Who Owns the Story?
I wrote about this last week, and thought I’d present the other side. People who don’t appreciate finding themselves (or aspects of their life) in someone else’s book. The New Yorker covered this recently, too:
I realized that the real world is full of people who, presumably, have feelings about being appropriated for someone else’s run at the Times best-seller list … When an author plants a made-up character in a novel, that character gains breath, agency, life. But when an author plants a real person in a novel, she metes out a kind of death … Is moving someone down the existence scale from “human person” to “character” anything like murder? Is moving someone up the scale anything like art?
Whoa.
As in, by fictionalizing, you flatten the person, you turn them into a character which is always two-dimensional (or maybe three-dimensional at best) whereas a human is four-dimensional and super-complex.
The article is about Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise, which was on my TBR list, as well as the author’s own experience finding herself in the pages of someone’s book, her life fictionalized. It begs the question: who owns a story?
The person who lived it? The person who observed it? The person who heard about it? If I heard your story and feel moved by it, can I write about how I feel (and by default, tell your story)? Is it only your story if you’re the only one in it? Once there is a second person in the story, do you no longer own the whole thing?
Big questions without clear answers.
8 comments
Can anyone really say they “own” a story? As in Rashoman, all you can ever get is someone’s interpretation of events. While a subject may not agree with a bystander’s account, does that make the account less valid? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
I don’t think anyone has any more right to a story than anyone else, if appropriate qualifiers are added. Telling something you observed is obviously different than repeating gossip. But it’s hard to draw a line, in my opinion. And it irks me when people write “it’s not my story to tell” – why’d you bring it up then? It’s not like I can ask the supposed owner. Whatever context is added is incomplete and therefore raises more questions than it answers. But I understand that people don’t want others talking about them. However, it makes for really boring stories (or none at all, in my case) if I can only talk about myself.
*Rashomon
I wonder this, too, and Rashomon is a great example of the same events told from different perspectives and how much it changes.
For me, I wonder all the time who owns the story of my first marriage? My ex’s family and my ex himself had a very different perspective on what went down, and they definitely do not see me as a person treated unfairly but rather a person who gave up on a sacred vow. I could tell my story of abuse and infidelity, but they would call fie on it even though there are people who saw some of the awfulness and I had crazy proof of the two affairs (that I knew about). But I am sure that I am painted as a crazy, unstable person who didn’t keep her man happy enough not to stray, and who deserved the treatment she got, which is how his ex-girlfriend before me was painted… So our versions of the story would be very, very different. But to be fair, he probably experienced our marriage differently due to his mindset and examples of relationships, so in his mind I could very well be the villain there. This is where things get sticky! Who’s side, who’s right, who’s slanted, who does the story belong to when there’s more than one person involved? Literature would be very boring if people didn’t imagine all the sides of a story or expand upon what really happened.
So yeah, no clear answers, and heavy, heavy questions.
That’s an interesting question. I have thought about it in relation to my blog: when I tell my story publicly, I really lose control over it. I can’t choose how it will be read or interpreted. I do think that by being as accurate and truthful as possible I reduce the likelihood of misinterpretation (but it is impossible to eliminate). I also know the risk and loss of control is something I chose to embrace.
I don’t know how I’d feel about being written about. I think it would depend on the quality of the work haha. I would not like to be maliciously misquoted or selectively quoted as happens all the time these days, but I don’t think that’s quite what you mean. If it was an honest attempt to create a character based in some part on me I’d be ok with it I think lol.
This is a tough one. But I if someone can recognize themselves in fiction then enough wasn’t done to fictionalize the story. There is a between reporting and fiction.
I really like Kat’s comment. I think it sums up how I feel about this.
Who owns a story makes me think about who owns the truth…
Interesting questions! Also now I’m wondering if I would be an unreliable narrator telling my own story as I’ve a bad memory anyway plus how I would interpret things could be different to how someone else perceives them.