Imagine one of your friends tells you they’ve based a character on you! How would you feel? I can imagine feeling intrigued and slightly nervous to learn more. My first question would be ‘What is their name?’ and even the answer to that would be fascinating and invoke feelings of sentimentality.

Have you based any of your characters on a friend or family member? My research tells me a lot of us do. Some use their ex-partners as a baseline as well, which I think I need to give more thought to. I’m not sure I’d enjoy writing about an ex-boyfriend, but when thinking about the men from my past, I can see that there are lots of traits I could pick out and use…some good and some not so good 😆.

Ex-partners aside, I come to one of my most beloved and cherished friends, Rachel. Rachel is a friend I have had since childhood, we became closer in our teenage years and have been reliable allies ever since. I wondered if ‘allies’ was the right word to describe us – allies are defined as ‘individuals, groups or nations that have joined together for a mutual benefit or to achieve a common purpose’, so yes, allies is fitting, because me and Rachel have a common goal – to survive the emotional rollercoaster of life and try to enjoy the ride!

Out of all the people in my life, why have I picked Rachel to focus on, when developing one of my main characters? Because my leading character, Martha, needs a ‘Rachel’ in her world. Every girl needs a ‘Rachel’, I’m not sure if everyone is lucky enough to have one though, and I don’t take mine for granted. I appreciate her unfaltering support, love and loyalty. Rachel always listens, she always understands, and she never judges me. But…Rachel is also a complex and unusual character, she battles with mental health issues, she has always been single (and happy to be), she wears her heart on her sleeve, she leaves the room when sad moments unravel in a film, she avoids conflict at all costs, she worries about what other people think of her (a lot). I don’t think she has ever uttered an unkind word to another. She also drives me bananas and on quite a regular basis I hear myself telling her ‘don’t put up with that’ or ‘tell them no’, not that she ever takes this advice 😆.

I want my lead character, Martha, to have a ‘Rachel’ to lean on. I want Martha’s ‘Rachel’ to be the loyal and supportive friend that my ‘Rachel’ is to me. But I also want Martha to bring something to the friendship, and I hope my ‘Rachel’ thinks I do this for her. My ‘Rachel’ can’t hold her drink, she has one glass of wine and she is quite tipsy, she has two drinks and she’s slurring, she has three drinks and she’s dropping her wine glass, falling over and asking others very personal and inappropriate questions. She’s a riot but also a liability in these moments.

I want to make sure I put Rachel’s weird and wonderful character to good use in my book. She will certainly enjoy a glass of wine or two, and I would like to incorporate the way Rachel asks inappropriate questions. Martha’s ‘Rachel’ will unintentionally stumble upon crucial information that will aid Martha’s investigation, through her drunken questioning.

I hope that Martha’s ‘Rachel’ will bring an extra level of depth and complexity to my book. Maybe some humour too. Would I ever tell my ‘Rachel’ that a character in my book is based on her? I don’t know…would you? Or maybe you already have? Your own experiences of developing your characters, based on friends, are welcomed in the comments box below.

Maybe you’ve based a character on somebody who is not a friend at all, but on a person you don’t like very much, or someone who has wronged you in some way? This is a dimension of my book I have not yet thought about, but I think I will. I will let you know in a future blog if I go any further with that, somebody certainly does spring to mind but I need to think on that a bit more 🤔.