Protagonist

[maestrowork]

How many of you created a protagonist (at least in your very FIRST novel) that is very much like yourself: looks, speech pattern, personalities, etc.? Or do you try to create someone completely different from yourself (including gender, ethnicity, etc.)? Or somewhere in between?

Related question: how often do your readers (or betas) wonder if your protagonist is a shadow of the author (you)?

[Tish Davidson]

My protagonists are never like me. I know what I am like, so writing about a protagonist just like me would be boring.

[detante]

Seeing myself in my stories is one of the things reasons I didn't letting others read my writing for a very long time. It felt too much like therapy to share those stories.

I still find bits of myself in every character, but at least now the chunks are smaller and harder to recognize. ;)

-Jen

[Flawed Creation]

originally my protagonist was completely different from me. he became more like me as time went on, but is still pretty different. we share some ideals, and bgroad personality traits, but his philosophy is completely different from mine.

[Gala]

I have and do. One reason I keep my true identity anonymous on the Internet.

My way is a bit different from what I think you're suggesting. I use personal experience to notch up the dark side. In my upbringing especially, truth is more interesting than fiction.

For example, in my current novel there's a scene where a guy tries to light a young girl on fire. I was reluctant to use this, because I thought it too over the top.

I wrote it as an experiment, and read it to my workshop participants as fiction. They told me there was no way I could not have that scene in my current novel, experiment or no. The scene has an edge of fear and emotion they found compelling.

The evil of the man with the lighter, and the terror of the girl was easy for me to write, because it happened to me. Don't tell.
:ack

My first novel cashed in on a few people I'd worked with that were variously jerks, had stalker tendancies, or were drug addicts. Of course I didn't waste that material, and it was a fun way for me to use my protag to take out my residual anger on them. My audience especially liked the stalker.

I don't purpose to make my protag a clone of me. I'm already introspective enough, and living inside fictional chars heads is a way for me to escape. In fact, I used to get to know the protag in my first novel by pretending to be her in certain situations that demanded a more aggressive, outspoken and less empathetic person that I am.

So though my protags aren't me, I do use personal insight and experience when the dark situations lend themselves to the story. I have a weird sense of humor I don't use on real people very often, but it comes out in my protags and readers tell me they love those parts.

[Jules Hall]

My first novel (which I'm currently rewriting) started out with a protagonist who was a lot like me. A little more adventurous, perhaps. OK, a lot more adventurous -- there's no way I would _dare_ to do a lot of the things he did. And he had some skills that I don't have (that military training of his really helps out at time to time), but in many ways he was based on me.

I'm currently doing a rewrite-from-scratch, keeping the basic premise of the story, and the ending, but messing around with a lot of the details. He's changed a lot. There's not a lot of me left in him. He has an interest in food and wine, the same as I do. He's a white British male, like me. But that's about it.

[Writing Again]

When I first took on novels I was a kid. I had already sold some short stories. I knew two things. One was that just the bare act of writing 80,000 words was going to be a chore. The other was the common belief that a writer's first novel is always autobiographical.

Therefore my first novel was a throwaway, designed for no other purpose than to get those two hurdles out of the way.

Now that I look back I realize the protag was not much like me at all. I'm a very boring person so I used the interesting aspects of various friends to supplement.

Nowadays I craft characters, craft plots, and try to make them fit together seamlessly. Any resemblance between people, places, and events, in my stories are truly coincidental and the only concern I have with them are, "Will this or that get me sued? If so how do I change it?"

[Jamesaritchie]

My protagonist is me in probably 80% of my fiction.

I know how well I handle a rifle, a shotgun, a handgun,a knife. I know how well I ride a horse or drive a car. I know how fast I can run, how well I can fight, how quickly I learn. I know what I believe, how I think, what I feel. Etc.

Using myself as a protagonist means I can keep it real. It means my protagonist won't be too fast, too strong, too good, too fake.

I think we're always in our protagonists to a larger degree than most would believe, but I put myself there openly and consciously.

[Fresie]

If it works, why not? Lots of famous characters in literature are carbon copies of their authors, if you study the authors' biographies. Probably, that's what James means: if you're writing with your heart and from your experience, the resulting character will be no one else but yourself...

how often do your readers (or betas) wonder if your protagonist is a shadow of the author (you)?

Yes, in the first draft of my book I had this heroine that was very much like myself. She actually moved the plot. As I got a better idea of the story and started tightening the plot, I realised the girl didn't actually belong there any more. It was probably nothing but my own vanity that made me put her there in the first place: I wanted to participate in my own story! So I delegated some of her plot responsibilities to another character (male) and... killed my darling! The story gained 200% from her absence.

[James D Macdonald]

Beware of the story that's just wish-fulfillment fantasy ... the dreaded Mary Sue.

[Clearrr]

The dreaded Mary Sue?????

[evanaharris]

The dreaded Mary Sue?????

You've obviously never dated her.... ;)

[James D Macdonald]

<a href="http://www.subreality.com/marysue/explain.htm" target="_new">Mary Sue</a>.

[Fresie]

Here's a useful test, suitable, with a bit of imagination, for all fiction types:

missy.reimer.com/library/marysue.html (http://missy.reimer.com/library/marysue.html)

:D :D :D

I guess, they refer to "fanfic" because in the real world such characters never make it past the slushpile...

PS And also this:

enterprise.mathematik.uni...rySue.html (http://enterprise.mathematik.uni-essen.de/~bastian/Ranma/MarySue.html)

[Clearrr]

to EvanaHarris --- no, I've never dated her. I'm rather sure my husband would object. :hug

Thanks for the link --- Such a wealth of information on this site. Thank you!

[ChunkyC]

Yes, great info. I guess there's nothing wrong with such ego gratification so long as the character is compelling to persons other than the author. James Bond immediately comes to mind.

[Dhewco]

My first novel (which I lost in a computer crash) was loosely based on me, but I'm told it was a poor effort at writing. I had much to learn before my second novel.

My second novel's protagonist is a 12yo girl, so not based on me. :lol

[Terra Aeterna]

There's little bits of me in all my characters, protagonist or not. There's little bits of people I know in all my characters as well. But they're all amalgams.

Laura Kinsale (a popular Romance author, for those of you who don't read Romance) once said that just because you can imagine a thing does not mean you are that thing. So no, my characters aren't me. But they are children of my mind. ;)

[Writing Again]

All of this makes me wonder what a wish fulfillment novel of mine would be like?

Or what is wish fullfillment in writing?

For instence my current novel does not have any "wish fullfillment" in it that I think I would like to do, but I would enjoy living in a universe where this type of story could actually take place.

So if I were to write my own "Mary Sue" it would be me as a Lazerus Long or an Elric, which makes me wonder if these arn't Mary Sues who have leapt past the doleful charts of bad lit and landed in the august company of greatness.

What about Dickens and his fascination with orphans, or Poe and his poems such as Annabell Lee and The Raven.

Sounds like we have some great lit with Mary Sue and Marty Too.

[James D Macdonald]

The big question with all writing is "Yes, but did it work?"

[vstrauss]

I spend too much time with myself anyway. I want to hang out with different people when I write.

>>Related question: how often do your readers (or betas) wonder if your protagonist is a shadow of the author (you)?<<

Grossest question of this kind I ever got: a male reader who wanted to know if the sex scenes in a book were based on experience.

Ugh.

- Victoria

[PixelFish]

All my characters except the homocidal one are all me.

Of course, it's all kind of Frankenstein, because they are all bits and pieces of other people as well.

The only reason I didn't include the homocidal character is because A) I've never killed anybody (yet) and B) I haven't written about him enough to know anything else about him. So he could still turn up with "me" traits.

There is a character who looks PHYSICALLY like me, with a bare bones description, and who was, like me, pregnant and feeling totally adrift in the world--but she sorta came about as art therapy, and then developed into her own person. She's much more courageous and strong than I am, a little bit less laid back, and six times as pissy. :)

[Beaver]

I definitely have a problem with making certain characters in my stories that have some of my traits. Most of the time, they are minor chars, but in the novel i am trying to write (now that i think of it) the protagonist is just like me in many ways.

Beaver

is this really a problem?

[Jamesaritchie]

I think wish fulfillment characters can be horrid, but I don't think Mary Sue characters have anything at all to do with writers putting themselves into the fiction. A Mary Sue character isn't the writer, it's someone the writer would like to be, but isn't, doing things the writer would like to do, but can't. A very, very different thing.

I suppose a writer who has really done little or nothing exciting, who has lived a dull, boring, life, might well use a character as someone to live through vicariously, to fulfill the writer's fantasies. But that character isn't the writer in any sense.

The writers who build protagonists I love best are almost invariably people who have been there and done that, who have lived lives as exciting as that of the protagonist. Experience does add realism. It's much easier to write realistically about something you've experienced yourself, just as it's much easier to write realistically about love and hate if you've been in love or hated someone.

If you've actually been in a firefight, if you've been shot, if you've killed, if you've looked down the barrel of a large caliber handgun at close range, it can help in the writing. Unfortunately, it also spoils a lot of reading because when the writer gets it wrong, you know it. And writers get it wrong far too often.

We all put more than a little of ourselves into characters, whether we mean to or not, but there's a right way and a wrong way to do this. The wrong way is with a wish fulfillment chracter. The right way is to put yourself in as a real person with the same limitations, weaknesses, etc. all real people have.

I'd also say, however, that while critics and reviewers and other writers usually hate Mary Sue characters, the public, unfortunately, seems to love them.

[maestrowork]

But not every writer can live so fully through their own RL experiences (how many have really slain a dragon and rescue the Earth from an evil power? :-) ) Where you lack in experience can be compensated by research, and it's more important in some genre (e.g. sci-fi) than others (e.g. contemporary chick lit).

I live an interesting and full life and by default, I actually make my protagonists a little duller or having less life experience than me (at least in the beginning -- the story must enrich the protag's experience throughout... otherwise, you have a weak story). I also try to make him/her different -- I usually inject myself and my philosophies into other, perhaps more minor, characters. I can't say none of my traits sneak into my protag (it's very hard to not have at least some part of you in the character because you're writing it -- somehow your world view, philosophy, etc. are going to show up through your protag, especially if he/she is the hero). But I do try to write a character that is quite unlike me (and not at all "Mary Sue" -- No, I'd hate to be some of my protagonists!!!)

[Writing Again]

But not every writer can live so fully through their own RL experiences (how many have really slain a dragon and rescue the Earth from an evil power? :-) ) Where you lack in experience can be compensated by research, and it's more important in some genre (e.g. sci-fi) than others (e.g. contemporary chick lit).

All that is not necessary. I learned this at a very young age and never forgot it.

When I was a kid my cat was run over by a man. The next day when I confronted the man, "You ran over my kitty," his reply was direct. "So? One less damn cat in the world."

I went home and wrote an angry story about a man whose lover had been murdered and how he sought revenge on the killer.

The story was not good enough to sell, but everyone commented on how well such a young boy had captured the man's grief. If you looked closely at the descriptions you could tell, as I'm sure my mother did, that the woman who was murdered had the same color hair and eyes as my cat, the killer fit the description of the car driver, and the berieved man fit the description of a neghbor who was kind to kids and cats and dogs.

You can say a child's grief for his murdered cat is not the same as a man's for his lover, and I have to agree. But it is still intense, and you can draw on the same emotions for one as the other, for it does compare.

Have you ever been attacked by a dog? I have. True, it was a pit bull, and not a dragon, and I held my bicycle between he and I rather than wearing armor.

But I knew that if the flat faced creature got passed my bicycle shield I could die, or be left crippled, and no matter what I would be in serious pain.

No, it was not a dragon, but I'm sure I was every bit as afraid as if it were.

Saving the world? Have you ever grabbed a small child just as it started to dart out into traffic?

It is not how fully you have lived those exotic experiences that add power to your writing. It is how fully you utilize the every day experiences you share with everyone else including your readers who have the same experiences.

Your reader has never fought a dragon either, but if you remind them how they felt when they faced down a mean dog, they will nod in understanding and share the adventure with you.