Is this going to be too creepy?
How to say all this without much spoulers?
About 5 months ago I’ve started writing fiction again, something I haven’t done much since my twenties. The book named “Awe and Wonder Quest”, in the realm of science fiction/fantasy. My main characters revealed themselves to me when I was playing with my own photo in Artbreeder, randomly changing all the parameters (a bit weird, I know). I ended up with a man and two women. I created their names using random name generating software. For the man, I decided, looking at his smiling computer generated portrait, he will be an adrenaline junkie risking his life constantly, a freedom-freak (an opposite of a control freak, of course), a vagabond philosopher travelling enormous distances, taunted by a horrible tragedy earlier in life for which he is to blame, carrying many scars on his body and his soul. Despite all that he will have a sunny disposition, be revered by many people, and will smile easily and often. He will speak with an accent. There will be a book involved, within the book.
For the last few years I also was building, in my mind, my dream house, in style of my favourite architect, in a specific location. I happily gave that house to my character.
Two-three weeks ago my favourite architects posted a picture of their building. It was incredibly close to my dream home, even the location. That wasn’t very surprising yet, because I have probably seen the picture of it in the past. I didn’t read the story of that building then. Now I have noticed that there was a surname attached to the building, and a very similar one to my character’s surname… Oh, it is a real person. Holy cow, he is still alive and looks roughly like my character, especially he did back in the 1990s, at the right age!
Immediately following him on Instagram, watching documentaries, a movie (its soundtrack, btw, written by one of my favourite composers and fits my writing playlist perfectly), reading one of his autobiographical books. Yup, a person THIS famous I haven’t really heard about, and (ta-da) a total adrenaline junkie, a freedom-freak, often in trouble for being honest, calling himself an individualist, anti-commumist, anti-nationslist and almost an anarchist, and a bit of a vagabond philosopher, guided by his feelings and intuition, great smile, foregn accent, someone very revered by many people. A horrible personal tragedy early in life for which he is partly responsible. Hence the movie.
There are a couple of minor differences, my character looking like someone from a slightly different part of Europe, being well educated at the start of his adventures (not a farm boy, for sure) and being less shy. It is important for me, that the real person looks really timid around people all the first half of his life but not now. Just confirming that being shy is not a permanent trait. That’s definitely a good news.
In my story, there are often waves of coincidences and similarities travelling across the Multiverse, the Ripples. Well, I had a big Ripple going through my life just now… You can read my previous post here, Ripples, from just before it all happened.
So, what could be the conclusion?
- This world is just a simulation (A hint of it in that “Awe and Wonder Quest” book, too, if this ever happens). 😂
- We change the Universe when we write stories. 😂
- My unwritten story is all true, with Ripples going through our lives. 😂
- We are archetypes in even more ways than we realise.
- Even when I try to create a very different character to what I used to do (well, radiant and tragic instead of gloomy and tragic) I inevitably go back home to my own archetype (That’s a bit sad). One of our uni professors was saying “It’s not that the world is small, it is your circle that is narrow.”
- When I was at uni in the 90s, I either went to a talk (we had lots of famous people visiting), or read a book, or watched a documentary which I completely forgot. I do remember most stuff from that time, so that would be strange. And I think I remember the character, sorry, the real person mentioned at a relevant uni lecture, just as a dot on a big empty map, nothing more.
(the real person, while being that dot, actually was reading the book called “A History of Civilizations”, as I now know, and I was actually writing my first silly story at that very moment, with the main character, solemn and tragic, constantly reading “The History of the Solar System” 🙄. Creepy, I know)
- Similarly I could have gradually collected all the information about the real person on the back of my mind for years, without noticing it. That would be Weird.
- Everything is (could be) always connected to everything, we just do not notice it very often.
The question is, how do I proceed? It is so much easier to describe a fictional character, if there’s a real reference, and in future people will say I copied him anyway (even if I didn’t! Got it? 😂) so why bother hiding it? Or should I change the character a lot? But then there probably won’t be much point in writing this book, it is very character-based. Anyway, the character still might change organically, with the progress of the story.
So I better go now, I have a lot of books to read and documentaries to watch — although lots of them are in the language I do not know… Which happens to be the mother tongue of my only local friend here in Wales, and it’s not Welsh. 😜
I am also re-reading “The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah” by Richard Bach, which I’ve read in 90s and it probably was a real inspiration for the character.
Writing is really fun, anyway. Can I post this on Facebook where people actually know who I am? Or someone will call the nurse?
