Do You Ever Encounter Your Characters in Real Life?

[MrPixel]

It's not exactly déjà vu, but it is déjà something - running across your characters in real life. Or your characters' characteristics. I'm not talking about basing a character on somebody real, I'm talking about characters built completely out of your imagination that you later encounter in reality.

F'rinstance, I have one character in my current serial, a café server and bartender, who is petite and outgoing but slightly troubled. Triple whammy on her - saw her embodiment in the produce section at the local Costco a couple of weeks ago. In another moment last week, overheard a voice somewhere that was exactly how I imagined her voice. That was startling, to say the least. Then there was yesterday, a petite and personable server at our fave eatery waited on us, somebody we've come to like. She is not at all the model for my character, but hit all the right notes anyway. Timing was right, so she was the recipient of our annual "Christmas tip"; after being out sick for a while we knew she needed it.

I ran across another near-perfect match for another character a couple of weeks ago when visiting in a hospital. This character, another female, is a cute over-the-top gym rat with a no-nonsense personality slightly bordering on abrasive. Damn if there wasn't a young nurse tending to my friend with these exact characteristics. I had to explain to my wife "that's not a 'tummy', dear, that's a six-pack".

A couple of characters are somewhat modeled on my wife, but that was aforethought. Haven't run into any of the male characters yet. A young, attractive, fit and polite young man (BF of gym rat) seems to be a challenge in our neck of the woods; the older supporting male is a fairly generic melding of guys I've known, so I'll run into "him" sooner or later.

 

[oggbashan]

Many of my characters are based on an amalgam of real people. None is a real person as such (except jeanne_d_artois Fag-Ash-Lil from her story Unatit. Fag-Ash-Lil is long dead from drug issues.

But I do meet characters from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (including the Wife Of Bath - I know at least three women like her) and some from Shakespeare e.g Justice Shallow.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Most of my characters are based on people I know in real life or have known. Others I make up but usually are based on someone I might have seen or just met casually. Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

 

[KeithD]

Yes, occasionally I find myself looking at some and thinking, "That's just like . . ."

 

[SamScribble]

Yes. Like Ogg and Zeb, I 'borrow'; so I have usually met my characters in real life before they become my characters.

 

[Blind_Justice]

I wouldn't mind meeting Arach or Padari. The chances of that happening are 0.0% though. Or even worse. I mean, this reality's lack of true futanari is lamentable enough, but my refusal to leave my home isn't improving the odds.

 

[SilkeeSmooth]

I haven't met people that look like characters in my story after the fact, but there's been more than one occasion that I've seen people wearing outfits that almost exactly fit the descriptions of outfits my characters have worn. I chalk it up to very likely having seen very similar outfits in public, and not realizing I've actually seen that, that I've possibly just imagined what such an outfit would look like, then writing that into a story, and seeing something very close again afterward.

 

[TadOverdon]

No...

 

[AllenWoody]

Every time I look in the mirror.

 

[EdwardsOtherSide]

Well, given that I have explicitly said that real people provided me with some inspiration...

And a dear friend asked if this was about her...

I have to say "yes".

 

[MrPixel]

Thank you for reviving this topic! I had an OMG! moment last week on discovering that the name I had "imagined" for one of my main characters was the exact name of somebody I have casually known for a couple of years... but I didn't know her surname. Fortunately this character didn't have the last name until an unpublished chapter, so I managed to save me from myself.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I had an unnerving moment a couple years ago. I'd posted most of a series where the character Adrian is from Northern Ireland, has sandy hair and at 40 has a receding hairline, wire glasses and a very sexy voice, accent mostly mellowed from 20 years in London. Looks and voice nicked from an old friend.

Turned on the TV and chairing a panel show is essentially the character aged 50ish, and called Adrian,which has never been a very common name. The actor Adrian Dunbar doesn't have such a deep voice, and I have no idea if he has ever had drink and drug problems or a wife who died or any interest in men, but the resemblance was uncanny.

We started watching Line Of Duty (cop show starring him) the next day.

Recently, I was trying to think of who I'd last seen with the hairstyle I'd just given my female character Ali, so I could describe it better. Turned out that it's Scorpia from She-Ra. Ah well,I still would...

 

[gunhilltrain]

Not a real person, but I have found a fictional character with the same name as one of my characters. I swear, it was completely by coincidence.

Holly Sykes is the main character in David Mitchell's 2014 novel The Bone Clocks. I have a character with the same name - Holly came from the first name of a woman whose photo I used as a model, and Sykes came from Sykesville, New Jersey, I think. When I was idly Googling the name, I found it was also used in Mitchell's novel.

 

[BiscuitHammer]

Never my paragon characters, but a few of my more 'mortal' characters have some real-life inspirations.

Jeanie, my resident airhead in the Alexaverse, is a hybrid of some really dumb girls I knew and the way they perceived things. "Why do all the garbage cans say 'Refuse'?"

Becky, my hot blonde teacher from Time Rider, is based on someone I know who is an educator, went through a sexually frustrated phase, and got it out of her system with martial arts.

I do know a hippie girl from a commune named 'Trilby'.

God save us all if I ever meet Boldbator...

 

[SimonDoom]

I have written a story based on someone I met online, and I continue to have interactions with her, and I'm in the process of writing another story about her, so in that sense, yes. Otherwise, no. I've never bumped into someone in the non-digital world and thought, "That's my character!"

 

[shakna]

Oh god. As my characters range from "broken" to "sociopathic", I really, really, hope never to meet anyone like them in the real world. Either they'll be carrying the burdens of the universe, or they'll be the crazy you shouldn't put your dick near. Fine for fantasies. Baaaad decisions in the real world.

 

[oggbashan]

I tend not to describe the physical characteristics of my people. I never use names associated with people I know or knew (apart from Fag-Ash _Lil). That was her nickname and she was very like the person I described - but long dead.

But I sometimes meet people like some of my characters.

 

[Nylonian]

It's not exactly déjà vu, but it is déjà something - running across your characters in real life. Or your characters' characteristics. I'm not talking about basing a character on somebody real, I'm talking about characters built completely out of your imagination that you later encounter in reality.

F'rinstance, I have one character in my current serial, a café server and bartender, who is petite and outgoing but slightly troubled. Triple whammy on her - saw her embodiment in the produce section at the local Costco a couple of weeks ago. In another moment last week, overheard a voice somewhere that was exactly how I imagined her voice. That was startling, to say the least. Then there was yesterday, a petite and personable server at our fave eatery waited on us, somebody we've come to like. She is not at all the model for my character, but hit all the right notes anyway. Timing was right, so she was the recipient of our annual "Christmas tip"; after being out sick for a while we knew she needed it.

I ran across another near-perfect match for another character a couple of weeks ago when visiting in a hospital. This character, another female, is a cute over-the-top gym rat with a no-nonsense personality slightly bordering on abrasive. Damn if there wasn't a young nurse tending to my friend with these exact characteristics. I had to explain to my wife "that's not a 'tummy', dear, that's a six-pack".

A couple of characters are somewhat modeled on my wife, but that was aforethought. Haven't run into any of the male characters yet. A young, attractive, fit and polite young man (BF of gym rat) seems to be a challenge in our neck of the woods; the older supporting male is a fairly generic melding of guys I've known, so I'll run into "him" sooner or later.

Well an upcoming story is a based on a friend's retelling of a fantasy he had about a colleague I've met so yeah. She's a looker and the story came together so quickly. I had a lot of fun writing it.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

I often base my characters on people I know, or have even just seen in a crowd. I was in court one day (to testify about an accident I'd witnessed) and I thought it was hilarious how almost every woman in the courtroom was openly drooling over this one young cop. Of course he was tall, dark and handsome and kind of swarthy looking. I fashioned the cop in my story 'The Dare' after him. I based the lady in another story, 'One Look,' on a friend I knew in high school who never knew his parents and was bounced from one foster home to the next, knowing how much it affected him.
I don't always realize that I'm fashioning my characters, or their stories after real people and real life situations, even if it's just in small snip-its.

 

[Duleigh]

I quite often base my characters on characters I've seen in movies or people I've met, that's the only way I can write a realistic character. I don't put in noticeable chiastic traits, quirks, or habits, I'm not putting that person in my stories, I'm using them as a template for a realistic character. I also do the same thing with buildings too. In my Stormwatch series there's a cabin where Josh and Veronica spend a lot of time. In my mind I know every square foot of that cabin, where every stick of furniture is placed, where Josh sets the charcoal grill, how far it is to the pond, I can't write without knowing that stuff. Same with the people, and when I base them on people I know from movies or real life, I can craft what they will say or do in a specific situation. Terri McCarthy in Stormwatch is an amalgam of about 4 people I've met in my past and as long as I can remember who they are, I can write Terri McCarthy.

 

[AlexBailey]

I wrote a character based largely on a description of someone I’d never met who is friends with some other friends. He sounded sexy and fun and had many talents I find intriguing.

I ended up using him as the inspiration for two different characters, one of which is my own unrequited fantasy guy.

I was deep into writing my story when I ended up sharing a house in Hawaii alone for two weeks with the guy. Fuck! What a mind fuck! I was able to use some of the tension of that experience to finish the story.

He’s the only person IRL other than my wife who knows I write here.

 

[MsNatalie99]

I'd give my left nut just to find someone who'd date me in broad daylight. It'd be even better if they were as open to trying new things as many characters on this site.

 

[MissPrim]

I was lunching with my sister in a restaurant when I turned my head and saw the total embodiment of one of my characters. I was about to wave to him to say "hi," when I realized what I was doing, and pulled my hand down. Very surreal moment.

 

[DouglasFinney]

The first and second novels that I wrote both contained a substantial number of characters who were based on people whom I had known in real life, but those two novels also featured a common major character who was completely fictional. Her appearance was modeled on what would have been my “ideal woman” when I was in my twenties.

One day when I was twenty-nine I was in a university’s graduate library doing some research on forest fires when I caught a glimpse of a woman who looked just like the character in my books.

I’m normally a fairly shy person but I immediately followed her out of the building and into the quad where I caught up with her and introduced myself. I’m no good with pickup lines, so I just introduced myself and told her the truth: she looked just like I imagined one of my heroines did. I’ll call her Eileen (for that was her name).

Eileen was surprisingly receptive. I learned that she was originally from Chicago, she was twenty-six, and she was just about to graduate with a master’s in nursing. After a ten minute conversation Eileen said yes to a dinner date, we traded email addresses, and I watched her walk off into that fine spring day. She had a great ass.

When I got home, I made a drink and dialed into the server to check my email. There was already an email from Eileen in my inbox. It was friendly, dare I say flirty; erudite; and witty. I wasted no time writing her back. We traded a half dozen emails that afternoon and evening and I was amazed at my good fortune. Eileen was terrific.

I was pretty high on this whole situation until, later that night, I received a serious email from her. Eileen had compiled a list of ten or so questions asking after my stances on a variety of social issues. Where did I stand on abortion? Capital punishment? Legalizing marijuana? Euthanasia? With which political party did I identify? Did I believe in God?

I answered every question wrong even though the character whom Eileen resembled would have answered them all exactly how I did.

“All things considered,” Eileen wrote back, “it’s probably for the best if we don’t go out.”

“That’s going to make it tough for me to get in your pants,” I replied.

“Yeah,” she answered. “Sorry about that.”

 

[JohnEngelman]

My protagonists are idealizations of me. "You're never too old to die" is based on an event that really happened to me. I was thrown into an alley and beaten up by two policemen after I stopped a man from yelling insults at Hispanic women. My explanation of why this happened is complex. Read about it.

https://www.literotica.com/s/youre-never-too-old-to-die

"Laurel" is also autobiographical.

https://www.literotica.com/s/laurel-3

"Richard and the Seven Brigands" is about a man who is the way I would have liked to be in Richard's circumstances.

https://www.literotica.com/s/richard-and-the-seven-brigands