Where Do You Get Your People?

[master_chay]

Inspired by the "does your family know what you do here ..?" thread, here's a question.

Where do you get your people?

Do you ever write real people into your stories?

Friends?

Family?

Lovers?

TV characters?

 

[Thefamiliar]

Dating site profiles. (If I get stuck)

All of the above, though ofcourse with real people you have to becarefull you aren't too revealing.

 

[HankDolworth]

two of my characters are based on real people. Or at least real encounters.

Others of my characters sprout from my brain and surprise me with their dimensions.

I try not to write fan-fiction, though there are TV characters that I would love to write about.

I keep my family out of it.

 

[damppanties]

Inspired by the "does your family know what you do here ..?" thread, here's a question.

Where do you get your people?

Three of the characters in my stories were inspired by people on the boards here at Lit. Two of the characters were inspired by an ex. One is a very dear friend. And then there's the Literotica Olympics was written entirely with people from the AH in it.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

My characters are composites with congruent traits, all were/are real.

One of my current characters is a remarkable man I worked with 30 years ago. He was 80 years old back then, and 100% muscles of iron. We called him SERGEANT ROCK. He was retired Marine Corps. The young dudes did not fuck with him. So a sweet old man, about 6-5 tall with hard muscles, ex military, is the protagonist of my story.

His antagonist is a 16 year old snake who's a blend of several vile boys I worked with over the years.

 

[Cruel2BKind]

Very few of my characters are based on people I know.

But I am very unimaginative, so I often have to look up baby-name sites for interesting names. If that doesn't work, I steal a friend's last name.

 

[NoCorrelation]

I'm not entirely sure where my characters come.

Most of what I have written (here and elsewhere) is the result of pub-based conversations with an old friend, which inevitably end up turning to our respective sex lives, fantasies or porn we've seen. Since we've always flirted a lot, I wouldn't be surprised if the characters are loosely based on us. Certainly I can see elements of me in one of the characters.

Equally, the locations tend to be places I know (especially exs' homes and bits of a famous English university town) and the cars and pets tend to belong to people I know.

I have no real problem bolting bits of people together to make a character I like, but I hate the idea of characters having names of people I know. I once "killed" off two characters when I realised that their names were the middle names of me and my then partner.

 

[MatthewVett]

I base a lot of characters on people I know a little bit. They're definitely not just inserted straight into the story, but they share some traits and minor details. In a few stories, though, they were written specifically for a friend, so of course the female leads are based directly on people I know.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Where do you get your people?

Do you ever write real people into your stories?

My characters are usually based on people I know/know of in real life, but not in a one-to-one fashion: most will be a composite of several different people, plus a bit of me, plus a dose of fiction.

I did write one lover into a story (not yet submitted here) with her permission; since we live on different continents, fiction is one of the ways we stay in touch.

More recently, I realised that some elements of my latest story were starting to resemble an ex, and I had to make some changes to reduce those similarities; while it's quite likely that that relationship will inform things I write, I don't have any desire to raise drama on that front.

 

[master_chay]

Dating site profiles. (If I get stuck).

Haha ... I hadn't thought of that.

Nice one!

 

[Recidiva]

I take part of a conversation or a situation and the way a real person responded to it as my inspiration. I don't write the entire person, but I try to pick and choose personality traits and social strategies I've seen in others, and combine them into something new.

Addition of a sense of humor or a flaw or unique ideals or an illness...

It's the facets that are the start, then the combination that's the alchemy.

 

[master_chay]

My characters are composites with congruent traits, all were/are real.

One of my current characters is a remarkable man I worked with 30 years ago. He was 80 years old back then, and 100% muscles of iron. We called him SERGEANT ROCK. He was retired Marine Corps. The young dudes did not fuck with him. So a sweet old man, about 6-5 tall with hard muscles, ex military, is the protagonist of my story.

His antagonist is a 16 year old snake who's a blend of several vile boys I worked with over the years.

Yes, that's what I tend to do instinctively too.

Is this story up?

 

[master_chay]

I will admit that in stories where something particularly unpleasant will be happening to a character, I will base that character on someone who pissed me off.

 

[Recidiva]

I will admit that in stories where something particularly unpleasant will be happening to a character, I will base that character on someone who pissed me off.

I usually make something so unpleasant that the character gets my sympathy. That'd ruin all my pissofedness. Can't have transfer to where I feel sorry for someone in reality because I'm a bitch.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Yes, that's what I tend to do instinctively too.

Is this story up?

No. I'm 3000 words along, and in no hurry. Plus I cant post it on LIT cuz the teen is underage and a rapist. He's also a perverted degenerate...all real! But he wont fly here unless I make him 18. Maybe.

How about this opening: Kareem Iguano celebrated his 18th birthday feeding his sister's puppy to his pet snake, 'Barack.'

 

[master_chay]

No. I'm 3000 words along, and in no hurry. Plus I cant post it on LIT cuz the teen is underage and a rapist. He's also a perverted degenerate...all real! But he wont fly here unless I make him 18. Maybe.

How about this opening: Kareem Iguano celebrated his 18th birthday feeding his sister's puppy to his pet snake, 'Barack.'

Ah man ... iguana used to be a safe word at one point ... I'm rofling here ...

18 seems very old to a UK author.

Like the opening

 

[TxRad]

People watching is a very good way to obtain characters. They are everywhere. A NaNo story came from an old house at the end of a road we were drilling a well off of. It came complete with the old man sitting on the front porch every day. The Female character came from a woman I saw at the local Dairy Queen with 2 kids. She was dressed for the deer camp and the kids were in pj's.

Another story came from the same DQ. A young black woman ordering a hamburger to go. Her mode of dress, tight white pants and equally tight shirt is what drew my attention. I had to stare but i thought I was safe with her back to me. On her way out she winked at me and asked if i liked the show? Story on.

Sometimes you can take two or more people and make one character. Like i said, they are everywhere. You just have to look for them.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

One character in two unpublished/unposted novels is based on one of my lit friends . . . with permission and amusement. Other than that, everyone is out of my head . . . or out of my mind, if that makes more sense.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I had an encounter during my recent Highschool reunion that I am going to write into a short story, exactly as it happened. But the person in this instance is vulnerable, recognisable-- like, the story couldn't have happened with any other person-- and she may well read it. I'm not sure if that's a can of worms I want to open.

 

[Saxon Stonedyke]

All of mine save one have come straight out of imagination. One I've done for Summer Loving is true but I asked the Lady for permission to submit it here. My asking for her permission is actually an integral part of the story.

If I have trouble with names for people or places I often look to my surroundings and scramble the letters of something laying around the house. It works for fantasy stories pretty well. If that fails there are always online character name generators for role playing games.

 

[master_chay]

I had an encounter during my recent Highschool reunion that I am going to write into a short story, exactly as it happened. But the person in this instance is vulnerable, recognisable-- like, the story couldn't have happened with any other person-- and she may well read it. I'm not sure if that's a can of worms I want to open.

Yes I know that one.

It is a can of worms but ... exploring it further through fiction can be an experience bar none.

Good luck with that.

 

[RedMonkeyButt]

I have this nifty character development sheet that I saved from an old forum I wrote on a long time ago. It's really good for breaking down the different parts of a personality and figuring out that character's path of change through a story. I try not to base my characters on people I know because that just seems too easy. By doing that, you have a ready-made character and you don't get the experience of making one up on your own.

As for names, I generally know the main players before I start writing on the actual story. I'll write short blurbs and stuff for character development and to see how it feels to write that character and if that name is going to fit, but I pretty much know who they are when I start the real writing for the story. A lot of the background characters, though, I come up with as I write. Kind of like, "Hold up, wait a minute, what the hell is his name?" Then I come up with his name, either from that dark corner in the back of my mind or an online generator or baby-name site, and then I write a note in a file on my computer for that story as to who this guy is and his details. This way I don't come along another need for a name later on and use the same one I used for that other guy.

Holy run-on sentences, batman. Fuck it, I'm not fixing them.

 

[sun_sea_sky]

Some of my stories have been based on situations involving real people. For example, friends comes to visit my partner regularly. Now, nothing happens in real life, but my story (The Affair) was based on "what if one of these friends tries to seduce the husband?". So, a loose connection with real people.

Another one (The Sewing Group) was based on a rather sweet real-life coupling I read about in the newspaper. I don't remember the names, just the broad idea.

Some of the darker stories come straight out of sexual fantasies I have --- not all of which are likely to be uploaded.

 

[CeasarBoobage]

Of course, it would be completely improper, gross, and wrong to have any sexual thoughts about any person that I personally know. Therefore, my characters are almost always completely fictional A few real traits have shown up a few times, but I didn't go out of my way to write them that way.

As far as the names go, I have recently tried to stick with a common set of names across my stories. It's not like these people are the same from story to story, they just happen to share a name. When I started out, I tried to choose unique names, but I honestly had problems remembering which names were in the current story, and which names I could use without getting in trouble with the wife because of mentioning the name of someone we know.

One fairly large problem is that my wife and I know a lot of people, and a spouse can get jealous easy, especially due to the nature of these stories. To ensure that the stories stay a fantasy, I don't want to take the chance of having her think any person whose name was used was thought of in that way.

 

[oggbashan]

Only one of my characters is based on a single real person:

Fag-Ash Lil in jeanne_d_artois' story Unatit.

The original of Fag-Ash Lil has now been dead for some years and had died before Unatit was written.

Some other characters have been based on traits and physical attributes from a variety of people I have known, worked with, met, or just observed in the street. The composites do not match any single person.