Such an eye-opening essay. As a matter of fact, I have watched your video on Heroes and Heroism as well, and found it to be very enlightening. However, I do wanna disagree with you on a point mentioned in this essay (and no, I won't say that morality is an emotional matter, because it's NOT). And that point is: there's nothing wrong with creating a character who shares, in one way or another, certain characteristics or preferences of the writer. Of course, this isn't a rule, either, because every writer out there should just write the type of character he truly wants to write. Although I will agree that it's not a very good idea to have a self-insert character (and by that I mean a character who is 100% percent the author), I don't see the harm in giving our characters some traits and preferences that we personally love. For instance, I'm a girl who loves books, so maybe at some point in my writing journey, I will write a character who also loves books. Nothing wrong with that. However, I will also give her flaws, as I'm not a perfect creature, so she-or he- shouldn't be either. At last, I hope I got my point across. If you do wanna discuss this further, please do let me know. And by this, I mean the claim I'm suggesting above. My aim in this comment is not to criticize, but to analyze and understand.
I completely agree. Drawing on oneself for inspiration or even for simple insight (a nurse writes a character who is a nurse because she knows a great deal about that life). There certainly isn't any harm in that. The danger there lies in the fact that many writers:
a) don't realize that writing the character as themselves results in bad writing, so they aren't concerned about it, and
b) even with this knowledge many will find themselves subconsciously imprinting, so to speak, on the resulting character. Then, even if the character is otherwise different from themselves, they will have him (or her) make choices or actions that they would make but that are inconsistent with the character. They will find it difficult -- for reasons they don't see -- to let their character make mistakes, bad decisions, even immoral decisions that they would not make, or to hold opinions that they do not hold. These are all problems that arise from self-insert character writing. The trouble is that it can happen accidentally as well.
You absolutely get your point across! And it's a very good point. My only word of caution to writers who wish to use some aspect of themselves as inspiration for their characters is to constantly guard against that character becoming a self-insert.
Oh, I think I finally get it now. Thank you for the clarification; it cleared up everything for me! And yes, I agree with the cautions that you provided above; inconsistency with our characters is definitely a false way to approach them, self-inserted or otherwise. I myself used to fall down that rabbit hole until I realized, at some point, that something was wrong. That I needed to write these characters as them, and not as me.
That if the character I was writing was, say, an arrogant and intolerable person, then I have to stick to these traits, even if he does undergo some kind of development arc of any kind, I still have to clearly show these traits of his. I can't have him making my decisions, because that simply-let's face it- doesn't make any sense considering the traits I've given him.
All in all, I've found this discussion to be very fruitful, so thank you again for that.
Such an eye-opening essay. As a matter of fact, I have watched your video on Heroes and Heroism as well, and found it to be very enlightening. However, I do wanna disagree with you on a point mentioned in this essay (and no, I won't say that morality is an emotional matter, because it's NOT). And that point is: there's nothing wrong with creating a character who shares, in one way or another, certain characteristics or preferences of the writer. Of course, this isn't a rule, either, because every writer out there should just write the type of character he truly wants to write. Although I will agree that it's not a very good idea to have a self-insert character (and by that I mean a character who is 100% percent the author), I don't see the harm in giving our characters some traits and preferences that we personally love. For instance, I'm a girl who loves books, so maybe at some point in my writing journey, I will write a character who also loves books. Nothing wrong with that. However, I will also give her flaws, as I'm not a perfect creature, so she-or he- shouldn't be either. At last, I hope I got my point across. If you do wanna discuss this further, please do let me know. And by this, I mean the claim I'm suggesting above. My aim in this comment is not to criticize, but to analyze and understand.
Yours Truly,
Lujyn From Egypt
Hello Lujyn!
I completely agree. Drawing on oneself for inspiration or even for simple insight (a nurse writes a character who is a nurse because she knows a great deal about that life). There certainly isn't any harm in that. The danger there lies in the fact that many writers:
a) don't realize that writing the character as themselves results in bad writing, so they aren't concerned about it, and
b) even with this knowledge many will find themselves subconsciously imprinting, so to speak, on the resulting character. Then, even if the character is otherwise different from themselves, they will have him (or her) make choices or actions that they would make but that are inconsistent with the character. They will find it difficult -- for reasons they don't see -- to let their character make mistakes, bad decisions, even immoral decisions that they would not make, or to hold opinions that they do not hold. These are all problems that arise from self-insert character writing. The trouble is that it can happen accidentally as well.
You absolutely get your point across! And it's a very good point. My only word of caution to writers who wish to use some aspect of themselves as inspiration for their characters is to constantly guard against that character becoming a self-insert.
Oh, I think I finally get it now. Thank you for the clarification; it cleared up everything for me! And yes, I agree with the cautions that you provided above; inconsistency with our characters is definitely a false way to approach them, self-inserted or otherwise. I myself used to fall down that rabbit hole until I realized, at some point, that something was wrong. That I needed to write these characters as them, and not as me.
That if the character I was writing was, say, an arrogant and intolerable person, then I have to stick to these traits, even if he does undergo some kind of development arc of any kind, I still have to clearly show these traits of his. I can't have him making my decisions, because that simply-let's face it- doesn't make any sense considering the traits I've given him.
All in all, I've found this discussion to be very fruitful, so thank you again for that.
Sincerely,
Lujyn