Am I In Your Novel?
One of the most frequently asked questions about my writing is: Do you base your characters on people you know? The answer isn’t clean. I write in different genres and for different age groups. I’ve written for children, and to make my stories relevant, I draw from my own childhood experiences or from those of my own kids or grandkid. I’ve even named characters in my children’s work for people close to me as a way to honor them. Or I’ve had my kids choose the names of the characters.
For my romance novels, however, it’s a different story. Do I base my characters on people I know? The answer is a resounding NO. I do back flips to ensure that my characters are not based on real people, especially people in my life.
Why not pay homage to friends and family by creating characters modeled after them? There are many reasons. If I wrote in genres other than romance, I might, depending on the content, but given the somewhat intimate content in my novels, I don’t ever want anyone to feel uncomfortable. Imagine meeting up with a friend and having them wonder if they served as the inspiration for that messy argument? Or even more uncomfortable, that moonlit escapade in Chapter 22? No. Just no!
I’ve lived on this Earth for a long while and have met many thousands of people. I’ve observed people, interacted with them, and experienced many different personalities and character traits. I’m sure that they’re all swimming around in a primordial idea-generating soup. However, I don’t purposefully re-imagine someone I know personally. If it happens, it is purely unintentional.
I create characters based on the story I want to tell. My inspiration for stories comes from many sources. A hike to a fire tower was the spark, so to speak, for Controlled Burn, my debut novel. It was further inspired by a novel I didn’t like, mainly due to its weak female character and her overbearing fireman love interest. That novel prodded me to create a strong female protagonist. Hence a story about a strong female fire chief was born. The original working title was Hartz on Fire. I couldn’t resist the play on words. Continuing the joke, I decided to name my protagonist Ashleigh Hartz; ‘Ashleigh’ being an obvious name for a firefighter. I grew up with a punster for a father – can you tell?
The characters and the plot of Controlled Burn came spilling from my imagination, and not from real life. There were two exceptions. When I needed a plot twist, I found it in the local newspaper and an actual event that occurred near my home. That being said, I didn’t base any of the characters on people involved. In fact, I didn’t read much about the individuals involved, nor the details of the case. The basic events served as the germ of an idea for the plot twist. There is only one other homage to a real person in this book. I include a scene in which my main characters go fly fishing. Because my husband is a fly fisherman, this is a nod to him. The book is dedicated to him, but also including a sport he loves was another way to honor his support of my writing endeavor.
I take great care in naming my characters, thoughtfully curating their names. Most of the names have meaning within the context of the book. In Controlled Burn, in addition to having fun with Ashleigh’s name, I had as much fun with her love interest’s name: Bear. He’s a park ranger. How could I resist naming him after a certain famous mascot? Although in the book, that is not how he got his name. He’s pretty teddy bear-like, and I’m sure my choice of his name influenced the writing of his personality. In my current work in progress, Crosswind Landing, my main character is a female pilot. Her name is Nikki Rutherford, which is based on a female aviation pioneer, Ruth Nichols. And Nikki’s daughter, Willa, is based on Willa Brown, another aviation pioneer. Nikki’s love interest is Skye Adams, a writer, who happens to be afraid of flying, despite his name. Naming characters is almost as much fun as actually writing the book! For side characters, I determine their birth year and check census records for common baby names that year. I also consider the region of the country that serves as my setting, and I draw from the ancestral names that I might find there. Finally, as an extra measure of social distance, I scour my social contacts to ensure that I’m not naming a main character after someone I know.
That’s the long answer to the question. So, if you read my romance novels, and you think you see yourself, rest assured you that you do not. I’ve taken great care to make sure of it!