t mind. Perhaps we will.”
Judy should have been gone for ten minutes at the most instead of – what? A glance at her watch suggested – surely it couldn’t be ten to six? She knew what time dinner would be on the table. What could be keeping the girl? The violet dusk had deepened to coal; the streetlights were encased in orange halos. Arms folded, Elaine walked to the end of the garden path, scanning the stretch of Strathdale Road. Judy wasn’t allowed to use the alley after dark, not alone. Long and narrow, it was enclosed by high windowless walls on one side and playing fields on the other, the middle stretch unlit. Elaine’s feet made the decision for her. They walked back into the house, infused with thyme from the Shepherd’s Pie, stepped into her shoes. It only remained for her to grab her keys. She would meet her daughter coming in the opposite direction. Hurry her along.
Approaching the end of her road, Elaine tensed at the sound of raised voices in the near distance, the odd order shouted loud above the general background roar. “Come on! Over here!” Must be the school football team practising in the playing fields, she thought. Keen, at this time of the evening. The sound of crowds, even spectators like these, always made her slightly edgy.
Leaving the streetlight behind Elaine entered the alley, picking up her pace, imagining that when her feet slid it was leaf mulch rather than dog shit she was treading in. The shouts escalated: if this was football, it was no friendly match. Tension mutated to anxiety. Last summer the Brixton Riots had spilled onto nearby streets after the police had approached the Stop and Search campaign with hunger for over-time. And they’d got it: 5000 rioters; buildings torched; looting; petrol bombs. Prior to that she had always considered that the perimeter of her home territory was encircled by a shimmering Ready Brek force-field. Perhaps it had been irresponsible to send a thirteen-year old on an errand just as it was growing dark. But she and Graham had agreed: a gradual loosening of the reins; a little more responsibility; and then the rewards.
These Fragile Things on Amazon US
or These Fragile Things on Amazon UK
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Nov 13, 2014 | 1st pages, Contemporary
Ayisha – July 2010 – Ashfield Comprehensive
Her hand sliding smoothly down the gun-grey stair rail, Ayisha was cursing her choice of footwear when the thunder of surging feet drowned their staccato clipping.
“Slow down, Nathan!” She raised her voice, naming the first face that span into view. Referred to in the staff room as ‘But Nathan’, this boy came equipped with an unusually comprehensive range of excuses. “There’s no need to cause a stampede. And before you ask: No, I don’t care if it is the last day of term.”
Neck twisting self-righteously, he didn’t disappoint. “But Miss, there’s a fight -”
Why now? was Ayisha’s first reaction; now, when the day was winding down nicely and all she had left to do was set her Out of Office Assistant? Glancing through the picture window, she identified the back of a male colleague cutting diagonally across the quad: Jim Stevens. Hand taxi-hailing, he was heading towards a boxing ring formation. Moments behind, her moral support was all that would be required. Reassured, she said, “Slow down! Whatever’s happening outside doesn’t concern you!”
“Why are you always pickin’ on me, Miss?”
“I don’t know, Nathan.” She countered aggression with sarcasm, a tactic she had developed for the classroom but found over-spilling into personal conversations. “Maybe it’s because you make yourself an easy target.”
“But that’s, like, discrimination -”
Side-stepping Nathan’s protests, Ayisha tightened her mouth – “I’m sure you’ll get over it” – and elbowed her way down, reaching the halfway landing between the second and first floors. Another glance outside: Jim had been absorbed within the outer ring. Through the bottleneck outside the boys’ toilets (where she instinctively held her breath), Ayisha used the side door, which was already hooked open, and briskly crossed the quad, shouting, “Alright! Break it up.” At the same time, she delved into her over-sized shoulder bag, needing the feeling of security that having a mobile phone in her hand provided. The fading of the chanting (Fight! Fight! Fight!) and the slow disintegration of the ring gave the impression that Jim was already busy refereeing proceedings. But the witnesses who staggered backwards, the eerie hush, a single high-pitched scream, suggested the need for a different drill.
A Funeral for an Owl on Amazon US
or A Funeral for an Owl on Amazon UK
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Jane Davis
Nov 13, 2014 | 1st pages, Contemporary, Women's
“I know you’re in there, Belle.” Although her mother’s voice was teasing, it also had a prickly quality. At the first of three knuckle-sharp raps, the girl’s head jolted, colliding with the shelf above her, more startling than painful. “It’s time to come out of the cupboard and say goodbye to Uncle Sergei.”
Curled horizontally, peering out through slanted wooden slats, Belinda could see the rippling silk hem of her mother’s turquoise dressing gown. It was the one Mummy called a kimono. She had bought it from a Chinese market before she gave up travelling and made her home in a place called Worlds End, sandwiched, not on a cliff’s edge with the roar of the ocean below, or next to the flag at the North Pole, but just beyond the snake in the King’s Road where the bus service was excellent. Her mother had christened the estate ‘The Land Architecture Forgot’, but there weren’t too many buildings you could learn about hexagons from, so that had to mean something.
Two pairs of shoes stood side by side: one towering, blister-forming; the other, sensible brown lace-ups. Hand-stitched, a little scuffed at the toes. The type Belinda would later recognise in the windows of old-fashioned men’s outfitters and think, He must have been nice.
Having accumulated all the wisdom and secret worries that being six can afford, Belinda understood that by insisting she called her friend ‘Uncle’, Mummy was suggesting he was trustworthy. As opposed to, say, the undercover abductors she was warned lurked outside school gates, elbows poking out of drivers’ windows, concealed cameras, a tempting selection of sweets spilling onto the dashboard (Fruity Frogs, Freaky Fish, and so on), ready to pounce the moment your mother’s back was turned. For someone with so few known blood relatives, Belinda had acquired a number of uncles.
“Bye, Uncle Sergei,” she murmured unenthusiastically, nestling deeper into the spare duvet (second-best, synthetic).
“She’s locked herself in!” The door was rattled, tentatively at first.
Children and long-haired cats – strays especially – weren’t supposed to lock themselves in the airing cupboard. Whether this rule had been dreamt up by their landlord, Mummy or the prime minister was unclear. No matter: at this moment neither cat nor child cared much for rules. “Don’t want to,” she muttered.
An Unchoreographed Life on Amazon US
or An Unchoreographed Life on Amazon UK
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