Real people?

A couple of the people I know have made jokes around me about me putting them in my novels. While I do not do that, even with permission, I do something else entirely. Whatever a character needs to be like, the traits and personality quirks they need to have, I first envision them as a stereotype. After I have the 'base' model built, I begin adding and subtracting things from their personality. The heroes are flawed, only appearing heroic in their application of whatever it is they need to do to resolve their problems. The villains, while appropriately villainous, are people, with the problems that people have. Maybe a villain was treated unfairly as a child, without actually being abused, but he or she felt the need later in life to inflict harm on others to make up for whatever it was that they felt was unfair in their lives. The villain may have a wife or husband, and children, that they treat as well as non-villains treat their families. However, he or she has this other life they lead in which their family would not recognize them.

To tell the truth; there really is very little difference to be found between the heroes and villains that I create. People I know may see themselves in the characters I use because the characters are so much like run-of-the-mill people. If they think that I used them as a template for a character, that simply is not true. They are only seeing their own ordinariness in the characters.

There is something that I read once that gives me pause, though. I read that all fiction writing is basically autobiographical. I understand that. The writer brings to the table his experiences and the ways in which he would respond to the problems shown in the story. The characters in a sense are the writer. He or she dictates the action and the responses the characters make. A lot of writers may write how they would like to respond to something, bringing to light an ingrained need to kick off the shackles of his life and really do something that may be frowned upon. How else can a writer write about serial killers, rapists and other criminals without getting inside their heads. He or she has to envision how they would do something utterly despicable. It can be troubling, to say the least. There have been a few times when I've thought for days about whether or not I should let a certain sequence of events in a story stand as-is, or to alter it in some way that I am comfortable with. Sadly, some of my best work has been cut from a manuscript because I just couldn't let people know that such thoughts could even cross my mind. That those cuts meant there was less blood in the story was a comfort to me. Perhaps I'll never be a crime-thriller writer. Maybe not even a writer of true horror stories. I'll have to live with that.