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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/34397
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

My experience is that "real people" don't make good characters in their _original_ form. Many of my fictitious characters are idealized versions of real ones. They are decidedly better than their originals, and that's what makes them "relatable."

In one of my fictitious works, the heroine insults a teenaged boy that the hero has befriended. Then she realizes her mistake, turns around and apologizes, wins back the hero, and gets the story back on track. This scene was [suggested by a true story](https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/28191/is-a-dramatization-of-a-true-story-classified-as-fiction-or-nonfiction/28202#28202) in which the real-life protagonist "doubled down" on her insults, and the real life version came to a grinding halt.

And while even the fictitious character's behavior may leave something to be desired, the story gave her an "excuse" (a medical reason) for it. The whole point of the medical reason was to create sympathy for the character; that is, if she's just out of a hospital, maybe she should be cut some slack for her words and actions.

You can even make fictitious characters _worse_ than their originals, if that makes them "outstanding." What you don't want in a story is mediocre characters that don't rise to the occasion, which is what (original) real life characters too often are.

Original score: 3