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Writing Composites: Is it Legal? Ethical? Dangerous?<\/h2>\nWriting Composites: Is it Legal? Ethical? Dangerous?<\/h2>\nTherapists, doctors and coaches often worry about including client cases in a book. Should they be writing composites?<\/p>\n
They’re right to be concerned\u2014legally, ethically and morally. And what might the effects be on someone who sees herself in a book? Or someone who recognizes someone he knows?<\/p>\n
You have several options to address these concern, however. If you have a great story and think the client may be amenable (and it’s not prohibited by a law like HIPAA<\/a>) then you can ask outright for permission. Get this permission in writing.<\/p>\n Make sure the person understands they will not be paid for their story being shared. Publishers often have specific waivers for you to use but you can also get a waiver from an intellectual property attorney if you are self publishing.<\/p>\n Another option is to create composites:\u00a0take a true situation and client; combine the facts with other cases. Change the gender, characteristics, personality, job and geography of the person. Meld it with another client case, perhaps.<\/p>\n Voila, a composite is born.<\/p>\n Here’s the kicker: If you turn a story into a composite too soon, you make squeeze out all the juice. It can end up sounding\u00a0dull or even fake.<\/p>\n Earlier this morning, I spoke on the phone to an aspiring author who wants to write his memoir. We talked about changing some details of the people in the story\u00a0and also, perhaps, leaving out some details that might make certain people look badly.<\/p>\n I advised him to write everything in while no one else is reading it. He can\u00a0change details later, when sending\u00a0the book to beta readers or an editor: “Just write the truth, without leaving things out, at first.”<\/p>\n My advice, then, is to write the original story in your early drafts that only you will see. After you’ve written the juiciest parts of the story, anecdote or case study:<\/p>\n a) Think about whether certain details stick out as revealing of the person. Change those details first.<\/p>\n b) Also, think about details of other people you know that might lend themselves to the story: an interesting way of walking, a certain mannerism or colorful speech pattern. Or an interesting career.<\/p>\n c) Also think about story details you can embellish. Perhaps another client has a similar story and you can mesh the two\u2014or even three.<\/p>\n Questions about writing composites or writing in general? Ask away and I will do my best to answer.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Writing Composites: Is it Legal? Ethical? Dangerous? Therapists, doctors and coaches often worry about including client cases in a book. Should they be writing composites? What if the client recognizes herself? What if the someone else recognizes the client? Is this even legal? They’re right to be concerned\u2014legally, ethically and morally. And what might the… Read more<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15145,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,73],"tags":[1943,1944],"class_list":{"0":"post-15233","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-more","8":"category-writing-questions","9":"tag-waiver-form","10":"tag-writing-composites","11":"entry"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jodieburdette.net\/lisatener\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jodieburdette.net\/lisatener\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jodieburdette.net\/lisatener\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jodieburdette.net\/lisatener\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jodieburdette.net\/lisatener\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jodieburdette.net\/lisatener\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":278965,"href":"https:\/\/jodieburdette.net\/lisatener\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15233\/revisions\/278965"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jodieburdette.net\/lisatener\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jodieburdette.net\/lisatener\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jodieburdette.net\/lisatener\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jodieburdette.net\/lisatener\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Option 2: The Composite<\/h3>\n
[bctt tweet=”Benefits of Writing Composites after Writing The Original Story” username=”LisaTener”]<\/h2>\n
![\"writing](\"https:\/\/jodieburdette.net\/lisatener\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/purple-writing-journal-e1463085514391-300x207.jpeg\")
There are 5\u00a0benefits to this method:<\/p>\n\n