# Simple enough question - Do you put yourself in your stories?



## Reilith (Mar 12, 2015)

As a writer and a reader I've noticed something. Some writers have that one side character that presents them in their novels (for example Sam Tarly in ASOIAF) and maybe there are even those who actually see themselves as the MC. Yes, all of the characters are the writers children and thus a small projection of the writer is inevitable, but my question is: do you intentionally put yourself as a character in your writing?

For me, it is a mixed deal. In short stories I usually write in first person, but sometimes I don't see myself as that character at all. When I was younger all of my writing was wrapped in imaginary scenarios for myself, so an idealized 'me' was the protagonist every time.

Now as a bit more serious writer I like the idea of putting myself into my stories as a side character, maybe as a mentor or a friend of the MC's, if not completely, at least by looks or personality.

Share your experiences.


----------



## Penpilot (Mar 12, 2015)

When I was in my teens and early twenties, a little bit. But now, not really. My characters are way cooler than I am or ever could be.  As you said, I put bits and pieces of myself into my character, but I'm never the character. When I write, I think of the characters as a suit that I put on, and I pretend to be them. Because like I said, they're way cooler than I am.


----------



## Tom (Mar 12, 2015)

I used to put myself in my stories a lot when I was younger. It was fun, you know, like role-playing. I'd just imagine myself into all different situations and explore them. 

Now that I'm older, I find myself making my MCs less and less like me. They still have core traits that connect me to them (most notable being a stubborn streak), but I've lost the need to tell _my_ story. I want to tell other people's stories now. 

Occasionally I still put myself in a story as a side character or as part of a crowd scene, but sometimes I'll change my in-story gender or ethnicity to work better with the setting. The personality is all me, though, and I kind of have to admit that I _like_ effing up my own storyworlds. (Which is what my self-insert characters do most of the time.)


----------



## Russ (Mar 12, 2015)

No, I havn't done that.

But now that you have me thinking about it...maybe just a bit part later on...


----------



## ScipioSmith (Mar 12, 2015)

I wouldn't consider my MC to be me, but occassionally I think of something that I might say and decide to have my MC say it instead because it would sound better coming from him. 

I have written myself into the story as a one scene part, as a herald of the Empress.


----------



## Garren Jacobsen (Mar 12, 2015)

I love doing my Stan Lee cameos.


----------



## ArenRax (Mar 12, 2015)

Only in my head to escape reality. But, if I want to write it out I just put in an MC and I'm mostly done.


----------



## X Equestris (Mar 12, 2015)

I've never done self inserts.  I might do a minor side character sometime, but that's it.


----------



## Reilith (Mar 12, 2015)

Brian Scott Allen said:


> I love doing my Stan Lee cameos.



Brilliant answer - it really sums it up. I need to remember to give you rep when I am able to (used them up for now).

As for all the others, I am glad to see a variety of answers. Keep 'em coming!


----------



## Pythagoras (Mar 12, 2015)

I am the Nameless Narrator in every one of my stories.


----------



## Ireth (Mar 13, 2015)

I've done it a couple of times. Once for a short story WIP, once for a potentially-longer fanfic WIP. It's an interesting exercise, trying to gauge how I'd react to all sorts of fantastical situations like fighting orcs or reciting poetry to a dragon.


----------



## T.Allen.Smith (Mar 13, 2015)

This seemed appropriate....

“I almost always urge people to write in the first person. Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.” 
― William Zinsser

Thoughts?


----------



## Feo Takahari (Mar 13, 2015)

My speech patterns are so distinctive that I have difficulty changing them for a character who should speak in a very different voice. I don't think my characters tend towards my personality, though, but rather that of my childhood best friend.


----------



## Reilith (Mar 13, 2015)

T.Allen.Smith said:


> This seemed appropriate....
> 
> “I almost always urge people to write in the first person. Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.”
> ― William Zinsser
> ...



I do agree with this as it ilustrates a fare point, but I am one of those who are believers in third person writing. When writing fantasy I find it simpler and easier to portray rhe cast world as a first person writing woild have constrictions to only that character's point of view. In third person I can have his narrower view if I wish and be inside his head, or be the narrator explaining the world around me.


----------



## Fyle (Mar 13, 2015)

I ran a comic strip for four years in my college paper and charity paper for the homeless in NYC where the MC was based on me, worked out well, and was easier to write due to that. 

I came close to expanding but, a larger publication that hired me went out of business before a bigger print could be run. Kinda scared me outta persuing it as a career.


----------



## CupofJoe (Mar 13, 2015)

By the Gods, No!
I used to write as a form of redactive therapy which was pure first person PoV.
That said I freely admit that my "issues" crop up in my characters, and writing in general, a little too often for my liking. So I guess I'm not done with the therapy after all.
I've tried writing FPPoV for fantasy and I can't make it work the way I want it...
And as I'm a 20th Century Boy and my fantasy really isn't I think that I'd feel out of place in anything I've written.


----------



## T.Allen.Smith (Mar 13, 2015)

Reilith said:


> I do agree with this as it ilustrates a fare point, but I am one of those who are believers in third person writing.


I love 3rd person too. I was mainly referring to the "writing is an act of ego" bit of the quote.


----------



## skip.knox (Mar 13, 2015)

I'm not sure what Zinsser means. Isn't every act an act of ego? Maybe he means the word as a synonym for arrogance or self-importance. Whichever way I turn it, I have to disagree.

For me, writing has been a kind of compulsion. At a certain point, some years ago now, I looked back across my life and saw that I had been writing all my life. I had done other things for a time, but the one constant was writing. Huh, I said, being given to profound philosophical statements like that. I decided I should try getting serious about it.

I had my core ideas. Everything I've written since then has had two aims. One, to explore the world I had conceived, to see if it really was as interesting as I thought it would be. That's the long-term goal. The short term goal is always to get the current story told. There, I'm just trying to get to the end of the darn thing, to build the bicycle well enough the wheels don't fall off, and to make it at least interesting enough and clear enough that I can take it out in public.

In that context, things like self-expression or acts of ego just feel silly to me. Note the prepositional phrase, please. I'm very aware writing means different things to different people. I guess I contribute my own reasoning in hopes that someone else will say yes, me too.  Which I reckon is an act of ego, right enough.


----------



## Tom (Mar 13, 2015)

skip.knox said:


> I'm not sure what Zinsser means. Isn't every act an act of ego? Maybe he means the word as a synonym for arrogance or self-importance.



In traditional psychology the ego is simply the _self_--a person's sense of "me". We've sort of corrupted the original meaning, perhaps by confusing it with egotism, which is the inflation of self, an unhealthy focus on "me".


----------



## Caged Maiden (Mar 13, 2015)

I write the most interesting parts of my life and thought process and assign them to a variety of characters...but most often I write people whose lives are three shades more colorful than mine will ever be.


----------



## SD Stevens (Mar 13, 2015)

Yes, don't we all? Whether we realise it or not? I know I do, in a battle of good and evil I split myself in two.... When I first did it I didn't realise until my daughter made it clear to me! Now I try not to because those traits now belong to two very different characters.


----------



## Xitra_Blud (Mar 13, 2015)

Some of my characters may be quite similar to me, but it's never intentional. I don't like writing myself into stories. I like to believe each of my characters are a real, individual person and it's fun seeing who they may turn out to be.


----------



## Joy (Mar 15, 2015)

Truth is, i seek inspiration not only in my surroundings of people and events but in myself as well. This includes not only personal traits but also development and changes in character over time. But i would never create a character that's basically me.


----------



## AnxietyDragon (Mar 18, 2015)

Hmm, not on purpose, but I see some of myself in a lot of the characters I write - I suppose they are all part of us and they have come from our imaginations!!


----------



## Devor (Mar 18, 2015)

No, not at all.  Who would ever read a story with a character based on me?


----------



## Nagash (Mar 18, 2015)

Once, just once, I did insert a very minor character which reflected my own persona as "the writer", "the storyteller". The MC met in his travels, a man who claimed to be a bard of some sort, a man who narrated "tales worth to be told" to whoever would listen to him. The MC being a depressed man and somewhat very anxious about his posterity, tells (half jokingly) the bard to chant his story if it ever turns out to be grandiose enough.

The MC ultimately dies heroically, yet his sacrifice is unknown to most. It is however implied that his story (which I'm narrating) was immortalized, thanks to this random, traveling bard - thus, the bard is a reflection of me, and i'm a reflection of him...


----------



## Ronald T. (Oct 4, 2015)

Every character I write holds a small part of me at their core.  Depending on the character, that part can be very small or quite large.  And that goes for both genders.  I must find something I can identify with if I want to write a believable character.  And that includes my various evil characters as well.  Without that connection, they don't feel real to me. 

I will admit that it is painful to see less than honorable aspects of myself in certain of my characters.  But I've spent a lifetime committed to introspection and self-examination.  And although it is a shameful reality, I recognize that my heart and spirit are not free of negative thoughts and feelings.  But knowing that truth gives me the ability to fight against such on-going personal vitriol.  It gives me the weapons I need to fight against leaning too far toward "the dark side", as referred to in Star Wars.  Knowing you have a dark side, and admitting it -- if only to yourself -- allows you the possibility of controlling it.  You can't fight something if you're unwilling to admit that it exists. 

That's not an easy thing to do.  But it's necessary if you wish to be a better person.

That was my greatest fear before I began to write with serious intent.  It terrified me to think I must immerse my mind and soul in the core of a tainted and ultimately evil character -- even if only for a short time.  I was afraid of what it said about me if I had the ability to create a truly evil character.  

Of course, I was eventually able to manage my fear and recognize that writing such tainted characters didn't have to mean I was one.  It was a joyful bit of insight...one that allowed me to dive wholehearted into my writing.  It took a few years, but I finally accepted that division.  Although I still dislike that aspect of the writing process, I know that without evil characters --whether they be internal irritants, other people, or acts of nature -- you have no story. 

But as I said at the beginning, I have to see a small part of myself in each character in order to feel I have created honest and genuine characters.  That includes those who are most heroic, as well as those with the taint of evil.  It is the Yin and yang of life, I suppose.  A leftover from my fifteen years of Kung-Fu training.

We all have our different methods.  And all that matters is that they work.

But what do I know?  I'm just a hermit in the woods.

As always, my best to all of you.


----------



## Miskatonic (Oct 5, 2015)

No. I may put an idealized version of the types of characters I really like but none of my characters thus far are based on me.


----------



## Zara (Oct 5, 2015)

I hear a lot from writers that they 'put themselves into the character or I become the character' and therefore many of them preference first person because it makes it easier for them to do it. But I think writing is about telling a story through another person's eyes and I've also found that when writer's make a constant habit of doing this they begin to write themselves in every character. So in each book they write all the characters become the same. 
I try to think what would mary-sue who is a shy character do in a confrontation. Because my reaction may not fit my character. I might punch them, she might let them push her over. 
So I would say I definitely write from the character's point of view and try not become the character because you then slip into the character becoming you.


----------



## Ronald T. (Oct 6, 2015)

Let me clarify.  When I talk about placing a part of myself into my characters, I'm not talking about specific character traits.  I'm referring to the emotions behind a character's actions.

There is no emotion someone experiences that hasn't been felt by millions of people before them.  But what makes a character in my books seem real for me, is to access that necessary emotion in myself.  However, that emotion has to be genuine.  Heroic or evil...I have to feel it...I have to remember it in detail. 

For the most part, people read for two reasons, and I believe their goal is to be entertained.  They read either to learn, or to have their emotions tweaked.  If neither of those needs is being satisfied, then why would a reader wish to read a book?  

I believe readers are smart enough to tell the difference between false emotions and those that are genuine.  That belief gives me the motivation the make sure everything I write is backed by truthfulness.  What better way to express that truthfulness than by first accessing the emotion in yourself?

But what do I know?  I'm just a hermit in the woods.

As always, my best to all of you.


----------



## valiant12 (Oct 6, 2015)

> As a writer and a reader I've noticed something. Some writers have that one side character that presents them in their novels (for example Sam Tarly in ASOIAF) and maybe there are even those who actually see themselves as the MC



Why exactly people think grim is similar to Sam Tarly? If we assume that Sam is the person which share the most personality traits with George, why Sams brother is named Dickon and why Sam's father is one of the most unlikable persons in Westeros. I don't think grrm hates his family.

Then again he offered  to kill a charecter named after a fan who pays him for the wierd honer. Promising a gruesome death. Sometimes i'm thinking that he is a sociopath.


----------

