Characterization: Write Who You Know–But Be Careful with Grandma

Recently, I shared places and things to use as inspiration for writing. Today, instead of the where or the what, let’s look at who you can utilize for character inspiration.

Here’s a thought. Family and friends.

Stop screaming. Bulging eyeballs and a frothing mouth do not become you. Let me explain. 

First, I am not suggesting you should insert Grandma, trait for trait, into your fiction. On the contrary, let me state emphatically: DON’T! Don't copy an ear twitch. Don't quote her favorite soap opera. Don't share her opinions on Engelbert Humperdinck, Carl Burnett, and Rand Paul.

In fact, never put anybody you know, trait for trait, into your fiction, especially Grandma. Not if you value her lefse recipe and all the cool things she bought you for Christmas when you were twelve.

Many authors like Ray Bradbury say they love to take the person they most despise, write him into a story, dress him all up in flowery language, and then kill him. However, unless you are completely antisocial, rest totally secure in your own person, are bound for Outer Mongolia in the morning, or you just don’t give a wombat’s booger whom you offend, you need to avoid copy-pasting people from real life into your fiction.

Instead, use those people you know as the basis for your characters, not as fully formed characters fit for the limelight. Especially if one of those people is your grandmother. 

Here's an example:

As alluded to above, I really loved my grandmother and her lefse. (For those of you who don’t know, lefse is a Norwegian delicacy–if anything Norwegian is delicate–that makes the very best of left-over mashed potatoes. Mmmmm.)  However, like with most children, for the bulk of my life, Grandma was simply Grandma. 

The woman we visited on Sundays. 

The woman who took care of me when my parents were away. 

The woman who let Grandpa live in her house. 

Mom’s mom.

That's who I thought she was, but she was so much more.   

Early in her life, she was a young Norwegian girl who lived the immigrant experience, moving to America in the early 20^th Century, failing first grade because she was unable to speak or read English, helping her family eke out a living amid the swamps and scrub-brush of northern Minnesota. 

When she grew up, she became a feisty woman who bucked age-old traditions and created a scandal by entering into a mixed marriage with–Gasp!–a Dane.

As a mature adult, her actions revealed her most endearing characteristics.

Loving, she housed her aging mother, raised four children of her own, and helped raise six grandchildren.

Caring, she fed the occasional hobo who came to our small town desperate for food. Yearly, she wrestled with spruce boughs to create evergreen wreaths for the neighbors' Christmas. 

Committed, she mourned the loss of her father, murdered on a business trip to Minneapolis.

Stalwart, she led the local American Legion Auxiliary after she lost her son at the Battle of the Bulge during WWII.

Ever curious, she read book after book, experimented with new recipes, and collected an eclectic assortment of music that included Joan Baez, Elvis Presley, and Lawrence Welk.

Blessed with a great sense of history, one dark, cloudless night she shooed her family onto the front lawn to search the skies to locate Sputnik as it traveled overhead. 

Observing her and listening to her stories, I learned that there was more to Grandma than simply what friends called "the lady in the big white house on the north side of town." I discovered there was more to her because of what she had experienced. Most importantly, I learned there was more to me because of what she had experienced. I had so many more stories to hear.

She's gone now. 

Except she's not. She's still telling her stories through the characters in my stories.  

None of them are her, but many reflect her. Combined with all my friends, relatives, colleagues, and acquaintances, Grandma provides enough examples and stimuli for thousands of characters. And they all have stories to tell.

So today's lesson in a nutshell is this: Rather than copy-pasting people from real-life into your book, use them to create new characters. Examine them, reinvent them, embellish their dominant positive and/or negative traits, or completely transform them into something unique until you barely recognize where the new person came from. 

Like lead character in my latest story idea: An elderly Norwegian ninja warrior who slaps all the power-crazed super villains senseless with her deadly roll of cinnamon-and-sugar-laced lefse.

Maybe not. But it's a start.