Basing on Real People

Many beginning writers get inspired by the real people around them, usually close to them, when designing characters. Is this good? Is this bad? How to deal with this? Let’s discuss it in this chapter.

Why it’s fine

The biggest fear is that people recognize themselves in your book and they’re mad about it. (They might even try to forbid you from writing about them, but it’s completely up to you if you listen to that. Anybody may write about anything!)

This fear is unfounded. People do not recognize themselves easily, as long as you don’t copy very specific details.

• Copy someone’s whole personality? Beliefs? Backstory? Way of speaking? Unnoticed.
• Copy the fact somebody always wears red earrings shaped like crescent moons with matching red glasses? Yeah, that’s obviously going to be noticed.

Especially with a whole story around it, and if you change up some parts of the character, nobody will notice.

So yes, you can get inspired by others. Friends, family, strangers passing by, people you see on TV or at interviews, whatever. It’s actually quite good practice to listen to their dialogue, to see their body language and habits, to study real character.

Why it’s not fine

Stories are not real life. You’re inventing your own world. And it’s a “heightened” version of reality, more streamlined and more focused on the fun and the conflict.

For example, in real life many people stumble over their words, or add “umm”, or have long pauses in which they figure out a response. Few people are as eloquent as characters in stories.

Similarly, stories don’t tell about the boring basic stuff of life. Many stories have been told in which the characters never eat, drink, go to the toilet, pay their bills, or whatever.

Stories are not real life. They’re a more focused and entertaining version of it, in a unique setting.

This means the characters must fit in that framework. The characters must be designed for the plot and theme of the story. To be realistic and engaging, the characters must be a product of their backstory and setting.

The chances are low that you’ll meet someone in real life who fits that perfectly. That’s perhaps the reason we tell stories. We tell of heroes, of extraordinary situations, of people rising above themselves to live better or more interesting lives … as an inspiration to all the regular humans having not-so-extraordinary lives at the moment.

As such, after copying from real life for my very first stories (as a kid), I stopped doing this entirely. Yes, you can take tiny tidbits from real life (the “most interesting” or “most suitable” parts), but that’s where it ends.

Characters in stories are a more interesting and important version of people in real life. Yes, even in very realistic stories set in the modern times.