Pardon my lack of humbleness as I pat myself on the back. As Three Crosses continues to make its way through the hands of readers, I am randomly approached with compliments and typically some variation of any of these 3 questions:
1. Where do you get your ideas?
2. Do you base your characters on people you know?
3. How long does it take you to write a book?
I'll start with #3 as its the easiest to answer. 1st draft - about 5 weeks. However, and this is a big HOWEVER, some novels have been brewing in my head for years and even decades before they make their way to 1st draft. Others, like A Miracle for Mackenzie, had absolutely no brewing time and Mackenzie book was never completed so its a bad example.
#1 - I get my ideas from a myriad of places. As most of what I write is character-driven, answer to Q2 will explain some of this a bit. But my ideas come from my own imagination asking the age-old question, What If? I don't do writing exercises per se where I deliberately ask the question; I just go through life asking that question about everything. Makes for a busy brain so I have to do something with all those thoughts. I get curious about certain things - like ghost encounters, so I create characters who deal with my curiousity because lets face it, I don't have the time to do all the research for everything that piques my interest. I also am quite interested in why people do the things they do. It can be something as extreme as "why do psychopaths do the most horrible things to other humans?" to something not as extreme like "why did Michael choose not to marry the woman he had dated for seven years?" If I get curious enough to want to know more, well then Q2 kicks in...
Q2 - Sometimes, like in the above paragraph, a situation will prompt me to develop a character, but other times a character finds his or her way into my head where they start to have experiences that may or may not blossom into a story. But are my characters based on people I know or have known? Simply put, no. And again I say, BUT sometimes characters are borne from traits of people I have seen, or met, or have known.
For instance, I have a potential character brewing in my head this very moment. She was borne from a real live human being I observed last night. I started a narrative in my head this morning about what I observed.
It was hard to be aware of her pretty facial features when I was so distracted by the gauntness of her body. She was a walking, living, breathing ad for osteoporosis. She had no descernible butt but she had muscle tone in her arms. How odd. Her attire of ratty, wrinkled, and holey cargo slacks matched with her canvas sneakers that looked as if they had been pulled from a dumpster gave me a picture of someone with little to no money. Her bleached-out blond and cropped hair looked like it was shellac to her skull in a rubber band and it screamed to me that she couldn't be bothered with primping. But the fact that she was present with girlfriends who were well groomed and quite obviously concerned about their appearance told me there was more to her story.
The questions in my head start. Is she a past drug addict? Was she intentionally making a fashion statement? Did she just get out of rehab? Is she anorexic? If she is, why? Don't her freinds care enough about her to help her? Help her what? Maybe they do care. Maybe they are the ones getting her to the gym. Maybe she would look even less put together if it weren't for her freinds. Maybe she is a rich young woman with lots and lots of money that her friends want so they keep her around despite her drug habits. Maybe they started her on drugs? Maybe she saw something when she was a kid that made her want to disappear.
And on and on it goes, well at least as long as I am interested. Let's say I am interested in developing this real woman into a character. The woman I observed may be the start of a character who ends up looking and acting nothing like the real version of herself.
Both Simon and Amanda in Three Crosses are shadows of people I have known. As a matter of fact, Simon is a shadow of a combination of people I have known. He exhibits traits that I found interesting in real people.
The point is, there are no characters in any of my books who are mirror images or even closely mirror images of people I know. People I know/meet/observe may be the jumping-off point for a character to come to life, but each of my characters are just as unique as every single child that was ever born or will be born. As a matter of fact, there could be a whole other world where all my characters live out their lives...but that thought process will only get me labeled crazy. Delusional, primary diagnosis, God-complex, secondary diagnosis. Oh...I think I just started a new story. Ha! Have a great day! Thanks for reading:)
