Some writers friends and I talked about family stories, how we loved preserving the history, but how we had to fudge the facts so various family members wouldn’t send a hit man after us. It is true that no man is the villain in his own story, nor any woman. It is also true that being labeled a colorful character is – to some people – the same as being labeled the villain.
However, if you want action in your story (whether fact, fiction, or something in between) you need colorful characters. You need the mean old lady who lives to ruin someone’s day, the unspeakably spoiled little boy who desperately deserves to be locked in the basement, the snarling alcoholic who destroys everyone without even trying. More than that, you need these characters to ring true.
Where better to get that than in your own family? I have three generations worth of anecdotes about impossible relatives, and I ache to turn them into characters in a story. However, since I want to survive the first Thanksgiving after such a story is published, I have taken to slicing and dicing my way to colorful characters.
The first thing I do is forget what really happened and focus on what will fit in my story. Names are definitely changed to protect the tender feelings of the guilty; often age and gender. Next, I blend parts of at least one more colorful character in my acquaintance. Once I’ve done that, it’s easy to let the new character play in my story, and become what he or she needs to be. And if someone asks, I can honestly say none of my characters are ever based on any one person.