“Why do southern novels always have a crazy character?”
That question came from an agent’s reader when I submitted The Sweet Gum Tree to her. And it left me yelling the indignant response of, “Hey! That’s my aunt you’re calling crazy!”
I’ve lost count of the times I’ve heard fellow authors say things like, “I don’t get mad at – insert offending person here – I just put them in a book and torture them.”
Now, I’ll admit I shamelessly eavesdrop on conversations I overhear in public, and I note oddities about people for later use. But until I wrote The Sweet Gum Tree I’d never actually used real people as character models, and the fact that I did so in this particular novel was an accident.
It started as a Book-In-A-Week exercise. I was told not to plot, to just sit down and start writing. What appeared on the page was a story my grandfather used to tell me about a creature called a Wowzer Cat. By page seventy-seven, all my aunts and my uncle had made an entrance in the story. Then my cousins showed up. So, while the story is fictional, I kept the characters true to the reality I’d grown up with.
And then waited in terror for my family to read it.
“Aunt #1 (name removed to protect the guilty) is going to hunt me down and hurt me,” I told my daughter, who laughed hysterically. So much for sympathy. I was obviously on my own. And we were scheduled to attend a lunch at Aunt #2’s house the next day in honor of one of the cousins mentioned above who was visiting from California.
Brave person that I am, I decided my best course of action was to keep a low profile during the event. In other words, I was going to hide. Deliberately, I pulled my car into Aunt #2’s back drive instead of the front one. Then I got my dish of food and hid by the back door until the kitchen was empty. Carefully, I tip-toed in and put my bowl on the counter.
I almost made it. My hand was on the back door, pushing it open for a hasty exit, when my very tall, very loud cousin’s voice rang out. “There you are! I can’t believe you made me a sheriff! And I did NOT get you drunk and leave you at the café.”
“No,” I mumbled, trying to shush him. “You got me drunk and then laughed when I threw up my socks.”
Of course, all the commotion drew the rest of the family, and before I knew it I was surrounded by Aunts 1, 2 & 3 and my uncle, all of whom wanted to talk about my book and their part in it.
“I can’t believe none of you liked my wife,” my uncle commented.
“It’s fiction,” I said.
“Of course we didn’t,” Aunt #2 said, ignoring me. “Neither did you, apparently. You divorced her.”
“I’m not really that bad, am I?” asked Aunt #1, who was portrayed as Aunt Darla in the book.
“It’s fiction,” I repeated desperately.
Aunt’s 1 and 2 laughed loudly. “You’re worse,” they both replied in unison. I didn’t mention the readers comment. I’m too young to die.
At this point, Aunt #3 smirked. “I certainly know who Piggy is in real life. I swear, she’s slept her way through every man in town. Bless her heart.”
OMG! Piggy was entirely fictional and not based on anyone, so I had no idea who she was talking about. Okay, I kind of had an idea, but I wasn’t going to admit it. “It’s fiction!” I yelled.
By the time I left two hours later, battered and bruised and hoarse from yelling my litany, I’d come to a life altering decision. Never again would I use real people as characters in a book. It wasn’t worth the agony. And I’ve only broken that rule once since then.
In Close Encounters: An Alien Affairs Novel, due out from Eos in February of 2009, there’s one character I modeled after a living being. His name is Crigo and he’s a three hundred pound rock cat with attitude. He’s based on my cat, Fuzz. She only weighs eight pound, but she doesn’t know it. She attacks dogs, growls at strangers, and tries to save me from drowning when I take a bath. I figure I’m safe using her as a character. Unless, of course, she learns to read…
So, do any of you use real people in your novels? Tell me about it so I won’t feel so alone.
April 12th, 2008 at 7:30 am
My sympathies, Kathy. Although, in my experience, when you write people, it’s hard not to write attitudes you know. It’s part of who you are as a person. How you see and relate to others. What’s really funny is when you write this amazingly fantastical paranormal and someone you know says, “You wrote the story of my life!” LOL Sometimes they’re just determined to see themselves in your work. But then, we write the type of stories where we want readers to be able to identify.
April 12th, 2008 at 7:55 am
I really, really try not to use friends/relatives in my books. However, a friend was writing a book and had a couple horseback riding and couldn’t figure out what they talked about. I suggested since the hero had never been on a horse, that the heroine regale him with stories of all the bad things that had happened to her–and anyone who rode with her was safe because she drew all the bad karma. I then provided suggestions from my own past of stuff that had happened to me–blowing a stirrup at a gallop, getting scraped off by a low branch, etc. When her book came out, it was like watching my life unfold–of course it was much funnier in the book.
April 12th, 2008 at 7:56 am
First of all, I LOVED The Sweet Gum Tree!! (Did I tell you this? If not, I certainly meant to.)
I don’t think I actually use real people, except perhaps as starting points for characters, but once, during a really stressful time in my life, I wrote a book about a historical romance writer who, it seemed, everyone had a reason to kill at a romance writing conference that was half RWA, half RT. (She natch, was forced to take on, against her wishes, a hunky former SEAL bodyguard.)
There was her ex-husband, who’d always pretended to write the novels (because she was horribly shy when she wrote the first one); her former editor, who’d married the ex envisioning the two of them being a publishing power couple, only to discover to her shock that he couldn’t write; the publisher who was mad because she was jumping houses; the cover model who threatened her because she wasn’t going to have clinch covers anymore, which cost him work; her best friend whose own writing career was in the tank; and some other people I can’t remember. (There was a bad agent in there, too, but I can’t remember what her beef was.)
Whenever I’d talk about the book in bars at conferences, all the editors wanted the killer to be the agent and vice versa. I told everyone they’d know who I was most ticked off at by the end of the book because that’d be the bad guy. (I honestly didn’t know myself until the end.)
Also, there was an over-the-top reviewer, who literally held court at the conference and had the power to make or break careers. I was a little worried about that character (I mean, do we really want to get reviewers mad at us?), but later learned that the fabulous and much beloved Melinda Helfer, at RT, was proudly telling everyone that SHE was the reviewer in 1-800-HERO. I was hugely relieved that, since she saw herself in the character, she actually loved what she saw.
April 12th, 2008 at 8:38 am
Thanks, all! Believe me, I learned my lesson. Never more. JoAnn, what a great story.
April 12th, 2008 at 10:06 am
I’m ROLLING!!!!!! GAW I love Southern Fiction too. I’ve done this once and so far it hasn’t come back to bite me in the butt!
April 12th, 2008 at 10:06 am
KathyGal, I’m laughing my a** off. Particularly at the “bless her heart” comment. Southerners rock the world.
April 12th, 2008 at 10:26 am
My aunts. Gotta love ‘em. And I didn’t even write a word about how they tormented me when I was growing up.
Kathy
April 12th, 2008 at 10:32 am
OMG! LOLOL! My sympathies Kathy. LOL But dear Lord, I’m writing my family in my current book. I wonder if they’ll recognize themselves. I sure as heck won’t be telling them!
I’m still laughing! What a hoot!
April 12th, 2008 at 10:35 am
Another LOL moment. Great story, JoAnn. Hee!
April 12th, 2008 at 10:54 am
I’m rolling around with Amie Stuart–and feeling utterly smug, as I don’t write, so there’s no danger of finding myself in your shoes ever *evil background cackle*
Ms Allred, you should keep writing real people into your books–when asked about it, you can always say it’s meant as homage
Or you can just never show up again at family functions…
April 12th, 2008 at 11:51 am
This just makes me want to meet your family now. LOL I loved that story! G
April 12th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Marissa, hide when it comes out. Azteclady, the not showing up sounds pretty good most of the time. And Erin, we’re having a family reunion next month. Want to take my place?
Kathy
April 12th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
ROTFL *wheeze* Oh that’s so funny. I love Southern fiction. There’s just nothing quite like our Southern “characters”.
April 12th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
OMG, hilarious story, Kathy–especially the part about Piggy. It strikes me what a great FICTIONAL piece that would be, the scenario of family reacting to their real and imagined parts in a family member’s novel and the secrets and conflicts that might arise.
All of it based solely on made-up characters, of course. Not that your family would ever believe that!
April 13th, 2008 at 8:40 am
The charm of Southern fiction is definitely in the characters. We see our own imperfect family members in the stories. I don’t start out intentionally writing about my quirky Southern family, but somehow when I’m done there they are in all their glory. There are some incidents that I can’t write about until the people involved are gone from this earth. I can’t wait to read THE SWEET GUM TREE!
April 15th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Katherine,
Late saying howdy and yes, I think every author ends up using some real person…bits of them here ad there in their writing. It’s almost unavoidable. People are a part of our experience, and our experience colors what we write. Glad you were able to stop by! Love, Love your books!!
Denise A. Agnew