"Real" Characters

[serria]

Are any of your characters inspired by real people? Or is everyone (to the best of your knowledge!) made from scratch?

Comments

[sarillia]

I have only ever done this accidentally. I once made an offhand mention of the main character's brother only because I needed her to receive a letter and I thought there should be more than one delivered to her so I had another one be from her brother "probably asking for money again". He later showed up along with his wife and they turned into caricatures of my brother and his girlfriend. I swear I didn't do it on purpose. It was still funny though.

There are other times when I realize that one of my characters is reminding me of someone so I might draw on that person's quirks to make the character seem more real. I think I'm not alone in sometimes having trouble thinking of idiosyncratic speech patterns and gestures and things for each character.

Mostly my characters are cobbled together from all different sources; general traits, pieces of other fictional characters, bits of real people, some of my own experiences, etc.

[ljwrites]

I did this consciously only once when I based a character partly off my father, and based the character's interaction with his daughter on some of the contentious issues between my real-life father and I at the time. I didn't mean this as therapy but as a way to develop the plot and characters, but ended up finding the father character sympathetic and was complimented for making a rather horrible character relatable if not likable. (To clarify, the character was not a clone--he was the polar opposite of my father in crucial ways, and some of his worst qualities came from the parts where he diverged from my father.)

Otherwise, the source of character mannerisms seems to be a composite of real-life and fictional sources, to the extent I can't pinpoint a clear origin. The peasants from a story might talk and act partly like my relatives in the country and partly like the workmen from Silas Marner; the nobles have some of the mannerisms of bigwigs I've seen at official functions but also draw heavily from period dramas.

This does, however, raise the issue of whether we have the ethical obligation to avoid certain real-life inspirations, at least without the consent of the people involved. This review on a biography of Samuel Bellow mentions an incident where an old friend of Bellow's told him a story that the friend found embarrassing and specifically asked not to reproduce in fiction. Bellow did, however, use that story in Humboldt's Gift, understandably angering the friend. Though the reviewer takes Bellow's side, I agree with the biographer that Bellow's letter to his friend was dismissive and callous, basically coming down to "That wasn't you, so get over it. Also, you're welcome to use any story I told you--if you can. But you're a contractor and not a Big Name Novelist like me. Ha-ha!" While there is some truth in Bellow's statement that there is a distance between the real-life inspiration and the novelized product, maybe he could have discussed this breach of trust with his friend before putting it in a novel that would become world-famous? And maybe he could have been less of a dick about his friend's reaction? Ugh.

Anyway I know my dad, if he were ever to read my story--which he won't because I'm not showing it to him and he would have zero interest anyway--would be angry and hurt if he recognized himself in there. I'm not sure how I'd explain, and in truth I'm not sure I'd come across much better than Bellow did in his letter. I could point out the differences, that the abusive father in the story is a lazy drunk while my own father is practically a teetotaler and never once failed to provide for his family. I could say the character is partly based on the stereotypical drunk father common in fiction, and unfortunately in life. Still the similarities are there once you look for them, in the father's violent rages, his excuses for himself, and his need to control his child's life.

In the end my only real defense is that the character is really me, that they all come from me. The emptiness in the father character that catches up to him at the moments he can't distract himself, that was something I both imagined for the character and felt in my own life. The events in the story come from my understanding of what happened in my life, refracted and reflected in the planes of my own mind. In the end my ultimate model for my characters is myself.

Edit: Whoops! I accidentally made this a reply to sarillia when it was meant to reply to the OP. In a way it's fitting, though, since we both ended up using family members.

[inkdust]

None of my characters has ever been consciously inspired by a real person, but I know the influences are there. If I notice that one reminds me of someone I know or another fictional character, I'll probably make an effort to give them more clearly different qualities alongside the similarities because I absolutely do not want those associations. More likely I'll notice a similar type of character rather than concrete similarities. That's okay with me, because if our brains are going to categorize people and characters into types, there can only be so many types out there.

[agilebrit]

I freely mine my friends for character names, but the characters themselves are (mostly) drawn from my imagination. A couple of notable exceptions are my Mad Scientist, who was inspired by Tony Stark (and it shows--minus the Asshole Gene). My werewolf private eye was inspired by Harry Lockhart from "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," although the only similarity he now bears to him is that he's a PI, he calls the women in his life "honey," and RDJ plays him in my head.

[inkdust]

I love your appropriate icon.

[ayumidah]

People I don't like make good antagonists sometimes ;)

But, nah. I generally try not to do that, haha.

[splinteredstar]

Honestly, it's more likely for me to draw on other fictional characters. I don't always notice it's happening at the time, but sometimes I'll look back and notice it. Usually it's just traits - Eira holds herself the way AC!Cloud does, and is even worse at dealing with her emotions; Estair is basically a less malicious Count D; Ice and Li were originally in a KH fanfiction that went so AU that I decided that I may as well just go whole hog and make it original. I think when I was in high school I had a universe where I took all the characters I thought hadn't been done justice in their original universes and shoved them into gang warfare with each other.

Of course, all of these characters have gone in ways that the original has not, and developed into unique characters. I don't know if that's better or worse than basing them off of real people. But 'made from scratch' is probably a misinterpretation.

Inspiration is a lot like compost, I think. You get interesting things out by having poured interesting things in.

[caecilia]

Lately, yes. Mostly because I've been thinking about the past a lot recently and wondering whatever happened to so-and-so, and those thoughts evolve into stories. Although I noticed that one character who was based quite blatantly on a girl I went to school with also became part me and part my mom.