Fictional Characters Inspired by Real-Life People

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Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks (left) and bandmate Lindsey Buckingham in the official video for the Nicks-written 1977 song “Dreams.” (Screenshot by me.)

Fiction is of course not always totally fiction. One example of that is when authors create characters inspired by real-life people, even if those fictional characters are often different in significant ways. 

This approach can certainly be compelling for readers as they look for the similarities and differences between the created people and the actual people – and wait to see where authors take these hybrid humans. Also, authors are helped by having a factual template for creating fictional characters.

Taylor Jenkins Reid (above) took that approach in her 2019 novel Daisy Jones & The Six, which I read last week, about a fictional mega-popular 1970s band inspired by the real-life Fleetwood Mac. Daisy has some similarities to Stevie Nicks, an FM singer-songwriter, while Six member Billy Dunne has aspects of Lindsey Buckingham, another FM singer-songwriter as well as the band’s guitarist.

But there are differences. For instance, Nicks and Buckingham were real-life romantic partners before their breakup, while Daisy and Billy’s relationship has a different dynamic. Also, Daisy and Billy co-write a number of songs amid their love-hate feelings for each other, while Nicks and Buckingham each mostly composed their songs solo.

Another Six member is keyboardist Karen Sirko, loosely based on late Fleetwood Mac keyboardist/singer/songwriter Christine McVie. But, again, various differences between the two. 

A much different novel, All the King’s Men (1946) by Robert Penn Warren, stars a charismatic populist governor — Willie Stark – who begins as an idealist but ends up corrupt. Stark was clearly inspired by real-life Louisiana politician Huey Long.

F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s 1925 classic The Great Gatsby includes several characters modeled on real-life people. Daisy Buchanan was inspired by socialite/heiress Ginevra King – a longtime romantic obsession of the author. And fictional Daisy’s fictional golfer friend Jordan Baker was based on Ginevra’s golfer friend Edith Cummings.

Three years later, Aldous Huxley’s 1928 novel Point Counter Point included the character of Mark Rampion as a D.H. Lawrence type.

In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Atticus Finch was inspired by the author’s attorney father Amasa Lee. And the young Scout Finch’s friend Dill Harris was based on Harper Lee’s childhood pal Truman Capote, the future author.

Looking to real-life people for novelistic inspiration of course predates 1900.

The title character in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula was partly inspired by 15th-century Romanian prince Vlad the Impaler.

In Mary Shelley’s 1826 novel The Last Man, there are characters based on Percy Bysshe Shelley (the author’s late husband by that time) and Lord Byron.

Of course, authors often create characters who are like themselves – as was the semi-autobiographical case with the aforementioned Scout Finch (Harper Lee as a kid), The Last Man’s Lionel Verney (Mary Shelley gender-switched), My Antonia’s Jim Burden (Willa Cather also gender-switched), The Mill on the Floss’ Maggie Tulliver (based on George Eliot), Little Women’s Jo March (based on Louisa May Alcott), David Copperfield‘s title character (whose name flips Charles Dickens’ initials), Martin Eden‘s title character (whose initials spell “me” for author Jack London), etc.

Comments about, and examples of, this theme?

Misty the cat says: “Two more foundations and we’ll have Isaac Asimov’s ‘Foundation Trilogy.'”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece – about my town’s welcome pulling of $91.1 million from a bank supporting cruel privately run immigrant detention centers — is here.

26 thoughts on “Fictional Characters Inspired by Real-Life People”

  1. Dave, these are very cool insights, I was always wondering about The Great Gatsby’s characters because they never felt believable enough. I read reread the story to find a deeper message but it was probably a good reflection of the people and the time.
    Another one I am always curious about is Lord Byron, I was taken by his writing as early as middle school. Still looking for a good biography/ documentary on this controversial character.

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  2. I remember that Dorian Gray was based on a real person (I had to look up the name) John Gray who was known well by Oscar Wilde. The book was published while John Gray was still alive, and he didn’t appreciate the connection. Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five was partially based on his experience during WWII.

    I weave characteristics of real people into my characters — it’s hard not to — but I try not to bring the characters close to the person. A person I know in town told me that one of my young character’s life “could be me.” I wrote the book before I knew this man, but some of the things he describes are a very good fit.

    This is an interesting topic, Dave.

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    • Thank you, Dan! I didn’t know that Dorian Gray wasn’t a totally fictional creation! I can understand why John Gray was annoyed. 🙂 Reminds me of how Emile Zola partly based the unappealing artist in “The Masterpiece” on his painter pal Paul Cezanne, ending that friendship.

      Yes, “Slaughterhousehouse-Five” was semi-autobiographical.

      Re your second paragraph, sounds like you have the right philosophy for your books when it comes to at least somewhat drawing on people you know.

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  3. I never knew that Dill was based on Truman Capote; interesting, Dave. As to others, the big brother Edison of Lionel Shriver’s ‘Big Brother’ was based on the author’s own big brother. Elsewhere, the activities of James Wormold, the protagonist of Graham Greene’s ‘Our Man in Havana’ were based on those of World War II double agent Juan Pujol García; to quote from the internet: ‘the premise of inventing a vast network of fictional sub-agents is taken directly from García. During WWII, García worked as a double agent for British intelligence (MI5) by feeding disinformation to Nazi Germany. To fool the Germans, he invented a wildly elaborate, completely fictitious network of twenty-seven spies across the UK and fed them fake reports that eventually helped successfully deceive Hitler about the timing of the Normandy D-Day landings.’ Elsewhere, Robinson Crusoe was based on Alexander Selkirk, a Scot who was stranded on a desert island for four years, and Turgenev often used facets of his mistress Pauline Viardot in characters. And Marguerite Gautier, of ‘La Dame aux Camélias’, was directly based by Dumas fils on Marie Duplessis, the tragic courtesan with whom he had a brief affair. I think that’ll do! Thanks for a great topic as usual, Dave. 🙂

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    • Thank you, Maggie! For whatever reason, I was aware of the Fleetwood Mac/”Daisy Jones & The Six” connection before I read the book, but didn’t know about a couple of the other connections I mentioned until I researched the post. 🙂

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  5. The Apes of God (1930) (I have the Black Sparrow press edition) is a dazzling, satirical roman à clef by the Vorticist painter, and prolific writer, Percy Wyndham Lewis. The Bloomsbury Group and the Sitwell family are among the targets. I hope this link to a Yale University appraisal works in this comment. https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&rct=j&url=https://campuspress.yale.edu/modernismlab/the-apes-of-god/&ved=2ahUKEwiQ5bG8sN-VAxXOhv0HHfRPCtkQ_r4PeggIAggBCCsQLw&opi=89978449&cd&psig=AOvVaw3WUxEiM7zRy5HdAXYEImFk&ust=1784572423689000.

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    • Thank you, Dingenom! Your comment ended up in spam, but I moved it out. 🙂 (It happens sometimes with comments with links. 😦 ) I was able to read the link — very interesting! “The Apes of God” sounds like quite a book.

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  7. Dave, another excellent topic that had me put on my “thinking cap”!!! I think that every writer is, in a sense, writing about humanity through the people they have encountered. Even those who write letters or keep journals are influenced by the lives that intersect with their own. Those relationships become the seeds from which stories grow. Perhaps that’s why great literature endures. We recognize not only the characters, but ourselves within them.

    Shakespeare was a master of this. Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Richard III, and so many of his plays were inspired by real people, yet he transformed history into something far greater than biography. He wasn’t simply recording events; he was exploring ambition, love, jealousy, courage, betrayal, and the whole range of human experience. And as he wrote so eloquently:

    We are such stuff
    As dreams are made on, and our little life
    Is rounded with a sleep.”
    The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1

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    • Thank you, Rebecca! You make an excellent point that authors rely on people they know or have encountered for at least subconscious fodder for characters they create.

      And, yes, writers often take real famous people and partly fictionalize them — sometimes in brilliant ways, as did Shakespeare — while grappling with/commenting on emotions and events.

      Classic words from “The Tempest”!

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  8. Excellent analysis, Dave! You’ve perfectly captured how the fusion of reality and fiction is so captivating for the reader.

    Italian literature also uses real people, historical figures, and the authors themselves as models for characters. For example, the character of Elena Muti in Gabriele D’Annunzio’s Il Piacere (The Child of Pleasure) is inspired by Elena Barbara Leoni, D’Annunzio’s lover and obsession at the time in real life.

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