Last Updated on September 3, 2017
Last November 19th, Jess asked her seventh question about creating characters that are more than similar to ourselves:
Is there one character that you have created that is truly you and not just a “shard?” What makes that character totally you and where does that character fit into your fiction?
I wouldn’t read a novel about me. I’m incredibly dull. I know, I know, we’re all unique and interesting in our own way. But I work, I go home, watch TV, surf the net, write, sleep (not enough of that last one), and get up the next day and start it all over again. It may sound like “Everyman,” but I make him look like Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan!
In my current WIP, the lead character has several of the qualities I have; in the rewrite, he’s going to get a little larger dose of insecurity, so he’ll probably be more me than any character I’ve written. But he still is sufficiently different from me to have taken some steps in the past that have caused him several serious problems in the present.
There’s a short story I’m currently rewriting that is based on a situation that happened to me when I was a kid. But even there, I’m embellishing a bit.
I don’t think I’d like to put myself under a microscope to see everything that might appear if I tried to put my true self in a piece of my fiction.
