Stranger Than Fiction: What If My Characters Weren’t Characters at All!?!

There’s this movie with Will Ferrell called Stranger Than Fiction.

I’d say it’s really good for a Will Ferrell movie except that it’s really good for any movie.

Plot, characters, acting, opportunities for introspection: This film has it all. And it’s original too! As far as I know, anyway.

The storyline follows Harold Crick, a thirty-something IRS agent who leads the most monotonous life ever until he’s assigned to Ana Pascal, a bakery-store owner who’s intentionally not filed her taxes properly for years. Naturally, the unlikely pair falls in love, but that’s not why Stranger Than Fiction is so brilliant.

It’s brilliant because of the backstory, which follows Karen Eiffel, a famous novelist who always kills her main characters off at the end of her books. And this time around, her main character is Harold Crick. Only she doesn’t know she’s writing about a real live person.

I own the movie. It’s good enough to watch repeatedly. But it always makes me wonder…

What if my characters were real?

When Karen Eiffel learns that she’s been essentially murdering real people – that she’s a serial killer – she’s horrified. As well she should be. And while I don’t normally kill off the good guys (if she was reading this, my darling mother would point out – with a disapproving air – the three exceptions to that rule), I do a lot of other horrid things to them.

I mean, in the Faerietales series, Sabrina gets terrorized mentally, emotionally, physically, psychologically… and by multiple characters. If some poor young woman was really chained to an evil shrink’s couch being questioned at the end of an electric baton because I dictated it?

Than, pretty much, I’m a horrible human being.

The same applies to Kayla in the Dirty Politics series. Evans brought some of the torture on himself, but I still gave him a rotten backstory to explain why he went rogue. (I’m so sorry, Sarah!) And I’ll even admit I’d feel bad for putting Rod through what I did. It’s amusing if he’s just fictional; not so much if he was an actual human being.

When it comes to my historical and Christian fiction stories, I did some serious research for those two. They’re based off of too much verifiable documentation for me to blame my imagination.

But as for my fantasy and political thrillers? Well, I would like to take this moment to express my most sincere hope that reality really isn’t stranger than fiction.

Did I Bash Real Politicians in “The Politician’s Pawn?” You Bet I Did!

I stated before that no nurses were harmed in the making of this book.

I can’t say the same thing about politicians. I never wanted to.

I now remember that I started writing “The Politican’s Pawn” after the 2012 presidential elections, when I was disgusted with everyone in D.C.: Democrats, Republicans, wishy-washy in-betweeners… Everyone. So as soon as I figured out my manuscript-in-the-making was going to be a political thriller, I started choosing real-life politicians to throw under the creative bus, as it were.

And gosh, but is there a wide pool of un-American egomaniacs in Congress to choose from.

Throughout the series, I pick on very real public figures, starting with the barely fictional Senator Aaron Greyble, Kayla’s kidnapper. While his name is changed to protect the innocent (me) from getting sued or something – and while the actual politician in question never ordered anyone abducted and killed (to my knowledge at least) – I stared at pictures of the real sleazebag when I was describing the fake one in my book.

Even so, I doubt anyone would know him. He’s on the obscure side Congressionally speaking.

Not so much with some of the other jerks I mention, both Republican and Democrat. One in particular is so blatantly obvious that I doubt anyone wouldn’t know her.

And if any of my readers have a good opinion of said person…? Well, I’m not going to apologize. She’s horrid. Besides, I trash her direct counterpart/opposition in Book 3.

He irritates me too.

Here’s the thing… These stories are anti-socialist, anti-crony capitalist and anti-establishment. But that’s truly about the end of their political preaching, as far as I intended at least. Despite my deep-seated disdain for almost all of D.C., I didn’t want to offend any reasonable constituents outside of it… including a dear friend of mine who has stated before that she’s a socialist.

She loved the books, by the way, even asking me to write a fourth one.

(Which isn’t happening. Just for the record.)

So with that all said, I sincerely hope I didn’t offend my readers with “The Politician’s Pawn” or its two sequels. Except, of course, if one of my readers served as inspiration for this series.

In which case, consider this payback. We’re not even close to being even.