On Using Someone Else’s Characters in a Story

As a rule, I am not a huge fan of using someone else’s characters in a story. That said, rules are meant to be broken and all that. So (spoiler alert) this article is going to talk about how I’m justifying doing so. I think I’m trying to convince myself as much as I’m trying to convince you, o reader. I’m also trying to find an approach that doesn’t feel like … appropriation.

I am, for example, presently completing a four-volume. one million+ word contemporary King Arthur novel series (sort of a sequel to the Arthurian legends). I obviously did not invent King Arthur, Morgan le Fay, nor any of the Knights of the Round Table, obviously enough. Then again, it’s hard to say that anyone did. You have a potential historical source that any number of poets, myth-makers, pseudo historians, and novelists have added to for centuries. I’ll even argue that the Matter of Britain is a core myth of Western civilization, but that’s another blog. Anyway, it’s almost like a stew to which many have added ingredients over time, to the point that the original flavor of the dish is all but lost.

It gets trickier, I think, when you’re using a character from a known and more-or-less contemporary author, especially without that author’s consent.

I have always hated Philip José Farmer’s novel Tarzan Alive, (despite loving much of his other work) because his narrator, Tarzan himself, insists on talking about the stuff Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan’s original creator) “got wrong.” The conceit of the book is that Tarzan was an actual person of whom original author Burroughs wrote highly fictionalized and romanticized memoirs based on Tarzan’s actual life and adventures. Farmer is telling the “real story.” Tarzan has certainly benefited from retellings by many different creators across all sorts of media, but I’ve never taken to the notion that it is fair game to claim that an author got his own creation “wrong.” I am aware that this is a lonely opinion, and Mr. Farmer’s book has many dedicated admirers.

I wonder what might have happened if Mr. Farmer had simply created his own character inspired by Tarzan, who might then have compared himself to his fictional counterpart? It’s impossible to guess whether or not it would have had the same resonance. George Lucas famously wanted to make a Flash Gordon film way back in the 1970s. When he couldn’t secure the rights, he cooked up his own space opera: Star Wars. I can’t help thinking that, in this case at least, we’re all better off with an original work, even if the artist was inspired by another’s work.

I adore Steven Brust’s The Phoenix Guards, a deliberate and loving pastiche of Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers (Mr. Brust actually calls it a blatant ripoff). I love how he captures the spirit and, yes, even the voice of Dumas while creating something new and original. Mr. Brust could easily have simply written an unauthorized sequel, but in my opinion, he did something much better. It’s the approach Lev Grossman took to Narnia in his wonderful trilogy The Magicians.

But what if (in your opinion at least) an author did get something wrong? If you’ve read this blog before, you likely know that I consider C.S. Lewis to be one of my book grandparents, an influence that leeched so deeply into my literary DNA and at such a young age that I’m scarcely aware of it. I even named one of the characters in my King Arthur series after Susan Pevensie, a character in his Narnia series. I adore Narnia, and the books have meant a great deal to me over the years.

Like so many other readers, though—including authors Neil Gaiman and J.K. Rowling—I’ve, uh, wrestled with Professor Lewis’s handling of Susan in the final Narnia book, The Last Battle. Neil Gaiman, in fact, famously wrote a short story called The Problem of Susan. It’s a brilliant and heartfelt story that, I confess, I’ve always struggled with for the same reason I struggle with Mr. Farmer’s Tarzan novel: he’s “correcting” Professor Lewis about his own creation (although I certainly sympathize with the urge). This is probably another lonely opinion.

For the record, a blogger named E. Jade Lomax managed to brilliantly address the problem of Susan—by somehow, almost magically, expanding on Professor Lewis rather than contradicting him—in a pair of stories here and here. Those two posts are among the best things I’ve ever read on the Internet, and I can’t tell you how much they’ve actually enhanced my love for Narnia. If there’s a right way to address something an author, er, “got wrong,” that’s it. E. Jade Lomax, whoever you are, you have set the bar.

I think the reason that (in my mind) E. Jade Lomax succeeded where the amazing Neil Gaiman didn’t (or maybe did to a lesser degree—it’s hard to criticize Neil Gaiman) is because Lomax didn’t “break” the original—the key elements of the story and the “rules” of the story world remain intact. Professor Lewis presented a problem, or perhaps posed a question. Lomax answered it.

One of my very favorite and most beloved books of all time, Silverlock by John Myers Myers, is literally all about other people’s characters. It’s a love letter to literature, and how it can change you, and I’m long overdue for a re-read. Mr. Myers doesn’t break or change the characters he borrows; he throws and wonderful party where we get to see beloved old friends one more time. At the end of the book, Mr. Myers returned all the borrowed characters exactly as he’d found them, no worse for the wear.

Which brings me to the novel I’m writing now—Incandescent. It’s another of my Winter Tales (short, holiday-adjacent novels illustrated by the great Carol Bales) and it’s set in the Renaissance festival introduced in my novel Blackthorne Faire (although it’s entirely stand-alone). At the risk of spoiling a novel I haven’t actually written yet, one of the characters turns out to be none other than Shakespeare’s Juliet. To make a long story short, this Juliet learned about her fate … by finding a copy of Romeo and Juliet. Not wanting to die at age thirteen (understandable, I think), she managed to escape her own story, and into the world of an entirely different story—mine. Now, she and our narrator are trying to understand love. That’s a bit ironic, because Juliet is (arguably, I suppose) one of the two most famous lovers of all time. But was she really in love? She was thirteen years old at time time, and she’d known Romeo for less than five days all told. Or was it a sudden onset of teenage hormones? Is it possible to truly love someone you barely know? My Juliet, who is now twenty-four, barely even remembers Romeo (can you picture someone you know for less than a week at age thirteen?). She has … questions.

When I started thinking about the story of Incandescent, Juliet was going to be a minor character at best. Now, though, she’s become central to the story, both in terms of plot and theme, and helps our narrator come to a rather startling realization. I can’t say I feel especially guilty about the appropriation, since Master Shakespeare appropriated Juliet himself, but I’m striving to be as faithful to his version as I can, given the needs of the story. I’m certainly not (God forbid!) trying to correct what Shakespeare “got wrong.” I hope, in some small way, I’m trying to express my love for the original, while questioning some of our most common assumptions about the play, about stories, and even about the nature of romantic love.

The story might work if I didn’t use Juliet, or if I used, say, a Juliet pastiche. It might. But I doubt it. It certainly wouldn’t work as well.

So with that in mind, here are the “rules” I’m setting for myself when using someone else’s character:

• I’ll remember that I’m borrowing something, something that the original creator would (presumably) consider very precious. I’ll do my best to treat Juliet accordingly, like I hope I’d treat anything precious that I borrowed.
• I’m trying to be as faithful as I can to Shakespeare’s original character and, to the very best of my limited ability, I’m trying to play by his rules.
• I am not suggesting that Shakespeare “got Juliet wrong,” or didn’t understand his own character. I wouldn’t dare to presume, even if the original creator wasn’t, well, William Frickin’ Shakespeare. (I am, however, suggesting that, at age thirteen, Juliet didn’t really understand herself. I don’t think that’s cheating.)
• I’m writing as though Master Shakespeare might somehow see what I’m doing, and hoping he would be pleased. Or at least maybe not mind too much. I’m definitely trying not to take the “well, he’ll never know, and what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him” approach.
• I’m trying my very best to write Juliet the way I’d want someone to write one of my own characters—with care and respect.

I’m trying to take the approach of E. Jade Lomax and John Myers Myers—the path of love and (that word again) respect. I hope it works. I can’t wait to share it with you.

As always, if you enjoyed this article, please share. It’s a huge help and I’m grateful.