Archives
Categories:
- Business announcements
- Ask the Editors
- Best First Line Contest
- Books/Reading
- Contests
- Editing
- New Releases/Excerpts
- FAQs
- Life
- Miscellaneous
- Round Robin
- TV/Movies
- Writing
Recent Comments
- Erin Nicholas (Earworms in Romance)
- Lainey Reese (Earworms in Romance)
- PG Forte (Earworms in Romance)
- Kelly Jamieson (Earworms in Romance)
- sami lee (Does Size Matter?)
- Alisha Rai (Cookies=Magic)
- Suzanne (Does Size Matter?)
- Ro (Does Size Matter?)
- Lainey Reese (Cookies=Magic)
- Alisha Rai (Cookies=Magic)
Careful, or you’ll end up in my novel.
This is the imprint on a sweatshirt I’d received from a friend of mine. He thought it was appropriate since I’m a writer, and we had a good laugh over it. With a clear conscious, I can say that my characters are definitely fictitious. Yet, I can’t deny that my personal experiences with friends and family influence my writing.
My husband pointed out in every one of my books, I’ve a main character with a sweet tooth. Okay, I confess. I’m a dessert freak. It gives me pleasure to have my character indulge in dessert and not gain an ounce. Another habit of mine is keeping a pile of books on my nightstand. Sure, I’m going to read them all, sometime, soon. So I keep adding to the pile. My heroines tend to be avid readers, and also keep a pile of books on their nightstand.
Okay, it’s true, certain habits and personality quirks find there way into my stories. But, my characters are composites, bits and pieces of people I know, not a ‘real’ person.
When I wrote Long Strange Trip, a story set in the late 60’s in Berkeley and San Francisco, I drew on my experiences living in the Bay Area. My older sister had attended U.C. Berkeley in 1967, and I remember visiting the campus, the Haight, eyeing the hippies gathered on Telegraph Avenue and being awed by the sight. These memories are sprinkled throughout my book, but my characters, Rose Red and Kenneth Hailey, are unique as their motives. Believe me, my tie-dye T-shirt was relegated to the rag pile ages ago. And my peace sign, well, that’s another story.
So, go ahead, and relax. You can be yourself in front of me. Most likely, you won’t end up in my novel. Now, there might be a certain phrase or word you say that catches my attention. Hey, don’t worry. I’ll ask your permission before you see it in my next book!
I love your post. It reminds me how I do the same thing with my characters. They are bits and pieces of me and people I know. In my second book, the character’s favorite ice cream was cherry cordial and during one of the round of edits, it hit me that in my first book, the character’s favorite was also cherry cordial. Yes, that happens to be mine too. I decided to change the flavor in the second book. Although I guess that could have been a trademark of mine – all my characters could love cherry cordial ice cream!
Diane, I know what you mean! In one of my books, my female character loves lemon meringue pie. Of course, that’s my favorite pie! It was an appropriate dessert since my novel was set in the 1940’s. That used to be a popular dessert in the 40’s and 50’s, losing steam as the decades went by. Now I hardly ever see it on a restaurant menu. It’s been replaced by a zillion versions of chocolate tortes and cakes!
I totally know what you mean about having pieces of yourself or people you know in your writing. I tend to do the same thing. I am a people watcher after all. Although, I do change the names to protect the innocent, and in some cases the not so innocent….
But in agreeing with what you’ve said, none of my characters are actually real people. They are composites of myself and the people around me, not recognizable as any one person. That’s where the creativity comes in. Its fun to take a little something from real life and then embellish/experiment and see where it leads.
I often go out of my way to make sure no one will recognize himself (with one exception…..I do have a character in a WIP that is based on my ex-husband, but since he doesnt read…..) Xavier is my polar opposite (I do tend to do that a lot) with a few of my tendencies and everyone else is just who they are. My husband likes to see if he can figure out who my characters are based on, but he’s always wrong.
Storylines on the other hand>...now THOSE are based on real occurances (often at least). CPS is an Americanized form of Nazi Germany, there is a fine line between good/evil, religion/cult, and love/hate, and then the question “what would happen if a reality TV show became too real?” And then there is the paper—a vast amount of plot ideas just waiting to be snatched up!
But I seem to be the odd one out on this…..figures
That’s funny, I just blogged in a similar vein. How can you not write what you know? Especially the quirks, etc. My poor husband was stunned to read a sex scene of mine (he just skips right to those) in which he recognized some of his own, well, mumblings…
Vicki I have a t-shirt with that on it. A co-worker gave it to me right after my first book came out. I have joked with her that I’m going to take it to a silkscreen place and have them add underneath “. . .and kill you off!”
But, I also create characters as bits and pieces of people I know. In one of my novels, I put both of my children. My daughter will probably get a laugh out of it, my son will probably never read it.
Ciar, what better research for sex scenes than our dear husbands :)
How funny. I just sent that very same t-shirt to my crit partner in South Africa as a Christmas gift.
I don’t think I consciously use people I know in my characters, but it probably does bleed through. My heroines are all tea drinkers and chocolate afficiados.
LOL, Liz. My heroines all start out as coffee drinkers and chocolate afficiandos. I have to consciously change that from time to time.
I think we can’t help but have parts of ourselves in our characters. It’s how we know how they’ll react – because we’ve been there.
Great post, Vicki.
I don’t usually base my character on real people except for once. Someone I was very angry with ended up the dead woman in the first scene of my book. I couldn’t help myself.
This so true, many of my characters are jazz freaks, like me.
I’ve based two of my characters on an actor I’ve never met. Well I did meet him once and he kissed me!!!The characters were different. One gay, one straight. The actor in question is gay by the way. But sooo gorgeous and really nice too. Vicki knows who he is.
Then some of them start talking to me in my head. Those voices again. Sometimes they cross their arms and shake their heads at me. “Nope not gonna do that.” No control at all. My murder victim in the book I’m working on now is based on my college boyfriend. It was kind of fun to kill him off.
My daughter wants me to put her in one of my books. She’s sixteen and experimenting with her inner b*tch. So I’ll probably wait on that for a few years.
Margie
Parts of my poor sainted hubby are scattered throughout my novels, like the Frankenstein’s monster of the romance set. He laughs off most of it, but sometimes, I exaggerate some of his bad habits to nth degree for comedic effect and he gets a little squeamish. I told him if I get paid, you get paid too. That shuts him up.
As for writing about someone else? If they ticked me off, I wouldn’t quibble about killing them in the bloodiest way I could think of, and I’m a woman, so that could be very very bad indeed. * evil smile *
That’s part of the fun of being a writer. Bits and pieces of ourselves and people we know end up in our books. :-)
Vicki, I do that, too. I sometimes use composites of people or maybe a particular trait of someone I know or have seen. But more often, I’ll just use a line or two—particularly if it was something funny. ;)
But I love the saying: “Be nice to the writer or she may put you in a book and kill you.” <GGGG> How true. ;)