Recently, a friend asked how I come up with conversational dialog between multiple characters in my stories. At first, I answered, “Simple, I have a whole bunch of voices rolling around in my head,” but then I thought about it a bit and wondered how the voices came alive. What I found was that most of my characters come from a montage of personalities I have met over time.
Some characters I have created have roots with someone I have met before. Others aggregated from two or more people’s personalities, with the more dominant traits usually taking over.
I can hear dead people. Well, not really, though, the persona of one of my close friends remains with me a decade after his death. His dark humor and sardonic nature permeate many of the stronger characters in my stories, but I digress.
My conclusion, after considering what I have written was, that most of my characters do have a base in reality. I draw upon the personalities of people I know or have met to create the voices in my head that make their way to paper.