It's been said, you write yourself into the book.

[BearBear]

Without this being a psychological or philosophical debate, the question is, where do all these characters come from really?

You could say they're all you, or they're mirrors to the world around you. Maybe they're who you want to be or who you really are. Maybe they're each a little aspect of you or they're the anti-you.

You pour hours into writing them, who's it really for? These are a lot of questions and ideas for one post, kind of scattered thoughts more than a topic but there is one question in bold above so feel free to concentrate on that one.

Are you the monsters, the villians and the heros? Could you be given the right circumstances?

 

[skip.knox]

My characters don't come from anywhere. I make em up.

Alternatively, my characters come from so many places, their origins are lost in the haze.

Also, my characters are never finished. They only get set aside.

 

[pmmg]

Yes and no to all of it.

My characters are nothing like me. Many have strengths where I have weaknesses and vice versa. Some are wicked, some a just, some are strong, some are weak, some are cruel and others nice. They just spring for what I though was needed, and what I think makes sense in the world they are in. I would say I think them up, but sometimes I just feel them up instead (insert seedy comment here). They dont match me very well, but they do match things I might expect in the world--though not really that either, cause I don't really expect an orc will come and light the village on fire.

Ultimately, I think the come from the creative energy that is birthed into us. I think, if we are not creating, we are just dying instead.

 

[K.S. Crooks]

When I create characters I like to give each a specific quality that a reader would use as the first word to describe them such as brave, intelligent, selfish, angry. I think of it as what type of person are they when under great stress.

 

[mia.seth455]

For me it depends. Some are my imagination, others are inspired by others. I have written myself in one of my stories but as a side character.

 

[FifthView]

My cast of characters is a fuzzy reflection of all my past acquaintances, but main characters tend to be aspects of myself—as I would like to be, as I fear I am, as I was, as I might have been had my circumstances been different. There's a kind of multiversal quality to them.

 

[Insolent Lad]

Of course, most of my characters aren't really anybody; they are, as Evelyn Waugh put it, furniture. We say a few things about them but don't delve into who they are. The more important characters are quite often based, at least in part, on people I have known. It is, to be sure, my perspective and understanding of them so I am certainly present in them, in that sense. And also, to be sure, I do drop bits of me or of my experiences into some of them. That doesn't make them me. Or maybe it does! Probably the one lead character closest to being me doesn't appear in a fantasy story but in one of my mystery series. I feel more comfortable doing that in the more familiar setting I used there.

 

[pmmg]

Every character I started to write that was to be based on someone came out nothing like them, so it would be hard to say it happened. Maybe inspired by...

 

[Mad Swede]

Well, any author who says that the characters they create don't reflect people the author knows or has met, or even the author themselves, is a liar. Where else do we as authors get our inspiration and our knowledge of people? That doesn't mean that our characters are exactly like ourselves or people we know, but those characters we create will have aspects of ourselves and people we know.

As to who these characters are for, I'd suggest that C S Lewis got it right when he said that he wrote books that he himself would like to have read. Most of us don't write because we want to be famous, we write for other reasons. I write because I enjoy it, because my readers like what I write and because I feel a need to write. Inevitably I tend to write what I enjoy, and in doing so my writing reflects people I've met, things I've seen or done and places I've been.

Are we monsters? Having worked as a war crimes investigator you can take it from me that anyone (and I mean anyone) can, given the appropriate circumstances, be induced to commit atrocities like that. It isn't something most people want to think about, but there is quite a a lot of research and several experiments (and here I am not thinking of that piece of trash they call the Stanford Prison Experiment) which show how easy it is to induce some quite horrific behaviour in perfectly ordinary people with good educational and social backgrounds.

 

[skip.knox]

This is one reason why I don't fine villainy interesting in itself. It's not hard to explain, not really hard to understand. It shocks, but not much more.

Goodness, otoh, is far more interesting and nuanced. And hard to explain. Courage. Kindness. Why, as the song says, two people love when there's no tomorrow and still not cry when it's time to go.

 

[Puck]

Characters can only come from characters an author knows or has encountered. Or course this might include characters they have encountered when reading a book (fictional or historic).

 

[S.A. Meek]

My main character does, many times, tend to reflect aspects of myself or aspects I aspire to. Most definitely other characters are based on people I know or that I have read about.

 

[BearBear]

My main character does, many times, tend to reflect aspects of myself or aspects I aspire to. Most definitely other characters are based on people I know or that I have read about.

I get the feeling though that they're all aspects of mine even when they're originally based on someone else. And they can be wildly different then who I feel is "me".

 

[turtlebiologist]

Without this being a psychological or philosophical debate, the question is, where do all these characters come from really?

You could say they're all you, or they're mirrors to the world around you. Maybe they're who you want to be or who you really are. Maybe they're each a little aspect of you or they're the anti-you.

You pour hours into writing them, who's it really for? These are a lot of questions and ideas for one post, kind of scattered thoughts more than a topic but there is one question in bold above so feel free to concentrate on that one.

Are you the monsters, the villians and the heros? Could you be given the right circumstances?

I definitely have found that I write myself as the main character in a lot of my books. Sometimes I think it is because I have main character syndrome but I also look at it as I like to dive myself out of life and into the book as if I was there and it takes me away from reality. In terms of my other characters I just make them up my selves or just base them loosely off of characters from movies, people I see, stories, songs, etc!

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

It depends. Certainly my POV characters all reflect my beliefs and values to a large extent, even when they're placed in strange situations. It's difficult to write a POV character that is alien to you. And while some might think that limiting - it is - it's also honest. How do you honestly write say a psychopath when you're not one? (I assume!) But the rest can come from anywhere - and usually do.

Cheers, Greg.