forum How do you stop your characters becoming you?

Started December 28, 2018 by Alice Mac

tune

My characters keep ending up with traits I have or goals that are mine? Is it ok for them to be parts of you or is that really cliche?

I'd say it's fine… if I really thought about it my guys have done the same thing..

I belive it is inevitable. Authors all over the world have made characters relating to them, like J.K Rowling and Harry have the same birthday.

It's perfectly fine as long as you vary things a bit and draw from different elements of yourself for each character and then flesh them out further in ways that don't perfectly mesh with your own experiences and personality. I do the same thing with my characters, giving them at least one little element from my own personality, morality, or experiences and then building them out from there in a way that feels right for that particular character. The only thing you really want to be careful about is always giving your characters the same traits - for instance, always making your characters writers or artists, blonde or something else like that.

It's perfectly okay to have characters that are really similar to you, it becomes problematic when you relate to your characters so much you can't put them in bad situations (I know from experience lol), meaning you feel weird about making your character do embarrassing things or otherwise suffer because you see yourself so much in them. It's chill if your characters are similar to you, as long as you can separate yourself from the character enough so that it doesn't turn into wish fulfillment or they're perfect and have no flaws, or you can't put them in certain situations.