Relationships & Partners and Writing Skills Tips. (A Writing Advice Guide Book

Lecture 3 from this book being How Are Characters Different From People

One of the curious facts about the emotional life of human beings is that some of the most memorable and influential people in our lives have never existed at all. Odysseus, Jane Eyre, Mrs. Dalloway, Holden Caulfield-these imaginary people have become part of the common cultural currency of humankind; further, they are the very foundation of the craft of fiction. We often hear people talk about the difference between character-driven stories and plot-driven stories, but the fact is that every narrative begins with its characters. In this lecture, we'll explore the fundamental differences between the imaginary characters of fiction and the people we know in real life. -James Hynes.

(King Arthur was an original part of his list as a non existent character but historical evident background and European researchers actually believe he is based on a real person not just an ordinary fictional character cooked up from someone's imagination that is why I removed him from the author list.)

See this chapter below

In this reference book of mine below in this reading list.

Characters in Fiction and Life
Writers love to talk about how complex and layered their characters are-and they often are but one major difference between fictional characters and real people is that characters are simpler.
A fictional character is constructed out of a few thousand words by a single writer, whereas a real person, even an uncomplicated one, is the product of millennia of heredity, centuries of culture, and a lifetime of experience. The best a fictional character can do is suggest a real person, not replicate one. They have only the illusion of complexity.
Indeed, their very simplicity is what makes fictional characters so vivid, because we can, by the end of a book or a play, see a fictional character whole in a way that we can't with most real people, even the ones we know intimately. But again, this wholeness is an illusion. In Hamlet, for example, we see only a few days in Hamlet's life, and even in larger-scale works, we never see as much of a character as we could a real person.
Another difference between fictional characters and real people is that characters are made up of only the most dramatic or the most representative moments of their lives. We all live through moments of drama that might make for good stories, but the vast majority of our lives is made up of an endless chain of ordinary moments. Such moments are of no interest to anyone else and sometimes not even to us. -James Hynes. (I don't agree with that sometimes boring ordinary moments are fun to actually write. Disney clearly contradicts this with Snow White and Aurora they are the most normal like people in their movies and if you don't like the Evil Queen's spice or Maleficient's spice they add to the story then you find their entire moving boring and thus also see Princess Snow White as boring and Princess Aurora as boring too. -Lumna10. Normaniforever4 and RoyalBunny7 I wrote that to yell at your own haters' hating on Snow White's and Aurora's Disney films. You're welcome.
When we write stories, however, we leave out all the ordinary, boring parts. (I disagree not all fictional authors do leave out boring ordinary moments. -Lumna10. I'm not one of them myself.) The story of Hamlet starts when he learns, from his father's ghost, that his father was murdered by his uncle and his mother so that his uncle could be king. The rest of the play is about how Hamlet deals with this information, and by the final scene, he's managed to kill, or cause to be killed, everyone he thinks has wronged him.
By contrast, a version of Hamlet that reproduced every single moment of his life would be both impractical and tedious.
The life of a real person goes on and on, with no scene breaks or dramatic structure, but in a narrative, we see only the significant moments.
Of course, some books try to reproduce the minute-by-minute progression of everyday life. The high-modernist novels Ulysses and Mrs. Dalloway both take place over a single day-and not a particularly dramatic one in the lives of the main characters. But even with these seemingly all-inclusive narratives, we see only a few hours of the characters' lives, not a complete record of every moment from dawn to dusk.
We know the people in our lives by what they look like, what they say, what they do, and what other people tell us about them that is, by report. When we add this fourth way of knowing, we can expand our experience of real people beyond personal relationships to include all the real people we've ever heard about, from a friend of a friend to a movie star to a figure from history.