Welcome to my contribution to Romance Writer’s Weekly. This week we’re answering questions from Beth Carter about how we write about our characters and how much of our own experience we bring to our writing.
If you’re joining me from J. J. Devine’s blog, then welcome! I hope you enjoy my answers to the questions. 🙂
1. Which type of character do you prefer writing about: Sexy, romantic, sweet, quirky, mean, old, young, smart, silly or other?
I think for me it’s a mixture of sexy and romantic. I like writing about a guy who’s sexy, but also sensitive enough to the heroine’s needs to be romantic, so that it’s not all about him. But I also like to write about someone who’s hot enough to make my heroine start to think twice about him and maybe not write him off for being arrogant or whatever faults I’ve given him.
2. Have you ever killed off (or gotten back at) an ex in your writing? On paper of course.
No, I can’t say I have. I tend to use my intuition a bit when it comes to describing men who let the heroine down, or are love cheats and so on. I find it a lot of fun, though, to create these characters and scenarios, all that tension and heartbreak. It’s good to get creative with ideas about how a guy has treated or mistreated a girl and how she responds to that.
3. What hobbies do you have that you incorporate in your writing?
Actually my latest novel Reunion of the Heart has a writer as its heroine. So for me that was an easy one. I’ve also written about characters who have a love of reading and some of the books I love are the ones they love too.
Now why not hop along to A. S. Fenichel’s blog and check out her responses to the questions!
Elaine Jeremiah 
That second question is rather interesting. I’m always being told by other authors about how they put an ex, bully, negative reviewer, or just someone that crossed them into their books. Then there’s a death scene or an arrest. I never realized how common a practice it is these days.
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I don’t tend to put real people in my writing. Sometimes some of my characters may have elements of a real person/people, but it’s never a deliberate decision to use a real person as the inspiration for a particular character.
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I try the same thing. I’ll use names and maybe do an honorary minor character for someone, but I never got the ‘kill them in your books’ revenge thing. Though I will say one person bugged me enough to be in the series that I did make them an expendable character in Book 9.
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I think as an author you have to be so careful if you are basing your characters on anyone you know because you could be tarnishing their name so to speak. I don’t know what the law is on libel in relation to authors’ work if someone makes a complaint, seeing themselves as a character in a book – I just mean that if an author has based their character on a real person, then, in theory at least, that real person could be angry and follow it up. Just a thought.
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Great response to two, and interesting discussion above.
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Thank you. And yes I think it is an interesting concept – how much do we/should we base our characters on real people? 🙂
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Basing our work on real people can be tricky…I usually don’t, but my family swears some things slip in. Probably, it all comes from our past experiences. Nice post.
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Thank you! I guess as writers we’re always inspired to some degree by the people around us and that influences our writing – even if we keep our characters strictly fictional they’re always going to have elements of the people we’ve known in our lives in them.
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I’ve also got a WIP or two that contain authors as the heroine. Great answers!!!
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Thank you! Yes I think being a writer is a definite inspiration for me. 🙂
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I’ve always found writing is like art or drama. You may base your character on someone inspired from reality, but then departure occurs as the character feeds the needs of your story.
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Exactly. You’re never going to have a character who’s a carbon copy of a real person – that just wouldn’t work.
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How fun to have a heroine as a writer. I haven’t done that yet.
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Oh it was good fun – you should try it! I’m sort of living vicariously through my character though – she’s a much more successful writer than me lol. Maybe one day… 🙂
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Great answers!
‘It’s good to get creative with ideas about how a guy has treated or mistreated a girl and how she responds to that.’ – That’s part of the fun of writing, getting to go through and find out how to twist it all so it works out! 😀
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Thanks Mishka. Yes, that is the fun part of writing for sure. It makes the less fun parts worthwhile! 😀
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