Characters

[brghostwriter]

Hi, there!

I was thinking... In all my stories, my female characters (the ones that have sex with my protagonist) are based on real women - women that I know. And all them arouses me.

No, I don't use real names, ages and etc. They are adapted to the stories. But in my mind, while I'm writing, I'm seeing the real girls.

Just wondering about it.

Regards, BRGhost

 

[Ray Dario]

Your sick man, sick sick sick!

Just kidding. While I don't do what you describe, I do think that many of my characters inherit traits from people I know in real life.

Ray

 

[Uther_Pendragon]

Your sick man, sick sick sick!

Just kidding. While I don't do what you describe, I do think that many of my characters inherit traits from people I know in real life.

Ray

:
Well, yes. They inherit traits.
My rule of thumb (rule of mouth?) is "take small bites."
By which I mean that I make up characters composed of small
portions of what I have seen people do in real life.
(Sometimes of small portions of other people's
fictional characters.)
Instead of describing Jane Smith and calling her Molly
Jones, I will take Jane Smith's addiction to coffee,
Mary Brown's habit of laughing at old jokes, Pam Jones's
technique of batting her eyes, etc. The character is (I
hope) quite believable, but nobody is going to recognize
her.
(Of course, some things are private -- so, made up.)

 

[wildsweetone]

after discovering that i'd simply been letting my pen do the writing, i recently learnt how to put a known person into the last few of my 300 word or less stories. to me the difference was incredible, the 'completeness' i felt after each story was finished was pronounced.

i managed to put the exact traits of those characters in without actually describing them. i still need to learn how to take little bits from several people and combine them.

i too 'see' the real people as i've written. how do i 'see' the little bits that are combined? my picture seems to be decidedly wonky...

 

[Quint]

I'm shamelessly self-projecting into my current novella, but I found a strange side-effect...it's projecting onto me! I have had a sudden urge to change my name to Beth, amongst other things. This is an unexpected development...

 

[mlyn]

My characters are always a composite

I always start with a name, and from the name I usually formulate in my head what their face is like, eyes, lips, hair, body type. And then I add the personality traits.

One thing I don't do anymore is describe characters in too great detail because I want the reader to be able to imagine them in their mind as they read.

 

[Route66Girl]

Composites

All my characters have at least one or two elements in them that I get from somewhere else, be it a character in some other story or an actual person.

There's no problem with basing a character on a real person, as long as you fictionalize by changing names and so forth. Otherwise, get that person's permission.

It's stickier to write a character that was inspired by one from another story. It's okay to draw the essence from that character and then make them your own from there, and it's done all the time.

If you're uncomfortable writing about women you actually know, perhaps you could just use the same method. Try to pinpoint what it is that bemuses you about the woman in question, and then build your own original character around that element of her.

 

[macdanife2000]

Well brghostwriter I think you are right on the money by basing your characters on people you know.

I gives you a great reference for developing the character even though they have attributes and appearances that can be in stark contrast to the real person.

It makes you're characters more believable, and though what we write is pure fantasy (ie no condoms, no unwanted pregnancies or spread of STD's) we like our heroes and heroines to be people we might meet.