You have spent years as a journalist, chronicling events great and small, meeting fascinating, inspiring, and loathsome people, and filling reporters' notebooks with human drama more entertaining than anything you could dream up. So, you think, now it is time to turn those notebooks into a best-selling novel. You might not have the wild success of, say, Joe Klein with Primary Colors, but because it is fiction, at least you won't have to triple-check your facts or worry about defaming anyone, right? Well, maybe not.
 As Klein found out, writing fiction is no guarantee of immunity from a libel suit. In the latest twist in the Primary Colors saga, he and his publisher, Random House, Inc., have been sued for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

 In the first few pages of Primary Colors, a southern governor contemplating a run for the presidency visits a Harlem adult literacy program run by a female librarian named Baum. A few pages later, the governor and Baum emerge disheveled from a hotel room. Now Daria Carter-Clark, a librarian who played host to then Governor Bill Clinton at her adult literacy program in Harlem, has come forward to declare that she is the fictional Baum. She also says that everyone knows the fictional governor is intended to be Bill Clinton. More important, she says, she never had sex with Bill Clinton after his trip to the library, or at any other time. Carter-Clark claims that she was defamed because she was portrayed as promiscuous, immoral, and unprofessional.

 It may seem nonsensical to sue for defamation (publishing false and derogatory information about someone) based on a work of fiction. After all, how can fiction be "false"? But it is, as a matter of law, possible. It is just relatively rare to get anywhere with such a lawsuit. In addition to the usual hurdles a defamation plaintiff faces, you also have to prove that readers familiar with you would reasonably know that you are the one the author is writing about. And courts have been reluctant to stifle the creative process by allowing such lawsuits to go to trial. Claims such as Carter-Clark's are often dismissed before they get anywhere near a jury.

 But as a recent case illustrates, authors cannot count on that. A reader submitted a short story to Seventeen's "New Voices in Fiction" series. Seventeen published the story, identifying the author as Lucy Logsdon "from southern Illinois." The story told of a fight between the narrator and a high school classmate, identified only as "Bryson," who is described as a "platinum-blonde, blue-eye-shadowed, faded-blue-jeaned, black-polyester-topped shriek." At one point, the narrator also refers to Bryson as a "slut."

 Enter young Kimberly Bryson, also of southern Illinois, who says she is the Bryson in the story. She also says that calling her a "slut" in a national magazine is defamatory and places her in a false light. She sues the story's author and Seventeen's parent company, Rupert Murdoch's News America Publications, Inc.

 Like Carter-Clark, Bryson claimed that she was defamed because she was portrayed as promiscuous. Like Joe Klein, the novice author's primary defense is that she wrote a work of fiction. Two lower Illinois courts agreed and dismissed the claim; one declared that "slut" was merely an opinion uttered by "a fictional character about another fictional character."

 But the state's highest court reversed those decisions and ordered that the case go forward. The Illinois Supreme Court brushed aside the label "fiction" and said it was reasonable for people who knew the real-life Bryson to conclude that she and the fictional Bryson were one and the same. The court relied heavily on the use of the same unusual name and the setting in southern Illinois. The dissent thought the court had made it too easy for Bryson to sue for defamation and feared the opinion would "pave the way for frivolous lawsuits whenever something caustic is written, even in a fictional story."

 Presumably Joe Klein will now find out if that dire prediction comes true. In his case, the fictional librarian and her alleged real-life counterpart do not share the same name. Still, Primary Colors became a best-seller at least in part because we all knew who the major characters were "supposed to be." (The only real mysterious identity for a while was the author.) If the fictional Governor Jack Stanton was a stand-in for Bill Clinton, why not Ms. Baum for Ms. Carter-Clark? In addition, Klein was along for the ride when campaigner Clinton visited the Harlem program. Nonetheless, as much as some of the actions and characters in the book mirror real life, others are clearly "fiction."
 These messy facts will all be sorted out by a jury if the case goes to trial. But will it ever get there? Bryson is not binding in New York state, where Klein's case will be decided and where courts are generally protective of authors' First Amendment rights. "The Primary Colors case will be dismissed," predicts Jan Constantine, general counsel for News America Publications, Inc. She also says that, though her client may have a harder time in Illinois, News America will continue to fight the Bryson case as it heads toward trial.

 The still larger question these cases raise is how much breathing room we should allow fiction writers (or journalists turned novelists), who inevitably draw on real-life experiences to create their fictional worlds. Labeling a work "fiction" cannot give the author carte blanche to defame someone. Yet the Illinois court's sweeping language in allowing Bryson's case to go forward is alarming. The court said that the story was "not so fanciful or ridiculous that no reasonable person would interpret it as describing actual persons or events . . . . [It] portrays realistic characters responding in a realistic manner to realistic events." But isn't that what many authors strive for? Under the Bryson court's broad language, only science fiction writers could feel truly protected against a defamation charge.
 "What is also really disturbing about Bryson," says lawyer Constantine, "is that the story was part of a program to encourage young writers. Now we may not be able to do these kinds of programs because, as a practical matter, you cannot vet every one of these submissions. Publishers looking for new voices will be at risk."

 Indeed, if the Primary Colors case goes anywhere, even seasoned journalists may think twice before spinning their reporters' notebooks into the great American novel they have always been meaning to write.

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