On Writing: Blog #3 — Inspiration
Characters and Angry Moms
“Shame on you. How dare you write a book about my daughter?!”
“I didn’t.”
Last week’s blog was about getting inspiration from real experiences. The North Face jacket guy who asked for “Walter” and my real-life teaching friends who drove with me to the Ukrainian border now serve as the starting points for characters in my screenplay-in-progress. Yes, they are the inspiration only — the launch pads for the fictional characters who will become invented along the way.
I realized this about writing fictional characters in 2011 when I was murdered by an editor (that is, metaphorical death by a professional editor’s brutal honesty — which I’ll elaborate on in a future blog about ‘getting feedback’).
Another writing lesson I learned back in 2019 is that nobody can tell you what, or who, inspired you to write a story or character. This seems obvious, but in our current age of increased disinformation, gaslighting, and outright lying, I think it’s worth sharing.
In 2018, I published a young adult novel called The Unusual Suspects. The following year (I’m not sure how), I wrote the sequel, Nia and the Dealer. The story follows a girl named Nia, a Bulgarian-American student who ditches her international school in Sofia to escape her neglectful parents and seek revenge on her boyfriend. She’s a fictional character, but her inspiration was a composite of real people.
In general, Nia is a smart girl, mature for her age, and light-years ahead of her male teenage peers. Teaching at my current private school in Bulgaria, I’ve worked with many bi-cultural or bi-national students; many come from wealthy families, like Nia. Having taught mainly in public schools in Southern California, I was used to students who didn’t come from privileged backgrounds. In most cases, my American students qualified for free or reduced lunch, meaning their families were much closer to the poverty line than the valet line. So when I began teaching at this private school, I assumed — wrongly — that these kids might not have any problems. I quickly learned otherwise.
One of those issues? Parental neglect. Did I know details about it? Not really. I just overheard comments from students or staff that suggested it. That became a foundation for Nia, a composite of many teenage students over the years. Then, an 8th-grade girl on a field trip told me — unsolicited, by the way — that she was flying to London to meet her boyfriend the next week and would miss a few days of school. What?! You’re going where? To meet who? You’re in 8th grade? It didn’t make sense, but I refrained from asking questions. The next week, she showed up to class every single day, sullen and withdrawn. What happened to the jet-set trip? The boyfriend? Of course, I didn’t ask — but that moment eventually wove itself into Nia’s story.
Another crucial piece of Nia’s motivation came from a different 8th-grade girl (I’ll call her Sarah) who ditched school one day. She left a note for her parents saying she was stressed and needed a break, but they didn’t see it. When the school reported her absence at 9 a.m., her parents panicked. They’d seen her leave for school at 8 a.m.! She was quickly presumed kidnapped, and by 10 a.m., the FBI got involved because one of her parents worked at the embassy. Sarah’s missing-person moment got my imagination going — what if an 8th grader didn’t just want to ditch school, but to escape the country and get back at a boyfriend who’d abruptly dumped her?
Why am I sharing all this?
Because it’s a glimpse into the creative writing process.
Because in 2019, I found myself explaining this all to a very angry parent at my school who was convinced that I had based The Unusual Suspects’ protagonist, Nia, on her daughter — who, coincidentally, was Bulgarian-American and also named Nia. Where do you begin when accused of something so patently incorrect, yet so impossible to disprove because it’s all in your head?
First, I told the mother that I’ve had many students named Nia (I counted at least 8) — it’s a fairly popular Bulgarian name. And that my protagonist was bi-cultural because I, and many of my students, are bi-cultural. Then I asked, “How could I possibly know so many details about your daughter if she’s never shared a single personal experience with me?” When the mother remained unconvinced, seemingly high on her own self-assuredness, I explained my entire writing process.
Still, she refused to accept it. She preferred her self-centered, daughter-centered version. Our inane argument ended like this:
“Shame on you. How dare you write a book about my daughter?!”
“I didn’t.”
Is there a lesson here? Maybe that fiction isn’t just about making things up — it’s about revealing deeper truths. Maybe I should take it as a strange compliment that this mother believed I had captured something real. After all, a story isn’t a mirror; it’s a lens — interpreting the world and painting characters in ways that connect deeply to our own experiences. That’s the connection I seek every time I open a novel. And that’s why we need to keep reading good fiction — because it helps us make sense of the beautiful, ugly, and absurd reality we live in.