It’s a question asked frequently of fiction authors: Are any of your characters based on people you know?
At a talk March 13 in Vancouver titled “Learning to Love Your Bad Guy,” a panel of 10 mystery and suspense writers was asked if even their villains were based on real-life characters. Most of the writers answered yes.
Author Heather Ames said it seems “we write about everybody that we know, and we just don’t realize it.”
Author Jill Kelly pinpointed exactly where some of her bad guys originated. One was inspired by a man she went on two dates with before realizing that something was off.
She used the memory of him “when I got to a place when I needed a creepy person” in her story, she said at the panel discussion sponsored by Vintage Books.
Kelly said she based the villain in another book on a man she’s never formally met: “a guy who goes to my gym.” There was just something fascinating about his 5-foot-7 frame, his coifed hair and the fact that he always exercised in jeans and a T-shirt, she said.
Author Dorothy Black Crow said one of her villains was inspired by a real FBI agent that she later befriended. “So what did I do? I changed things around,” rewriting a few of the details, she said.
After the book was published, she sent it to the agent, not knowing quite what he would say.
He thanked her for the book and said he loved its cover.
Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story or just tell a story.
