The question whether fictional characters are a result of actual lived experience of the author is not one that can always be answered with any sense of finality. Yet some of the most living characters must have some link with actual people; direct or not. The character that seems genuine or real must be a part of the author’s real experience. Real experience may be divided into two possibilities: (a) that which is pure in the sense that it has not been fused with imaginational additions and (b) one that that has been enriched by the imagination. Both these categories of experience will give birth to characters that are connected with the author in some way, however remote.

There has been much talk of the death of the author in recent times. This relates to impersonality which is the hallmark of the best literary writing. Or, alternatively, it is an approach which chooses to ignore the presence of the author in a text. My contention is that in the case of characters that have been created merely to further the plot, or act as functional beings in the general scheme of a novel, total impersonality can be likely. But where the character created is a result of genuine experience, a slice of life that an author has come to terms with, the character cannot be entirely severed from the creating author. The author has felt the presence of someone in life deeply, whether a positive presence or a negative he has assimilated the presence into his consciousness. When writing of such a presence the author may wish to put to death his very subjective responses to such a presence; or he may want to show his subjective responses in a Dickensian manner. Any author worth his salt will want to objectify the persona he has experienced and will do away with the wholly subjective aspects in the portrayal. This means that what an author will do is to blend his personal impulses with what is generally considered to be true , or what the author’s insight informs him as generally true . After this amalgamation of the personal with the impersonal a character will take shape. The character cannot be freed entirely of the author just as a child can never sever links with its mother after birth. The most effective, living and convincing characters in fiction are an amalgamation of the highest personality with the highest impersonality.