Day 29: Roadmap into the industry

Using real people to create fictional characters

A few days ago I opened Facebook and read this post: "My boyfriend's dad puts cornflakes in his hot coffee and wears two pairs of reading glasses at a time. His wife has made 50 different costumes for their toy dog."

Those brief sentences help answer a challenge I've struggled with: how to create memorable fictional characters. Just a few descriptive words in that Facebook post capture strong, unforgettable characters, people who are unlike anyone who has lived, or who will ever live.*

In fiction writing workshops at USC, we discussed using real people as inspiration while creating fictional characters. Is it ethical? What should a writer consider as we began to write?

A guest speaker shared that she had included a much-despised agent as the antagonist in one of her projects. A mentor revealed that a crazy lady who lives in her neighborhood and who owns dozens of cats, has appeared in several of her books.

And during the "Academy Series" class, Nia Vardalos told us that some of the most memorable lines in her movie, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," are from conversations she'd had with family members. One of my favorite examples (paraphrased): "The man is the head of the family. But the woman is the neck. She can turn the head any way she wants." Professors and guest lecturers agreed: the people who have inspired a character do not recognize themselves. They may insist to the author, however, that they're certain a character is someone else whom they both know.

Here is an article by my mentor, Gina Nahai: http://bit.ly/n4hicx

Gina recalls several stories about memorable people she has known. The words below, excerpted from her article, describe why experiencing stories (many with characters inspired by real people), is something people around the world thirst for.

Gina writes:

..."Now I don’t know if it’s just me, or if most people revel in the notion of such extraordinary creatures existing within the folds and wrinkles of our ordinary lives. I realize, of course, that what we hear or remember of them — the surprise wedding, the serendipitous arsenic, the red dress and red hat and the fork stuck in the raw chicken — is a sliver of an otherwise epic, multifaceted tale. It’s not fair, not something any of us would wish for ourselves — for everything we have ever done or felt or wished to be reduced to a single story, and for that story to become our legacy. And yet, it’s also true that without those odd, perhaps even misperceived, traits, without those radical deviations from the customary, there wouldn’t be much to remember any of us by."

This is what I live and breathe for; this is why I write.

*"If you can't show in your story why this child, his father, his grandmother, are unlike anyone who has lived or who will ever live, you don't have anything." ~Irvin Kershner

NOTE: These entries are inspired by the final assignment for "The Business of Writing for Screen and Television," a School of Cinematic Arts' course taught by Frank Wuliger. Hoping to help his students become working screenwriters, he asked us to create a personal, five-year road map into the industry. This post is day 29.