{"id":20,"date":"2006-12-04T11:12:49","date_gmt":"2006-12-03T23:12:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/?p=20"},"modified":"2006-12-04T11:12:49","modified_gmt":"2006-12-03T23:12:49","slug":"purely-coincidental-similarities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/purely-coincidental-similarities\/","title":{"rendered":"Purely Coincidental Similarities"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the Silly Season about to smother my General Good Will, I’ve been proactive in sending out overdue emails to longtime friends and acquaintances. ‘Touch-bases’, ‘hi-how-are-ya’s’ and ‘long-time-no-see’s’ have been the order of the day. Mucho<\/em> time and\/or distance may have passed but these are the people that do<\/strong> reply to my emails, and the mutual exchanges of offers of visits and hosting and\/or coffee are sincere.<\/p>\n

It’s had me thinking, too: if I had a dollar for every friend I snuck into a script, I’d be twelve dollars richer; and if I had a fifty cent piece for each line of dialogue I’ve ripped off those same friends, I’d be comfortably wealthy, thank you.<\/p>\n

Friends’re good like that.<\/p>\n

When it comes to characters based on friends, by the second or third draft, the character has its own idea on what s\/he should be doing in the story. (Usually because the friend in question may not be an astronaut\/psychiatrist\/assassin by trade.) The similarities with its origin begin to blur further as traits are added and\/or subtracted at whim. That’s how it goes.<\/p>\n

As for dialogue, no one’s safe. I make sure none of it’s attributable and as long as I don’t get asked directly, I can take credit for ‘creating’ it. Damn, I’m good.<\/p>\n

Using friends and family for dialogue or characters isn’t just for some in-joke (or laziness) on my part. Their existence provides a grounding that points to some kind of Truth. It’s fun, too. And I also see it as … love letters to friends and family.<\/p>\n

I lie, cheat and steal1<\/sup><\/a> for a living – I’m a writer<\/em>. Get with it.<\/p>\n

<\/a>1<\/sup> All on paper, of course. And within reason (and libel laws).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the Silly Season about to smother my General Good Will, I’ve been proactive in sending out overdue emails to longtime friends and acquaintances. ‘Touch-bases’, ‘hi-how-are-ya’s’ and ‘long-time-no-see’s’ have been the order of the day. Mucho time and\/or distance may have passed but these are the people that do reply to my emails, and the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Purely Coincidental Similarities”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scriptwriting"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2690,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions\/2690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}