How much of yourself do you put into your characters

Discussion in 'Character Development' started by html-dragons, Oct 13, 2017.

  1. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    I'm certainly of the school that says every character is a shade of their creator. That's certainly true for me. I appreciate that may not be obvious on the face of it; as a guy who writes teenage girls. But, well, I still have a lot of teenage stuff hanging over me; a lot of angst and a lot of... Stuff. There;s a reason why even my previous adult characters have a lot of teenage neurosis, you know?

    I can't put everything of me into my characters, even into my old author expy characters. But these days I certainly put a lot of me into them. When they romance they do it just the same way I do; they meet people during hard times and fall for them hard. And they are loved for being them. That part... Eh still a work in progress to me. But if you know me very well you can see exactly what I'm doing in my work. Conflict is all based in internal stuff; overcoming it means realising it's you with the problem not the world. And hopeless romantics who do stupid, cute, teenage stuff for their partners because... Well that makes me smile.

    My girls aren't just me. But there's me in a lot of what happens to them. When they are hurt it's things that'd hurt me. When they love it's things that I'd love. When they fall it's their fault, just like me.
     
  2. raine_d

    raine_d Active Member

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    Ummm, some of us have to unless we were writing "How To Completely Screw Up The Storyline in One Swell Foop..."
     
  3. crappycabbage

    crappycabbage Member

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    Something of me always end up in my main characters, and it's mostly the flaws. Poking fun at oneself is kinda liberating. And also, getting the characters into more trouble than I have been because of those flaws is very calming in a way. :D If a character starts to resemble me I change them, because I have no interest in writing about myself at all.
     
  4. jim onion

    jim onion New Member

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    What do you mean? As far as I can tell, a creator always leaves his fingerprint on whatever it is that he creates, no matter how careful.

    Tolstoy's characters aren't carbon copies of Tolstoy, but you can still find Tolstoy's influence in his characters. Same for Dostoevsky, Hemingway, and so on. And these characters are acting and reacting in a world created by the author, in the context of a plot being invented by the author, and that all has the author's DNA on it too.

    Important note: I do not think "making a character identical to the author" is the only way to interpret "putting oneself into their characters".
     
    Last edited: Dec 26, 2017
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  5. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    Inject yourself, unless you can inject some Vader, then do that. :p

    Though have you ever written characters that are not even a milliliter
    of you beyond the fact you gave them a name, but pretty much not
    you in the slightest?
     
  6. Seraph751

    Seraph751 If I fell down the rabbit hole... Contributor

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    Bits and pieces of myself, or pieces of a direction I want to go in as a seed. The character grows from there. This gives the characters a unique flavor if you will, and gives the readers a chance to get to the know the author through their writing.
     
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  7. NateSean

    NateSean Senior Member

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    A little of my character DNA will always include a drop or two of my blood.
     
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  8. Damien Loveshaft

    Damien Loveshaft Active Member

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    I guess the actual amount depends really on the character, but I can't say I've ever personally done a self-insert yet. Not that I don't like them if done well, Randolph Carter was quite entertaining actually and he was just Lovecraft's insert. If you feel your characters are getting stale however maybe it's time to venture further away from your comfort zone. Just don't try anything drastic either. People will be able to tell if you're just throwing traits at a wall and waiting to see what sticks.
     
  9. Marty Kirby

    Marty Kirby Member

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    This is a problem if you don't recognize it. I think a lot of Kevin Smith movies have this problem. Everyone sounds like him.
     
  10. exweedfarmer

    exweedfarmer Banned Contributor

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    If I tried to write a character that was a complete abstract, it would seem like it. No one would want to read that. I have a hard enough time getting readers with one foot in reality.
     
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