Dear Reader,
First, I'd like to apologize for my lack of posting. I have been unwell and it has everything topsy-turvy. I'm trying to get back into the swing of things but it is proving difficult. Which, in a round-about way brings me to the subject line of this post and the main theme. As authors and artists, we are told to work with what we know. At the same time, we are cautioned not to let our 'real' lives bleed into our work unless we are writing an autobiography or a memoir.
To use a bit of strong language, that second bit of advice is bullshit. Now, I'm not saying that you name names or doxx the person who bullied you relentlessly in eighth grade. But you can take their character traits, their personality traits, and the various qualities that made them who you knew them to be and use that to create a villain that you can avenge yourself by proxy upon that old bully. Your experiences are your own to do with as you please. If people don't like it, they should have treated you better. Especially when you are writing a memoir or an autobiography. That's where the kid gloves come off and you lay bare all the ugly facts and unburden yourself of horrors that you have lived through.
Turning an old nemesis into a fictional villain can be a cathartic experience. Nearly every villain that's died in my books have had some elements of people who've done evil things to me in them. A few are full on reproductions of the person, but you would have to exactly who I was describing down to the intimate details that I am aware of about them to have a hope of identifying them.
Sometimes there are people who will actually threaten to sue you for defamation after they learn you are a writer and they've done you wrong. All it takes is some strategic fictionalization of qualities and exaggeration of other qualities for those people to be unable to have a legal foothold in such a lawsuit. Remember, always note that your characters are 'incidental' in their resemblance of real people, living or dead.
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