Support for Indie Authors discussion

I looked at some old threads and remembered one where many people commented on taking revenge in literary form against an enemy in real life. It got me wondering, what ways have you honored or tortured someone in your real life with a created character?

I made my sister-in-law super rich and famous as a celebrity chef. She has a food blog that is moderately successful at the local level, but I supersized her to Julia Childs.

On the enemy front, I had a superpowered serial killer (of rude people only) stab a blue tooth headset through a man's brain.

What have you done? Or am I the only weird one?

I've used real people as the basis for characters. If they were you read my books (which they never would) they would see themselves put out there for all to see.

I've honored others I admire by using them and their good qualities in books and stories.

If all authors were honest, they take bits and pieces of those around them and use them to form their characters.

One of the characters in my story is loosely inspired by my first love.

I intentionally avoid negative inspiration, because I don't want to be reminded of negative things when editing.

One person who pissed me off made it into my book.

Roughly half the characters in my second novel were based on kids I rogued with in the eighties or knew from school. The one adult in the book, Larry, is very much based on a man I rogued with. His name was Larry. He was an odd enough duck I didn't have to change much about him.

In HBD, my 8th fiction story, I took the mistreatment of veterans (and many other things) to the extreme to prove a point and also "killed off" real-life examples of things that need to change.

Your weird is welcome here! lol :)

I've done it, but I think it's more that some of my characters have traits or do things that I recall people I know having or doing IRL. I don't know that if any of them read my books that they would recognize themselves. Maybe. I write historical fiction that takes place in an esoteric time and place, so I wouldn't be surprised if they never looked at them.

I'll admit that I have only loosely done it when it comes to character personalities. There is no better source of inspiration than your own personal experiences with the people you interact with but I don't want my neighbors and coworkers to come at me with torches and pitchforks. I have also occasionally usurped names because I often struggle with making up names that just naturally suit the character I'm writing. I used to flip through an old phone book for ideas but now, where can you even find one?

No phone book, turn to google.

G.R. wrote: "I used to flip through an old phone book for ideas but now, where can you even find one?"

Drive through a cemetery. If you're on Facebook, start searching through friends of your friends. Pull names from the sports page. Scroll through comments on any social media discussion. Watch the end credits of movies. There's tons of places you can find names to use.