Are your characters based on real life people, complete invention, or a mixture of both?
Are there particular books that have influenced your characters?
Are your characters based on real life people, complete invention, or a mixture of both?
Are there particular books that have influenced your characters?
My characters are drawn from reading books, real life and imagination.
Regarding some replies.
Goethe remarked that, no-one can write a novel without revealing intimate details about themselves. Two of the best examples are Jane Eyre and Villette by Charlotte Bronte.
Again, I fall into the fantasy category so 'inspirations' for characters don't apply so readily. I think all the above are good points. Personally, I have one character who practically is me (or who I was at that age) and the rest... I don't know. They just sort of... happen. I am sure I draw subliminal inspiration from all sorts of places, but I have never consciously modelled a character on anyone.
If you go to the Roald Dahl museum (which I admit is largely for kids but still fascinating) they get the kids to cut out eyes, hair etc from magazines so they can invent their own character. I did that in my head as far as the features go, borrowing from celebrities and friends.
But I have a rule that if I borrow in that way physically, I then don't take any personality traits from the same person for any single character, otherwise they become to like the real person and difficult to differentiate when you're making choices for that character. Plus, I really love inventing characters so if I have to spend extra time working on someone's personality, I'm not going to worry.
I would say most of my characters have similar principles to me and that is the way they are like me. There are very few correlations in any other way to anyone in my life, really. Didn't stop my mum searching through my first three chapters for some, though!