Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

50%
+0 −0
Q&A Should I create a fictional college if students go missing in my script?

You are asking for legal advice, on whether you slander or libel the college in question, which even a lawyer would have to read everything you write about the college in order to provide you with ...

posted 7y ago by Amadeus‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-19T22:13:15Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/32104
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T07:33:05Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/32104
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T07:33:05Z (almost 5 years ago)
You are asking for legal advice, on whether you slander or libel the college in question, which even a lawyer would have to read everything you write about the college in order to provide you with advice.

I am not a lawyer. However, as you can see from the TV series "Suits", it is important to their story line that ALL the lawyers in the law firm Mike works at (Mike is the MC) graduated from Harvard Law, specifically. Mike is a fraud that has used hackers, forgeries and his own skill to pretend to be a graduate, and in their story fictional professors (and I think fictional students) of Harvard Law are blackmailed or corrupted into corroborating his story. (Harvard Law itself, however, is not presented as a routinely corrupt organization.)

So it obviously is possible to use a real (and famous) college, and even imply some fictional professors and administrators are bad apples and their information security leaves room to be hacked so frauds like Mike might exist.

But that is not legal advice; in the end it depends on the college, whether they choose to sue you for defamation or whatever, and whether your publisher's editor is willing to use a real name or not. So unless using an ACTUAL college is very important to the plot of your story (e.g. it MUST be an actual Ivy League college), I personally would set the story in a fictional private college and imply the status with who attends it and how much it costs.

That's the safe route, if the story can still work. If not, spend a day researching what exactly constitutes slander, libel, defamation, etc, use the real name but try to avoid those, and risk being rejected for what an agent or publisher regards as crossing the line. Be aware that a rejection letter may not tell you that is their **_reason_** for rejecting you; doing so may constitute legal advice on their part, which they will refrain from giving. They would likely send you form letter A1, something like "Thanks for considering us. Unfortunately this work is not a good fit for us at this time."

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2017-12-21T13:08:12Z (almost 7 years ago)
Original score: 5