Your Memories vs. Reality

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Yes, this is AH material as it can affect how we define characters.

You recall a person you haven't see in a very, very long time. You may have only seen them a half dozen times, but for whatever reasons, they etched a place in your mind. You find out the person has died years ago. You have no pictures and there are none anywhere that you can find.

Does your mind paint a fairly accurate picture of them? Or is it idealized?

Would your description of them as a character in a story be even close?

 

[sister jenny]

It would be close in the sense that it would be one version of that person. And that version would be correct from that perspective.

Just like if 5 of my friends each wrote a story about me today, you would get 5 different versions of me. All probably correct in their own way.

Idealized? Big chance, or the opposite depending on your relationship when the person died.
But with people there is no absolute truth and writers always just writes the truth as they know it or interpret it.

Anyway, fuck that was a boring answer.
Sorry.

 

[Stanfield2025]

I wrote a fanfic OC character based off a woman I knew for one day, and I've always wondered just how accurately I portrayed her. Probably not at all, but her mannerisms did lend themselves to a great character.

 

[NuclearFairy]

There was a guy I had a crush on in the eighth grade, even at the time I knew my crush wasn't on who he actually was, because I was just attracted to his quietness, and his confidence with being big and quiet. I don't know him, but, I still very clearly remember that quiet strength, and yes I have based a character upon those qualities.

But, I'm not sure if this answers your question.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Does your mind paint a fairly accurate picture of them? Or is it idealized?
Would your description of them as a character in a story be even close?

Well of course they are idealized. This is erotica, where everything is made up and the points don’t matter.
The MFC in MILF Cruise: Upgraded was based upon a beautiful older woman I worked with years ago at Honeywell. She was smart, fun and sexy, but that's where she and my character diverge. My physical description of her would be general. near six feet tall, blonde, blue eyed and big boned, of Scandinavian stock. Uncommonly beautiful with more curves than a country road. That's as close as I need to get because the readers imagination fills in the rest and rightly so.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Does your mind paint a fairly accurate picture of them? Or is it idealized?

Would your description of them as a character in a story be even close?

I'm going through this right now. A couple of nights ago I dreamed of someone I knew back in university days, decades ago. I then remembered someone else from the same era, and a story start leapt into my mind. All I have is my memories of them both, no photos. It'll be interesting to see how I depict them visually - they will be co-opted for erotica, so the characters won't be the same: lost opportunities.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Memories are inherently leaky and prone to jiggery-pokery. Every time you remember something, you open it up to being edited. They aren't solid things, they're quite malleable and even the act of remembering can cause alterations. So the odds that you remember details as they happened are exceedingly rare, and more so the longer it is, and the more times you think about it, you accrue damage to the fidelity of the memory. Whether that's for good or ill, idealized or nightmarized, odds are that the memory will drift from the reality. How much depends on a lot of facotrs, not least of which is the strength of an individual's memory.

So if I'm remembering Mindy from high school, or Dominick, or anyone else I may have had a crush on, or interacted with, or hated, or loved, odds are that my mental picture of them is probably not all that close (not least of which is because I'm borderline aphantastic, so all my "mental images" of those people are abstractions, not photographic). I do remember how a lot of them treated me though, and I would be surprised if that was far off from reality. Whether or not they remember it the same way is a different story, but a lot of those interactions left pretty big marks on my psyche, and those tend to be pretty stable due to perseveration, although I'm sure those have accrued errors as well.

So, I'd be pretty surprised if someone's character representation of someone they knew decades ago was incredibly accurate. There are, of course, some details that are likely to be right, but there are probably at least as many that are likely to be wrong, if not more, and it's a rare person indeed who remembers things mostly as they occurred.

 

[sirhugs]

Yes, this is AH material as it can affect how we define characters.

You recall a person you haven't see in a very, very long time. You may have only seen them a half dozen times, but for whatever reasons, they etched a place in your mind. You find out the person has died years ago. You have no pictures and there are none anywhere that you can find.

Does your mind paint a fairly accurate picture of them? Or is it idealized?

Would your description of them as a character in a story be even close?

Accuracy is in the eye of the beholder.
Characters in stories are always fictionalized to fit the needs of the narrative, or just to protect their anonymity.
Sometimes they are composites, mosaics of the attributes, quirks and warts of many.oddly, my two truest loves have never informed any of my characters. Yet my ex-wife is the star of my earlest efforts. what does THAT tell us?

 

[sirhugs]

It would be close in the sense that it would be one version of that person. And that version would be correct from that perspective.

Just like if 5 of my friends each wrote a story about me today, you would get 5 different versions of me. All probably correct in their own way.

Idealized? Big chance, or the opposite depending on your relationship when the person died.
But with people there is no absolute truth and writers always just writes the truth as they know it or interpret it.

Anyway, fuck that was a boring answer.
Sorry.

Reality is Perception
Perception is Reality

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Thank God for yearbooks.

They make the visualization easier for remembering what someone looked like, but other than possibly an interpretation of what they wrote in the pages of the yearbook, or what activities they might have been involved in, they won't provide much on their mannerisms or personalities in general.

I am currently working on a retrospective of a guy's life, chronicling his loves over that time. I am using former girls and women I have known to develop his love interests, so it is somewhat autobiographical.

My recollections of how they looked are easy to write because of the yearbooks. The behaviors of some are based upon my memories of them, but with others, these aren't as clear, and everything is left to my imagination.

Whether I recall much about them or not, the characters based off of them will all be embellished for literary purposes.

 

[SkyBubble]

Some of my female characters (I'll leave you to figure out which ones) are based on women I knew. Some of them are pretty accurate.

 

[sirhugs]

Some of my female characters (I'll leave you to figure out which ones) are based on women I knew. Some of them are pretty accurate.

As long as they never ever read your stories, you should be fine...
and if they read your stories, that might even be better.