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This depends in part on how recognizable the landmark is to readers. On the one hand, if your scene is set in Times Square, it's hard to change anything -- enough people know the place that if you...
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#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T03:26:42Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/10587 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
This depends in part on how recognizable the landmark is to readers. On the one hand, if your scene is set in Times Square, it's hard to change anything -- enough people know the place that if you do, it'll just draw attention to your changes (which may be distracting). On the other hand, if your scene is set in Joe's House of Gourmet Eggplant in some small town most people haven't heard of, then readers will probably recognize _neither_ the landmark _nor_ any changes you make to it. So in that case, you could change the name of the business with no harm done to your story, and if you're at all concerned that would be safe. You said you want to use it because of the building; does it matter what the name of the business occupying that building is? On the other hand, you might just approach the business owner about it; maybe he'd actually like the exposure.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2014-03-24T17:34:04Z (over 10 years ago)
Original score: 6