"My Characters are not Me" Train of Thought?

[Naruzeldamaster]

So, I'm a firm believer in the idea that my characters are themselves. Even though tiny bits of them are pulled from the DNA of my personality. They might have different views on things like swearing, sex, guns etc.

So I try to write them as if they weren't 'echoes' of me and like they're real people.
Although sometimes I do have to put the more potty mouthed ones in a corner and tell them 'no'
I like to go with the flow, then during the editing phase when the book is finished I'll refine/polish them until they're fully what I mean them to be.
To be clear on the 'echoes' thing, I don't mean like a mary/gary stue I mean like how some writers use their characters as a way to push their beliefs or whatever on the reader.
Neither one of these is appealing and I'd like to avoid that if possible.

Often I'll use the character swearing a lot to show their immaturity at the start of a story. As they grow as a character and mature through the course of the story, they swear less and less. Aside from the occasional 'hell if I know' type of swear.

 

[Malik]

 

[Malik]

So, yes. I feel you. My characters are not me. I needed to make that as clear as possible, especially with this new novel. I'm merely reporting what I saw.

STONELANDS has one partial self-insertion character--a guy who has my old role--though there's nothing else about him remotely like me. I made it a point to distance him from me every way I could manage.

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

So, yes. I feel you. My characters are not me. I needed to make that as clear as possible, especially with this new novel. I'm merely reporting what I saw.

STONELANDS has one partial self-insertion character--a guy who has my old role--though there's nothing else about him remotely like me. I made it a point to distance him from me every way I could manage.

If I do any sort of proper self insertion character (especially for the ones I plan to make games of) it will be a bit like how Game Freak does it in The Pokemon games.

Since red and blue they've always had a 'dev room' where the 'staff of game freak' are working on the game, sometimes the next game.

Typically if they are named, they're named as the actual staff (especially in later games)

And it's usually where you go to collect the shiny charm when you complete the dex. (and some other stuff depending on the game)

They don't usually introduce themselves as 'staff of gamefreak' because of lore implications. But they do say stuff meant for the player like 'do you like the music in the game? Great! I made it!' things like that.

Though I do have to wonder what the lore implications are. In Pokemon universe they also have pokemon games (somehow) but for the player, we know them as the actual staff who made the real games, so it's quite immersion breaking haha.

I'm thinking of making a character who's a 'mysterious traveler' who sometimes helps the protagonists get back on track if they get side tracked.
But if I do he won't have a name and he won't be doing anything too out of place. Just nudging them in the right direction.

 

[LittleOwlbear]

My characters are not me, but they still come from my imagination, my worldviews, my experiences and preferences etc...

It tells a lot about an author how they portray a character, who's different from them in gender, sexuality, profession, personality, preferences etc...
That also could be something little detail in storytelling, like every shy male character is told to man up and becomes a warrior or something similar to this.

In romances it also tells a lot about the author's view on relationships and people. If every single ex or romantic "rivalry" is treated with hostility or anything like that, or if possessive behavior gets portrayed as romantic, it tells a lot, imo.
It makes the difference between "the hostile love triangle", or "the main character choses" ... or an incoming "poly relationship" too lol.

So... my characters are not me, but how I portray different kind of people, might tell something about myself, what kind of people I know in real, how they talk and how I view them.

 

[pmmg]

Well, I don't go around hitting things with a sword, so obviously...I am not my characters.

But, my characters do spring from my imagination of what people like them would do, and from my experience in how the (imagined) world would treat them for doing it. All of which is shaped heavily by my understanding of people, and greater aspects like culture, evolution, religion, circumstance, and many many outside factors that all play a role.

It's just not possible to say they 'are not me' and escape that, in some part, they must be. They are a reflection if what I believe would be true about them, and what I think that truth would mean to others around them. In a broader sense, given that we are often shown worlds and people that are not meant to be much different from our own, with the exception of things the author shows are different (such as magic, or giants or whatever), they way I view the work of others is often measured but what I believe would be true in their circumstance as well. If something really does not match up, I will call BS, and if I am doing that, the story is in trouble.

And, yes, as LittleOwlBear states, how and what people write about reveals something about them, but...at the same time, it is also separate from them. My characters do things I would probably never do. And don't to things, I probably would. They are poor reflections if their creator in many ways, but they are still distant reflections.