Do you ever base your characters on people you know?

[SkyMessenger]

Usually for the idiotic bosses, I use the jerks in real life sweatdrop

[the 2nd daughter]

Of course! In order to "flesh out" my characters a bit, I'll use a habit or a phrase that my friends, family, coworkers, (etc.) use often.

For example, I've noticed that when I'm thinking, I touch my mouth a lot, play with my lips... When my sister is nervous, she'll play with her hair... A combination of these two, since my MC is a long-haired introvert, is that she'll twist or pull on her hair when she starts thinking.

I believe every character has a little bit of an actual person in them. smile

[Winter_Kamiya]

I have one character that I purposefully based on my friend Michelle because she has a very open personality. Otherwise I try to make my characters as original as possible in this day and age. I often find that some of them do remind me of certain aspects of myself and my friends though. This bugs me but at the same time I feel that it brings the characters closer to my heart.

[justadarling]

KageNoRurouni

Thats how I started writing. I started doing some fanfiction, which is really good practice. It gets you to examine characters to understand how they act and why.

It doesnt hurt to start writing original stuff. I would recommend saving all of the stuff youre writing so that you can look back on it later. I started writing a story when I was a teenager and never did anything with it. I actually just went through it again and really liked what I saw in it. Of course, the style is really different because that was before I had published anything or had even gone to college. Now, Im expanding on it and Im going to make it into a series. I love some of the ideas I came up with then because I wouldnt have come up with them now, if that makes sense. But you know, there are certain insights you have right now that you wont have later in life. I think getting those down now is a really good way to set up something that could be interesting later on. Worse case scenario, you never do anything with it. Whats the harm in that? rofl

Yea, Im actually really excited! Im currently working on the characters. Im confident that it will come out decent. Im really loving the plot! Id looove to get something published! 4laugh Are there classes that teach writing related things besides regular English class?

[Celestial Fireflies]

I have loosely based my characters off people I know, but more often than not they take on a personality that is completely their own. So, most times, the people serve as a jumping off point to exploring an entirely new character. I also look at people with similar traits from my characters and ask, "Okay, how would they respond to this situation?" It helps me write more natural reactions.

There have only been a couple of times where I nearly directly inserted a person as a character into my writing, and most of those times it was for the fun of it (i.e. a very minor side-plot in the background for an unimportant character that fits in with the main plot).

[Prolly Naut]

I know a lot of people who base main character's on themselves when not writing in a biography format.

Self inserts have the ability to go sour and the ability to go sweet.

[The Drunken Jester]

I do this embarrassingly a lot.
It works really well.... as long as no one ever finds out. xD

When I base a character off of someone I know I do it VERY loosely. So I never tell anyone because then they'd think that I viewed that character in the same way I view them, which is almost never the case. xD

[priuses]

I have in the past, but the character gradually morphed into its own being. All of my characters do have a huge chunk of me in them though 3nodding

[Syslius of Nurvida]

I do so too, but no too much since my friends seem the same as hyperactive, childern.

[Pirate Gigue]

Uh, not really. I might get inspiration for a character from some of my friends, but I try not to make them like people I know. I can't wrap my mind around that. xD

[Celestra_Shadowbane]

I don't think I've intentionally based characters off of people I know, not even certain characteristics. The only case would be myself since every writer puts a little piece of themselves in every story, every poem, every work, whether they mean to or not. I try to be careful not to put too much of myself into my characters, but it doesn't always work out that way sweatdrop

Though I will admit, it would probably be a good challenge for me to try to use real life people I know and put them in a fictional setting, just for the sake of experimentation and as an exercise in observation.

[TottWriter]

I used to sort of do this in the past, although I never really had a character who was anything more than a little like someone, or whose appearance I borrowed.

TBH though, I've always preferred inventing characters; starting out with a basic gist of a personality, and throwing a backgrounds/plot at them and seeing what they're made of. My mind has developed basic archetypes of characters (the snarky, the shy, the bubbly, etc), but randomness and a touch of direction means they rarely turn out too much alike. I've worked on my creation technique enough that I'm fairly confident in my characters now.

[Pika-D]

I always base my characters of myself. On occasion, I'll based them off a friend or whatever depending on the character's role in my writing.

[LoperDoper]

I have created characters with traits that friends share, but it's never been an intentional thing.

[ShalomTheStargazer]

I once wrote a poem where the WHOLE POINT was that everyone would see themselves in it, because everyone in the poem was someone I knew, and everyone I knew was someone in the poem. XD I know that makes little sense, it makes more sense if you read it I guess...Dedication is what it's called, it was spoken word at first, I wrote it all down later.