Do you guys ever write something into your story that is somewhat of a nod to the truth or your friends? For example. I'm working on a science fiction piece and the name of my planet is my lover's name spelled backwards. I've used a friend's bar as a setting before. And I've built a whole story around another friend's words of advice. I guess these could be seen somewhat as inside jokes or a secret private hello. I've been having a little fun with this lately. If you've done something similar, in what ways? I don't think this sort of thing should or has to interrupt a story. Just having some fun with my serious writing career.
When I was a youngster I had an entire cast based off of my friends, with their last names being some sort of animal. Mine was John Eagle, later Maxwell Eagle, later Maxwell Hunter. . in my WIP I do have two characters dedicated to my Pharmacy Manager and a Customer who's a pretty nice old guy. Not based off them in anyways except that the Character has a similar ethnic as my Pharmacy Manager.
In my web serial, there is a training scene where the main characters side kick starts crying, but sucks it up and keeps going. It is basically something that happened in real life in a class I took.
In my crime novel, I have one of my characters running from a threat past a bar with my own last name (and the place really exists). I also use restaurants I've eaten in as settings and use their real names. My mc has the same last name as a college friend of mine, but that wasn't intentional, I just stumbled upon it (but he doesn't know that...yet).
I used my husband's band name in my short story, Kneadful Things. It doesn't play a big part in the story, but it's a fun nod and I didn't have to come up with a name on my own. I also named a little girl red-headed girl in Under the Knife who's on page for a blip or two after one of my friends who also has red hair.
I put my mother-in-law in a story once. She had the witchy gift of shopping. She could bend space and time to find the perfect deal.
I probably do this subconsciously more than deliberately, but that happens as well. I can think of one in-joke that I repurposed for a story, and I once named an establishment after a friend's cat. I sometimes base characters (loosely) on acquaintances, but not very often. I tend not to do it with close friends; it feels weird somehow. As with most things, though, there are exceptions. In one of my unfinished novels, one of my main characters has a piece of backstory based on a dear friend of mine. Said friend miraculously survived what should have been a fatal accident, and made a no less miraculous recovery. Not long afterwards, he died in one of the most pointless, unfair ways imaginable. Well, I had a similar thing happen to my main character's friend. I changed the context and the particulars, of course. The story sits there, somewhere in the unfinished script. At times I feel positively filthy for writing it, as if I'm exploiting a tragedy when I have no right to; but I guess it was just part of my coping process. I don't know if it will stick to the finished product, or if there will even be a finished product, but I'm pretty sure my friend would have gotten a kick out of it. It's probably the most powerful passages in the whole script (though of course I'm biased) and it meshes very well with who my character is. But then there's that dirty feeling... I just don't know. On a lighter note, another friend begged me for a cameo, so I wrote him a short scene in the same novel. Just a gag, really. I have no intention of keeping it, because it's a chunk of text that accomplishes nothing, and we all know what those are worth.
I wrote a flash contest entry with me, a friend of mine and a model (It was a photo shoot). It was very close to reality, they both appeared under their real names. But I had to guess what Amanda felt. They have both read the story.
I'm writing a sci-fi/space fantasy where the planet the MC hails from has a bit of a genetic oddity--hair color at birth can be any shade on the rainbow, from bright red to emerald green to a queer sort of violet, before turning a 'natural' color sometime before age 10. One of the MC's daughters has silver hair, the other has sapphire blue. The MC himself had green hair that dulled to brown. That particular change is a reference to the time a high school friend of mine dyed his hair oompa-loompa green the week before a TV appearance. The teacher was so mad, he almost kicked the kid off the team (Brain Game).
You know I was thinking humans but I actually put animals into my stories as well, for instance we had a horse named Ruffian, who is the horse to one of my MCs with a decadent of Ruffian also named ruffian who is the horse of a secondary character how is a descendant of that MC, both with the same name as well, Samuel. Also that ancestor MC has a dog named Elsa who is my current Dog, and Avatar, Also, I have my Doggo Sophia as my current WIP MC's dog. I may try to add in more dogs as I go.
Nope, gotta have friends before I can do that. I put in nods to things that have inspired my own WIP, but most people don't know what they are. Why should I use real people, when I can make up all the interesting people I would much rather meet? Though if anyone wants to volunteer for a story, then feel free to speak up. Can't say for sure what the story will be about, but you can be the MC.
I have secret and private hellos in my stories, but I'm not telling what they are because they're secret and private. I don't plan them beforehand; they just seem to happen on their own. Most of them probably won't even be read by those they're addressed to. I have a dog named Sophia in my WIP. She is mean and ugly and she dies early on. I might just rename her... One of my human main characters is called Felix, for my dog who died tragically on one of the worst days of my life. My MC is Becky, named after a mare I used to work with and who also died tragically. In that WIP, one of those two characters dies... tragically (although there's light and redemption at the end of the tunnel).
Not friends but in darkest storm there are a few nods to the Indy author community, dusty travels under the alias Mark Dawson near the beginning, and the colonel who recruits him at the end is colonel J penn. In the sequel I'm working on the Canadian premier is called lefvebre and so on. Also Aldo is inspired by but not based on wreybies the only similarity is the first name and that he's gay and a bear (not an actual bear , it's a term the gay community use for the roughly toughly guys)
Not deliberate as I've always liked the name Will, but anyway Will is my MC in my novel. It also happens to be my ex's name. Met him off the internet when meeting friends on the internet was still a bit of a taboo, the guy who gave me my first kiss and who sparked a spiral in my faith that took another 4 years before it'd recover (long after the break-up). It's not like I think of the ex when I think of my Will, but there you go anyway
In the novel I am currently writing, I had a scene where two characters were arguing about a philosophical issue and I made one of them use arguments a real person had used in an email message sent to me years ago. I didn't mean it as a secret private hello, I just thought those arguments suited that situation perfectly. Generally, I have never felt like writing anything so that someone might recognize themselves. That said, I have always excelled at parody, and in parody writings I have used lots of (non-personal) things from the real world without giving any obvious hints. For example, I took an advertisement slogan that could be frequently seen in my hometown at the time, and wrote it backwards and made it the name of a wandering crackpot preacher. Most readers will probably just think I made up a foreign-looking name, but those who happen to read it backwards will recognize its meaning and, in all likelihood, burst out laughing.
There are quite a few supporting characters of mine who are slightly stylised versions of friends or people I've served with in one organisation or another. A couple of low-level mooks are thinly-veiled references to people who I don't like and are hardly likely to ever read my stuff.
I use little tidbits from everything like David and Bathsheba (watching her bathe in the moonlight) and Hawaiian Rick's wife coming over and sharing a joint with me.
Oh, yeah, I've got plenty of those . . . though in many cases, the wink-and-nod in-joke turned out to be a darling I had to slay, so out it went.
I wrote a short short about the world's most boring ghost, but had to shelve it when the first three people who read it immediately recognised the workmate who inspired it. On the other hand, all three laughed like anything...
So I've decided to make it my mission include one of my pets, cat, dog, or horse into my books. Real life or fictional, current or past they will find a way to be one of my MCS pets. Note on the fictional animals, none that are copyright like Epona or dog meat, of course. But once I have used in video games that I got to name or pretend to name. So far I got couple matched up with an MC. My current WIP MC has my Rottweiler!
