The Real McCoy or Whoever

I use people I know in stories all the time. If I knew you in junior high or high school, there are good odds you've appeared in one of my novels. There are even better odds, depending on whether or not you were a bully, that you've died a messy death or three in those novels. But I defy anyone to point to one of my characters and prove they can identify themselves.

I go to great lengths to make darned certain no one will ever recognize another human being in what I write. Names are changed. Race is changed, sometimes species is changed. Speech patterns won't be identifiable. Nor will body language or habits. And if you ask me who that alien was in the first SFR book? Remember that I have a degree in acting. I have the flat-dumb stare that says, "I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about," down pat. I'd really rather not find out that it's useable in court. The point is to have my infantile revenge on a few memories. No one in the great wide world needs to know who these people are or once were. Just me. Chances are, the bullies aren't bullies anymore. Chances are, some of them didn't make it into adulthood to care whether I'm offing them in novels or not. That's a sad, statistical fact of life. One I intend to go on respecting. So while I admit I model some characters on some people - there won't be names and everyone will go on being made 100% unrecognizable.

If you weren't a bully, I might have borrowed a single thing from you to put in a novel. Occasionally, I see someone who has a look or a feature that I find intriguing. I'll assign that to NPCs in a book (Non Player Character, for you non-gamer types). The NPCs in my books are characters who walk on, do one thing, and then walk back out. Nothing bad happens to them. In fact, they get no story of their own. They're color. Set dressing. Customers in a shop. Soldiers guarding doors. It is possible that someone could identify these characters in a "Hey! She totally stole that pink hair thing from me!" kind of way. That said, I seriously doubt that the people I am lifting wardrobe or dye jobs from actually read the sorts of things I write. Also? I keep it as general as possible - like pink hair. No one individual owns that hair color. So if I see it on someone and use it for an NPC in a story, it's pretty tough to say I took it from that guy over there in the skinny jeans with holes in the knees. (All of which I just made up. I'm sitting on the boat, staring at the unbelievable mess that's been made this week.)

Main characters are almost always products of imagination. I say 'almost' because there have been cases where I kept a personality type in mind when writing, but that's as far as that goes. The protagonists and antagonists need to be specific people in order to serve the story. Even if I'd wanted to model an MC on a real person, in order for the story to work, I'd likely have to change so many things that the real person would be lost. So I just don't.

What about you? Do you think it would be cool to be written into a book? Would you want to be a major player in the story? Cause you know some terrible things have to happen, then. What about being a bit player?

Sex, Lies, and Irritating Neighbors Who Won’t Shut Up

Hello, all! I’m Jane, your part-time Whore, here to fill in for Allison while she rests up.

As my erotica-writing husband used to say, “Never sleep with an erotica writer if you don’t want strangers to know what you look like naked.”

My earliest published works were also erotica, and though it might seem counterintuitive, erotica writers are far more likely than anyone else to write about people they know. Which is not to say that erotica writers are necessarily having all of that sex they’re writing about (in most cases, probably not; writers don’t have that kind of time). But in addition to those “band camp” experiences and the antics of proud, self-proclaimed sluts, erotic fantasies are built on missed connections, what-ifs, and unfulfilled attractions.

In epic fantasy, however, I’m far more likely to make up characters out of whole cloth. I’m inventing entire worlds, so why not people them with my own imagination? I don’t like to use photos of models or actors as inspiration for my writing either; it’s fun to find pictures afterward to represent the ones in my head, but I find it distracting to have an external reference for someone I’m inventing.

But there are a few exceptions. In my series set in Russia, I based many of the settings in my books on real places I visited while I was there, and that seems to have spilled over into the people I met. I can’t think of anyplace else I’ve consciously done this in my writing, but there’s at least one character I based on someone I met there simply because that person’s life touched me, and I figured I’d never see them again. Writing the person into my fictional world was a kind of homage.

More often are the people I’ve seen while riding the bus to work or getting a latte at Starbucks who fit the image I had in my head of a certain character I was already working on. Afterward, those people tend to influence my mental image of the character.

For the most part, though, I try to avoid mixing fiction with reality. Who needs the hassle if someone “recognizes” himself in a character and takes exception? (Although there’s a guy loudly blathering outside my window right now who may have changed my mind. I’m thinking he’ll make an appearance as a corpse in my next book.)

Whatever the writer’s intentions, I think it’s inevitable that fictional characters will have bits and pieces of real people, just as visual art uses models. But a painting that uses a model is often about someone else entirely. When it’s not, it’s a portrait. Which is biography, not fiction. I’m far more comfortable with lies. ;)

You're So Vain

You probably think this scene is about you. The chapter? The whole book? Dude, that character is totally not you. No really.  It's not.

I don't write about people I know.  

Consciously, at least.

Yes, you may take that to mean,  "I don't write about people I consciously know," "I don't consciously write about people I know," or even "I don't consciously write."  Those of you who follow my boozey tweets might be choosing the latter.

My characters are constructed based on who I need them to be to the protagonist. Their motivations are derived from that intentionally constructed relationship. Their actions and reactions are meant to expose something about the protagonist and the plot.  I don't (and won't) view my Real World relationships under that filter; therefore, I can't craft characters from Real World individuals. Not from family. Not from friends. Not from random dude at the traffic light.

How my characters look, what sort of unique trait or tic they have, the rhythm of their speech, the way the express themselves ... it's all cobbled together from the roiling chunky stew of my imagination. 

So, if you ever read one of my books and think I'm writing about you... it's okay. Feel free to think it. It is your undeniable right as a reader.  Just forgive me for having that vacant stare when you mention it to me.

Writing About Real People - When Do You Disguise Who They Are?

My editor at Kensington, Peter Senftleben, asked me to draw a map of my world in the Twelve Kingdoms trilogy. This is what I plan to mail him tomorrow. In a poster tube, because it's big! Though I hadn't drawn anything in a really long time (20 years? More?), I enjoyed doing this more than I thought I would.

However, I also plan to tell him that, if they want to have a real illustrator redo it, my feelings won't be at all hurt.

So, this week's topic in the Word Whores bordello is - *rummages around in the purple pimp hat we store topics in* - Basing Characters on real-life people: the dangers and advantages.

You all remember I started out as an essayist, right? More, I wrote personal essays - about what I call pivotal moments. Those teaching events, big and small, that inform our lives. Which means, I wrote about real-life people all the time. As themselves. In fact, for my essay collection, Wyoming Trucks, True Love and the Weather Channel, my editor only let me change a few, very sensitive names, because she felt strongly that nonfiction carried a burden of promising the truth.

Now, any time you render a real-person into a character, even in a nonfiction essay, there's some "based on a true story" fictionalizing going on. There's really no choice, as it's impossible to fully represent the many complex details of a real human being on the page. You pick and choose key characteristics, much as in fiction.

The danger, of course, is picking the wrong stuff. We all bring subjective biases to our perceptions of others. In representing a real person, we want the reader to understand what makes that individual unique and interesting, particularly as plays into their role in that tale. It's not easy to do.

The other great danger, of course, is annoying, hurting or pissing off that person, depending on how they think they come off to the reader.

I had a writing teacher - a nonfiction essayist/memoirist - who insisted that a writer should never worry about the people in your essays ever reading them. She felt that the odds were vanishingly small that they would 1) see the article and 2) connect themselves with the character. (She was a big fan of changing names and distinguishing details.) However, she gave this advice coming out of writing for the magazine industry in New York City in the 80s. Pre-Internet.

Yeah. It made a difference.

There's another famous bit of advice, generally credited to Anne Lamott, to give a the character an exceptionally small penis, if you don't want him to recognize himself. It's a cute answer - though obviously a flip one. The principle might be sound, that you can somehow introduce a character flaw the real person would never recognize in themselves - or certainly not proclaim publicly - but it's not really practical. More, it defeats the purpose of writing about that person. If you're deliberately changing aspects of them, you're no longer faithful to the mission of nonfiction - see editor advice above on changing names. Taking that a step further, if you're not willing to own up to what you're writing about them, then you probably shouldn't write it.

I know this is a strong stance to take, but it's the same one I try to apply to everything I speak and write:

If I wouldn't say it to the person's face, I shouldn't say it at all.

Same goes for writing about the person.

This is not to say that I think we should only say happy, sunshiney things about each other. Sometimes we have things to say about how our friends, enemies and family members (a mix of both, there), that will not make them happy. The only answer is to own it. Be ready to respond, if they find out.

And, if that response means apologizing, then it's probably better to ask permission first.