Some posts about self-inserts got me wondering. What about other-inserts? That is, authors putting characters into their story meant to represent other real-life people. Now, I know that a lot of characters are inspired by real-life individuals, but has anyone here actually written a character with the thought -- "Yeah, I would want Soenso to be Wutsairnam if this was the world they lived in." -- ? I don't have much fiction writing under my belt so I haven't done this myself, though I came close with putting in my significant other in as an obscure character in the lore. I realized they probably wouldn't be happy with the role that character played, so I bowed out (honestly, putting in any character development there would have been distracting from the story anyway). So, what about it? Has anyone else done this, or am I just a weirdo for even wanting to?
Not as a complete person, no, though literature is riddled with examples of what you mention. Jack Kerouac famously mythologized many of his acquaintances and friends in his novels From On The Road: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Road#Characters From Desolation Angels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desolation_Angels_(novel)#Character_key I've certainly used traits, essences of people I know as scaffolding for characters, but never really used a character as a kind of complete literary avatar for someone I know.
I've got a lot of inspired by in my books, but I don't tend to do the complete insert as that strikes me as a good way to get sued... I have occasionally taken a basis from real life for a throwaway character ... the type who is dead when you meet them and only lasts about a page or less, such as from my most recent WIP, Blood Tide Val laughed “ You're a fucking maniac Dusty. Do it, but you'll need to call it, my controller is T4.” I pressed my face against the gritty ground and prayed. I pictured Ray, Val's JTAC, a slight Puerto Rican, on attachment from the Air farce. We'd expected him to be a standard issue useless fly boy, but he'd surprised us by having the balls of a lion. Another good man gone.
I don't think character development is ever distracting from a story. In fact, it's a very important part of any story. I like to make my fiction as real as possible whether that be nods to real world things/places/people or basing characters after people I know or know of (famous people). And I do name drop whenever I can. However, I've been including some political and world issues in my fiction lately. I chose to change the names of characters based on members of the current administration because I'm going for a bit of a parody or satire of sorts with the last several short stories I've done. Plus, my characters might be slightly more intelligent than their real-life counterparts who don't even exist. But it's very clear who these characters are supposed to be, I believe. And I think this kind of writing can be important. Sure, I could just tell these stories with characters not based on members of the current administration, but then these wouldn't be the same sort of stories. Even with other fiction I like to have someone in mind that my character reminds me of. It helps me flesh out the details that make a character seem realistic and relatable. Is your partner really going to care if you base a character off of them? Surely, they know you are writing fiction and taking the creative liberties necessary to make it a good story. I think they could be flattered that you used them as a jumping off point to base your character. And they should know that it's not really them or even what you really think of them. It's fiction.
Yep, it has a long history in the roman-à-clef - thereby giving English Lit studies lots of material/fun matching up the fictional character with the real person (I have several books of them, quite fascinating).
