Ask the Author–Do you ever write people you are angry at into your story so you can get revenge on their literary version?
Somewhere floating around there is a quote about how you should never make an author angry because they’ll end up writing you into their book so they can kill you. I tried to find the exact quote, but somehow, it eluded me, so I just had to paraphrase, and I have no idea to whom I should contribute it. If you happen to have the quote and/or know the person who first said it, I’d love that information. Anyhow, that is more or less what that question is about. Have I, as an author, ever written anyone into a book so I could vent my anger on the character patterned after them?
In all honesty, I really haven’t. For one thing, I don’t get angry enough at people to wish them harm. Yes, I do get angry at people, and sometimes I get angry enough to want to write them a scathing letter or something, but I can’t bring myself to get angry enough at others to really want something bad to happen to them. Therefore, I don’t write people into my story to symbolically get revenge.
On the other hand, I have used some of the attributes I’ve observed from people I’ve known who were jerks for characters who are also jerks. However, whatever happened to those characters, in the end, had nothing to do with what I wished for the real people. I only used those observed attributes and behavior to make the character seem a bit more realistic because if someone in real life was like that, it could be believable in fiction. So in other words, when I wrote, I never thought of the nasty character as “Real-life-So-and-So”, just that the character was behaving like “Real-Life-So-and-So”.
Anyhow, that’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to writing someone like that into my stories. No, I haven’t written anyone into my stories to get revenge. I’m just not a revenge type of person (unless it’s something like silly, harmless pranks, in which case, yeah, I might retaliate).
What do you think of writing people into stories for revenge purposes?