Do You Know Your Characters?

[The_Everlasting]

I guess what I'm really asking is " Do you model your characters after people you know?" How do you come up with your character's mannerisms and signature personality traits? I have modeled all of my charcters after people I know. They, of corse, don't know I've done that but I'm wondering what others have done? I'm a real people watcher so I pluck those quirks from everyday life and use them to make my characters seem more real.

What do you do?

[Christopher Wright]

As far as I know, I don't model my characters after people I know.

[Telcontar]

I've never modeled an entire character after a real person. However, I'll often take particularly memorable defining traits that I encounter in real life and "implant" them into a character. Things like verbal and physical tics, especially. I've also loosely based physical appearances on people I know.

[Ireth]

I sometimes draw inspiration from celebrities, though that's only for a few of my characters. And once I created a character only to later on meet a person who looked almost exactly like my mental image of him. THAT was bizarre.

[Jabrosky]

Once I started a romance story with the male lead based off myself, but it never went anywhere, and other than that aborted effort I've never based my characters off anyone I personally know.

[Devor]

It depends on what you write - certainly there's some inspiration which comes from the people I've met. But typically I think a character's personality should be shaped by a backstory that has relevance to the novel, at least for the main character. It's hard for me to fully reconcile most fantasy characters with a fully modern personality. It can be done, sure, but I think at some point the connection between character and person ought to break so that you can better incorporate the character's development into your story.

[Shockley]

In the last western I wrote I named all of the main characters after members of my family two generations back, so I knew some of them. Other than that and a semi-biographical side project, I don't base characters on real people.

[The Din]

Don't know anyone interesting enough.

[Gonji]

A friend and I wrote a short story where the tow main characters were us with different names. Once he wrote something he's email it to me and I'd write something. We wrote on it for about 5 years before we finally posted it on his website. So, I knew the characters pretty well.

[Ghost]

Do you model your characters after people you know

No. People I know are separate from the characters in my head. Of course, I'm influenced by people I meet or read about, but I don't set out to copy someone's presence or personality. It wouldn't feel authentic to me or organic to the story. Even quirks or traits I like aren't incorporated into a character until long after I've forgotten the source of it. They simply develop as I'm writing.