What to do about readers reading into things?

Question

I have certain people in my life who insist on reading *way* too much into my writing. As it is, I do my best to avoid giving my characters initials or names or appearances that coincide even a little with anyone I know. Still I get "clearly $character was modeled after $person" or "so-and-so said you modeled $character after me...I'm nothing like that!" These meddlers are driving me nuts.What do you do with such people? I don't care what *they* think per se, but they occasionally stir up trouble with others.

Answer 1

One aspect of good writing is that the reader will be able to identify with some of your characters. While this is fantastic when you don't know the readers, unfortunately your friends/coworkers/acquaintances might find fault with "their" character.

I wish I could say that there's some magic formula to making sure this does not happen, but there isn't: people look for things that are familiar, so while you might not be consciously making an allusion to a person or event in your life, your friends will notice some sort of similarities and assume that they were intentional. For the most part, it's best to ignore it, and just give them some sort of explanation as to how you came up with the character. Hopefully that will put their concerns to rest.