How you you choose your characters? Do you base them off of people from real-life? If so, how you disguise your characters so their real-life counterparts don't recognize them?
I’ve taken names, verbal tics, physical attributes from people I know, but never a whole person. Part of that comes from not wanting them to take offense if I kill them off, but also I feel like if I’m writing about someone I know then I’m shortcutting the creative process for myself.
Also, I write about a lot of bad people doing bad things and I’m fortunate enough to only know nice people, I guess. I don’t even have a weird uncle in prison somewhere I can draw from. My extended family is midwestern nice and would be very boring in a book. The closest I came was using my Grandfather’s first name for a character who was a boxer, as he was in real life. Even that came with too many explanations that he, in fact, never killed anyone like the character, even in self defense like the character. It got exhausting to keep clarifying that the only thing the two people shared was a name and an occupation.
If people want to choose to see themselves in a book of mine I always find that curious. And it’s fascinating to find out how they see themselves. “You though that might be based off of you, huh? This guy who killed three people?”
There are also a few names I’ve kept a ban on, like my wife’s. No matter how far removed from her I would write someone, sharing a name would invite some awkward conversations and assumptions about how she thinks I see her. Is she a femme fatale? A victim? A shrill, hard-boiled matron? I want to avoid that at all costs. Same thing with my kids. I can live without those three names in my fiction.
Characters come to me when I find the right person to plug into a plot who would give it the maximum friction. Someone outside of their comfort zone. Someone not used to dealing with an extreme situation of life and death. Someone you might not expect to be involved in a crime novel.
I like writing older characters, and often dislike writing children. I like writing outside of my gender and race, but always worry I’m getting it wrong.
Mostly, I like making up people from out of thin air. I like nothing beholden to impressions of someone I know in real life. I like the total freedom with a person I’ve invented. And when they begin to feel fleshed out and fully formed to the point that certain reactions or feelings they have make sense and what they wouldn’t do or say are apparent, then I know I have a three-dimensional character.
If I ever did use a real person as inspiration or placed a person I know in a story and didn’t change a thing about them, I would never try to hide it. If I ever do it, it will be an homage. I’d want them to know. I’d want them to see it on the page and hopefully get excited and not embarrassed or question what I think of them in real life. It could be an honorific, a tribute or a payback for some kindness they paid to me. But if you end up in one of my books, trust me, you’ll know it.
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