Characters and Events in Infused

One thing that you often hear being given as advice from authors is “Write about what you know.” I obviously don’t know about receiving super powers, as most other authors of fiction haven’t experienced exactly what they are writing about, but characteristics and other details come across much more believably  when the author actually knows something about them.

As an example, in the beginning of Infused, Geoff is very skinny. This came from my own experience; I was extremely skinny as a child, and I, like Geoff, would sink to the bottom of a pool if I was not constantly moving. However, unlike Geoff, by the time that I was in college I had put on some muscle and I was not quite as sinkable.

Although I gave my characters some characteristics that I was familiar with, none of the characters were actually based on real people that I knew. However, when I was writing about some of the celebrities in the book, I would sometimes have real life celebrities in mind.

Some of the events in the book were also inspired by actual events. An example would be when Kevin told Geoff about the dorm mate that had his nose injured by a drunken student. In real life, I was the one that took the dorm mate to the hospital to have his nose attended to.

These details help to give the story authenticity, and if someone were to come up to me and tell me that some of the non-power related events are too farfetched, I would probably be able to relate a true life experience to sway their opinion.