Characters in Writing

It's not often that I share my writing with people. That's because when I do, I want it to be the best it can be. The other thing is that when you share your writing with those closest to you, they wonder if the characters are representations of themselves. 

While I haven't had anyone confront me yet about being a character in my writing, I know that it will happen one day. All the writers that I talk to and my professors have told me that they've gotten teary phone calls from mom's and sisters, apologizing for things that they never did, because they see a character in a story and think that it's based on them. They think it's a commentary on their parenting, or what not. The thing is, it's not. 

Most of my characters just come to me. They pop up in my head, and start talking. I see the weird situations that they've been thrown into, or decided to participate in themselves. And then I go from there. Draft to draft I fill them in, and learn more and more about them. I never base a character solely on someone that I know in real life. Mostly because I can't see them dealing with the fate of the world on their shoulders. And because, that's no fun. These are my characters and they come to me as toddlers in my head. They already have their own personalities. 

The only things I steal from real life people are weird quirks. If someone has this weird fear, or a food they won't eat, or this odd thing they wear, I might steal that. If I do, it won't be for a character that looks like that person, or even acts like them. I just steal these little bits and pieces to fill in characters that are already formed. 

I had a friend who used to always put me as a character in their writing. I knew when they were mad at me because my character would die, get shot, or something else awful. Granted we were hormone filled kids who weren't emotionally mature enough to talk to each other. But still. That's something I'll never do. 

The mom's in my story never represent my own mom. The dad's, siblings, and friends don't either. They might have one or two characteristics but that's it. The love interests are never like Sammy. Sammy is so awesome that I never try to make him a character, and never will. Well, that's not true. In my current novel, he was purposefully annoying me while I was writing a scene with a dog. Something that we've noticed is that everyone names their dogs Sammy. Since he was being bad, I named that dog Sammy, and plan to hide dogs or animals named Sammy in all of my work as a joke. 

So, in the future if you ever get to read my writing, don't go looking for yourself. Just read the story as it is.