Using other people’s characters to inspire you
Writers’ Topic: Character Inspiration
Can writers get character inspiration from other writers? Using an existing character can be a good jumping off point to a new character.
A student once asked, “I often find B characters in novels more interesting than the leads, yet they’re never fully developed (hence the B aspect). I wonder if using another novelist’s B characters as a jumping off point for a new character or story would ever produce any ideas worth exploring?”
As writers, we can find inspiration all around us, and other people’s fictional worlds and characters are a good example. The key point here is that you need to create a new character.
Of course, you can’t use another writer’s characters or worlds, as that is copyright infringement, unless the novel is out of copyright protection (which is why we have all those Jane Austen mashups).
Authors keep the right to produce derivative works (that is, other stories based on their characters and worlds) and although fan fiction is a popular sport, for someone seriously pursuing a writing career, you have to create your own characters and worlds unless you want to end up on the wrong end of a subpoena.
But you can certainly be inspired by other people’s stories and characters! In fact, I once wrote an entire novel that was was sparked by seeing Faramir in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He’s a minor character – a B character – but there was something about his situation that struck me as having a lot of potential for a story.
The character I ended up writing had almost nothing in common with Faramir, but the novel wouldn’t even exist if I hadn’t seen Faramir and thought, “Hmm.”
No matter where you dig up character inspiration, it’s essential is to make the character/story your own, even if the spark comes from another person’s character.
Other Helpful Content
World-building without info-dumping
World-building is often seen as the province of science fiction and fantasy writers who have to convey new-to-us settings and cultures, and occasionally by historical writers who have to convey the feel of an era that a reader may not know much about. But every story takes place somewhere. Even stories set in a contemporary…
Focus on a limited number of problems in story development
Typically in a manuscript evaluation or developmental edit, I focus on what I perceive to be the three-to-five most important concerns I’ve noticed in the ms. This is the approach I teach my editing students. Editing too many problems at once overburdens the author In any given ms, there may be ten or fifteen developmental problems…
Clients who want services you don’t offer
Newer freelancers sometimes come to me in a panic because a client has approached them to do work that’s outside their typical scope. Commonly this is something like the freelancer offers copyediting and developmental editing but the client wants coaching. What should they do? They don’t know how to coach, they don’t offer coaching services,…
