QUESTION:

Did you insert any of your own life experiences or any friends or family members of yours into your stories? Can you "relate" to any character in any of your Ender-based novels, and if so which?

OSC REPLIES:

I relate to all the characters in all my books. How else could I create them, if I didn't "get inside" them and try to understand why they do the things they do?

My novel Lost Boys is based extensively on my own family. Other than that, I have not based any characters in any of my books on real people (except where it's obvious, as with historical figures who show up in the Alvin Maker books).

However, in creating the novel version of Ender's Game I made superficial use of the relationship between me and my older brother and sister in creating the triangle of Peter, Valentine, and Ender. But the characters themselves are not at all based on me or my siblings.