Many writers beyond memoirists find themselves creating a protagonist who is patterned after themselves. This can pose a problem or two.
One, many writers tend to be introverts and thus their character ends up passive and sort of floating from one event to the next.
Also, I’ve found that although most people are quick to identify other people’s flaws and faults, they have difficulty pinpointing their own. Without a flaw, the character arc becomes more difficult to manage.
Do you find yourself creating a protagonist that is patterned after yourself?? If so, do you have trouble getting close enough to the character to create a full-blown characters with good and bad qualities, warts and all??? Just curious…….
I’m a psychotherapist and am surprised to find you’re right about this. I would have thought I knew myself better.
I belong to a critique group, and once upon a time, a new member joined us with her WIP, a mystery novel. She explained that she was protagonist: same appearance, same job, same family background, etc. She even named her protag after herself! (We kept asking, “And this isn’t a memoir?”) We found this a bit self-indulgent, not to mention weird. It’s one thing to base a protagonist on your experiences, but we need to give them a separate life so they can be true heroes/heroines.
Self-modeling a character is a sign that the writer may have a problem with invention. I’ve been noticing lately that many writers who are excellent at memoirs and non-fiction often have trouble with fiction. They are good at re-creating, but to create from scratch may be difficult for them.
There is a difference between writing a character and discovering a character. Writers may rush in with a lot of assumptions first rather than take time to get to know the character. Children are good at it because they lack the adult inhibitions that go along with trying to get to know an imaginary character. I believe that for many, it isn’t that a writer is self-modeling a character as much as simply writing with assumptions that turn out to be the writer’s own perspective.
Self-modeling or modeling after real people in fiction usually doesn’t turn out so well because most people are boring most of the time. We all have brief moments of excitement, but rarely live lives like characters out of a novel (especially writers). It works for memoir because there are other mechanisms in play that don’t exist for fiction.
There is a difference between writing a character and discovering a character — I like that. Great comments.
A character based on one self should have sufficient distance from the experience you are relating. I just published a novel, Suriving an American Gulag, which relates my experiences as a Gay man in the US Army in 1967, before the “Don;t ask, don’t tell,” policy. I shied away from writing it in 1st person and did 3rd – and the character, although based on my experiences is sufficiently distance from the events in time to allow fictional development – that is for the character to be released from impediments of reality. Remember, as novelists, we must maintain our heritage to be natural and crafty liars. Warts and all on self-based characters should be presented, but the warts should be bigger.
Edward C. Patterson
Dancaster Creative
http://www.dancaster.com
Hi Maratha,
Us flower smellers are the protagonists as we head of to get our 'his n her' journals published in a unique way…the same story through different eyes with 2 different styles of writing….
Once this is done and we've well and truly written about ourselves and got it out of our system we'll be working on fiction but it's bound to feature traits, experiences and folks we've met along the way…hard not to.
We'll drop in here for your continual wisdom,
Cheers,
Jim & Em
http://www.gosmelltheflowers.com
If I did that, I would sure have some boring characters! LOL No, but it’s funny because sometimes people who know the author and then read their work often think that they have modeled their character after themselves.
But of course there is a tiny tiny little bit of me in everyone of my characters – protagonist and antagonist.
cool blog!
To Martha AND Blog friends,
What about villians? How do you go about in creating villians? Do you see yourself using the negatives aspects of your self? As someone mentioned, it is hard to see are own flaws.
What is your process???
Parts of me are in all my characters, no way around it to my way of thinking. However, I have never set out to write a character based on myself. I’m more interested in using information from people I’ve observed and known.
Great writing blog.
It’s the reason I write — to release my dark side.
I end up spreading my traits – good and bad – amongst my characters and then let the problems happen with character interaction. That works out well, and I can muse about how to “fix” myself by seeing how the characters handle situations. They do come alive. 😀
Thanks for the congrats. I just sent out a candid shot of myself to the publisher. The portrait shot will be on the way in a few days. This is real. Funny it’s for photos first. I sent in 40 of them. Was busy for a while.
Hugs, JJ
??????
I posed this question after a plot consultation where the writer was struggling with the problem.
The same dilemma often repeats itself where the main character is more an observer than the agent of change.
I agree with Greg about most people being boring. If your main character is boring your story will be boring, too.
Too many writers end up wanting to protect their protagonist. They fall in love with their main character — albeit sometimes themselves — and thus do not want anything bad to happen to them.
Yet, conflict is the core to all great writing. Without the caldron, there’s no transformation.
To Martha AND Blog friends,
What about villians? How do you go about in creating villians? Do you see yourself using the negatives aspects of your self? As someone mentioned, it is hard to see are own flaws.
What is your process for creating villians???
I love the brilliance of the comments here. Thank you for reminding me that every day is a new day of discovery for us as writers. When I was in an MFA program, there was one fellow who wrote in the first person, gave his main character his name and had him come from the Midwest which is where he was from. I dreaded critiquing his work because it was so damn BORING. We as a group tried to tell him what fiction was supposed to be, but he would have none of it. I doubt he’s publishing anything. Whenever I talk to my dad or good friends from where I grew up in Massachusetts, I wonder why I’m NOT writing about the antics of my early life but if I did it would be a memoir, not fiction. Do we scatter pieces of ourselves in our writing, what we believe, great lines we’ve overheard in real conversations? Of course. But god fiction writing has to be more than that – it has to push us up against new challenges, it has to surprise us, it has to force us to reconsider the direction a piece is going toward when we discover a new even more interesting character in Chapter Five that needs to be our true protagonist (this happened to a friend of mine just recently). Invent…discover…persist and never be afraid of that dark road your character must navigate. It’s what will keep readers craving our work…Mary Kennedy Eastham
“Invent…discover…persist and never be afraid of that dark road your character must navigate. It’s what will keep readers craving our work” — I love that, Mary.
Anonymous, I’ll post about villains soon. But, if anyone else has any comments about creating villains…..
Martha,
Your question reminds me of a common newbie’s problem which is self-insertion into their fiction.
This phenomenon has been given the unflattering name of being a “Mary Sue” or a “Gary Stu.”
Given your experience of working with writers, I think you’ll find this online list of warning signs of Mary Sues to be worthy of more than a few laughs.
http://www.theninemuses.net/hp/work/marysue.html
Enjoy!
Linda
Thanks Martha,
I’m looking forward to your post on creating villains.
J.A.
To Martha AND Blog friends,
What about villians? How do you go about in creating villians? Do you see yourself using the negatives aspects of your self? As someone mentioned, it is hard to see are own flaws.
What is your process for creating villians???
To Martha AND Blog friends,
What about villians? How do you go about in creating villians? Do you see yourself using the negatives aspects of your self? As someone mentioned, it is hard to see are own flaws.
What is your process for creating villians???
To Martha AND Blog friends,
What about villians? How do you go about in creating villians? Do you see yourself using the negatives aspects of your self? As someone mentioned, it is hard to see are own flaws.
What is your process for creating villians???
🙁
I guess I will look elsewhere for help. Thanks.