There is a car in front of my house. It is a white hatchback that sits way too low on the ground with rims that stick out past the edge of the wheel rubber. It is clean to the point of obsession and on the front glass the word, “Philthy” is written in a permanent white script. Mark Twain is is credited for writing, “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” I often feel that real people are often unbelievable because they feel impossible in one way or another while fictional characters, even the ones with super powers, tend to feel more grounded in a reality I understand.
When I write characters I build them from a conglomeration of the people around me. This is a safety mechanism to create a thing that is actually realistic. When I develop characters without the thought of a living human, these characters tend to represent the better part of my ideals. They are sensitive, thoughtful creatures who, in the face of overwhelming evidence, will point their minds towards fact. Real people do not behave like this. Real people come pre-loaded with cognitive bias and their delicate mental lattices point them towards cognitive ease. It is under these precise conditions that a person, thick with belief in God and the tenets of the bible, can look at Trump and call him a proper follower of the righteous path of God and then, in that same breath, side-eye Obama and declare him a sinner.
Real people do not make sense, which is why they make interesting but difficult characters. In a story the reader generally tries to make sense of or identify with at least one character in the story. In my experience this is usually the protagonist. So, at least one character in the story ought to be inhuman. In other words, at least one character needs to make sense, because the rest of us absolutely don’t.
That car in front of my house belongs to the boy a few bedrooms down. He isn’t my boy but he might be legally related to me one day. Maybe his youth is him time to not make sense. I’ll forgive him that. However, if he doesn’t figure out a way to move closer to reality eventually there could be a problem between me, him, and the law that has nothing to do with kinship.