Thank you for joining me on the blog tour for 37 Hours by J. F. Kirwan today I'm sharing a great guest post where J F Kirwan talks about basing fictional characters on people you know. First of all though let's take a look at the book...
After two long years spent in a secret British prison, Nadia
Laksheva is suddenly granted her freedom. Yet there is a dangerous price to pay
for her release: she must retrieve the Russian nuclear warhead stolen by her
deadliest enemy, a powerful and ruthless terrorist known only as The Client.
But her mysterious nemesis is always one step ahead and the clock is ticking. In 37 hours, the warhead will explode, reducing the city of London to a pile of ash. Only this time, Nadia is prepared to pull the trigger at any cost…
The deadly trail will take her from crowded Moscow to the silent streets of Chernobyl, but will Nadia find what she is looking for before the clock hits zero?
But her mysterious nemesis is always one step ahead and the clock is ticking. In 37 hours, the warhead will explode, reducing the city of London to a pile of ash. Only this time, Nadia is prepared to pull the trigger at any cost…
The deadly trail will take her from crowded Moscow to the silent streets of Chernobyl, but will Nadia find what she is looking for before the clock hits zero?
Book links:
Buy link: http://www.bit.ly/37hours
Guest Post
Basing fictional
characters on people you know
Guest Blog by J F Kirwan
One of the
commonest questions I’m asked is whether any of my characters are based on real
people that I know. My answer is usually, ‘Well, sort of…’ It’s a good and
natural question, but the full answer is tricky.
So, why do it? It takes a lot of time and effort to
create a brand new character out of nothing, one who will resonate with
readers, and who will, as Hemingway put it, ‘leave footprints in the snow.’ Sometimes it comes easy, a character
seems to be hiding in the ink in your pen or in your fingertips above the keys
on your laptop, just itching to be born. Other times it’s easier to use someone
you know as a starting point. But that’s all. A starting point.
What’s the process? I pick someone I know, or have known.
They must have something about them that ‘fits’ the character I want to
portray. For example, I once knew someone who was a bit of a scary individual.
He’d nearly died, and that experience seemed to have affected him in
not-always-positive ways. I used his character as the basis for Danton, a sadistic torturer in 66 metres. Of course in reality he’s an
okay dude, but there was just enough to leap off from the real person, to
extrapolate to how he might be in a different life, and to bring flesh and
bones to his fictional persona. It worked. Some people can’t read some of the
scenes involving him, as he’s pretty nasty.
Do you make them look the same? No, I almost always change some or
all physical attributes. Otherwise you can end up writing about the real person
and how they might react, rather than who the story needs them to be.
Do you do this for the principal
characters, e.g. Nadia or Jake?
No. I think an author should always take the long route for the protagonists
and the other main players. That way they are entirely constructed for the
novel, and the result will feel more authentic to the reader.
How many characters do you do this
for? Just two or
three. 66 metres had four. 37 hours, one, and she was a minor character. It can
work well for ‘walk-on-walk-off’ characters, as you can give them a ‘handle’ (a
pithy description that immediately brings them to life) quite quickly, so that
even secondary characters seem three dimensional, and appear to have a life off
the page.
Do the real people ever find out? How
do they react? Here’s
the downside. In my earlier, pre-Nadia writing, someone found out and wasn’t
too happy about it, and didn’t like the way they’d been portrayed, even though
they were a hero. So, I got burned once, and now I never tell people. The
trouble is, that in the author’s mind, the new characters really are different
from the person who acted as the launch-point, but to the actual person, of
course, well, they may see it differently. One guy though, a good friend,
really gets a kick out of the fact that I made him evil.
Which characters end up seeming more
real to the reader?
Here’s the crux. If you work hard on a completely fictional character, I think
those are the ones people most relate to, and most remember. In 66 metres, for
example, there is Lazarus, who is pretty memorable, and came completely out of
the blue. And there is Nadia, the protagonist. People really think I based her
on somebody, but it’s simply not the case. And if she was real, given what I put Nadia through in the novels, she’d
probably hunt me down…
J.F. Kirwan is a
writer for Harper Collins, under their HQ
digital imprint. By day he works in aviation and nuclear safety, but at night,
during bouts of insomnia, he writes thrillers with significant body counts.
He’s an ex-diving instructor, so there is an underwater element in each of his
two novels, 66 Metres and 37 Hours. Most readers find his writing has a cinematic feel, as if you are there
with the characters. The original inspiration for the protagonist, Nadia, came
from Stieg Larsson’s Girl with the dragon
tattoo, though David Baldacci and Lee Child have had significant impact on
the writing style, plotting and pace. He is currently writing the third book in
the series.
Author links:
Website: http://www.jfkirwan.com/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kirwanjf
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/66metres
Giveaway
£20 Amazon giftcard
International
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