Are Your Friends or Family in Your Books?

I have this habit of reading TV recaps even though I don’t watch the shows (is this weird? I don’t even know if it’s weird). Anyway, apparently Gossip Girl had a storyline this week where Dan got a book published, and it got me thinking.

I’ve already seen several blog posts that discussed how unrealistic the whole “book acquisition process” was in that storyline. Which is to be expected—it’s TV. They get CPR wrong every time, too. But what snagged my interest was the fact that apparently Dan had based all his characters in the book on the people in the show—Blair, Serena, Chuck, etc. Naturally, drama resulted from this, because people were pissed about the way they’d been portrayed.

It got me thinking. I actually get asked somewhat frequently if I base my characters on real people. People ask me, “Am I in your book?” Or, "Do you write books about people you know?"

No, you're not. And I don't.

I don't write real people into my books. At least not all of real people.

To make an analogy—if writing a character was like drawing a picture, I might use my best friend’s ears, my mother’s nose, my sister’s hands, my own chin, Mona Lisa’s smile, and hair and eyes straight out of my imagination.

So a character might have my husband's tendency to be on time, my love of unicorns, and my mother's work ethic. My characters are mishmashes of people I know and people I observed in the store or met once or even simply dreamed up. And sometimes they're more influenced by fictional characters than real people (hello, Han Solo)!

I have multiple reasons for this. 

First, putting people you know into your novel seems like a bad idea (at least to me), especially if you have any deeply flawed characters who do bad stuff. 

But besides the potential damage to interpersonal relationships, trying to fit an already fully-formed individual into a book just doesn't make sense to me from a creative standpoint.

Maybe it's just the way I write.

See, 90% of the time I begin with a scene or the plot itself.  Then I ask myself, "What kind of person would get into this situation? What kind of person would act the way they need to act in order for the story to go the way I want it to go?" And there are so many nuances to that question, little quirks and facets to the character’s personality that will explain all these choices. It’s pretty unlikely that I would just plug my best friend into the story and have all her quirks and neuroses line up with the necessities of the plot like that.

Of course, plot and character are just two parts of the same rope. Plot affects character, but character also affects plot. I’ve had stories neatly planned out only to discover that my character wouldn’t do the thing they’re supposed to do in order to make the plot work, because by now that character has become a huge part of the story and the plot is beginning to shape itself around them.

But I digress...

So if I write a story about a girl with a mean sister, or a boorish cousin, or a hateful friend—I’m not writing about my own sister, cousin, or friend. 

 Writers, do you base your characters on people you know? Or do you make a mishmash of traits? Are your characters 100% fictional, even?