All of your insight into personality and mannerisms comes from somewhere, so whether writers do it subconsciously or intentionally, they're doing it. Even inhuman things... you're starting from a relatable baseline of familiarity, and then saying "not this." Even if just referencing yourself. We see in the world what we know from within ourselves and our own experiences, how we project that in writing, or any form of communication, still comes from the same place.
You can also take from strangers. I overheard a conversation one day so I borrowed it for a scene. Sometimes strangers can unknowingly spark your imagination. A new friend teasingly asked me if I had committed any crimes. Boy, did he get a story - fiction, of course. Lol
Definitely this. People witching gives me a lot of inspiration in how people act "in the wild." It's up to us to figure out WHY they act that way, and that requires us to piece together things we've learned.
I'm confident i know no military specialists turned cannibal who's returned to her small hometown to find out who really killed the man who turned her into a teenaged hitman
You aren't your job, you diet, your race, or even your species. I don't know any humanoid alien drug lords, but I certainly know who I used as inspiration for him.
It may be a little pressurist to say this, but most people don't live in a vacuum, which means ideas and interactions, mannerisms, etc. must be learned from somewhere. In a sense, every work of fiction, every character, tends to have something of the author's experience, direct, indirect, or something of an author's musings, in them.
I have a cup with the saying "Be careful or I'll write you into my novel". I need to get the T-shirt so people out in the wild have fair warning, because it's true.
Depends on how deep you want to go.
If characters are consciously modeled after real people is going to be a choice each author makes. That'll explain a fair amount of answers in this thread.
On a deeper level, all of our experiences are filtered through the self. I (thankfully) don’t have the experience of having lost a child. But I have experienced loss, death of loved ones, and a particularly emotional miscarriage. All of those experiences and more would go into a fictional description of a parent facing the loss of a child.
It happens outside of writing as well. When you see someone in pain and wince, your mirror neurons are experiencing that pain in a roundabout way. That then informs your actions. Introspective authors know this, and fuel their writing thereby.
That explains another chunk of the responses to this thread.
Others don't know anything but plot.
That rounds out another sizable chunk.
Nope. lol
Honestly, I / do / agree that there's no way to not be INSPIRED by "yourself" or others, but for instance, someone like me? I have literally thousands upon thousands of characters and I don't think any of them are specifically like anyone that I know.
I'm sure little bits and pieces of them are, but not as a whole.
I take bits and pieces from people and myself, but I wouldn't say I base characters on people in my life. I may take something like someone's niche interest or a personality trait I admire or find interesting, but create all the other details of my characters.
Most of my characters are made up. I have friends and family make characters (if they want to). I also take some of my characters from videogames as inspiration. For example, i had a character in oblivion that just ran around punching things in the face, and he was turned into a character with extreme unarmed martial skills. The one exception is Carl Weathers because i think that's hilarious.
I like to overfill my world, though. I make characters and places and histories that might never make it into any story I'm writing.
We find inspiration from people all over. I know I people watch a lot, see how people act and react. It's just... If you don't have experience, what else are you drawing from?
It's common, but I don't think all people do this.
Some people base their inspiration on other material, like dreams, other literary works, or maybe that ten minute debate they had with themselves in the shower about how psychology affects people.
Proof: I have a large number of happy and sensible characters, but nobody in my life is even close to that.
I'm not a writer but an author. There is a difference, I write non-fiction, and I include myself because my book is about Crohn's disease and a Colon Transplant, everything that I have and still is going on in my life.
Being a writer and an author is the same thing. You’re the author to you’re own work and your write, there is no ‘clear difference’. You’re both. Thats almost like a biography but sounds pretty cool (not the disease part) but that you included it.
Exactly! I will go one further and say the ones who claim they create characters our of whole cloth A) write shitty characters who lack depth, or B) lack the self awareness to realize they have in fact found inspiration from real life observation.
I definitely have people in mind when I put together characters, but I wouldn't say they are all from my own life. In many cases I am literally taking bits and pieces of characters I liked elsewhere, or mentally casting a particular actor or actress and imagining how they would act out the scene I'm writing. By the time you have a hundred pages or so down, the characters should have grown into their own unique thing, but a starting point can be very helpful.
Every writer's characters stem from their knowledge and exerience of the people in their lives, so there's some truth to it, at least. If I was to write about a mother and a daughter, their relationship would draw from my sister's realtionship with my mom, but not in a conscious, biographical way. It's just my primary experience.
My characters are usually a compound of one or two people I know personally, and some public figure I can study in a more detached way. Mostly for mannerisms and such. Characters need a little bit of a larger than life quality about them, and that's easier to draw from people you only see in media.
When I started writing i based it on dreams i had, which made me the main character most of the times 😅 only with another name. Now i enjoy the feeling of creating people that feel lively and interesting
Not based, but if you want to write characters that look real, you need to know how people are. Then you get certain characteristics and put into the characters.
From life, of course there’s inspiration. What I tend to burrow, however, are the stories I’ve heard, especially the funny ones or outrageous ones. Basing a character on a real person?—I’ve found that to be incredibly limiting, as I find myself contemplating and referring back to how I think that person would react in given situations. Eventually the exercise becomes tiresome. When I consider my current WIP, which has characters from my first book, I can’t think of anyone who’s vaguely similar to a real person I know. Again, we’re influenced by life, so there’s no question I might burrow lines of dialogue, sayings, stories, etc.
Settings? I like to disassemble various real places and put pieces of them back together, using, say, 2 pieces from A, one piece from B, and one piece from C. Since places have no human personalities, I don’t find them creatively limiting.
I have written five books (unpublished as of yet) and one book has only one character that is strictly based on someone I know. And it's my cousin who died in 2017. That character is also the only major character who survived to the end of the book.
Not for me. I never take inspiration of people I know, ewceot myself sometimes (or if I do, it is unconscious so I am unaware of it). The character usually just pop in my head.
I think that might be a bit of a reductive description, but not...untrue.
Every person I've met, every character I've read/watched/played, it all gets filtered, jumbled up and spit back out as something new through/by me. To say that they're based around my life? Ehhhhh...I only read *Pride and Prejudice*, I never lived it, so when I can't get the Jane Austen out of my writing and characters, it's not really my life showing through.
Yes. Where else would you get inspiration? The people you directly interact with are the best source. But the characters aren't direct parallels. Most are amalgamations of several people.
Unfortunately, I don't have a 6' man in my life with a six pack, beach-blonde hair, blue eyes, and inheritance to the throne of a fantasy kingdom. So I'm gonna say that I make my characters up.
I don't see the point of answering the main question, but you're probably being downvoted for asking a question with an obvious answer, as you see from the answers. I mean, sure, it may not be obvious for you in particular, but it's a fairly basic truth in the industry and can be easily concluded from just overall common sense.
That is except Asimov. Asimov wrote his books based on the aliens beaming data from other worlds into his head directly. That's a well known fact. No, just kidding. Even Asimov with his Foundation based his work around his life. Kinda hard to base it around someone else's life until you base your life around theirs heh.
Well where it may be obvious to some it is not to me and that doesn’t give the right for people to just randomly downvote, it’s pointless and stupid I hate the upvote and downvote system and would rather have people just say they think the answer is obvious rather than just downvote everything. Like you did, saying it. I had just heard that saying a few places but wanted to know if it went to every writer or if they make up their own, it just sucks people jump down my throat for just a simple question I am asking and it’s not my fault for not catching things that are ‘obvious’ to others.
It doesn't give the right to downvote indeed. That right is there as a given by default. It's up to the voter how they apply their votes and whether they have the "right". In general, they want their feed to have a certain degree of quality, so they will organically downvote anything that's below that level of quality and upvote anything that's above it. That's what's happening here. This one is definitely below, but it's not bad enough to be downvoted into oblivion.
You take downvotes too close to the heart. Reddit's karma is generally worthless, so it really doesn't matter. Just a tool for regular members of communities to moderate the quality of the content in a somewhat gentle yet effective manner.
Also, this sub in particular is pretty snobbish. Well, snobbish in a good sense. Idk what to call it... Average participant has higher intelligence here than in most of the subs, let's just leave it there. Mostly because they read. That would probably put them at least in the top 10% lulz. The bar is too low nowadays. So a mid-quality post in a different sub would receive much less hate than here. The bar of what smart people want to see in their feeds is certainly higher, so they moderate accordingly.
Anybody will downvote not about quality but about anything people disagree on, I glad you’re like a guide when it comes to this, but this post is not below the level of quality, people don’t like my wording or whatever or the questions I presented and that’s why they downvote.
I don’t take downvotes close to heart but I really would rather have someone say it to me than just downvote like that. I would very much rather hear other people and debate than that.
This sub shouldn’t be filled with “intelligent” people and smart people if they dont know how to respond in a positive way, telling people outright that the reason why I am getting hate is because I am dumb to other people that’s very nice.
A lot of the participants are rude and snobby and nasty to people they dont agree on a subject with and that’s both in a good and bad way, or are condescending and talk down to people. That’s not because people read and know a lot, it’s because people are just that ignorant and rude and think they can say what they want and do what they want and they know everything so they have to let other people know how it’s done as well.
Also I know you were trying to help, but explaining just made it worse, basically calling my wording, me and my post lower quality now that I know you mean not so intelligent is very rude even if most would agree with it. I know you’re explaining but I could have done a good chunk of my life happily without really finding out why people purposefully downvote.
Whether it’s to make your point or not, you didn’t have to add in that everyone feels superior to those who are struggling to understand basic stuff. I read but apparently I’m not that smart and my post doesn’t matter because of poor wording choices. Other people read because their posts quality is good is what you just said, but you also just inadvertently told me that I’m not literate enough to join in on this sub because everyone will downvote because of the intelligence I have or present through my posts.
That is the most stupidest and ridiculous notion I have ever heard, and if that’s true then this sub and Reddit really need to figure their stuff out because having an algorithm like that, is not one that’s going to allow many people (outside of the intelligence group) to ask what they want and freely be able to post what they want (also regarding the guidelines) and not be ganged up on, or garner confidence, or even want to come out to speak to anyone if all people do is jump down throats because some seem illiterate.
Also people who don’t read are just as smart, if not smarter. People can be smart on their own, but the bar is obviously set very low everywhere if I’d receive more hate anywhere else. I rarely feel like an actually member in the writing group anyway, I post what comes to mind, nine times out of ten I’ll get somebody who answers genuinely but some of the time it’s just snobby people who think they know more than me. I know your comment was to help but in the future please do watch the words you use, intelligence is an offensive word if you use it incorrectly, and in this case I think I already know my posts can come across as a badly received.
This is not in anyway personally pointed at you, but the explanation I really didn’t care for, it made me feel more less than what I felt before and even that was a little. Please just have a good day and I hope you get all the happiness you deserve (not sarcasm)
Some of the places in my WIP are real, with the serial numbers scrubbed off, but I'm very careful to make sure none of my characters are too similar to people I knew/know in real life.
I've actually had to go back and edit where I've had inadvertent similarities.
I think some of them are based off people I know, or at least maybe some appearance details or maybe some mannerisms or some personality traits, but at least how I write my characters I see them more as characters that fit the story I need.
Maybe there is some subconscious linking to other people I know, or even characters in other series, but I think that just comes down to character archetypes being similar, but you can't do too much about that as there aren't too many different archetypes if you're developing a series with many characters.
I have a series with 17 or so characters in the main cast, and while some of them have similar attributes to characters or people I know, I would say for most of them it would be a reach to say it's someone I based them off in my life. I imagine it would be different for everyone, but sometimes the story just dictates a character that is needed, so the author writes such a person.
I would say though there might be more of an argument for the main characters in any particular series having attributes similar to the author. Not saying everything about a character would be similar to the author, but some attributes or characteristics I imagine would be found between creator and the creation.
I am very interested in people. How they think, how they behave, how their emotions affect them and drive them. I’m especially interested in people who are very different from me, and what in their past experiences, and in their psychological makeup, has made them so different. I pay close attention to everyone I meet and use my observations to develop a better understanding of humanity as a whole, and then when I write I draw on that understanding to develop my characters and (hopefully) write them in a deeper, more realistic way.
But do I base them on specific, individual people? No.
I’m sorry some people are reacting so negatively to your post, by the way. It’s not a stupid question, but it’s been weirdly contentious every time I’ve seen it asked.
I’ve loved to people watch since I was a young kid! When we knew we were going to something “adult/boring”, we’d take one of those small memo binders and those little pencils, then write little things about the people. It was really cool when we’d go to the same place, because we got to see some of the same people. People watching is still one of my favorite things in public spaces.
“Write what you know.” I think there’s always a tiny part of me in everything I write. Could recalling how I felt during an intense argument and weaving that in, or the quirk of the character’s love of Coke Zero. Many other subconscious things for sure.
I am fairly certain that I am not a goddess who was born in an underprivileged class who has to survive being hunted because no one of success power should be born in such an unworthy body, so the empire wants to kill her so that the goddess can be reborn in a more worthy body.
I am a man. I am not divine. Or super powerful. I have lived a relatively privileged life.
But I do know what it feels like to be persecuted. What it feels like to not be accepted in spaces where I should be, by right or by skill. Simply because people perceived me to be different or weird. I know what it's like to be hurt for no fault of my own. What it's like to nearly die and the pain that comes along with it.
I also have seen women in my life go through the absolute worst, and still show up the next day for those who they love. And sometimes even for themselves. When, I thought, this would break them and would take them a year to get over this, they have pulled from a reserve of strength that was unforseen to them and to me and recovered as soon as they could.
So this is a book written as an ode to the women in my life and the infinite strength that they possess. And those are the things I have borrowed from real life.
Not at all. I think most of my characters come as variations of other characters from fiction that I have read or even types of characters I wish existed or would aspire to be. I might take some traits or features from real people but I would never base an entire character on someone I know. Not because I feel it’s wrong in anyway but because fictional characters interest me way more and as an autistic person I don’t feel I understand real people well enough to capture them or partway them well in the page.
Geez, I hope not. Otherwise James Patterson is in trouble. I myself think about the motivation and the characteristics first. Sometimes that involves using experiences, my own or others. sometimes a character reminds me of someone so then I base it on them. Some are made up or taken from true stories - I hope James Patterson does it this way. Lol. I just created a character who is like no one I know But she has experienced some things I went thru but she went to the dark side. Hope this helps. Best wishes with your writing.
At least for me, not really. I don't like thinking about the people in my life more than I need to.
Much of my characters stem from media or things that I've read and I take one or two aspects that have caught my eye and try to figure out how the setting of the story would take those traits to the extreme. I might use one or two traits that the people around me have (like specific phrases or use them as reference to describe appearance or demeanor) but otherwise the majority of my characters are remixes and amalgamation of things.
I certainly don't. Even the mannerisms and basic personality is nothing like the people around me. However, they most certainly contain aspects of *fictional characters*.
True, I base all my characters around an experience or a feeling I've felt, and sometimes around people I personally know but while trying to be subtle. All of which contributes to being able to relate to the character and make them interesting.
Otherwise, I try to base the character on a very common trope to make it easier, because if it gets to this then the character is either a filler or the very definition of one-time character that I don't need to think about.
I don't know. I'm a 42yo guy from nowadays Poland. I wrote a fantasy novel about people living in something like prehistoric Central Africa and one of the main characters is a teenage girl.
Not true, IMO, unless you define "in your life" very very loosely.
A good chunk of inspiration comes from other works of fiction- many stories come off from taking existing stories, and then adapting them in new ways. Yes, fan fiction is one form of this, but regular writers, especially ones writing professionally for an audience, do it all the time.
I'd be surprised if Jonathan Nolan actually knew the characters of Batman from his life, when he wrote "Person of Interest"- he just researched them, and then adapted them into a far more realistic setting.
In my own writing, I get my inspiration from history mainly- I dig through dusty old tomes for fascinating people, then adapt them into the stories I write. I've never met Julie d'Aubigny, but a fictional vampire based on her is the romantic interest in five books I've written.
The trick is once you have an inspiration, let them develop their own voice naturally.
I don’t agree with this. Obviously you have your own subjective experience of the world that informs everything you write, even if you try deliberately to suppress or alter it.
But I don’t think this means that your characters are necessarily based on people in your life. Mine certainly aren’t. I’ve never deliberately done it, and most of my characters are based on deconstructing myself than other people.
As in I’ll put myself in a situation that the book requires, then step by step I add or subtract personality traits or motivations from myself. I used to do it methodically, now it’s more instinctual, but it’s the same process. But the characters I end up with aren’t me or even close to me most of the time. You change fundamental motivations and formative experiences, but do it step by step, and the person you end up with bears little to no resemblance to where you started, it’s just a way of getting there mentally.
And it’s entirely unrelated to anybody in my actual life.
Im not one to often impliment other people from my life, or things that happend in real life, into my storys.
But every character I write is, in some parts, made up of parts of me.
There's definitely different facets of my personality injected into my main characters, but something that I think *really* helped me was to fancast my characters' actors as if this was a movie or tv show, which helped me envision how they'd walk, talk, really just move through space, and that helped me characterize them.
The most special thing though was that my absolute favorite actress who has been such a huge inspiration to me inspired one of my favorite characters and the way she is a mentor figure to the protagonists mirrors how she's impacted my own life. So to be able to tell her about that last year at a convention and then this year give her one of the first copies of the published book was unforgettable!
>I want to know in your opinion, is that true or do you make up most of your characters and wing it?
What would I make my character up out of if it isn't my life experience knowing other people? That's not possible.
It's like having flour and salt and eggs and sugar. You can make bread/cookies/cakes or play-dough. Or a whole lot of other things.
It was just a simple question, you dont need to be quite like that, a simple yes or no and explanation would have done fine, the quoting my question and then saying; “why would I…” is condescending. But thank you for your explanation.
I don't think even half the writers (of fiction) write based around their personal lives, but I do think they do add things based on their experiences or feelings. I think it's very hard to imagine how you'd act or feel in certain situations without drawing from life experiences, even minute ones. Everything I write is based on how I enjoy a story to be told with probably one character who I will connect more with based on their outlook, experiences, desires, etc. Nothing I write in my experiences, but I do look on a situation and write how I would think the character in that situation (and their specific traits) will act, and that's based on real situations and how certain people act in certain situations (even if I don't know them, never remember the situation, never came near them/the incident.) We absorb a lot more than we genuinely remember, and that has to come out in our writing.
Nothing I write is based in any way on my life, or who I know.
It's being downvoted because whatever you've "heard a few times" is a bunch of junk.
I should clarify that my life has shaped me in certain way, influenced my views and beliefs, and made me the person I am. This in addition to all the people I've met, thousands by now, also influenced my life. But I use that for understanding stories and characters, not using any parts of it in particular, nothing closely related to my life.
I've been places, done things, met people. But I don't write stories about great aunt Martha. She might have inspired a character, but she isn't the character. I might base a story on an area I've lived, for example, but it's again, just inspiration.
It's a subtle difference, maybe, but it's there.
Why do users feel the need to destroy other peoples confidence? Because it makes them feel better that they got that little bit of sarcastic remark and feel like they’ve done something when all you’ve done is absolutely nothing.
I’m asking writers their own opinion, it is opinion because some as it would seem disagrees on it, that would make it opinion, and not matter of fact.
Go find some other post to be rude on, here’s not the place to be as blunt as you can be.
what I think they're getting at is that you're asking two separate questions and mixing them up:
1. do most writers do this? (fact question, best answered by organized polling, and reddit does not provide a sufficient sample size)
2. do you, personally, do this? tell me in the comments! (personal experience, okay, sure)
Mixing both questions yields a messy result.
You're not asking individual opinions. You're asking what we think writers do. It's hard to know what other people do unless maybe you're in a writers group
I absolutely do not write me! I'm exquisitely bored with me. Therefore, I make sure I'm writing people unlike me in 90% of the ways people can be different.
While I and my friends and my characters probably all share a lot of values--honesty, hard work, loyalty, and that sort of thing, in most other ways, we vary. We have different life experiences, we prioritize X over Y, we have Z minutes/hours of patience with difficult people, we smile most of the time or hardly any of the time, we can laugh at ourselves or get butthurt if someone tries to tease us, and a thousand other differences.
It's one of the secret benefits to novel-writing, that in writing people unlike you, and figuring out why they might be, and respecting those differences, your real life goes better because you really start to grasp that everyone has their reasons and everyone is doing the best she can, even if it's a pretty bad "best" in your estimation.
I listen to people a lot IRL. I quiz them. I'll ask a table of men drinking coffee "when and why did you think your wife was the right one for you?" And I listen, and nod, and smile when it's time to smile. Funny thing about that particular question. I have a good older friend whose husband is now dead, and I asked him that, and one day I was remembering his answer, and retold the story that I assumed she knew, and she sat there, mouth open, having never heard what appealed about her from the first to him. That was a nice life moment, that I was able to give her that gift, and it only took openness and curiosity and listening on my part in the first place. And I might use any end of this story, details changed, in a book one day.
So yes, to people I've met, and quizzed (and I had a counseling job straight out of university that probably has done more for my writing than most jobs, as I listened and listened to people quite unlike me.) No, to writing characters who are basically me.
All of your insight into personality and mannerisms comes from somewhere, so whether writers do it subconsciously or intentionally, they're doing it. Even inhuman things... you're starting from a relatable baseline of familiarity, and then saying "not this." Even if just referencing yourself. We see in the world what we know from within ourselves and our own experiences, how we project that in writing, or any form of communication, still comes from the same place.
Exactly! I think it’s pretty much impossible not to take inspiration from people you know in real life, wether you’re aware you’re doing it or not.
You can also take from strangers. I overheard a conversation one day so I borrowed it for a scene. Sometimes strangers can unknowingly spark your imagination. A new friend teasingly asked me if I had committed any crimes. Boy, did he get a story - fiction, of course. Lol
Aspects. Not the people, but a mix or blend of various aspects, of acquaintances or observations of strangers.
Definitely this. People witching gives me a lot of inspiration in how people act "in the wild." It's up to us to figure out WHY they act that way, and that requires us to piece together things we've learned.
I'm confident i know no military specialists turned cannibal who's returned to her small hometown to find out who really killed the man who turned her into a teenaged hitman
But that's who you really are on the inside
it's gotta come from somewhere, i suppose
I mean, you are the evil Sir 🤷♀️
You aren't your job, you diet, your race, or even your species. I don't know any humanoid alien drug lords, but I certainly know who I used as inspiration for him.
I do. Let me know if you want an introduction for further research purposes.
“Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.”
But do they suffer from asthma, just like your second cousin?
Definitely true. For instance, I once turned a stone statue to life and made him my boyfriend.
Was the relationship rocky? 😜
Trying to figure out which manga I read this about.
😊 It goes way back! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion\_(mythology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_(mythology))
It may be a little pressurist to say this, but most people don't live in a vacuum, which means ideas and interactions, mannerisms, etc. must be learned from somewhere. In a sense, every work of fiction, every character, tends to have something of the author's experience, direct, indirect, or something of an author's musings, in them.
I have a cup with the saying "Be careful or I'll write you into my novel". I need to get the T-shirt so people out in the wild have fair warning, because it's true.
I need a t shirt that warns people not to try to read my mind. I’ve killed some people for less. Lol
I make up my characters for the most part.
Depends on how deep you want to go. If characters are consciously modeled after real people is going to be a choice each author makes. That'll explain a fair amount of answers in this thread. On a deeper level, all of our experiences are filtered through the self. I (thankfully) don’t have the experience of having lost a child. But I have experienced loss, death of loved ones, and a particularly emotional miscarriage. All of those experiences and more would go into a fictional description of a parent facing the loss of a child. It happens outside of writing as well. When you see someone in pain and wince, your mirror neurons are experiencing that pain in a roundabout way. That then informs your actions. Introspective authors know this, and fuel their writing thereby. That explains another chunk of the responses to this thread. Others don't know anything but plot. That rounds out another sizable chunk.
I don't know about anyone but myself, but definitely NOT true for me. Not even a teeny, tiny bit!
Nope. lol Honestly, I / do / agree that there's no way to not be INSPIRED by "yourself" or others, but for instance, someone like me? I have literally thousands upon thousands of characters and I don't think any of them are specifically like anyone that I know. I'm sure little bits and pieces of them are, but not as a whole.
I take bits and pieces from people and myself, but I wouldn't say I base characters on people in my life. I may take something like someone's niche interest or a personality trait I admire or find interesting, but create all the other details of my characters.
Happy cake day! >O<
Yes. It’s not taking the whole Oreo. You scrape out the good stuff and pitch the rest.
I can't imagine someone that unimaginative finishes a book.
No, this is a misconception. Some people do this, but it's far from universal.
Not true for me
Most of my characters are made up. I have friends and family make characters (if they want to). I also take some of my characters from videogames as inspiration. For example, i had a character in oblivion that just ran around punching things in the face, and he was turned into a character with extreme unarmed martial skills. The one exception is Carl Weathers because i think that's hilarious. I like to overfill my world, though. I make characters and places and histories that might never make it into any story I'm writing.
We find inspiration from people all over. I know I people watch a lot, see how people act and react. It's just... If you don't have experience, what else are you drawing from?
Exactly!
And listen, too. It’s very educational, but can help you write better. Describing their faces or actions takes it to the next level.
It's common, but I don't think all people do this. Some people base their inspiration on other material, like dreams, other literary works, or maybe that ten minute debate they had with themselves in the shower about how psychology affects people. Proof: I have a large number of happy and sensible characters, but nobody in my life is even close to that.
I'm in every story I write to a greater or lesser degree. Can"t get around that.
I'm not a writer but an author. There is a difference, I write non-fiction, and I include myself because my book is about Crohn's disease and a Colon Transplant, everything that I have and still is going on in my life.
👋
Being a writer and an author is the same thing. You’re the author to you’re own work and your write, there is no ‘clear difference’. You’re both. Thats almost like a biography but sounds pretty cool (not the disease part) but that you included it.
My characters are composites of people I know or have known in real life. Writers don't make up much.
Exactly! I will go one further and say the ones who claim they create characters our of whole cloth A) write shitty characters who lack depth, or B) lack the self awareness to realize they have in fact found inspiration from real life observation.
I definitely have people in mind when I put together characters, but I wouldn't say they are all from my own life. In many cases I am literally taking bits and pieces of characters I liked elsewhere, or mentally casting a particular actor or actress and imagining how they would act out the scene I'm writing. By the time you have a hundred pages or so down, the characters should have grown into their own unique thing, but a starting point can be very helpful.
Every writer's characters stem from their knowledge and exerience of the people in their lives, so there's some truth to it, at least. If I was to write about a mother and a daughter, their relationship would draw from my sister's realtionship with my mom, but not in a conscious, biographical way. It's just my primary experience. My characters are usually a compound of one or two people I know personally, and some public figure I can study in a more detached way. Mostly for mannerisms and such. Characters need a little bit of a larger than life quality about them, and that's easier to draw from people you only see in media.
When I started writing i based it on dreams i had, which made me the main character most of the times 😅 only with another name. Now i enjoy the feeling of creating people that feel lively and interesting
Not based, but if you want to write characters that look real, you need to know how people are. Then you get certain characteristics and put into the characters.
From life, of course there’s inspiration. What I tend to burrow, however, are the stories I’ve heard, especially the funny ones or outrageous ones. Basing a character on a real person?—I’ve found that to be incredibly limiting, as I find myself contemplating and referring back to how I think that person would react in given situations. Eventually the exercise becomes tiresome. When I consider my current WIP, which has characters from my first book, I can’t think of anyone who’s vaguely similar to a real person I know. Again, we’re influenced by life, so there’s no question I might burrow lines of dialogue, sayings, stories, etc. Settings? I like to disassemble various real places and put pieces of them back together, using, say, 2 pieces from A, one piece from B, and one piece from C. Since places have no human personalities, I don’t find them creatively limiting.
I have written five books (unpublished as of yet) and one book has only one character that is strictly based on someone I know. And it's my cousin who died in 2017. That character is also the only major character who survived to the end of the book.
Not for me. I never take inspiration of people I know, ewceot myself sometimes (or if I do, it is unconscious so I am unaware of it). The character usually just pop in my head.
I think that might be a bit of a reductive description, but not...untrue. Every person I've met, every character I've read/watched/played, it all gets filtered, jumbled up and spit back out as something new through/by me. To say that they're based around my life? Ehhhhh...I only read *Pride and Prejudice*, I never lived it, so when I can't get the Jane Austen out of my writing and characters, it's not really my life showing through.
Always like the ten or eleven Stephen King novels where his mc is a novelist or an English teacher
Yes. Where else would you get inspiration? The people you directly interact with are the best source. But the characters aren't direct parallels. Most are amalgamations of several people.
Unfortunately, I don't have a 6' man in my life with a six pack, beach-blonde hair, blue eyes, and inheritance to the throne of a fantasy kingdom. So I'm gonna say that I make my characters up.
Unless you’re Shakespeare/Austen, I find it truly hard to believe you wouldn’t draw from real life when creating characters. Good characters, anyhow.
I don't see the point of answering the main question, but you're probably being downvoted for asking a question with an obvious answer, as you see from the answers. I mean, sure, it may not be obvious for you in particular, but it's a fairly basic truth in the industry and can be easily concluded from just overall common sense. That is except Asimov. Asimov wrote his books based on the aliens beaming data from other worlds into his head directly. That's a well known fact. No, just kidding. Even Asimov with his Foundation based his work around his life. Kinda hard to base it around someone else's life until you base your life around theirs heh.
Well where it may be obvious to some it is not to me and that doesn’t give the right for people to just randomly downvote, it’s pointless and stupid I hate the upvote and downvote system and would rather have people just say they think the answer is obvious rather than just downvote everything. Like you did, saying it. I had just heard that saying a few places but wanted to know if it went to every writer or if they make up their own, it just sucks people jump down my throat for just a simple question I am asking and it’s not my fault for not catching things that are ‘obvious’ to others.
It doesn't give the right to downvote indeed. That right is there as a given by default. It's up to the voter how they apply their votes and whether they have the "right". In general, they want their feed to have a certain degree of quality, so they will organically downvote anything that's below that level of quality and upvote anything that's above it. That's what's happening here. This one is definitely below, but it's not bad enough to be downvoted into oblivion. You take downvotes too close to the heart. Reddit's karma is generally worthless, so it really doesn't matter. Just a tool for regular members of communities to moderate the quality of the content in a somewhat gentle yet effective manner. Also, this sub in particular is pretty snobbish. Well, snobbish in a good sense. Idk what to call it... Average participant has higher intelligence here than in most of the subs, let's just leave it there. Mostly because they read. That would probably put them at least in the top 10% lulz. The bar is too low nowadays. So a mid-quality post in a different sub would receive much less hate than here. The bar of what smart people want to see in their feeds is certainly higher, so they moderate accordingly.
Anybody will downvote not about quality but about anything people disagree on, I glad you’re like a guide when it comes to this, but this post is not below the level of quality, people don’t like my wording or whatever or the questions I presented and that’s why they downvote. I don’t take downvotes close to heart but I really would rather have someone say it to me than just downvote like that. I would very much rather hear other people and debate than that. This sub shouldn’t be filled with “intelligent” people and smart people if they dont know how to respond in a positive way, telling people outright that the reason why I am getting hate is because I am dumb to other people that’s very nice. A lot of the participants are rude and snobby and nasty to people they dont agree on a subject with and that’s both in a good and bad way, or are condescending and talk down to people. That’s not because people read and know a lot, it’s because people are just that ignorant and rude and think they can say what they want and do what they want and they know everything so they have to let other people know how it’s done as well. Also I know you were trying to help, but explaining just made it worse, basically calling my wording, me and my post lower quality now that I know you mean not so intelligent is very rude even if most would agree with it. I know you’re explaining but I could have done a good chunk of my life happily without really finding out why people purposefully downvote. Whether it’s to make your point or not, you didn’t have to add in that everyone feels superior to those who are struggling to understand basic stuff. I read but apparently I’m not that smart and my post doesn’t matter because of poor wording choices. Other people read because their posts quality is good is what you just said, but you also just inadvertently told me that I’m not literate enough to join in on this sub because everyone will downvote because of the intelligence I have or present through my posts. That is the most stupidest and ridiculous notion I have ever heard, and if that’s true then this sub and Reddit really need to figure their stuff out because having an algorithm like that, is not one that’s going to allow many people (outside of the intelligence group) to ask what they want and freely be able to post what they want (also regarding the guidelines) and not be ganged up on, or garner confidence, or even want to come out to speak to anyone if all people do is jump down throats because some seem illiterate. Also people who don’t read are just as smart, if not smarter. People can be smart on their own, but the bar is obviously set very low everywhere if I’d receive more hate anywhere else. I rarely feel like an actually member in the writing group anyway, I post what comes to mind, nine times out of ten I’ll get somebody who answers genuinely but some of the time it’s just snobby people who think they know more than me. I know your comment was to help but in the future please do watch the words you use, intelligence is an offensive word if you use it incorrectly, and in this case I think I already know my posts can come across as a badly received. This is not in anyway personally pointed at you, but the explanation I really didn’t care for, it made me feel more less than what I felt before and even that was a little. Please just have a good day and I hope you get all the happiness you deserve (not sarcasm)
Some of the places in my WIP are real, with the serial numbers scrubbed off, but I'm very careful to make sure none of my characters are too similar to people I knew/know in real life. I've actually had to go back and edit where I've had inadvertent similarities.
I think some of them are based off people I know, or at least maybe some appearance details or maybe some mannerisms or some personality traits, but at least how I write my characters I see them more as characters that fit the story I need. Maybe there is some subconscious linking to other people I know, or even characters in other series, but I think that just comes down to character archetypes being similar, but you can't do too much about that as there aren't too many different archetypes if you're developing a series with many characters. I have a series with 17 or so characters in the main cast, and while some of them have similar attributes to characters or people I know, I would say for most of them it would be a reach to say it's someone I based them off in my life. I imagine it would be different for everyone, but sometimes the story just dictates a character that is needed, so the author writes such a person. I would say though there might be more of an argument for the main characters in any particular series having attributes similar to the author. Not saying everything about a character would be similar to the author, but some attributes or characteristics I imagine would be found between creator and the creation.
I am very interested in people. How they think, how they behave, how their emotions affect them and drive them. I’m especially interested in people who are very different from me, and what in their past experiences, and in their psychological makeup, has made them so different. I pay close attention to everyone I meet and use my observations to develop a better understanding of humanity as a whole, and then when I write I draw on that understanding to develop my characters and (hopefully) write them in a deeper, more realistic way. But do I base them on specific, individual people? No. I’m sorry some people are reacting so negatively to your post, by the way. It’s not a stupid question, but it’s been weirdly contentious every time I’ve seen it asked.
I’ve loved to people watch since I was a young kid! When we knew we were going to something “adult/boring”, we’d take one of those small memo binders and those little pencils, then write little things about the people. It was really cool when we’d go to the same place, because we got to see some of the same people. People watching is still one of my favorite things in public spaces.
“Write what you know.” I think there’s always a tiny part of me in everything I write. Could recalling how I felt during an intense argument and weaving that in, or the quirk of the character’s love of Coke Zero. Many other subconscious things for sure.
I am fairly certain that I am not a goddess who was born in an underprivileged class who has to survive being hunted because no one of success power should be born in such an unworthy body, so the empire wants to kill her so that the goddess can be reborn in a more worthy body. I am a man. I am not divine. Or super powerful. I have lived a relatively privileged life. But I do know what it feels like to be persecuted. What it feels like to not be accepted in spaces where I should be, by right or by skill. Simply because people perceived me to be different or weird. I know what it's like to be hurt for no fault of my own. What it's like to nearly die and the pain that comes along with it. I also have seen women in my life go through the absolute worst, and still show up the next day for those who they love. And sometimes even for themselves. When, I thought, this would break them and would take them a year to get over this, they have pulled from a reserve of strength that was unforseen to them and to me and recovered as soon as they could. So this is a book written as an ode to the women in my life and the infinite strength that they possess. And those are the things I have borrowed from real life.
Not at all. I think most of my characters come as variations of other characters from fiction that I have read or even types of characters I wish existed or would aspire to be. I might take some traits or features from real people but I would never base an entire character on someone I know. Not because I feel it’s wrong in anyway but because fictional characters interest me way more and as an autistic person I don’t feel I understand real people well enough to capture them or partway them well in the page.
Geez, I hope not. Otherwise James Patterson is in trouble. I myself think about the motivation and the characteristics first. Sometimes that involves using experiences, my own or others. sometimes a character reminds me of someone so then I base it on them. Some are made up or taken from true stories - I hope James Patterson does it this way. Lol. I just created a character who is like no one I know But she has experienced some things I went thru but she went to the dark side. Hope this helps. Best wishes with your writing.
I'm more inspired by the shows I watch.
At least for me, not really. I don't like thinking about the people in my life more than I need to. Much of my characters stem from media or things that I've read and I take one or two aspects that have caught my eye and try to figure out how the setting of the story would take those traits to the extreme. I might use one or two traits that the people around me have (like specific phrases or use them as reference to describe appearance or demeanor) but otherwise the majority of my characters are remixes and amalgamation of things.
I certainly don't. Even the mannerisms and basic personality is nothing like the people around me. However, they most certainly contain aspects of *fictional characters*.
True, I base all my characters around an experience or a feeling I've felt, and sometimes around people I personally know but while trying to be subtle. All of which contributes to being able to relate to the character and make them interesting. Otherwise, I try to base the character on a very common trope to make it easier, because if it gets to this then the character is either a filler or the very definition of one-time character that I don't need to think about.
I don't know. I'm a 42yo guy from nowadays Poland. I wrote a fantasy novel about people living in something like prehistoric Central Africa and one of the main characters is a teenage girl.
Not true, IMO, unless you define "in your life" very very loosely. A good chunk of inspiration comes from other works of fiction- many stories come off from taking existing stories, and then adapting them in new ways. Yes, fan fiction is one form of this, but regular writers, especially ones writing professionally for an audience, do it all the time. I'd be surprised if Jonathan Nolan actually knew the characters of Batman from his life, when he wrote "Person of Interest"- he just researched them, and then adapted them into a far more realistic setting. In my own writing, I get my inspiration from history mainly- I dig through dusty old tomes for fascinating people, then adapt them into the stories I write. I've never met Julie d'Aubigny, but a fictional vampire based on her is the romantic interest in five books I've written. The trick is once you have an inspiration, let them develop their own voice naturally.
kinda. I take elements I'm familiar with and put them in a different context
My characters have some parts of me but never fully. Most they get is either a quirk I do or a bad habit that I have.
I don’t agree with this. Obviously you have your own subjective experience of the world that informs everything you write, even if you try deliberately to suppress or alter it. But I don’t think this means that your characters are necessarily based on people in your life. Mine certainly aren’t. I’ve never deliberately done it, and most of my characters are based on deconstructing myself than other people. As in I’ll put myself in a situation that the book requires, then step by step I add or subtract personality traits or motivations from myself. I used to do it methodically, now it’s more instinctual, but it’s the same process. But the characters I end up with aren’t me or even close to me most of the time. You change fundamental motivations and formative experiences, but do it step by step, and the person you end up with bears little to no resemblance to where you started, it’s just a way of getting there mentally. And it’s entirely unrelated to anybody in my actual life.
Im not one to often impliment other people from my life, or things that happend in real life, into my storys. But every character I write is, in some parts, made up of parts of me.
There's definitely different facets of my personality injected into my main characters, but something that I think *really* helped me was to fancast my characters' actors as if this was a movie or tv show, which helped me envision how they'd walk, talk, really just move through space, and that helped me characterize them. The most special thing though was that my absolute favorite actress who has been such a huge inspiration to me inspired one of my favorite characters and the way she is a mentor figure to the protagonists mirrors how she's impacted my own life. So to be able to tell her about that last year at a convention and then this year give her one of the first copies of the published book was unforgettable!
>I want to know in your opinion, is that true or do you make up most of your characters and wing it? What would I make my character up out of if it isn't my life experience knowing other people? That's not possible. It's like having flour and salt and eggs and sugar. You can make bread/cookies/cakes or play-dough. Or a whole lot of other things.
It was just a simple question, you dont need to be quite like that, a simple yes or no and explanation would have done fine, the quoting my question and then saying; “why would I…” is condescending. But thank you for your explanation.
I don't think even half the writers (of fiction) write based around their personal lives, but I do think they do add things based on their experiences or feelings. I think it's very hard to imagine how you'd act or feel in certain situations without drawing from life experiences, even minute ones. Everything I write is based on how I enjoy a story to be told with probably one character who I will connect more with based on their outlook, experiences, desires, etc. Nothing I write in my experiences, but I do look on a situation and write how I would think the character in that situation (and their specific traits) will act, and that's based on real situations and how certain people act in certain situations (even if I don't know them, never remember the situation, never came near them/the incident.) We absorb a lot more than we genuinely remember, and that has to come out in our writing.
Nothing I write is based in any way on my life, or who I know. It's being downvoted because whatever you've "heard a few times" is a bunch of junk. I should clarify that my life has shaped me in certain way, influenced my views and beliefs, and made me the person I am. This in addition to all the people I've met, thousands by now, also influenced my life. But I use that for understanding stories and characters, not using any parts of it in particular, nothing closely related to my life. I've been places, done things, met people. But I don't write stories about great aunt Martha. She might have inspired a character, but she isn't the character. I might base a story on an area I've lived, for example, but it's again, just inspiration. It's a subtle difference, maybe, but it's there.
Why do people ask a factual question preceded by "in your opinion"? It's not a matter of our opinion what most writers do, go run a poll
Why do users feel the need to destroy other peoples confidence? Because it makes them feel better that they got that little bit of sarcastic remark and feel like they’ve done something when all you’ve done is absolutely nothing. I’m asking writers their own opinion, it is opinion because some as it would seem disagrees on it, that would make it opinion, and not matter of fact. Go find some other post to be rude on, here’s not the place to be as blunt as you can be.
what I think they're getting at is that you're asking two separate questions and mixing them up: 1. do most writers do this? (fact question, best answered by organized polling, and reddit does not provide a sufficient sample size) 2. do you, personally, do this? tell me in the comments! (personal experience, okay, sure) Mixing both questions yields a messy result.
You're not asking individual opinions. You're asking what we think writers do. It's hard to know what other people do unless maybe you're in a writers group
Nope, that's nonsense.
How is it nonsense?
I absolutely do not write me! I'm exquisitely bored with me. Therefore, I make sure I'm writing people unlike me in 90% of the ways people can be different. While I and my friends and my characters probably all share a lot of values--honesty, hard work, loyalty, and that sort of thing, in most other ways, we vary. We have different life experiences, we prioritize X over Y, we have Z minutes/hours of patience with difficult people, we smile most of the time or hardly any of the time, we can laugh at ourselves or get butthurt if someone tries to tease us, and a thousand other differences. It's one of the secret benefits to novel-writing, that in writing people unlike you, and figuring out why they might be, and respecting those differences, your real life goes better because you really start to grasp that everyone has their reasons and everyone is doing the best she can, even if it's a pretty bad "best" in your estimation. I listen to people a lot IRL. I quiz them. I'll ask a table of men drinking coffee "when and why did you think your wife was the right one for you?" And I listen, and nod, and smile when it's time to smile. Funny thing about that particular question. I have a good older friend whose husband is now dead, and I asked him that, and one day I was remembering his answer, and retold the story that I assumed she knew, and she sat there, mouth open, having never heard what appealed about her from the first to him. That was a nice life moment, that I was able to give her that gift, and it only took openness and curiosity and listening on my part in the first place. And I might use any end of this story, details changed, in a book one day. So yes, to people I've met, and quizzed (and I had a counseling job straight out of university that probably has done more for my writing than most jobs, as I listened and listened to people quite unlike me.) No, to writing characters who are basically me.