I’d been hearing good things about Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife, so I recently downloaded it to my Kindle and read the book. I really enjoyed it.
I found, however, that I kept sympathizing with Ernest Hemingway instead of Hadley, which is not what I think I was supposed to do. :)
As a writer, it’s hard not to, though. After all, he was a literary genius. He’s got to get those books out there. Don’t hold him back, Hadley!
There were other times, of course, when Hemingway was less than likeable.
This book is a novel based on real events, so we can’t really treat it as a biography, but it does have a lot of really interesting insights into the couple (and McLain did a ton of research.)
One of the things that apparently created some concern for Hadley Hemingway was the way that Ernest wrote about their friends and even parodied one friend’s work (destroying some friendships in the process). And the fact that he didn’t write about Hadley in The Sun Also Rises.
Apparently, everyone knew who Hemingway’s characters were drawn from.
So some people were upset at being portrayed in a particular way and some were upset at not being portrayed at all.
This could become a problem with our own stories, too. Friends or family could get their feelings hurt. The thought of libel isn’t too thrilling, either.
For me, it’s more fun to take lots of small bits of different people and make it into a sort of Frankenstein’s monster of a new character. That way I’ve still got the solid traits that I can easily describe, but I’m not drawing too much from one person.
And I don’t put people’s secrets into my book. Although I don’t know too many secrets! And the fact that I’m a writer might be why. :)
To me, it’s just not worth losing friends over. Some characters may be amalgams of many different people I know, but I’m not going to use one person’s life or appearance to base a character or story on.
Do you write about people you know? Do you have a line you won’t cross?
Like you, I take inspiration from bits of people I know, but I don’t base anything on reality.
I just don’t presume to know people that well. When I observe interesting behavior, I imagine various things which would cause a person to behave that way, but it can’t be based on the person I observe, because they have whole huge sections of their lives I don’t know.
My characters are mixes of numbers of different people and character traits. I prefer to invent my own characters from scratch.
The one topic I won’t cover is adoption of fostering. With three adopted siblings and three fostered siblings, people who know us would assume that it was one of their stories, even if it was purely fictional. Their stories are theirs to tell, not mine. That’s the line I won’t cross.
I keep a file of all the oddities I see, behavioral quirks, phrases others use, facial expressions, etc. When designing a character I use this file to “Frankenstein” them together.
One example of how to use people directly, however, is provided by Chaucer in “Canterberry Tales”. While he is said to have based each of the character on actual people he met during his travels he placed them in the generic and then portrayed their behavior.
Besides, most of the people that the majority of us know simply aren’t interesting enough to write an entire book about.
I’ve made a point of trying not to use people I know in my work. Like you, I think it puts way too much at risk, and I certainly don’t have Hemmingway’s genius to back me up!
That said, I do find myself drawing on certain events and relationships I’ve had to get an idea of the emotion I need to portray in particular scenes or characters. So while my best friend or a person I hated in college will never show up in one of my books, remembering an argument I had, or the way a friend was there for me when I needed them, will help me write similar elements.
Elizabeth – You raise a really important point here, because I think we’re all affected by the people we meet. It’s hard for them not to sneak into our work in some way or another. But consciously? No I don’t use people I know. I do use composites for characters, and if a person I know uses a particular catchphrase I really like, I may use that catchphrase. But no, my characters are not people I know. They have their own personalities and they wouldn’t want it any other way…
Sometimes I get rid of anger and frustration I have toward someone by writing about them, but I would never publish it. I wouldn’t want to risk losing someone’s friendship either.
It is a hard line to walk though, with some people expecting to be in your writing and others wanting no part of it. Sometimes people see themselves in characters that weren’t intended to be anything like them at all.
The Daring Novelist–Exactly. We don’t know why people behave the way they do and if we take a stab at explaining it through a character in a book, we’d probably just alienate the person we’re basing it all on.
Paul–I think Hemingway knew he’d written something so amazing that he was willing to put his relationships at risk. Hard to imagine for most of us!
That’s very similar to what I do, Paul. Sometimes it’s easier to describe an emotion when we can recall it ourselves or have witnessed a vivid bit of it in others. It doesn’t mean we’re ripping the whole scene, but we might take the emotive pieces of it.
Christine–I think that’s a very wise position for you to take. I do the same in a way–I won’t write my children into my books.
Aoife–I’ve had that happen, too–people thought that characters were based on them and they *weren’t*! At least, they weren’t on a conscious level. :)
Of course I am inspired by real people – where else would I learn about how they behave and what they say?
But I would never write about real (living) friends and acquaintances in such a way that they could recognize parts of themselves in my fiction. I have thought about killling my former boss once in a while, but if I do, it will be in such a way he can´t sue me – and believe me, he is a pocket dictator who deserves it ;)
I’m with you, I fuse a bunch of traits and quirks from people I know and make a brand-new personality. I don’t write about other people’s secrets either! I love writing, but to me it’s totally not worth a broken or strained relationship with loved ones. That’s why writing fiction is so great. There are no limits to what you can imagine and make up!
I don’t write about people I know – or at least I don’t on purpose. There is no saying what happens when you fling a book out there. People will speculate. If I’m mad at someone – I might find the thing they did and find another way to portray it and have my protag deal with it but it wouldn’t be identifiable.
For many of my characters I start out with a real person, then start changing just enough to make them different and distinct. To some extent,I think that we all tend to people our books with people we know. They have to come from somewhere, and even if we say they came from our imagination, some idea of a person had to be planted there first.
I write characteristics and quirks of multiple people into a single character. But I do not base a character solely upon a single individual, especially in a negative light.
There is a lot of me in my good guy and in my bad guy. My protagonist has a quite a few of what makes me, me, although I do not go around killing people.
I have long considered using real people, lifted wholesale from real life, to be the lazy person’s way of writing. To me, it shows either you haven’t enough imagination or don’t trust yourself enough to concoct believable characters yourself!
Agatha Christie, I know, used to get extremely indignant when people would assume her characters were based off of real life. “NO,” she would say. “They are MINE.” And I feel the same way – my characters are MINE, my property, and nobody else can or ought to lay claim to them.
Totally agree with you – friendship is far too important. Not worth the risk :)
None of my characters are based on anyone I know. Guess I’m snubbing everyone!
I sometimes have to try really hard NOT to base characters on people I know – they somehow sneak into my writing without a conscious decision on my part, and I have to make sure I change some aspect of the characters so they couldn’t possibly be mistaken for real.
I did once write a whole murder story just to ‘kill’ someone who had really made me cross, but that was purely for my own amusement.
I try to use the Frankenstein approach, too. If you mix it up enough, they’ll enjoy it, and not think you told their secrets. I like to tell them I’ll use somethig they say, especially in humor scenes.
I’ve been lucky. Someone or an event will trigger something in me and as I begin to write it takes on a life of its own.
I would never want to exploit someone that way.