Art Imitates Life by Talia
So the other day my husband commented on a Twitter post where I *might* have mentioned that I was skipping scenes in the first draft of my WIP, so I could get to the part where the MC gets together with the hot love interest. He asked me if all the hot guys in my novels were based on him. And I said, "why yes, of course they are." And I wasn't lying. Not exactly.
There are bits of him in every book I write, but none more so than in my first novel BANDIA, which started out as a fictional account of our own tortured path to romance, beginning when we were both in our teens. However,I soon realized that I couldn't write characters based on people I knew, because I could never truly get inside their heads. I was always second guessing how they would react in a given situation. I felt paralyzed when it came to giving them words to actually speak.
So I changed them. I gave them new looks, and new backstory. New names, quirks and hobbies. I couldn't be free to experiment and ultimately tell a cohesive story until I'd changed them completely. But, that doesn't mean that life can't provide wonderful inspiration.
The friend with the heart of gold who has had a series of horrible boyfriends, each one worse than the one before? Great material for bad dates, girls that are too nice for their own good and some very, very bad guys.
The friend's mom who covered the furniture and carpet in plastic covers and kept the curtains closed and the lights off in the daytime? She's real. I couldn't make that stuff up.
The boy who takes your breath away with just a smile? I might know someone like that...
So where does the line between creating a new world and borrowing from the real world start? Where does it end? The characters in my books are not intended to resemble anyone in particular, they're made up of parts of many people, real and imagined. Frankenstein's monsters.
But in every book I write, there's a bit of me in the main character, and a bit of my husband in the love interest.
Just enough to make me want to skip ahead to the good parts.
There are bits of him in every book I write, but none more so than in my first novel BANDIA, which started out as a fictional account of our own tortured path to romance, beginning when we were both in our teens. However,I soon realized that I couldn't write characters based on people I knew, because I could never truly get inside their heads. I was always second guessing how they would react in a given situation. I felt paralyzed when it came to giving them words to actually speak.
So I changed them. I gave them new looks, and new backstory. New names, quirks and hobbies. I couldn't be free to experiment and ultimately tell a cohesive story until I'd changed them completely. But, that doesn't mean that life can't provide wonderful inspiration.
The friend with the heart of gold who has had a series of horrible boyfriends, each one worse than the one before? Great material for bad dates, girls that are too nice for their own good and some very, very bad guys.
The friend's mom who covered the furniture and carpet in plastic covers and kept the curtains closed and the lights off in the daytime? She's real. I couldn't make that stuff up.
The boy who takes your breath away with just a smile? I might know someone like that...
So where does the line between creating a new world and borrowing from the real world start? Where does it end? The characters in my books are not intended to resemble anyone in particular, they're made up of parts of many people, real and imagined. Frankenstein's monsters.
But in every book I write, there's a bit of me in the main character, and a bit of my husband in the love interest.
Just enough to make me want to skip ahead to the good parts.
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