How I Turned Real Testimonies Into Fiction Without Exploiting Them

Writing Stop. No! meant sitting with real survivor testimony, gathered over years of journalism, and deciding what belonged in a novel versus what belonged nowhere except in the trust that had been placed in me as a reporter. That decision-making process turned out to be far more demanding than the actual prose — and it’s the part of the work I get asked about most, usually by other writers approaching similar material for the first time.

The First Rule: Consent Isn’t a One-Time Event

A source agreeing to an interview for journalism is not the same as a source agreeing to have their story reshaped into fiction. I went back to every survivor whose testimony meaningfully informed the novel and had a separate, explicit conversation about the fictionalisation itself — what would change, what would stay recognisable, and crucially, what they wanted removed entirely, no explanation required. Several people asked for specific details to be excluded, and every one of those requests was honoured without negotiation.

Composite Characters, Not Composite Lies

No character in the novel maps directly onto one real person’s account. Details were deliberately recombined across multiple testimonies specifically to protect individual identifiability, while preserving the emotional and factual truth of the patterns those testimonies shared. This is a common practice in trauma-informed narrative nonfiction and fiction alike — the goal isn’t to obscure truth, it’s to prevent any single real survivor from being recognisable and therefore exposed by a published story they didn’t fully choose to be identifiable within.

Where I Drew Hard Lines

• No detail existed purely for shock value. Every difficult scene had to serve the reader’s understanding of the character’s experience, not just intensify the reading experience for its own sake — the same principle covered in a related piece on trauma-informed writing more broadly.
• The aftermath got as much space as the event. Testimonies consistently emphasised that survival continued long after the abuse itself, and the novel was structured to reflect that — refusing to let the traumatic event become the character’s entire narrative identity.
• Survivors reviewed relevant sections before publication. Several of the survivors whose testimony most directly shaped specific scenes read those sections in advance and had the opportunity to flag anything that felt wrong, exploitative, or inaccurate to their actual experience.

The Money Question I Had to Sit With

A question I asked myself honestly, more than once: was I benefiting from other people’s worst experiences? There’s no fully comfortable answer to this for anyone writing trauma-adjacent fiction professionally. What I could control was making sure the survivors whose testimony informed the work knew, clearly, what the book was for, had genuine veto power over how their story was used, and that the book’s proceeds and platform were used, in part, to actively support the advocacy work the testimonies were about in the first place — not just to build my own career on someone else’s pain.

What I’d Tell a Writer Approaching Similar Material

Get explicit consent for fictionalisation specifically, not just for the original interview. Build in a review step with the people whose experience most directly shaped specific scenes, even though this adds real time and vulnerability to the process. Interrogate every difficult detail with the same question: does this serve the reader’s understanding, or does it exist mainly for impact? And accept that there is no formula that makes this work entirely comfortable — the discomfort of handling someone else’s real pain responsibly is, in some sense, appropriate to feel, not a problem to fully resolve.

What Happened When Someone Said No

Not every conversation about fictionalisation ended in agreement, and it’s worth being honest about that rather than presenting a tidy process where everyone consented smoothly. One survivor whose testimony had shaped an early draft asked, on reflection, for their specific narrative thread to be removed entirely from the novel — not adjusted, removed. That meant reworking a section I’d already spent months developing. I did it without pushing back, because the alternative — trying to negotiate someone down from a boundary about their own trauma — would have undone the entire premise of asking for consent in the first place. A consent process that only functions when people say yes isn’t actually a consent process.

That experience also changed how I approached every subsequent conversation: I started asking not just ‘are you comfortable with this’ but ‘what would need to be true for you to feel uncomfortable later, after publication, in a way you can’t undo’ — trying to surface concerns before they became irreversible, rather than only checking for immediate comfort with an early draft.

The Ongoing Responsibility After Publication

The ethical obligation didn’t end at publication either. Survivors whose testimony shaped the book were given the opportunity to see how it was being discussed publicly, and I’ve turned down interview questions and media framings that would have made specific real testimonies more identifiable than the survivors had agreed to. Writing responsibly about real trauma isn’t a box checked during drafting — it’s a standing commitment that continues for as long as the book is in the world and being talked about.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it ethical to base fiction on real survivor testimony?

It can be, with specific safeguards: explicit consent for the fictionalisation itself (not just the original interview), avoiding identifiable details without permission, and involving survivors in reviewing how their experience shaped the work.

What is a composite character, and why use one in trauma-based fiction?

A character built from details recombined across multiple real testimonies, used specifically to protect individual survivors from being identifiable in a published work while preserving the emotional and factual truth their accounts share.

How is fictionalisation consent different from journalism interview consent?

A source agreeing to be interviewed for journalism hasn’t automatically agreed to have their story reshaped into fiction — these require separate, explicit conversations about what will change and what the survivor wants excluded.

Next Step

**→ Read the book**

About the Author

Smita D. Talukdar is a journalist, published author, and digital strategist based in Shillong, Meghalaya. She writes on child safety and advocacy, women’s voice, Northeast India, and digital marketing, drawing on her background in news reporting, her novel Stop. No! (which centres a child-abuse survivor’s story), and her work founding Sprout Ecosystem, a marketing, media, and AI content studio. She has spoken on child rights and media panels across the region.