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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.

First-Class Males in Fiction

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Elijah Wood as Frodo and Sean Astin as Sam in The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy (2001, 2002, 2003).

Last week, I wrote about fictional female characters who are brave, strong-willed, etc. This week, I’ll do the same for fictional male characters – whether their courage is physical, mental, and/or moral.

One such inspiring guy is Sydney Carton of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. In that 1859 novel, Carton is a less-than-admirable man who wants to do better – which moves him to make an almost unfathomably heroic sacrifice during the French Revolution.

Ten years later, R.D. Blackmore’s 1869 novel Lorna Doone co-starred John Ridd, who does all kinds of courageous things after falling in love with the title character. Romance can be an incentive that way. 🙂

Staying with 19th-century literature, Walter Scott’s Rob Roy (1817) features a title character partly based on real-life outlaw Rob Roy MacGregor – who has been called “the Scottish Robin Hood.”

Moving to the 20th century, we of course have various heroic males in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy (1954-1955) – including the hobbits Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee. Impressive when physically small-of-stature beings are valiant against larger foes.

A lesser-known novel is Louis L’Amour’s Last of the Breed (1986) starring Native-American military pilot Joe Mack as he makes a daring on-foot escape from capture in the vast Siberian wilderness.  

A much-better-known novel is Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), in which Alabama attorney Atticus Finch bravely defends an innocent Black man in the racist 1930s American South.

Moving to 21st-century fiction, African-American attorney Malcolm Bannister is incredibly clever and resourceful after being wrongly charged and jailed in John Grisham’s 2012 novel The Racketeer.

Count Alexander Rostov of Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) is stoic and quietly courageous while serving a lifetime sentence of house arrest in a hotel.

Private investigator Cormoran Strike of J.K. Rowling’s series of eight (so far) crime novels published between 2013 and 2025 is far from timid as he pursues wrongdoers while dealing with the painful partial loss of a leg from when he was deployed in Afghanistan. 

Straddling the 20th and 21st centuries:

Walter Mosley’s private investigator Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, star of the ongoing series that began with Devil in a Blue Dress in 1990, is quite gutsy in a low-key way. 

Lee Child’s roving Jack Reacher character, who was first introduced to readers in 1997, is fearless as he deals with various bad guys in 30 (and counting) novels.

Your thoughts about, and examples of, this theme?

In our dimly lit garage, Misty the cat says: “Here’s where Joseph Conrad wrote ‘Heart of Darkness.'”

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 high housing costs, the end of free tuition, and a failed candidacy — is here.

Moving from Incompetent to Competent Characters

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Sue Grafton

Last week, I wrote about incompetent characters in literature. So, naturally I’ll write this week about…Valentine’s Day yesterday. Oops, just kidding; I’m going to discuss competent characters in literature.

That can mean smart people, handy people, socially adept people, etc. They might be skilled in many areas, or skilled in some ways and not in others.

Obviously, detectives are among the protagonists who come to mind, although many of them are more competent in their work than in their personal lives. For instance, Sherlock Holmes is a brilliant sleuth with loner and eccentric traits in Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels and stories. Val McDermid’s Karen Pirie is also highly intelligent and driven in her cold-case work while not being as successful in off-duty life. Sue Grafton’s self-deprecating Kinsey Millhone is a brainy, brave, dogged, and witty private investigator who had two failed marriages, eats too much junk food, etc.

I’m currently working my way through — and loving — the Millhone-starring “alphabet mysteries” (now reading M is for Malice).

Other memorably competent characters? Hermione Granger is as book-smart as they come, and also has plenty of common sense in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Those books’ wizards — including Albus Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall — are obviously quite capable, too, as is another wizard: Gandalf in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

In Stieg Larsson’s trilogy that starts with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, abuse survivor Lisbeth Salander is a determined genius with computers.

Preteen-then-teen Francie Nolan is wise beyond her years — both academically and as a navigator of difficult family dynamics — in Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

When one thinks of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre character, competent is one of the first adjectives that comes to mind. Whatever she does — whether being a governess, a teacher, or generally maneuvering through the difficulties of her oft-challenging life — she does well.

Also quite skilled — and with a strong sense of morality — is attorney Atticus Finch of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

Another classic, Willa Cather’s My Antonia, features a title character (Antonia Shimerda) who’s a very competent farm spouse and parent.

In the sci-fi area, we have protagonists like Mark Watney, who has to be unusually clever and innovative to survive when stranded on Mars in Andy Weir’s The Martian. Twentieth-century Black woman Dana Franklin also has to be really skilled to deal with and survive involuntary time travel to and from the slave-holding American South in Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred.

Your thoughts about, and examples of, competent characters in fiction?

Misty the cat says: “This must be one of Norman Rockwell’s larger paintings.”

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 a congressional candidate’s welcome win and various weird maps — is here.

A Semi-Comprehensive Look at Semi-Autobiographical Novels

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In early 2016, I wrote about semi-autobiographical novels. Now that nearly 10 years have passed, I suppose it would be semi-okay to write about those books again — mentioning semi-autobiographical novels I’ve read since then or had read before then but didn’t mention in that previous post. So, with this semi-decent first paragraph nearly done, here goes:

As I wrote in ’16, semi-autobiographical novels “can be the best of both worlds for authors and their readers. That mix of memoir and fiction takes facts and embellishes them and/or dramatizes them and/or smooths them into more coherent form. A partly autobiographical approach also allows authors to potentially pen very heartfelt books — after all, they lived the emotions — and perhaps provides those writers with some mental therapy, too.” I also wrote that a semi-autobiographical novel is often, but of course not always, a debut novel — at least partly because that kind of book might be easier to write; the author can use aspects of her or his own past.

Back here in late 2025, I just read The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje, whose 2011 coming-of-age novel was inspired to an extent by the author’s life and a ship voyage he took as a boy from his native Sri Lanka to rejoin his mother in England after his parents had separated several years earlier. A boy named…hmm…Michael. The Cat’s Table is another compelling book by The English Patient author, who went on to live in Canada.

Another semi-autobiographical/coming-of-age novel (those two things often go together) is Betty Smith’s 1943 bestseller A Tree Grows in Brooklyn — about a brainy girl (Francie) growing up in an impoverished urban family.

Then there’s Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, who loosely based her classic 1868-69 novel on herself and her three sisters.

A few decades earlier, Mary Shelley’s apocalyptic 1826 novel The Last Man featured three principal characters based on herself, her late husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their friend and fellow writer Lord Byron.

Aldous Huxley also used famous people as models for characters in his 1928 novel Point Counter Point — including himself, Nancy Cunard, D.H. Lawrence, and Katherine Mansfield.

The characters in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) are somewhat modeled on the author’s father (attorney Atticus Finch in the novel), herself (Scout in the book) and Lee’s childhood friend Truman Capote (fictionally named Dill).

Kurt Vonnegut’s horrific World War II experiences were fuel for his sci-fi-infused 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five, and Jack Kerouac’s travel experiences provided fodder for his On the Road (1957).

Some of the semi-autobiographical novels mentioned in my 2016 post include James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle, Charles Bukowski’s Hollywood, Willa Cather’s My Antonia, Colette’s The Vagabond, Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, E.L. Doctorow’s World’s Fair, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The House of the Dead, George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Jack London’s Martin Eden, W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, Herman Melville’s Typee, L.M. Montgomery’s Emily trilogy, Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, and Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.

Your thoughts about, and examples of, this topic?

Misty the cat says: “When Christmas-tree lights reflect off the window, it’s a pane in the grass.”

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 — which contains a tale of two meetings — is here.

Fictional People Are Getting Deported, Too

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The Trump regime’s cruel deportation program has extended to fictional characters. And this program is widespread: affecting characters from the United States or other countries, characters who live in the present or lived in the past, etc. Because novels can make readers smarter and more empathetic, most of today’s Republicans feel many characters have to be removed from the pages where they live — including pages in some of my favorite literature.

I first heard about character deportations when The Grapes of Wrath‘s Tom Joad, who develops a stronger class consciousness as John Steinbeck’s book goes on, was yanked from the novel by Trump’s masked ICE agent goons. Determined to find Tom, the rest of the Joad family traveled east instead of west and ended up picking crops in New York City’s Times Square. Needless to say, not much was growing through the pavement.

ICE agents also plucked Jane Eyre from Charlotte Bronte’s novel because she’s a determined young woman too independent-minded for Trump’s taste, and doesn’t have big blonde hair like many Fox News hosts do. So, U.S. Secretary of Education/wrestling biz wacko Linda McMahon substituted for Jane as little Adele’s teacher, and Rochester instead fell in love with a Disney princess.

Of course, characters of color are most at risk of the Trump regime’s deportations, and Bigger Thomas of Richard Wright’s Native Son was no exception. Plus his attorney is a communist! With Bigger no longer around as a client, that lawyer represented Jane Eyre as she tried to return to her novel, but Jane instead got sent to Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” two centuries before that repugnant concentration-camp-like jail was built.

Clara del Valle Trueba was also deported — from The House of the Spirits. After being kicked out of Isabel Allende’s novel, the clairvoyant Clara took her knowledge of Trump’s guilt in the sickening Epstein pedophile scandal and started a blog about that. Because Clara had been in a magic-realism book, the blog levitated out of her computer screen — which puzzled WordPress customer support.

In Daniel Deronda, Daniel D. and Mirah Lapidoth and Ezra Mordecai Cohen are idealistic proto-Zionists rather than the U.S.-armed genocidal Zionists in Israel’s current leadership who are mass-murdering Palestinian civilians, so the three were deported when entering a government office to register as George Eliot characters. That left Gwendolen Harleth wandering around Eliot’s 19th-century novel, searching for a Burger King in which to have lunch.

Atticus Finch? Taken from To Kill a Mockingbird for being an attorney with integrity. This came after some Trump regime hesitation to deport Finch because author Harper Lee had the same last name as Confederate traitor Robert E. Lee, the Civil War general greatly admired by right-wingers for fighting to defend the appalling institution of slavery. But Atticus did ultimately get booted from To Kill a Mockingbird before joining Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch novel starring a painting of a bird sharing his last name.

In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, every character except the ultra-evil Lord Voldemort was deported to make the series more palatable for Republican fascists. One of the characters, Nearly Headless Nick, went on to successfully lose 10 pounds by becoming Completely Headless Nick.

But no character was spared from deportation in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things because Trump erroneously thought the title of that novel referred to his fingers and his…

Misty the cat says: “Where’s my teen human? Oh, she went away to college last weekend.”

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 Misty says 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.

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 the spending to date of money authorized by my town’s massive 2022 school bond referendum — is here.