Jerks where I work will appear in my novels.....

[DWSTXS]

Arggggghhhhhhh.......I work with some real jerks!

Days like this spur me on to write.....if anything, just to get to the point where someday I can 'retire' from the 9-5 world and write for a living.
And yes, I will be putting some real-life jerks that I work with....into my stories....so that they will get killed, blown up, cheated upon, slapped, put-down, and in general, suffer bankruptcies, abnormally large rectal growths, wild animal maulings, ED, hair loss, projectile vomiting, explosive diahhrea.......etc etc....and in that way, they will get what's coming to them......

SO.......this thread 'Jerks where I work....' is asking the question....

Do YOU put 'real-life' people into your stories, where you have your way with them, and get your 'revenge' upon them?

I know I do...........and it makes the writing all that more fun.

[Sage]

I did once for a performer at Borders who sang about first-time writers (dissing them). Yeah, the character died.

My next MC's job is going to bear some resemblance to mine. Should be very therapeutic.

[Takvah]

so that they will get killed, blown up, cheated upon, slapped, put-down, and in general, suffer bankruptcies, abnormally large rectal growths, wild animal maulings, ED, hair loss, projectile vomiting, explosive diahhrea.......etc etc....and in that way, they will get what's coming to them......



I AM SO BUYING THIS BOOK! :D

[Toothpaste]

I put my friends into my novels. And I am usually very nice to them. And they also know they are in the novels. It's fun! But at the same time you can't feel obligated to your friends over your book. For example I had a character based on one friend that I wound up cutting out of the book. It made me sad, and she was disappointed, but I wasn't just going to keep it in there at the expense of the story. She understood.

[Soccer Mom]

Oh yeah. I write murder mysteries, so people who piss me off always come to a bad end.

[DWSTXS]

well......maybe not ALL that happening to one character.......although, I do have someone in mind that I'd like it to happen to...........LOL

on the other hand......if I did have all that happen to one MC.....he'd end up being sympathetic..........(or a superman for being able to live through all that)

[Haphazard]

I never put real life in my stories, especially not to get revenge on these real people.

I need to like my characters to get me to write them.

[HeronW]

Which is why we luv writin'--revenge on the bastids!

[NeuroFizz]

just to get to the point where someday I can 'retire' from the 9-5 world and write for a living.
Unless you are one of the few who gain meteoric financial success in this business (and I hope you do), these people may be too senile to comprehend the slams.

In response to the question, pieces of real people end up in my characters, but I can't think of one who has been lifted, intact, from flesh to paper. But I agree, there is nothing like a little righteous indignation to get the fingers flying on the keys.

[brokenfingers]

I never put real people into my works either, although I will cannibalize parts of them for various characters.

Besides, I find taking revenge upon them in real life much more satisfying anyway.

[JoNightshade]

My WIP is set in my real-life high school (note: I graduated like a decade ago), although my main character is entirely fictional. However, all of the faculty are patterned on the teachers I had in high school. I change their names a little bit, but if any of them ever picks up my book, they're gonna know who they are. And I do make a one-line dig at this teacher who really pissed me off.

Buuuuut, my main character's love interest is actually my junior high gym teacher, a woman I loathed. I thought she was ugly and mean and seriously jerky. This novel actually came into being because I always thought, Could anyone ever marry this woman? Could this horrible bitter person have any shred of decency within her? Then as I got older and came to see teachers as real people, I really wondered about what she was like outside of class. Who she was. And then she became the woman my MC fell in love with. I'm using a very close third person POV on him, so in a sense the process of writing this book has been me attempting to see this woman through different eyes. And I think I've come to understand her a lot more. So really, it's been cathartic. :)

[Wolvel]

I write to escape the real world, not drag it in behind me.

[Judg]

Jo, that sounds like a very cool idea.

[Scrawler]

I like this question! I have a hard time featuring current real life jerks in my writing. I was trying to base an important secondary character on a jerk I know but I was getting too upset reliving the situation to write. This could be because the "jerk episode" is too fresh or recent.

I find myself incorporating painful issues and people into my work and resolving them to my satisfaction. But I need to have a sense of forgiveness or peace in order to open some of those old wounds and relationships and write about them.

My revenge fantasy is sending certain people a copy of my #1 Bestseller --when they think they recognize themselves, I smile and say it's all only fiction.
Bwahahaha.

[DWSTXS]

I like this question! I have a hard time featuring current real life jerks in my writing. I was trying to base an important secondary character on a jerk I know but I was getting too upset reliving the situation to write. This could be because the "jerk episode" is too fresh or recent.

I find myself incorporating painful issues and people into my work and resolving them to my satisfaction. But I need to have a sense of forgiveness or peace in order to open some of those old wounds and relationships and write about them.

My revenge fantasy is sending certain people a copy of my #1 Bestseller --when they think they recognize themselves, I smile and say it's all only fiction.
Bwahahaha.

That's the whole point with me......to change their name.....but describe them as they actually are........put them through the wringer, fiction-wise, and then, after it's become a Harry Potter-like best seller, and gets made into a movie....I make sure that that character is cast with an exact look-alike and he/she gets to see themself screwed royally on the big screen! ......and the greatest kicker of all....is that I am living the good life.........
LOL....that's my dream of 'scoreboarding' my nemesis.

what have you been up to?
Oh, working at the local McDonald's...and you?
Well.....my novel was on the NY Times Best-Seller list all last year, and now Spielberg wants to make it into a movie! (Scoreboard!)

[David I]

I never base my characters on specific, real-life people.

That said, however, John Grisham admits to routinely killing characters in his books because they pissed him off in real life. So there's plenty of precedent.

[Shweta]

I never put real people into my works either, although I will cannibalize parts of them for various characters.

You cannibalize parts of real people? I'm scared of you :D

I'm sure aspects of people make it into my stories, but I normally can't tell how.

[Danger Jane]

I don't put anyone I know in deliberately. But it wouldn't be that hard for them to see themselves in my characters, I guess...damn navel gazing readers :tongue

[Matera the Mad]

I put a jerk into something that I knew he would never read, and happily insulted him. One villain that I killed has a lot in common with my mother, and another is just a bit of a lot of @55holes I've known. My heroes are not intentionally patterned after anyone in particular. I'm sure a lot of personality recycling is done unconsciously.

[ClaudiaGray]

I don't put real-life people into my books. This is true for everyone -- not just people I dislike -- but it goes double for them. Writing is my pleasure and my release, and why drag people I dislike into the place where I get my joy?

[David I]

I suppose this is a good place to mention that Mario Puzo based Don Corleone, The Godfather in The Godfather, on his own mother...

[nb No, I am not making that up, however much it might sound like it.]

[Thomma Lyn]

Do YOU put 'real-life' people into your stories, where you have your way with them, and get your 'revenge' upon them?

You betchyer britches I do. :D

BUT...

I do it subtly. I mix, match, and morph. Meld them with other people, real or imagined. I never take someone from real life and stick them into a novel "as-is."

[kellytijer]

I do it too! My ex-coworkers go through a load of problems in one of my wips.

[Cassidy]

Mmm... I don't put people from my life in my books. I do steal individual traits from people though. And I confess that I have named two nasty characters after two real people... one a former teacher of mine from about twenty-five years ago (jeez, I sure hold a grudge) and one a cop. I couldn't resist...

[Paichka]

I named one of my more unpleasant characters after one of my bosses.

He's a jerk, the character's a jerk...it seemed to fit. Thus, "Ser Linwood" was born.

I haven't used much else, or been conscious of it if I have.

[JohnDavidPaxton]

Yes, people I hate and murder often appear in my stories.

[Unfocused Me]

I haven't been working on my novel long enough to have given the issue much thought, but this thread has given me some very interesting ideas.

[Prawn]

real-life jerks that I work with....will get killed, blown up, cheated upon, slapped, put-down, and in general, suffer bankruptcies, abnormally large rectal growths

In your novels, what happens to the hot chicks that you work with?

[bluemoonscribe]

You had me at "abnormally large rectal growths." Please for the love of all that's holy, let us know when this is published.


And Sage, I'm glad you killed the "performer."

[Elladog]

I named a sort of pathetic bully after a sort of pathetic bully of a supervisor I once had. Nothing horrific happens to her, but the name just seemed to suit the character.

[Chase]

Best revenge has been out-living the rascals. Like those pictured on U.S money, they become fair game for any humiliations, this one murdered in a particularly grisly fashion, that one's silly expression frozen forever in deep space.

[Willowmound]

Yes, people I hate and murder often appear in my stories.

People you hate and murder!

Cripes!

[narnia]

Yes, people I hate and murder often appear in my stories.

Yeah, that reads a little scary to me, too. :eek:

ETA: My ex-husband is slated to be killed off in one of my current wips.

[III]

I've put friends in my books before and then messed with them and killed them because ... well, because I'm a jerk I guess. As abusive as I am towards my friends I don't really need any enemies.

[Storm Dream]

I've been fortunate in that I really love my coworkers. HR is a different story, but my immediate contacts are awesome.

My exes, however, are another story. THEY get the real writer's treatment...most don't get out alive. Heh heh heh.

I think the most interesting thing I ever did with a character inspired by someone I knew was to make him the person I thought he could've been...you know, if he hadn't turned out to be the idiot that he was (and gotten into drugs, but that's another story). He still messed up horribly at the end, but I ended up liking a character I'd stuck in there purely to be horribly killed.

[ink wench]

I put one of my friends in the first novel I wrote. He was annoying me online, so I threatened him to turn him into a whore in my story. He liked the idea so much I made him a pirate instead. He was supposed to just have a "walk on" bit but he ended up being an extremely important minor character, and one of the few who lived at the end.

[BlueTexas]

I've put behaviors and other bits of real people into stories, but not the the whole person intact. I think it's like taking real situations - you take the part you need and leave the rest, twisting it as you go. What may have started out as Sue comes out the other end as Helen, totally unrecognizable. Kind of like how sausage is made, now that I think about it.

[Pomegranate]

I based on of my NaNoWriMo novels on an experience with a psycho coworker, and killed off a nasty boss from a different job in the same novel when I ran out of material. It was very cathartic. My only problem with the psycho character was that I tried so hard to make her well-rounded that she altered significantly from reality and became a sympathetic character by the end of the novel.

In general though, when people irritate me I just assume that Karma will pay them back eventually and I get on with my life.

[RedScylla]

I'm a bit of a cannibal. In my WIP I'm cannibalizing my former boss--a Reverend Doctor--and the inane, worshipful way his parishioners and my dippy co-workers acted toward him.

[DWSTXS]

In your novels, what happens to the hot chicks that you work with?
Prawn -

Well........I 'work' with them in the novel too.....heh heh heh .....and there are so many........I have to 'work' with 2 at a time............DWS

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

You had me at "abnormally large rectal growths." Please for the love of all that's holy, let us know when this is published.

well......that's nothing.......wait until you see the 'cure' I prescribe for them!
DWS

[rhymegirl]

Do YOU put 'real-life' people into your stories, where you have your way with them, and get your 'revenge' upon them?

I know I do...........and it makes the writing all that more fun.

Yes. Sort of.

[GeorgieB]

Yes, indeed. I have one major pain-in-the-ass who appears as the major antagonist in one of my stories. His personality fit the part perfectly and I had no problem fitting him in...in fact, he's the reason for the story.

I worked for 35+ years as a computer application engineer, and in that time was never fired or laid-off or downsized...the job I did was fairly important. However, I did change companies once, exactly once, and that was because I worked for the character described above.

He was absolutely clueless about the employee/employer relationship. When he first arrived at the company I worked for and took over the job of VP of Sales/Marketing, he announced that at his previous company he had the joy of closing the doors and firing everybody. It went downhill from there.

Yes, he's in the story, a perfect villian. I did not kill him off, but he was the deserving victim of a vicious, high-visibility divorce, hitting right where it would hurt the most...his public face. Very satisfying ending to the story.

[Twizzle]

I stuck my mother-in-law in mine, momzilla the heinous. my mc, they end up having to spend the night (with this crazy friend in tow) at the future in-laws so her fiance can break it to them she's now, you know, going to be part of the family. momzilla doesn't take it well. so the mc and the crazy friend sneak out of their rooms in the middle of the night and rip all the damn plastic off her furniture and the three hightail it in the morn before momzilla finds out.

it felt SO good writing that. I don't have the guts in real life, but ohhhhhh how I'd love to rip the gawddamn plastic off her stupid snowwhite sofa.

[Gina M]

[QUOTE=Twizzle;2020189]I stuck my mother-in-law in mine, momzilla the heinous.



Ha ha. I'm lucky, I haven't talked to my monster in law for 8 years, neither has my hubby. She phoned last week and we both looked at the call display and then each other trying to force the other to answer the phone. She eventually left a voice mail and I dialed it up and quickly erased it as soon as I heard her whiny, nasal voice. I guess someone died and she felt compelled to tell us - brother in law filled us in later as he didn't check his call display first, snicker,snicker.



I have relatives by marriage that leave the plastic on all their furniture AND they live in their basement so their sweaty skin doesn't permeate through the plastic covered furniture upstairs.

Can't you tell I love my married into family?

Gina

[LilliCray]

I don't consciously put people I hate into my novels... although those whiny brats from social studies may be an exception... ;)

The only way I've noticed that real life people have affected my characters is that I can't seem to write a responsible and/or hard-working father realistically to save my life. Write what you know, anyone?

[Twizzle]

[quote=Twizzle;2020189]I stuck my mother-in-law in mine, momzilla the heinous.



Ha ha. I'm lucky, I haven't talked to my monster in law for 8 years, neither has my hubby. She phoned last week and we both looked at the call display and then each other trying to force the other to answer the phone. She eventually left a voice mail and I dialed it up and quickly erased it as soon as I heard her whiny, nasal voice. I guess someone died and she felt compelled to tell us - brother in law filled us in later as he didn't check his call display first, snicker,snicker.



I have relatives by marriage that leave the plastic on all their furniture AND they live in their basement so their sweaty skin doesn't permeate through the plastic covered furniture upstairs.

Can't you tell I love my married into family?

Gina

AHHHHH!!! You ARE one of my peeps!!! :Hug2:It's been like 2 yrs since I've had to talk to mine...and what a wonderful two years it has been...

And it's not just the furniture. What drives me nuts is her entire house is white. White. Everything. Furniture. Tile. Rugs. Appliances. Everything. And she covers it all with plastic. Seriously, it's so bizarre. And then she took a back room and set a tv and chair in there, and my father-in-law is only allowed to use that room. I look at Hubby and am like you so have to be adopted.

It makes for great material, however. And no one ever suspects you're stealing from real life. People read it and go, no one could be that nutty...hah.