[Discussion] How similar are you to your characters?

How similar, or how different are you to the characters you're currently writing? Would you say there's some of you in them, or none at all?

Also, what is your opinions on self inserts? I'm indifferent towards them as long as they're not extremely obvious. If you want to insert yourself into a piece of fiction, go right ahead. Just don't go overboard, I guess.

I have some characters that I'm somewhat similar to, others that I'm completely different to. That being said, I think even the characters I am vastly different to probably have a little me in there somewhere - after all, they're from my own mind. Generally, I write characters who have a personality or worldview I want to explore. So even if there was nothing of my personality in them, you could still argue that they're representative of something I'm curious about instead. I don't think any character is totally separate from their creator.

For the rare occasions where I need to write an existing character, I make a concerted effort to make sure I'm true to their characterisation as I possibly can. It drives me mad when people write someone else's character completely different to how they were in the canon - I do not want to be one of those people.

I'm not a fan of self-inserts either. They very rarely are written well and usually are just wish fulfilment for the author at the expense of the audience. Exceptions exist, but they're far from common.

In terms of looks, 9 out of 10 I have my original characters almost look the same as me because mainstream media rarely has people like me on screen. Personality wise I have them be more sass, bold, and confident than me lol. I used to have them be book smarts and goody-two-shoes, but I started to have more fun with the sassy and bolder characters I thought of.

Pretty much every character in Shattered Crests can be linked back to me in some way. Be it things I've felt, experienced, learned, feel, view, am, etc. Some more than others, but even I'm finding new things I can relate or see in similarity each time I focus on the characters of this story.

I'll give three examples:
Vragon: probably the most like me as a personality. Someone that's rather hard on himself in comparison to others and what he does, feels he needs to do better while not doing what he should almost as if he's afraid to accept it, the way he talks is very akin to my own in real life, strategy is something I and he enjoy, and a couple of other things I could stew on. Vragon is a lot more of what I would call a "literal" relation, though I wouldn't say he's a self-insert. There's a lot about him that's different from me still and his struggles are pretty much never going to be mine, aheh.

Ciecro: Vragon used to be my favorite character in terms of relation and how he was pseudocrafted a lot like me. However, as I worked on Ciecro's character more and built his development, I gradually began to really enjoy Ciecro to the point he's now my favorite of my protagonists. His development is very similar to how I've grown as a person and where I wish to of. Someone that feels he's let people he cares about down and thus feels the need to push himself, even if the views he holds of himself are higher than he should, potentially unhealthy. Someone that cares deeply about his family and would gladly bite the hit for them. Someone that wants to help and is frustrated when he doesn't know how or can't. Someone who doesn't know where to go with his life and holds to some idea of "guidance" from someone older that can help him find his path. I could go on. It's one of the reason I like him so much besides just his personality. His struggles, choices, and character feel very "present-day" for me. If Vragon is what I would view as the "me" of years ago, Ciecro would be the "me" recently. He would be what I would call a "development" relation.

Baphomet: Is one of my favorite of the antagonists. Someone that has a backstory that's not the most depressing, but still shows his struggles. He is part of a core theme in the story, and his reaction to what he sees in this world and what he does with that reflects my own personal worldview. I don't really share much when it comes to his backstory and conduct nor physical traits or quirks, but I do share a mindset similar to him. I'll spare spoiling it for now, but I can say I would classify this as a "Exstistential" relation.

To answer your second question, I'm not really a fan of self-inserts because you can draw aspects of yourself into almost everything in the story already. So much already says so much about you. It feels like taking the "literal" way to much and can really minimize the ability of a reader to really appreciate what is said here, since oftentimes self-insert stories are written just for the self-insert person. Some can write this in ways that work very well and some go as Palamon said, "Overboard".

All my characters are closely related to me in terms of interests and personality. This is because I struggle to write anything that I am not familiar with, and I am currently only familiar with myself. It helps though that I have several different interests so I can spread them out across different people, but of course there comes the challenge of not making any of them too one-noted.

I try not to - and I used to struggle with this a lot more, because my characters were so similar to me in beliefs and interests that you could argue they were badly written self-inserts! And I do not like self-inserts honestly, because most of the time, you can sense the author is really wrapped up in it, and it takes away from the story and the immersion, and reminds me too much of "author x character" fictions...

A rather embarrassing realisation for me was that my characters were boring BECAUSE they were like me, and back then, that amounted to being just... kind, shy, loves animals, hopeless romantic etc. And while that's perfectly fine, I just think for a main character, it can very easily lead to boring interactions and an overall lacking female protagonist. When I realised this I challenged myself to break away from it and create more daring, outgoing, even crass and sassy characters, which is hard because it's not like me at all! But yeah, I didn't like that I kept falling into the "girls should be kindly and gentle" trope just because I related to it. 😅

My first OC is somewhat of a genderbent version of myself, so it only makes sense that he is very similar to me. The more I wrote about him though, the more I tried to differentiate him from me. My other 2 characters in this universe share some traits with me, but again, I try my best to differentiate them with me. Then there's my other OC (a villain), who I have absolutely nothing in common with.

Self inserts are weird for me... I know you're supposed to put yourself in when it says Y/N, but it feels weird for me to do that. I just start imagining the Y/N as a completely new character instead of myself, if that makes sense.

Some characters have pieces of me, but I'd say my main oc is different from me in many ways, but borrows stuff from me. I see some posts in here that say that people here only write what they know. That's not the case for me. I don't know a single bit of sign language, but my main character does. For me, writing things I don't know but my characters would isn't hard because I can just do research and hope I'm able to get it right with enough reading up on the subject.

So, while I don't know any sign language myself, my main character taught himself some, so I had to look up signs for him. But, there are some characters that are pretty much the direct opposite of me. I have one character who is vain and arrogant about himself. I've got zero self-esteem and don't like how I look at all.

But, I guess you know, when it comes to characters for me, you're playing a role and writing out someone else's life for them. So, I just think of it as something I'm "acting" out in prose form.

(Btw writing a characters who is incredibly vain and in love with their looks was a big challenge, but I think I did well.)

Also, character x reader y/n, I never relate to those, either. There's only fair share of well written character x reader, imo, but when I said fair share, I mean very few.

I noticed, that my characters and me often have similar features

In my stories, I always put myself as the antagonist because a lot of people in real life see me as a bad guy which usually means they don't usually want to see my point of view or relate to how I see things. Also, if I make my antagonist character have children, I always put a small portion of myself into those characters.