forum I've noticed that I base my characters off of myself a lot... any ways to fix this?

Started March 06, 2018 by @Fraust

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My characters (or at least my main characters) seem to be a lot like me. Aka socially awkward derps who get really anxious at one thing or another. Is there a good way to create more original characters and avoid this?

Maybe start basing your characters off of friends/characters from other things. If not, then base them off different aspects of yourself.

Hmm, I'll try that. For some characters, I'll also do the opposite of myself, or close to opposite, but I'm not sure that's a good strategy either. Thanks for the advice ^^

I personally think it's okay. I mean, doesn't it mean that you know yourself to be able to write a story on it? Most of my characters are socially awkward people that want to find out about the world, and I'd say I'm some-hat like that.

@Mintleaf I think it's fine for me to have some characters like me, I just don't want ALL of them to basically be me, if you know what I mean :)

I think the safest way to do that is to give each character a shred of your personality- a mere trait or two, and then let them become their own separate person. Then, instead of having one or two people who are clearly self-insert characters (and it happens sometimes), you will end up with several people who are you, but not really. Alternately, just loosely base them off people or types of people you have met. Whatever works for you! (But also you do need to be careful if you're actually putting in a self-insert, even just one, though it could definitely work if you do it right.)

This used to happen to me all the time when I was younger. All of my characters were way too bossy and "confident" and got in fights ALL the freaking TIME. It made me rethink my life choices and personality, tbh. 🤔

I think it's a problem that gets solved by age and experience. I started to get to know myself better, get to know other people and how they worked, and got better at observing people. A few years later, I now have a much more diverse in personality cast of characters. It's good to learn how all types of personality traits benefit each other and different situations in the real world, and bring them all together to clash and also work in harmony. Humans are so awesome…

Thanks for the advice guys ^^. I probably do it because I know how it feels to be socially awkward and nervous and needing to get my freaking life together, and I struggle to understand why other people do things, since I'm a highly logical person. When I make my characters emotional, a lot of the time it's because I always feel that way and never show it. My characters are sort of a way to express myself without having to worry too much about people judging me personally. I wonder if that's why authors like to torture their characters so much?

Yeah I feel like the artist-writer types tend to be imaginative and emotional, which leads to the tragic…