What to do if my character is to similar to myself?

One of the main characters in my story feels too similar to myself. I've seen posts where people advised not to make him or her perfect but the problem is that she has my flaws too and I only noticed it not long ago. Have you ever had a similar problem? I really need this person in my story. I haven't begun writing yet but I have the story quite planned since a long time.

 

If it becomes obvious to your reader that the characters you've created are based off yourself in a way that inflates your ego or basically makes the author seem like the important part of the story, then obviously they're going to hate the book. ItsIa difficult thing, but unless you have a big name in writing, readers don't care who you are at all. They want to be immersed, and if they feel like the characters or one in particular are basically reflections of whoever wrote the story then they're going to lose that immersion.

Having said that, how will they know unless they know you personally? Flaws are good, as you've said, and if the flaws are the focus of your personality that's coming through then that can only make your character stronger. Inspiration has to come from somewhere real, and there's nothing more real than your own feelings and flaws. You know yourself better than anyone else, so writing with that in mind is going to be more accurate, more real, and probably actually immerse your readers deeper.

We all do this, a little bit - whether it's flaws, traits, physical descriptions - we all incorporate a little bit of ourselves into writing. Often it's accidental and can't be avoided, and as long as it's not serving the purpose of puffing up the reader's opinion of you then where's the harm? Take what you have and what you know and use it. Ground your story in the things you've experienced.

Just don't make a character exactly the same as you. If you feel like it's too similar, tone it down. If you feel like it's glaringly obvious, then share out those flaws between your characters. At the end of the day, they're your creations, and if something doesn't feel right you have the power to change it.

 

It's generally fine. Nearly every author has an "author insert character" in their books, some obvious examples being Dan Brown's Robert Langdon, George Martin's Tyrion, and Patrick Rothfuss' Kvothe.

Unless you're a celebrity, most of your readers won't have any idea of what you're like as a person or even what you look like, so they'll probably have little reason even to suspect a particular character is "you".

 

Welcome to the site!

I would recommend starting with a list of everything you can think of about yourself (both major and minor), seeing which ways the character is already similar and which ways she's different, and seeing if you can add any extra differences that you may not have thought of at first.

There are a lot of writers that despise official personality typing systems, but I find those to be an incredibly good place to start

Spoiler: My personal favorites

are Myers-Briggs

• Is the person more asocial (I for Introvert) or more social (E for Extravert)
• Is the person more abstracting (N for iNtuitor) or more practical (S for Sensor)
• Is the person more insensitive to others (T for Thinker) or more sensitive to others (F for Feeler)
• Is the person more disorganized (P for Perceiver) or more organized (J for Judger)

and D&D Alignment

• Is the person extremely authoritarian (Lawful), neither extremely authoritarian nor extremely antiauthoritarian (Neutral), or extremely antiauthoritarian (Chaotic)
• Is the person extremely saintly (Good), neither extremely saintly nor extremely sociopathic (Neutral), or extremely sociopathic (Evil)

Together, these give 144 combinations that can be instantly compared and contrasted in 6 different ways For example, I (a male) am a Chaotic Neutral INTP, my female lead protagonist is a Neutral Evil ISTJ, my male first-person narrator is a Lawful Evil ESFP, and my female lead antagonist is a Chaotic Evil INTJ.

The two closest matches out of the four of us are

• Myself and the antagonist (Chaotic non-Good INT-), the main differences being that she's a homicidal sociopath who wants to do horrific things and who's very step-by-step and methodical about getting them done (Evil ---J), while I'm not a sociopath (though not a saint either) and am more loose and spontaneous (Neutral ---P)
• The protagonist and the antagonist (non-Lawful Evil I-TJ), the differences being that the antagonist has a grand narrative of what she wants from her life and doesn't like being forced to deviate from it (Chaotic -N--), while my protagonist is more focused on worldly goals and is more pragmatic about occasionally submitting to another's authority in order to accomplish them (Neutral -S--).

and the two worst matches are

• The narrator (Lawful Evil ESF-) and myself (Chaotic non-Evil INT-), the main similarities being that neither of us are saints (though he's a homicidal sociopath and I'm not) and that both of us are loose and spontaneous (non-Good ---P)
• The narrator (Lawful ESFP) and the antagonist (Chaotic INTJ), the only similarity being that they're both homicidal sociopaths (Evil)

 

I did that inadvertently. One of my characters Gaius was a Roman army officer, roughly the equivalent of an modern LT COL. I was a retired Navy commander, and in a lot of ways Gaius thought, spoke and acted as I did.

In the end, however, Gaius exited the first draft as he entered it, unchanged. Cool. calm well-spoken, a good negotiator, but no character arc, because he was me in the story. In subsequent revisions I had to insert faults, failings and fears to make him more of a real person, with some sort of an arc for him as well. Oddly, though I started him out as what I thought would be the major character, he did not evolve into that role. But he worked out well, and he is playing a bigger role in the sequel.

You may not recognize that you have done this until, like I did, you get critique and editing on the first draft

 

I don't see the problem with "real people" being in a story. Most of my characters are based on real people I know. I had one character dying of cancer, and he was so full of painkillers that they found him on the bathroom floor, chewing on a towel. This was directly inspired by my sister's father in law. She recognized it immediately, but I never meant it as a joke, or to offend anyone. It was more a tribute to this great man, who sadly passed away shortly after. She saw that too, and thanked me for it. He was a great guy in real life, and everyone in the book talked about how great he was, too.

That said, there is another person in the book that was sort of based on my sister, but she kinda turned into a Nazi. My sister wasn't happy about that... But I do this a lot. Character are inspired by real people, but I change them enough to make them unique characters. I love my sister, and she certainly isn't a Nazi or anything. Just like the MC loves her sister too, minus the Nazi stuff.

And that, in turn, is something I've always wanted to try. How do you make characters different from yourself? By challenging yourself. People have often called me the sweetest, nicest person they know, and some guy even said that if you need someone to trust, talk to me. Even so, I had that Nazi-sister as an important character in the book for two reasons. For one, the story needed a bad guy, and I figured this could be a fun thing to do. But it also let me try to get into the mindset of a Nazi, to see how she thinks and reacts to different things. In the story, the whole neighborhood has gone from mixed races to all white, thanks to her. Looking at it from outside, it looks really bad. She deliberately tried to get rid of all the non-white people living there, and she succeeded. But looking at it from her point of view, things are not quite as simple as that. In her mind, a lot of the foreigners that comes to the country are gold diggers, or people who want to abuse the system, and don't care about being integrated into society. Most people from other countries are nice people, and some truly don't want to come here. They only come here because it's too dangerous to stay at home. But in her mind, she thinks that if people from other countries don't behave nicely, they should be sent back, no matter the cost. Sad thing is I kinda agree with that. But that's a discussion for another time and another place.

 

I can’t find the quote, but I remember someone saying once that everyone’s first novel is an autobiography. And I think there’s some truth to that. We all have stories inside of us that we want to tell, and our own is often the first. But there are many others, and as you write you’ll discover them.

Each character that we make is a piece of our soul broken off and written down into words. My recommendation would be to break off a small piece, and put it under different circumstances from the ones that one might expect. But above all, be true to your character. Write what the character that you can see in your mind would do. If you make yourself write anything else then you aren’t being true to that character.

 

There's really nothing wrong with having a character similar to you. Whose struggles do you know better than your own? What story could you write better than your own? You can use that to get really in-depth with your character, bring out real emotion and complex problems. You can draw on your own life experience to connect with readers who have been in similar circumstances.

I have a few characters that people who know me would say I modeled after myself, but that's not exactly right. They're who I'd like to be, if I were a better person.

 

I don't see it as an issue, all my main characters have a little part of me to some degree. Some more than others.I guess it mostly comes down to good writing, good story. The beauty of writing, is that there are no rules, just what people like to read.

Rgds

Mike

 

Unless your readers are people who already know you, they're not going to have a clue that your character shares a bunch of traits with you. I don't know that I've ever written someone just like me, but some of my female characters - particularly those who are moms - have very recognizable personalities and mannerisms to myself.

 

Yep. Same here.. well I'm not a mom yet but I agree with this.

 

To the OP, I can say that I also tend to see myself in my characters and I think this is natural. Perhaps you have conflict within yourself that is manifesting this story idea?

Welcome to the forum

 

Most of main characters in my WIP share a good deal in common with me. I think it's good to write some of your main characters to be like you, because it helps to be able to write them well. You try to avoid writing anyone like you, could just make things worse as you overextend and miss out on a larger swath of personality traits, or write characters artificially when you refuse to use your own experience to inform it.
As others have said, the biggest problem with self insert is if it's seems egostical or wish fulfillment. If you write characters well and use your own traits just to help flesh them out easily, that should be fine. Just make sure you have a number of other characters who don't have much in common with you.

 

Oh my God! I hope that's not true. My first complete novel was about a young nun in the 1800's, and here I am an old man pretending to be a bad-ass biker.

To the OP...I would give your dialog a tick or a tell that reoccurs throughout the dialog. That will steer you away from how you speak and you may find the characters own voice later and remove the tick. I did that with an FBI agent and it seem to work for me.

 

Characters that seem too much like yourself are usually vessels to pour original ideas into. In my story I have a character called Rainne who very much takes on the bits and pieces of me I wanted to put into the novel. The rest is pure fiction or elements from people I know. If they share your flaws then at least you can be sure those flaws are written from a place of sincerity, from a place where your readers who identify with your character can in turn identify with you. That's the kind of connection writers of high concept fantasy or science-fiction often lack. Not always but helps to secure that connection. I hope you keep your character as they are because they clearly manifested that way for a reason. Happy writing!

 

This has been pretty well covered, but seriously, there's no problem inserting yourself, intentionally or not, into your writing. There are authors who avoid it, sure, but they're the exception. Regardless of how fantastical the plot or setting might be, most writers put at least some of their personality into their characters, and as much of their personal experience into their stories as they can fit. There are even celebrated authors, screenwriters, etc. who write themselves as a main character in almost everything they write. Charles Bukowski books are thinly veiled autobiographies. Practically every Woody Allen movie is centered around a Woody Allen character, even when played by Kenneth Branagh or Jason Biggs.

Using personality traits you understand personally can only benefit your writing. Recognizing yourself in your character only means that you've been utilizing an effective and popular writing tool without realizing it. Now that you're aware of it however, it's bound to color your judgement. That doesn't have to be a bad thing either though. The only problem, as has been mentioned, is the potential for self-indulgence. Do you want the character to be a mirror of yourself? If so, how honest can you be with yourself? Just how self-aware are you? You mentioned flaws, so you're off to a good start. Alcoholics Anonymous uses a term I think is not only apropos here, it's practically invaluable in self-assessment. One of the twelve steps is to take a "fearless moral inventory". What a brilliant concept, almost as perfect as it is impossible. It's worth striving for though.

If, on the other hand you have no intention of making yourself the center of your own prose, then you're stuck doing what we all do, pro and amateur alike: use your experience for all it's worth, cull what you can through observation and make up the rest.

 

My novel became infused with 'me,' in the sense that I deliberately chose to give a relationship I had experienced as a young person the chance to 'be,' which it was never given in real life. I asked myself what could have happened to 'us' if we'd lived in another time period and were given the chance we never got in real life to build our relationship? It was an extremely cathartic thing to do. It threw up some surprises as well. And I got to see how we might have worked as a team, if we'd had the opportunity we were denied in real life. My characters were totally fictional and the story bears no relation whatsoever to my real life, but I gave my two main characters that base to start from.

I've always said if you have an 'issue' in your life that you'd like to explore in writing, it's a good idea to turn it on its head. Instead of going on about how bad things were (or are) in your personal life, turn them around. Give 'yourself' whatever you lost or whatever you lacked. If you had a cruel father, give your character a kind one. If you loved and lost, let your character love and win. And then move quickly on. Make the change from your real life the start point, not the end point of your story. How would a different beginning have changed things for you? Give the 'new you' some new and difficult problems to solve, and see what happens. It's a way to get a second chance at life, and turn regrets into story gold.