Fiction writers do it, though usually there’s more fun than profit! Short stories, novels, all lies. Well, mostly lies. Sometimes a real person or a real event will trigger a story idea. As Samuel Clemens AKA Mark Twain said, “Get your facts first, then you can distort ‘em as much as you please.

As a matter of fact, a writer had better distort the facts if for no other reason than self-preservation. Aunt Betty might be pretty enraged that in your noir novelette you outed her clandestine Saturday night excursions to the country bar/roadhouse on the edge of town. And the urban cowboys half her age she brought back home. She’s far too genteel to come after you with her late husband’s Colt 45. Maybe. But she might leave her prized wooden butter mold collection to the local museum as revenge.

You might better assure personal safety (and inheritance) if you morph Aunt Betty into the head cashier at the supermarket. That gray haired martinet who always makes you show ID for a carton of light beer even though she’s known you since you were a ten year old towhead.

And always heed Samuel Butler in his Notebooks, “Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.”