In works of creative nonfiction? I'm grappling with potential legal ramifications from descriptions of relatively innocuous infractions like playing in home poker games and smoking pot to more stigmatized actions like selling drugs (which I was already arrested and convicted for).
There are many works that may sit on the fence of creative nonfiction such as On the Road, or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or Electric Kool-aid acid test that presume to describe very serious crimes (in terms of legal weight, not necessarily against humanity in my eyes), with, to my knowledge, no consequences on the parts of the author or other pseudonym-ized characters in the book. Is all I have to do to avoid possible legal penalty to change the names of characters in the story, including myself? Can the work still then be considered creative nonfiction? I will be writing some stories for my creative nonfiction class this semester and had a lot of questions like these.
There are many works that may sit on the fence of creative nonfiction such as On the Road, or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or Electric Kool-aid acid test that presume to describe very serious crimes (in terms of legal weight, not necessarily against humanity in my eyes), with, to my knowledge, no consequences on the parts of the author or other pseudonym-ized characters in the book. Is all I have to do to avoid possible legal penalty to change the names of characters in the story, including myself? Can the work still then be considered creative nonfiction? I will be writing some stories for my creative nonfiction class this semester and had a lot of questions like these.
