No, honestly, I'm not.
I know I've said this before in this blog, but a poem I wrote the other day might have made people wonder who it was about. A couple of you might have thought it was about you, in which case, we have a far more interesting relationship than I can recall!
If you're ever wondering if something you've read from your writer friend is about you, first, ask two questions:
1) Is it about me?
2) Do I identify with the character/situation?
If you really want to know the answer to the first question, ask the author. Luckily, most characters have been shaped from several different people the writer has known. Most situations have been shaped by many situations the writer knows. I know of only one case where a character was directly created from a real person and given a bit of a whooping, and boy, did he deserve it. Most authors do not want to kill you off in their next novel.
If you want to know the answer to the second question -- that's more interesting, isn't it? Writers want you to identify with what they're writing, both good and bad. They want you to feel the love, the happiness, or the frustration of a situation. They want you to see both the hero you could become and the villain you might become, the angel and the devil and the screwed-up person in-between.
Writers want to transform you.
If you ask yourself "Do I identify with the character/situation?" and you answer, "Yes", rejoice. You have been given a gift that only those who truly look at themselves can claim, the gift that opens you to self-acceptance.
If you ever decide to create character based on my personality I would be truly flattered.
ReplyDeleteWhen you create a character do you see the person in your mind? Do you sit and create a word document noting their character strengths and flaws? Do you invent a background story complete with the characters likes, dislikes, fears, what they hold in contempt, and what giveegives them the most pure joy?
This is Lanetta.
Ahh, how does this work? When it comes to what a character looks like, I look for a picture of what the character should look like, because I don't have a visual memory. (One rather androgynous, otherworldly character looks like the model David Chiang.) Otherwise, if I just know the person and don't have a photograph, I can't get more specific than "strawberry blonde hair, glasses, button nose".
DeleteI do have a template I use for writing characters -- it allows me to put the picture up, and describe things like looks, origin, background, likes and dislikes. For one novel I wrote, I had 65 of these. That's highly unusual.
What I supply from memory is speech habits and patterns, voice, typical vocabulary, mannerisms, how they walk. None of this is visual, and I can give these things justice!