Question about characters

[Rosie]

I wasn't sure which folder to put this in, but this folder seemed like the best. I was wondering how similar you are to your main character or other characters in your book? For me, I feel that my main character and I are like sisters: incredibly similar, but not identical.

[T.L.]

Oh noes! The only similarity between myself and my heroines seems to be their recurring theme of stubborn independence. ;-)

Although, having said that, one of them is also an admin by day.
I hasten to add however, that I am most assuredly not a wild clubber by night.

[Ben]

Depends on what I'm writing. My Apocalypse Wow series is definitely based off of my own experiences and the people I know. There's a little bit of myself and my friends/family in all the characters.

However, I currently have a sci-fi WiP going and those are completely new characters that have no ties to me in any way. They just are who they are which is a 75 year old female space smuggler and her elderly alien crew. I just can't connect that to myself.

[Rachael]

I come up with the storyline first, then think of the types of people who might populate that world. 75% of the time they're pure fiction with people I know thrown in. Historical non fiction is also a great place to find characters; with relatively few adjustments they can be thrown into your sci fi or fantasy saga.

[Anthony Deeney]

In some ways, my main characters are like me. They are robots, so far (two works only). As robots, they seem to have infinite patience. I am not that perfect. Perhaps, if I was, someone might tell me to "grow a pair." I would say that they reflect the better side of my character.

I am also writing another book which has a young female Lead. Writing this character well, might provide more of a challenge. Still, I like her also.

I am tapping the brains of my wife and a colleague for this. She is however, a bit of a "tomboy." So, she's not into shoes and handbags: Which I will never understand. My wife, and the fore mentioned colleague, were both tomboys when they were young, by their own definition.

[G.G.]

With my series, the protagonist came first. He pushed me to write if that seem possible? All other characters came as the story unfold. And again the protagonist 'told' me what they would do. Even the first one that he meets. I kept writing something and he kept making me change it. He's not an easy guy to live with.

He is like me? Maybe. I like when things go my way, even if they never do. :P No but seriously, I think the only thing we have in common is that when I first learned English, I had problems with its idioms mostly. Contraction? Not so much except that I didn't know which ones we could use because the teacher kept telling some students not to use ain't and gotta. :P

[Martin]

In my books the main characters are nothing like me.

I do sneak a secondary character in all my books that is based on me like Hitchcock did in his movies. Just for fun. If you know me personally, you can spot him in the books.

[T.L.]

Martin; now I have the dum dee diddly dum de dum Hitchcock music in my head!! :-O
I love that idea though; a cameo role in your own books.

[Martin]

T.L. wrote: "Martin; now I have the dum dee diddly dum de dum Hitchcock music in my head!! :-O
I love that idea though; a cameo role in your own books."

My friends and family really enjoy finding me in there. "Better than where's Waldo!"

[Anthony Deeney]

T.L. wrote: "Martin; now I have the dum dee diddly dum de dum Hitchcock music in my head!! :-O
I love that idea though; a cameo role in your own books."

LOL, I confess that I put a bit part cameo of me and my brother in my first book. I couldn't resist it! For readers of the book: The two grey haired, bespectacled brothers in the pub, talking about "what is 'going wrong' in the world and then about family."

[Zoltán]

Knowing some personality traits directly and having experience with certain things will definitely influence most authors. It's easier and more natural to write about things you know.

I've never written myself directly in a story so far, but there are characters that in a way or the other resemble me.

OTOH I do like to put direct or hidden references to existing people or characters of authors I like in my stories. In a positive way, as a kind of tribute. For example in the science fiction short story collection I'm about to publish, I included my ex boss at the Academy and the research institute. In English, his name is unusual. His name was Dezső Kiss. Doctor Kiss may sound strange, but I chose to include it anyway. :)

[Carrie]

Characteristics of my family especially my niece and nephew are present throughout my book series The Glory Chronicles. When I wrote my first book Journey to Glory, there were bits and pieces of me and others that I know in the characters. However, in my second book Return to Glory which is going to be published in May, the character Aislynn feels about her appearance the way I have felt for many years. What happens to her is almost similar to my testimony. I think when you write a part of you comes out onto the pages of the story unless you purposely keep it from happening.

[Micah]

I've been playing role playing games all my life. Games where you imagine being a character in a fantastical world doing strange things. Sometimes good, sometimes evil, sometimes profoundly morally ambiguous. I count my childhood play as RPG games, too, albeit w/out a gaming system.

So, the characters I write come more out of that experience than anything else.

As such, I like to think that I am not putting myself in my characters, but rather that my characters are inhabiting me. As I write, they enter my brain and I see/feel things from their perspective. At least the POV characters and those in close proximity to them.

Sometimes personal experience creep in, but those are hodgepodge montages used to create verisimilitude ... write what you know kinds of things. Anyone trying to psychoanalyze me based on my characters, though, is going to be way off base.

It's all just a bit of fun, innit?

[Dwayne, Head of Lettuce]

PaperRose wrote: "I wasn't sure which folder to put this in, but this folder seemed like the best. I was wondering how similar you are to your main character or other characters in your book? For me, I feel that my main character and I are like sisters: incredibly similar, but not identical."

Well, I don't often have one main character in a story. Sometimes, yes, sometimes no. Aside from that, it varies from story to story. The major characters often have some traits and bits of history and personalities similar to mine, but there's often a few differences, too.

Tempest Moody, for example, is a bit like me in that I do enjoy writing negative reviews online when I get bad service somewhere. On the other hand, I am not raising any children so I can't be a rotten mother like she is.

Not sure that I see much of myself in Happy Clown Burger. I can be a jerk at times, like Byron.

Oh, there was the main character in Boo!. That guy was so much like me, it was a bit spooky.

Anyway, I think I'm going to move the thread to the fun folder. It's not a bad topic, but the Help folder is more for asking questions about problems in writing and things like that.

[India]

Oh, Destiny, from the Forever Series, is my twin. She is hands down the closest to me. Older, still a dreamer, yet earthy and loving the mystical side of life. She can get caught up in the everyday madness of the world but always eventually catchs herself and grounds herself to what is most important to her. Her close nit family and friends. Hmmm, maybe it's more like I aspire to be like her? LOL!

[Eric]

PaperRose asked: “I was wondering how similar you are to your main character or other characters in your book?”

My, that IS a potentially dangerous question. All of the responses I've read to this point have been very enlightening. Micah, I too am an RP-kid so, HIGH-FIVE on that. As for my own character creation process, the song Cult of Personality by Living Colour comes dangerously close. I've always perceived my own writing process as an exercise of controlled schizophrenia . I figure it better to let my internal angels and devils run a muck with their eternal struggles on the written page, rather than have one pull the strings on my physical person. Yes, safer that way.

[Owen]

Martin wrote: "In my books the main characters are nothing like me.

I do sneak a secondary character in all my books that is based on me like Hitchcock did in his movies. Just for fun. If you know me personally,..."

What Martin said. Of course, I write with a co-author, so the fact the MCs are nothing like me is probably to be expected. But I do sneak a "cameo" in there.

[Quantum]

Anthony wrote: "I am also writing another book which has a young female Lead."

cool. my first novel (for which I need to do a cover) has a PRC female spy as an MC and a Chinese American male hacker as the other MC.

Then a flash fiction piece that i wrote a first draft of a few months ago has a japanese-named female mage-warrior as the MC in an America of the future.

Then my most recent short story has a japanese american female undead hunter as the MC (1st-person POV, present).

That's probably b/c i watch too much anime and i just love those tough female leads like Re-L in Ergo Proxy or Yuri in Angel Beats! Heaven's Door, Vol. 1 or Specia Agent Nishu Mizunoe of Toei Heavy Industries in Biomega, Bd. 2.

[Curtis]

I think there's a definite similarity with my main character, he's curious, slightly awkward and tries to be funny quite a lot which I can definitely see in myself. There's also a lot of differences between myself and the main character though, I like to think I'm not as stubborn and angry as he is.

With a story I'm currently writing I feel like there's parts of me seen in each of the six core characters, so I wouldn't say I'm similar to just one of them but I've split similarities between all 6.

[Holly]

There's quite a bit of me in all my main characters. Some are closer than others, and a few are more together than I was with regard to relationships, (esp. when I was in my 20's!). I was a lot more insecure when I was younger, and I think I've taken the perspective I have now and plopped it on h's that have a bit of me in them. Sort of... improved me in a way. ;-)

[Christina]

I often find myself asking, "What would I do in this situation?" Whatever the answer, my characters do the opposite. ;p

I do like to add in-jokes, Easter eggs, and bits of personality into my stories, but no, if my characters were anything like me, they'd be cheeto eating lumps on the sofa, complaining about geting old, and talking in strage voices to their dogs. Now, speaking of dogs, I have twice used one of my dogs in a story. The first time I made her a slipper chewimg puppy and the second time she was a world destroying demon, so not really all that different. ;)

[R.]

In a sense Jane is the person I wish I was, not the person I am. In a situation where I end up saying, "I wish I'd done..." Jane actually did it. She's not perfect, but she's a better person than I am.

[Jane]

I'm in the camp where there's usually a mucky old tart somewhere in the background that my friends identify as me. That'll be the one who eats too much, drinks too much, and cusses a lot.

Heroes and heroines not so much. I'm not hero material.

When I went a bit bonkers and stepped out of my genre, my main female character was a chef - because that's something I know about. And things set in the here and now need a basis of reality. But she wasn't at all like me in character.

Sometimes, people think they recognise themselves. Most notably in an unpublished short story that caused so much hurt to somebody I love a lot that it'll never see the light of day.

[R.]

Christina wrote: "I often find myself asking, "What would I do in this situation?" Whatever the answer, my characters do the opposite. ;p

I do like to add in-jokes, Easter eggs, and bits of personality into my stor..."

BTW there are a few Easter Eggs in mine. Since it's SF there are quite a few big numbers such as secret codes and map references that come up from time to time. They just happen to be all my friends' birthdays.

[K.C.]

I would say that I know my characters very well. And though I don't image them as knowing me, if we were to magically meet on the street somewhere, I feel like they might even recognize me or see me as familiar - like some long lost friend or brother. Unfortunately, this goes for my villains as well as my heroes. I recon I give them both the best and worst of me.

[Susan]

I think my character is who I wish I had been at 13-14.

[Christi]

The two brothers in my novel are based on me and my sibling. We are similar in many ways yet different in others. It is hard to explain, but drawing from real emotion and experience was the only way I could make the brothers feel authentic.

[Grace]

Almost all of my characters are based on me, which sounds a bit arrogant come to think of it... Honestly though, I don't know who else I could base them on.

One of my favorite stories is a movie called '9' and it's about a man who put pieces of his soul into nine separate puppet-creatures. Each creature had a completely different personality, but they were all made from small sections of their creator's soul--I think characters a bit like that. They're little bits of our souls, completely different from us in practice perhaps, but a part of us all the same :)

[T.L.]

R. wrote: "I do like to add in-jokes, Easter eggs, and bits of person..."

Talking of sneaking things in;
All of my books has either "TLC" or "tender loving care" in them. It goes along with my pseudonym. ;-p

And for the very observant, my main characters have names, which if you look into their meaning hints at their role in the book. :-)

[Lyra]

There are bits of me in every character, especially the main ones. They're all variations, really... Except for the really nasty evil one who is a selfish, cruel slave owner. He was pure yuck to write. Glad to be done with him. Lol

[L.V.]

Like others, I'd say majority (not all) characters tend to have either bits of me or my experiences. Even if they are different gender. :)

[R.]

Lyra wrote: "There are bits of me in every character, especially the main ones. They're all variations, really... Except for the really nasty evil one who is a selfish, cruel slave owner. He was pure yuck to wr..."

I had that with Jojo in "The Thirteenth Commandment". She believes that everything she does is erased by the passage of time, and so it doesn't in the end matter if she is good or bad. She becomes a major drug dealer by killing everyone who gets in her way.

One day she discovers that someone whose life she has ruined has killed themselves. Her reaction is that this has solved the problem, and she goes back to what she was doing before, ordering a new BMW.

Jojo is so creepy that I don't like writing her if I'm alone in the house. (BTW she is redeemed in the end.)

[Jane]

It's probably true to say that if any of us thought our bad guys were a reflection of ourselves it would creep us out. Big time.

Have we considered, though, that the baddies are maybe doing the stuff we have in a small, undiscovered corner of our deepest selves?

I thought about this for a while and tried to dismiss it. But I can't, so I just thought I'd have everyone else worry along with me.

[M. Ray Holloway Jr.]

Christina wrote: "I often find myself asking, "What would I do in this situation?" Whatever the answer, my characters do the opposite. ;p

I do like to add in-jokes, Easter eggs, and bits of personality into my stor..."

I find myself doing this same kind of thing. There is one item that is in every story that I have ever written, but I keep it to myself. I do like to insert things into the story that resemble actual situations in my life, but they are changed enough that no one, no matter how well they know me, would recognize them. these kinds of things are fun for the writer and if the reader is sharp enough, fun for them to look for.

[Holly]

R. wrote: "Christina wrote: "I often find myself asking, "What would I do in this situation?" Whatever the answer, my characters do the opposite. ;p

I do like to add in-jokes, Easter eggs, and bits of person..."

I put in Easter Eggs too! My boyfriend doesn't know that the latest book I'm working on has a reference to a story he told me about getting a stomach ache from eating too many pickles . ;-)

Adding a little 'flavour', disguised personal experiences, etc., makes stories feel more authentic, real to me.

[K.P.]

at first my characters were aspects/fragments of my self but by the second draft they have their own voice and I'm their God now. lolz my characters hate me. I love torturing them

[K.C.]

I think it would be extremely hard not to put at least a little of yourself into your characters. I put myself into their shoes when I'm writing them as much as possible, and that alone leaves a residue of me.

K.P., torturing characters is what it's all about! And hey, it's legal! ;-)

[Thomas]

Once upon a time, the my main character of my current work was a lot like me. This was back in the day when the story was an 11 page short story based on an old RP character.

When I developed that short story into something more, so did he. As I wrote, he developed a personality of his own, with hopes, ideals, and dreams. And because I wrote it in first person, he led me on a journey instead of the other way around.