When Graham Greene published the novel Stamboul Train in 1932, the author J.B. Priestley was outraged. Having seen an advance copy of the novel, he was convinced that one of the characters, a conceited writer by the name of Q.B. Savory, was based upon himself, and he threatened to sue for libel. All 13,000 printed copies of the book had to be unstitched so that the offending pages could be replaced with altered text.
As a writer of fiction, you have to be careful. It’s very easy to slip into modelling your characters on people you know, even without realising it. You don’t want to publish your first novel only for all your family and friends to whisper in horror: ‘I can’t believe you did that to Auntie Betty!’ You didn’t intend to offend Auntie Betty; you needed a miserable old woman in the story, and without thinking you used Auntie Betty as raw material – after all, she’s the most miserable old woman you know – you described that verbal tic, that sour face and even that lilac plastic raincoat she always wears… and now everyone thinks you’re a monster. Always think before you publish.
But where do characters come from, if you can’t simply draw the people you know? The truth is that the characters you invent will always arise from the mulch of everyone you’ve ever met, the basic ingredients fed into your imagination for you to cook up original fictional people. You’ll use the nervous gesture of that man you saw on the bus, the irritable sarcasm of your maths teacher, and the shiny hair of the girl your brother was in love with. People are infinite and fascinating.
One of the most satisfying things about writing fiction is when a solid, believable, knowable character rises up out of your imagination, a brand new person you can see and hear and roam around inside of, whose thoughts and dreams and reactions to the world are as unique and compelling as those of a real live human being.
Just leave Auntie Betty out of it.
Sarah Healey Editor 