Stealing Souls

Look at the title...it is rather interesting for a first post, but that's the way my mind works. I suppose I should explain the rather devious title. I have taken up a habit, one that involves 'stealing souls', as I call it. I carry around a small notepad in my back pocket and when I hear some interesting phrase or talk to a person whose general character traits amuse or intrigue me, I write down the phrase or make a overview of the certain character. I then archive these characters and phrases to use in my writing. It is a very amusing habit as I've run into some phrases such as, "fine as a frog fart."
As I read Jerry Jenkins, Writing for the Soul, I came across this quote, "novelists who think fiction is easier because they can just make everything up will soon find readers disinterested." This quote made me dig into the characters all around me even more. You see, I had realized that if I took real life traits and introduced them into an entirely different world it would produce a familiarity between the reader and what he is reading. This is probably the greatest revelation concerning writing that I obtained from Jenkins' book.