Too much of your own personality in your characters

To add my opinion to the various already given: I think there's a quite important difference between assigning some of your traits to a character (which are,in a way, universal) and designing a character as an image of yourself: because you might be led to treat both dfferently, as you might easier mock yourself than a stranger, and I don't think a writer should mae fun of their MC. If that's not a problem to you, then I agree there's nothing wrong with writing about a however enhaned version of yourself

I don't think there's anything wrong with having your personality show in your characters' thoughts and actions. As a writer, your view of the world is shaped by your experiences and beliefs, so it's only natural for some of that to impact the development of your characters as well.

To be clear, the only parts of my characters to come from me are their wittiness, their debonair flair, their astounding bravery, their quiet, stoic nobility, and their impeccable taste. Their flaws are all theirs, alone.

Even within the "like me" wheelhouse, my characters are composites. Of both good and bad traits. Hell, to that end, I am a composite, as are most people. Or at least an amalgam of traits.

I also borrow freely from other people's traits.....and let my characters have their own, as well. So I rarely set out to write "A kinda sciency guy who is starting to accept that he's getting old, and who tends to get side-tracked easily, and swears a lot".....

I usually start in a more situational spot and build my characters from there, like "suppose it was really the end of the world, and I didn't even know if I was the last person on it.....what would I do to stay sane? Where would I go? How would I attempt to find others, or would I?" to start fleshing things out, then create characters from there, who might do exactly what I would, or might do something very different (and if so, why?)

but I have never felt I was making every character Quicklime A, Quicklime B, Quicklime C (with a great ass and lovely boobs, can't just write men, so QC is me admiring myself in every available mirror and using them as a crutch for description Anita Blake-style), Quicklime D, etc.

JoyceAernouts said:

Hello,

this is something I've been struggling with for a while now. You want to make your characters the best they could possibly be and so you make their personalities like the coolest/best/funniest/sexiest/... person you could ever imagine (with their flaws of course, we're not making robots here). But those personality traits are the ones you like, and you think are cool. So where does it stop being a literary character and starts being a 'better' copy of yourself?

For example, I think I'm a somewhat weird, awkward person. My MC is a quirky guy who doesn't know how social interactions work. Did I just write about myself but with a gender swap? Or am I way overthinking this all? My other MC is completely different and not at all like me, but she is somebody who I think is really cool and who I'd like to hang out with.

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It only becomes a problem if you start using yourself as the criterion for what your MC would do in a given situation, instead of thinking about what the MC needs to do to further the story. I've also seen a lot of student work in which the MC is clearly a version of the writer, and the writer--- perhaps in sympathy with his fictional self---smooths out all the plot bumps and lets the character coast. But characters can't rise to meet challenges that never come. To be kind to readers, writers often need to be cruel to their characters, which is tough when they are avatars of oneself.

Sometimes yes sometimes no. There is lots of great advice in this thread! I agree there is nothing wrong with putting a little of you in your character. Just be wary of making all your characters like you or giving all your characters the same voice.

Have you considered writing a character bio? Scrivener has some great starting point templates. Basically a map of your character. Who they are, where they come from, their personality traits, there looks. Sometimes it helps to write one after you've spent time writing the character because then you can really get in the character's head.

I have similar issues with some of my characters, but I think it's very natural that your characters would resemble to some degree yourself. I've made lists before of the similarities and differences between myself and my characters to make sure I wasn't losing the character. And my favorite piece of advice is something Doestoyevski said; to paraphrase, don't rob your characters of the ability to surprise you. If you feel your character is too similar to yourself, try to let them run free on the page for a while, and see what they get up to.