Character inspiration

[scorallover]

Where do you find the characters for your stories? Are they people you know? Strangers? Or completely made up in your mind?

Do you find writing about characters based on strangers easier or more difficult than writing about characters based on people you know?

I find that most of mine are based in some way on people I know or have met. It might only be their name or physical description, but part of them are very real. I also find that I look at strangers in a different way than I did before. Now when I look at a stranger who catches my eye I try to imagine them in different settings. I try to create an entirely new world for them.

 

[bbw4youngercocks1]

Most of my characters were either developed by my own creativity or inspired by erotic photographs/movies. A couple instances were life experiences, but what stories inspired those remain my secret.

 

[soflabbwlvr]

My characters are probably a 50/50 mix of pure imagination and real-life inspiration. The real-life inspirations are often a composite of two or three different people I know (e.g., a neighbor's appearance, a co-worker's personality, and a friend's background), but sometimes they are straight-up representations of real friends or co-workers, with changes in minor details to preserve anonymity.

Purely fictional characters are often inspired by an image such as a photograph or video clip, or they can be entirely constructed in my imagination. In either case, the personality traits and behavior are my own inventions.

I don't find one any harder than the other to use. Dialogue is perhaps easier with reality-based characters, since each already has a distinctive voice. I sometimes find that invented characters tend to speak with the same voice, and therefore require additional work to make them distinct.

 

[oggbashan]

Most of mine are complete inventions based on a mix of characteristics from a large number of people.

The characters in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Shakespeare's Comedies can be a good basis for developing an individual because their contemporaries can be found in any town.

There are three individuals who are closer to people I knew than the rest of my characters:

Only one of my characters was close to a single individual - Fag-Ash Lil - as described in jeanne_d_artois' story Unatit. The source of Fag-Ash Lil was a local feature around my town until she died about ten years ago. The most frequent feedback is that the character of Fag-Ash Lil is unlikely or unrealistic yet she was a real person, slightly simplified and exaggerated.

The two characters in my stinker: Donna had a basis in real people, but an amalgam of many real people that I had dealt with in the community. Again I simplified and exaggerated for effect, but the man's manipulation and the woman's degradation were repeated too often in real life.

Apart from Fag-Ash Lil, my characters couldn't be identified as "that's me!".

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Trained in psychology I use my knowledge of people to make characters. That said, I use incidents with real people to bring my characters to life. From the LSD trips they tell me about, to the evil they do, to how they dress.

Be they teen monsters or Mother Theresa social workers, I try to make them stereotypes of what people believe they are.

 

[PennLady]

I think I tend to start with "what if there was a person with X problem" or "a person in this situation." Then it builds out from there. Like in my current story, the woman is a musician, but her family is obsessed with sports. Her name (Ryan) is usually a guy's name. So she has to deal with disapproval or dismissal from her family. My beta reader pointed out that if she is trying to succeed in music (which she is), she can't be a wallflower. Also, all of that disapproval has to make her angry. So she's not a damsel-in-distress type.

Sometimes I do think, what if a person with [characteristics] was in [situation]. Occasionally I do base a character on a person/people I knew, but they're usually minor characters.

 

[bashfullyshameless]

Where do you find the characters for your stories? Are they people you know? Strangers? Or completely made up in your mind?

Do you find writing about characters based on strangers easier or more difficult than writing about characters based on people you know?

All of the above. Kind of depends on the character and the role I'm trying to fill. I find that I don't use people I know for characters who are gonna be part of heavy sexual action because writing that just seems a little weird, but it's generally fair game for supporting characters.

The most useful thing about modeling characters after real friends/acquaintances is that I can pretty much hear what they'd say in a given situation. It makes characterization and dialogue that much easier.

 

[lovecraft68]

Many of my characters come from role plays I've done with my wife. Eventually the two of us want to publish a couples guide to role playing book so I keep a journal of all of the role plays we've done. Everyone of them is a plot bunny and the fact I've acted out the character makes writing them easier.

And yes, before anyone who's read my stuff asks, we do incest role plays.

Never knock your wife saying , "Oh fuck me little brother!" until you've tried it.

 

[BONNIEBREA]

I think I tend to start with "what if there was a person with X problem" or "a person in this situation."

I use this approach as well, but more for story/plot development rather than character development. It can be a very potent way to approach writing. For my latest story I began with "What if you had a character who grew up with a curiosity about the concepts of dominance and subbmission, and then as an adult had to sort those feelings out?" I used a minor character who had appeared in two previous stories as the main character (I'd been looking for an excuse to develop the character more fully). But talk about a puissant method to approach a story. Six weeks later I had a 140,000 novel written, and saying that the story wrote itself is probably something of an overstatement, but not by a lot.

 

[Anomandaris]

I mainly have my charachters come from within. They often take shape in dreams or thoughts. My current story, I kept on thinking about it both awake and alseep, so I started writing it just to get them out of my damned head.

 

[fuckwaffle]

Character are just that, characters. They can be spawned by real life people or imaginary people or they can be composites of both. They can be suggested by a song, a picture, a thought, they may even be suggested by an animal.

Personally, I have created characters based on all of the above.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Where do you find the characters for your stories? Are they people you know? Strangers? Or completely made up in your mind?

It's very rare that I would directly base a character on one person - but if you knew me well IRL, you'd see facets of me in my characters, along with bits of people I know. I don't think I've ever set out to base a major character directly on a real person, but inevitably real-life experience creeps into what I write. And sometimes I'll pilfer episodes from RL, or from things other people have related to me, if it seems like a good fit.

Often I start with just a few elements and see where imagination takes me. In my current series (first and only on Lit so far), I started out with a one-shot that involved a would-be professional cellist whose father is a Greek immigrant who's been passing as Anglo for the sake of his business. Then it unexpectedly turned into a series, and I've been riffing off those facts and seeing where it takes me: what sort of school would her father have sent her to? As a musician trying to build a career, she's not earning much, but her father has money to spare - how does she feel about having to call on his support? And so on. It all colours who she is and how she interacts with the rest of the world.

(And probably annoys the hell out of people who just want me to skip ahead to teh sexx0rs, but that's their bad luck ;-)

 

[lance gt]

I borrow from real life a little, but mostly I create my characters from scratch. I tailor the character to fit the role I have in mind, so real people are mostly a physical embellishment of the character and their personalities are my creation. I've used people I know and seen in public, or watched a vid and liked what I saw in the person.

 

[sr71plt]

Most of my stories are plot- or theme-driven rather than character driven. The characters usually drop in without is needed from them to serve the storyline. Although I don't intentionally employ someone real in my life for a full or partial character personality, I'm sure I can't avoid doing so, often without a specific person I've encountered in mind.