From a True Story . . .

I did a podcast this week, and the host asked if I’d ever based a character on a real person. I said, “No,” because it’s too limiting, doing that doesn’t let a character breathe on its own. It didn’t occur to me until later that I have stolen dialogue from real life, three times (that I remember). I’ve also stolen T-shirt slogans, but I don’t think that counts. (My fave: “Jesus Is Coming. Look Busy.”) But spoken dialogue? Only three times.

The first time was long ago when I was working on my MFA thesis, on a short story called “I Am At My Sister’s Wedding.” I took a break and ran to the local Kroger’s for something and ran into my next door neighbor who was buying a wedding cake for her daughter. When I admired it, she said,

“Well, she’ll only get married for the first time once.”

That may be my favorite sentence of all time. I almost ran over her to go back home and put that in the story because it was absolutely perfect for the mother in there, especially since the sister in question got married four times in the course of the story. I love dialogue like that, a throwaway line that works on about forty different levels, that has a huge well of meaning underneath it.

The second time, I was at a writer’s conference in South Carolina, having breakfast at a Denny’s next to a family with several kids. There was lull in general noise level and I heard the mother say,

“Justin, I told you, we do not hit family.”

That’s another one that when you start to unpack it, you get an entire novel. I can’t remember if I ever used that one, but I must have, it’s too good not to.

The third one I just used yesterday, from something on Facebook two months ago. I’d posted something and two men answered, two of my favorite people so I forgive them for being smartasses, but I also forgive them because I used the dialogue.

Here’s the FB post and comments:

I couldn’t help it, I laughed when I read that, and again there was so much underneath that spoke to the relationship the three of us have, my collaborator and me, my much-loved cousin and me, and the two guys who know each other and know me and so they can go out skating on thin ice together. The jerks.

But I forgive them because I got this (Rose’s PoV):

“You can tell me now,” I said, biting back my temper. I’d had about enough of men being men. “What’s going on?”

“Relax,” Max said. “We’ve got this.” He noticed Luke wincing by the door which is probably why he didn’t see I was about to rip his face off. “What?” he said to Luke.

“Now tell her to calm down,” Luke said. “Chicks love that.”

I do not use real people as inspiration for characters (although Beelzebub in The Devil in Nita Dodd sometimes sounds like Trump, as in “I have a very large brain”), but I will steal what you say to me right out from under you. You have been warned.