| 1 | ->''"Bad books on writing and thoughtless English professors solemnly tell beginners to WriteWhatYouKnow, which explains why so many mediocre novels are about English professors contemplating adultery."'' |
| 2 | -->-- '''Creator/JoeHaldeman''' |
| 3 | |
| 4 | [[ShapedLikeItself You don't say?]] |
| 5 | |
| 6 | Seriously, though. In fiction, it is relatively common for the main character to be a writer or a reporter. This is in large part because many narrative works of art are initially driven by writers themselves (novelists, playwrights, screenwriters, etc.) |
| 7 | |
| 8 | Interestingly, such characters are only occasionally {{Author Avatar}}s. As the page quote indicates, one of the main pieces of advice writers hear is "WriteWhatYouKnow", and since, as writers, they know writing, they have some idea of how a writer would react in a given situation. This trope is almost unavoidable when the setting revolves around a ShowWithinAShow and may lead to a WritersBlockMontage. Making characters who are writers by trade [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools has a number of advantages for a narrative]]: |
| 9 | * It helps get past the whole RealisticDictionIsUnrealistic problem, since a writer would be expected to know how to use big, fancy words. |
| 10 | * Journalists and other kinds of nonfiction writers generally are expected to have investigative skills and an attention to detail that are [[ChekhovsSkill useful to many kinds of plots]], such as crime-solving. |
| 11 | * Even if they don't use those skills in the plot, journalists are generally close to a wide variety of local important people like politicians and big events like disasters, but not actually one of those people or part of those events. This is the in-universe reason why ComicBook/{{Superman}} and ComicBook/SpiderMan went into journalism in the first place: so they could keep their ears to the ground and find out when and where superheroes are needed. |
| 12 | * Freelance writers and journalists have a semi-plausible excuse for their OneHourWorkWeek. |
| 13 | * Fiction writers in-universe, because of that same "write what you know" principle, can theoretically have every ChekhovsSkill an amateur could plausibly have if they had [[ItsForABook researched it for a book]]. |
| 14 | * However, writers who don't write also don't get paid, which means this can become OneHourWorkWeek if the writer never actually gets around to doing any writing, or if they spend too much time doing something other than writing. In a one-off story, this can be {{handwave}}d on the basis that the character can always [[IShouldWriteABookAboutThis write a book about precisely the adventures they just experienced]]. |
| 15 | |
| 16 | This can tie into the FramingDevice, particularly if the story is written in the first person, i.e. the writer protagonist had an adventure, wrote up his account of it, published it, and this is supposedly the book you have just read. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | As a corollary to this, there are a disproportionate number of movies about the movie industry, a disproportionate number of plays about actors and playwrights, a disproportionate number of songs about singers, and so on. Comic book authors similarly have the tendency to include the SequentialArtist. It is also probably why so many books [[ReadingIsCoolAesop praise the idea of reading books]] while [[NewMediaAreEvil suspiciously eyeing other forms of media]]. |
| 19 | |
| 20 | Particularly clever or cynical writers have also been known to invoke a little CreatorCareerSelfDeprecation and write stories in which WritersSuck. |
| 21 | |
| 22 | SuperTrope of HowIWroteThisArticleArticle, which is writing about not knowing what to write anymore, and WritersBlockMontage. For characters who only become writers once they have some interesting stories to tell, see IShouldWriteABookAboutThis. |
| 23 | |
| 24 | See also MostWritersAreMale and MostWritersAreHuman. Compare and contrast SelfInsertFic. |
| 25 | |
| 26 | ---- |
| 27 | !!Examples: |
| 28 | |
| 29 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 30 | |
| 31 | [[folder:Anime & Manga]] |
| 32 | * Sumiregawa Nenene of ''Anime/ReadOrDie''. |
| 33 | * There's also a number of manga about making manga, or at least doujin: ''Manga/{{Genshiken}}'', ''Videogame/ComicParty'', ''Manga/DoujinWork'', ''Manga/{{Bakuman}}'', ''Manga/EvenAMonkeyCanDrawManga'', ''Manga/TheUnpopularMangakaAndTheHelpfulOnryoSan'', ''Manga/AhAndMmAreAllSheSays''... |
| 34 | * Manga that contain characters that are writers are also plentiful: ''Manga/SchoolRumble'', ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'', ''Manga/JunjouRomantica'', ''Manga/{{Kodocha}}'', ''Manga/OtakuNoMusumeSan'' and ''Manga/FairyTail''. |
| 35 | * In ''Manga/StrawberryMarshmallow'', Miu tries her hand at being a writer of manga, but her works are a bit surreal for Chika. |
| 36 | * ''Manga/{{Bakuman}}'' is a manga about manga, with the main characters being a manga artist and author, and is coincidentally produced by a writer and an author as separate people. |
| 37 | * Himeko's mother from ''Manga/HimechansRibbon'' is a writer of young women's romance novels who often takes ideas from the real world into her stories, with little changes. |
| 38 | * ''Manga/GalaxyExpress999'' does this several times. At one point, a poor person Tetsuro meets is a would-be anime creator (who we are told, did manage to get her anime created), and episode 58 features a ghost who was a would-be manga writer in life. Episodes 60-61 have another would-be manga artist, and another one shows up in episode 101. And 111 too. |
| 39 | * Sai Nanohana, father to Anime/JubeiChan, popular writer of samurai period pulp, and AuthorAvatar. |
| 40 | * ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureDiamondIsUnbreakable'' introduces the famed mangaka Kishibe Rohan, whose Stand lets him read and write into people like they are books. [[AuthorAvatar He shares many personality quirks with Hirohiko Araki]], such as [[ShownTheirWork doing lots of research and preferring to experience things hands-on before writing them into their works]]. Rohan would later become the protagonist of multiple SpinOff series, including the ''Manga/ThusSpokeKishibeRohan'' series. |
| 41 | * ''Manga/FairyTail'' has SupportingProtagonist Lucy who has spent much of the series writing a book. The trope is even played with when she tries to trick a villain by saying she needs to go the bathroom. The villain has prepared for such a cheap trick and shows Lucy a bucket that she may use instead of a toilet. Lucy pretends that she is actually going to use the bucket. The villain is embarrassed and looks the other way, and Lucy uses the opportunity to [[GroinAttack kick him in the crotch]]. She then notes that despite the bathroom trick being [[TheOldestTricksInTheBook one of the oldest ones in the book]], it actually worked and that she might use it in her own novel. |
| 42 | * ''Manga/DailyLivesOfHighSchoolBoys'' have the "literature girl," who wrote a RomanceNovel... and then [[LongingForFictionland trying to re-enact the scene herself]]. |
| 43 | * Sae of ''Manga/HidamariSketch'' is a seventeen-year-old who's [[InstantBookDeal already writing commercially]]. |
| 44 | * Wakanae Sora of ''Manga/FamilyCompo'' is a manga artist, who seems to specialize in manly action stories if the covers of ''Our Emblem'' are anything to go by. |
| 45 | * Yuuki Rito's father in ''Manga/ToLoveRu'' is a manga artist who rarely sees his children because he's constantly on deadline. The bodyguard/chief enforcer of an intergalactic warlord becomes Mr Yuuki's assistant. Somehow. |
| 46 | * Nitori from ''Manga/WanderingSon'' shows a knack for writing throughout the series, typically being the one to write scripts for the {{school play}}s and often being shown writing. In high school, she even begins writing a book that can best be described as an in-universe version of the manga. When she goes to college at the end of the manga she says she wants to get into a writing-related career. |
| 47 | * Nozaki of ''Manga/MonthlyGirlsNozakiKun'' is mainly a SequentialArtist, but he sometimes writes plays for Hori of the school drama club in exchange for Hori drawing backgrounds for him. |
| 48 | * ''Anime/{{Shirobako}}'' is a series about the process of making anime. Main character Aoi is a production assistant, whose role is to make sure everything stays on schedule, but we see writers, animators, sound effects creators, and the occasional voice actor. |
| 49 | * ''Manga/TheComicArtistAndHisAssistants'' is a comedy about pervy manga artist Aito Yuuki and his staff of {{Beleaguered Assistant}}s. |
| 50 | * The protagonist of ''Manga/{{ERASED}}'' is a struggling manga artist, which doesn't have that much relevance to its main plot of traveling back in time to catch a serial killer. |
| 51 | * The protagonist of ''Manga/DagashiKashi'' wants to be a manga artist, but his art isn't that good. |
| 52 | * ''Kaasan: Mom's Life'' stars a mother who works as a mangaka. |
| 53 | * ''{{Manga/Nichijou}}'''s {{tritagonist}} Mio is an aspiring mangaka who draws [[YaoiGenre yaoi]] doujin [[YaoiFangirl in her spare time]]. Fellow FourTemperamentEnsemble member Mai has also written at least one unpublished manga...though her style tends toward the same [[MundaneFantastic absurdist humor]] that runs the series. |
| 54 | * Episode 10 of ''Anime/ParanoiaAgent'' shows an anime studio struggling to put a {{pilot}} together. The creators are [[CreatorCareerSelfDeprecation overworked]], irresponsible, and [[WritersSuck hostile towards each other]]; and the episode plays out like [[spoiler:Creator/SatoshiKon and Creator/{{Madhouse}}'s twisted sadomasochistic fantasy of [[PutThemAllOutOfMyMisery ending it all]].]] |
| 55 | * [[DownplayedTrope While she doesn't have anything published]], Ayano in ''Manga/AsteroidInLove'' is actually a budding fantasy novelist. She left the Literature Club for the [[SchoolNewspaperNewsHound Newspaper Club]] mainly because the former seems to be more interested in literary criticism than creative writing, while the Newspaper Club's president is willing to provide feedback on her writings. Her [[ADayInTheLimelight limelight chapter]] shows she takes so much time writing that her classmate notices she keeps AsleepInClass. |
| 56 | * ''Manga/WhyTheHellAreYouHereTeacher'': The eleventh arc, starting with Chapter 101, focuses on Minamoto, a teacher who's also a mangaka, and Kobayashi, a student who dreams of being one as well. |
| 57 | * ''Manga/TheKindaichiCaseFiles'': |
| 58 | ** Itsuki is a freelance writer who used to write for a weekly paper a decade ago. That being said, he functions more as an IntrepidReporter in many a mystery case arc. |
| 59 | ** In ''The (37-year-old) Kindaichi Case Files'', Fumi, as an adult in her late 20's, works as a mystery novelist. |
| 60 | ** Some of the individual case arcs have a writer as among the participants in a given case. Which role said writer plays varies, depending on the case arc in question. |
| 61 | * The OfficialCouple of the {{seinen}} romance manga ''Manga/AGalaxyNextDoor'' consists of {{Shojo}} mangaka Ichiro Kuga and his assistant Shiori Goshiki, who [[AscendedFangirl learned to draw manga by tracing his]]. |
| 62 | * ''Manga/TheSummerYouWereThere'' stars Shizuku Hoshikawa, who took to writing as an outlet for her emotions. She started with a web novel titled, "Girls Lovers Suicide," which she wrote to work through her guilt about bullying her elementary school classmate Ruri Ichinose and the isolation caused by her ostracism. After being viciously attacked online for inadvertently making it resemble an actual tragedy, she finishes the story, then plans on [[DrivenToSuicide killing herself]] after throwing it out, only for her classmate Kaori Asaka to find it. At Kaori's urging, Shizuku begins writing again, first writing a story that later becomes the basis for an apology letter to Ruri, then takes Kaori's suggestion to write a love story about the two of them. [[spoiler:Shizuku completes the story just before Kaori dies and sends her the final line, in which Shizuku's character tells Kaori character, "I love you" as a LoveConfession.]] |
| 63 | * "Manga/MuraiKunWantsToFuckMizunoKun": It's mentioned in passing that Mizuno works as an editor at a small book publisher. |
| 64 | [[/folder]] |
| 65 | |
| 66 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 67 | * In the ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'' mythos, Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen -- and in some continuities [[ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} Kara Danvers]] -- are reporters. |
| 68 | * Creator/AlanMoore writes ''ComicBook/{{Providence}}'' as a homage to the writer Creator/HPLovecraft and his main protagonist Robert Black is himself an aspiring novelist and literary reader. |
| 69 | * In ''ComicBook/{{Kabuki}}'', the titular heroine writes children's books after she retires from a life of violence. |
| 70 | * The original ''ComicBook/{{Grendel}}'', Hunter Rose, is a world-renowned novelist. |
| 71 | * ComicBook/{{Supreme}} is a comic book artist. |
| 72 | * Also in Creator/DCComics, Sam Simeon (of ''ComicBook/AngelAndTheApe''), R. Rodney Rabbit (aka [[ComicBook/CaptainCarrotAndHisAmazingZooCrew Captain Carrot]]), and Kyle Rayner (one of Earth's many [[ComicBook/GreenLantern Green Lanterns]]) are comic book artists. |
| 73 | * Daniel Clowes (''ComicBook/{{Eightball}}'') frequently writes about artists and writers. Enid Coleslaw of ''ComicBook/GhostWorld'' was an artist, as is Dan Pussey of ''ComicBook/{{Pussey}}!'' It's alluded to in ''ComicBook/DavidBoring'' that the title character is a multimedia artist. At least two of the main characters (including ''the'' main character) of ''IceHaven'' are writers. ''Twentieth Century Eightball'' is a collection of short-stories from Clowes, ''many'' of which are about artists (''ComicBook/ArtSchoolConfidential'', ''Ink Studs'', etc.). |
| 74 | * ''ComicBook/{{Transmetropolitan}}'''s main character, Spider Jerusalem. |
| 75 | * Steve Rogers (a.k.a. ComicBook/CaptainAmerica) has worked as a comic book artist -- even illustrating a ''Captain America'' comic! |
| 76 | * Franchise/{{Tintin}} is nominally a reporter, [[ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything although he has only rarely been seen to file any stories]]. |
| 77 | * ''ComicBook/WildsEnd''. The main group includes a writer and reporter. Then we are introduced to two eminent sci-fi writers. There are multiple sequences where these characters sit and write about their experiences. |
| 78 | * In ''Dream Country'', the third book of ''ComicBook/TheSandman1989'', a struggling writer gets famous thanks to his imprisonment and rape of Calliope, the Greek muse. He buys her from another writer, whom it is implied became famous through the same means. Unsurprisingly, Calliope is not thrilled about this arrangement; neither is the title character, with whom Calliope once had a child and who delivers some karmic justice to her captor. |
| 79 | * The first main character introduced in ''ComicBook/StrikeforceMorituri'', Harold Everson, is an aspiring writer. He writes about his adventures with the Morituri and dreams of living on through his work like Hemmingway. |
| 80 | * The ''ComicBook/AstroCity'' story "Where the Action Is" follows the tribulations of a comic book writer. |
| 81 | [[/folder]] |
| 82 | |
| 83 | [[folder:Comic Strips]] |
| 84 | * Jon Arbuckle of ''ComicStrip/{{Garfield}}'' was specifically identified as a cartoonist in early strips, at least before he essentially became a full-time {{Cloudcuckoolander}} loser guy. In the [[WesternAnimation/GarfieldAndFriends cartoon]], however, his profession regularly drives the conflict in the plot. |
| 85 | * The father in ''ComicStrip/TheFamilyCircus'' is also a cartoonist. The family seems to be based on Bil Keane's. His son in the strip, Jeffy, shares the name of his son in real life, who eventually took over doing the strip. |
| 86 | * Michael Patterson of ''ComicStrip/ForBetterOrForWorse''. His first novel is a best-seller. |
| 87 | * Sydney in ''ComicStrip/DykesToWatchOutFor'' is an academic writer and there have been other minor characters like Deidre and Anjlai who write but main character and semi-AuthorAvatar Mo has creator Creator/AlisonBechdel's bibliophile tendencies instead of being a writer herself. |
| 88 | * Pretty much everybody in modern ''ComicStrip/FunkyWinkerbean'' is a writer or comics artist, is going to become a writer or comics artist, is a writer or comic artist's girlfriend/wife, has their life revolve around writing or comics in some other capacity, or is about to be PutOnABus. In this universe, writers are the ''only'' successful and fulfilled individuals, and are irresistible to the opposite sex. Especially if they write comics. |
| 89 | * Val in ''ComicStrip/{{Retail}}'' is an aspiring one, and hopes to someday be able to afford to quit Grumbel's in order to devote her time to it. [[spoiler:Cooper's new job at the end of the comic, which pays twice as much as Grumbel's did, finally allows her to do so.]] |
| 90 | [[/folder]] |
| 91 | |
| 92 | [[folder:Fan Works]] |
| 93 | * Naruto in ''Fanfic/AGrowingAffection'' ghost wrote for Jiraiya during the time skip, and helped with the outline for the next few books as well. |
| 94 | * Vale, the protagonist of the ''Hunger Games'' fanfic ''Fanfic/SomeSemblanceOfMeaning'', wants to be a writer, even if she simultaneously acknowledges this aspiration as "unrealistic". Her writer's mind affects her perception of events at times, and her storytelling actually comes into play when [[spoiler:Kit asks her on his deathbed to tuck him in, and she tells him about a "land without districts" where good people go when they die]], and later, when she [[spoiler:echoes that story during the final confrontation]]. |
| 95 | * One of the sidestories of ''Fanfic/PokemonResetBloodlines'' features Gary meeting a former Pokémon trainer-turned-novelist named Casey Snagem, who has written many best-sellers. In another, it's revealed that Elite Four member Lorelei writes magazine articles and light novels under the PenName "[[MythologyGag Prima]]". |
| 96 | * Played with in the ''Franchise/DragonAge'' series ''Fanfic/SkyholdAcademyYearbook,'' in which students Rory and Jim are aspiring writers. Specifically, they write in-universe fanfic about their teachers. It’s actually a device for the (real) authors, allowing them to write AlternateUniverse stories about the characters and include them in what is already an AlternateUniverse fanfiction. |
| 97 | * In ''Fanfic/APrizeForThreeEmpires'', [[Characters/MarvelComicsCarolDanvers Carol Danvers]] is a pretty successful novelist. |
| 98 | * Both Klar Kent and his wife Lyra from ''Fanfic/SupermanOf2499TheGreatConfrontation'' are reporters. On top of it, Lyra is a popular writer. |
| 99 | * The imagination of Wendy in ''Fanfic/NotOldAloneOrDoneFor'' hasn't changed much since childhood. She puts it to good use through writing. |
| 100 | [[/folder]] |
| 101 | |
| 102 | [[folder:Films -- Animated]] |
| 103 | * The corollary to this is "Most animators are artists." In ''WesternAnimation/{{Tangled}}'''s musical number "When Does My Life Begin?", Rapunzel demonstrates a wide variety of talents, but the only one of them that becomes crucial to the plot is her art skill. |
| 104 | * In the {{Novelization}} of ''WesternAnimation/TurningRed'', Mei and her friends are all fanfic writers. |
| 105 | [[/folder]] |
| 106 | |
| 107 | [[folder:Films -- Live-Action]] |
| 108 | * ''Film/AnAngelAtMyTable'' is a {{biopic}} of New Zealand writer Janet Frame. |
| 109 | * The main character from ''Film/TwoThousandTwelve'' was a science fiction writer, albeit an unsuccessful one. |
| 110 | * The protagonist in ''Film/ThrowMommaFromTheTrain'' is an author and writing professor who tutors people that want to write books. |
| 111 | * The leading character in ''Film/{{Lanotte}}'' is a famous author who attends the presentation of his own book. |
| 112 | * In ''Film/MoulinRouge'', Christian is a struggling writer. |
| 113 | * [[Film/TheThirdMan Holly Martins]] winds up as one after the end of the film. |
| 114 | * ''Film/BartonFink'' is about a writer suffering from writer's block, written while the Coens themselves were having difficulty with ''Film/MillersCrossing''. This writer really wants to make arty, weighty, important movies about the plight of the common man (mainly Fink), similar to his successful play, but gets assigned a wrestling picture instead. |
| 115 | * In the film ''Film/{{Croupier}}'' the protagonist is a novelist working as a croupier for a day job. The film really starts to get interesting when he commences writing a thinly disguised roman á clef entitled ''I, Croupier,'' the plot of which resembles his own life. |
| 116 | * Creator/CharlieKaufman's ''Film/{{Adaptation}}'' is a particularly surreal take on this trope. Kaufman himself (as played by Nic Cage) is the protagonist, and the movie is at least in part about the writing of itself. Then it gets even more surreal. The writer credits for the movie include Donald Kaufman, Charlie Kaufman's ''fictional'' twin brother, who's also a character in the movie, [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment and also a writer]] (and [[ActingForTwo also played by Nic Cage]]). |
| 117 | * The Jet Li movie, ''Film/DrWaiInTheScriptureWithNoWords'', in which Li plays a NonActionGuy for once, a writer picturing himself as a badass adventurer he created on paper. All the action scenes in the movie are ImagineSpot which Li puts himself in while thinking about how to progress with his latest story. |
| 118 | * ''Film/StrangerThanFiction'' also uses the device in an eerie, roundabout, and darkly humorous manner. |
| 119 | * ''Film/SunsetBoulevard:'' Protagonist and narrator Joe Gillis is a screenwriter, and this proves important -- he catches Norma Desmond's interest as she believes he can help her complete the script of her great comeback film. To complete the triangle, Joe's girlfriend Betty is another aspiring screenwriter. |
| 120 | * ''Film/ShakespeareInLove,'' naturally. |
| 121 | * Marty's father becomes a bestselling science fiction author in ''Film/BackToTheFuture1''. |
| 122 | * Gordie, the protagonist of ''Film/StandByMe'', writes and tells stories as a teenager; the movie ends by showing us the now-adult Gordie writing the events of the film on his computer, while his son irritably waits to be taken to the pool. |
| 123 | * Brother Gilbert in ''Film/{{Dragonheart}}'' wants to compose epic ballads, and spends part of the film trying to write one about protagonist Bowen. |
| 124 | * It would be shorter to list the Creator/WoodyAllen movies where one of the main characters ''isn't'' a writer. |
| 125 | * ''Film/LadyInTheWater'': There is a writer whose future work is destined to save the world. Did I mention that Creator/MNightShyamalan plays the character himself? |
| 126 | * ''Film/RomancingTheStone'' is about a female author who gets pulled into a treasure hunt alongside a rugged male adventurer played by Creator/MichaelDouglas. It was written by a female writer who got pulled into the world of Hollywood by Michael Douglas. |
| 127 | * In ''Film/WithnailAndI'', the character only officially known as "I" is a writer, but all he writes is "just thoughts, really." His writing serves as the movie's occasionally FauxlosophicNarration. |
| 128 | * In ''Film/HowToLoseFriendsAndAlienatePeople'', which is based on a memoir by a British journalist, most of the characters are journalists (and a lot of them have hobbies such as writing poetry or novels). |
| 129 | * ''Film/TheCoward'': Protagonist Amitabha Ray is a screenwriter who accidentally runs into his ex-girlfriend while road-tripping to get ideas for his next story. (Even better, he shares a last name with the writer/director of the movie, Creator/SatyajitRay.) |
| 130 | * ''Film/RubySparks'': Calvin is a young novelist struggling with writer's block. |
| 131 | * ''Film/SevenPsychopaths'': Marty is a struggling writer who dreams of finishing his screenplay ''Seven Psychopaths''. |
| 132 | * ''Theatre/{{Sleuth}}'': One of the protagonists has become wealthy as a successful writer of popular, though now old-fashioned, crime fiction novels, which feature an aristocratic amateur detective, St. John Lord Merridew. |
| 133 | * ''Film/BeforeSunset'': Jesse has written a novel, ''This Time'', inspired by his time with Celine, and the book has become an American bestseller. |
| 134 | * ''Film/TheHelp'': Skeeter has just finished college and comes home with dreams of becoming a writer. |
| 135 | * ''Film/InALonelyPlace'': The film starts out with Dixon being a down-on-his-luck screenwriter who has not had a hit "since before the war." |
| 136 | * ''Film/WorldsGreatestDad'': Lance Clayton is a struggling author. |
| 137 | * ''Literature/{{Factotum}}'': Chinaski is working toward becoming a writer. |
| 138 | * ''Film/{{Following}}'': The protagonist is a struggling, unemployed young writer. |
| 139 | * In ''Film/TheShining'', the fact that the protagonist is a writer who is suffering severely from writer's block is the reason the family goes to the hotel in the first place. |
| 140 | * ''Film/TheThirdMan'': Holly Martens, the protagonist, is an American pulp Western writer - in this case, it's drawing attention to the fact that he's somewhat afflicted with arrested emotional development, considering Harry Lime to be basically a good guy because they were friends once. At least until he gets a look at what Lime was really like. |
| 141 | * ''Film/BasicInstinct'': Catherine Tramell, the female lead, is a crime novelist. [[spoiler:And a particularly manipulative and genre-savvy one at that; by the end of the film it's revealed that she set up almost every event to emulate her own book.]] |
| 142 | * ''TheDoorInTheFloor'': The protagonist is a children's book author and artist. |
| 143 | * ''Film/SwimmingPool (2003)'': The story revolves around a middle-aged English mystery author, who is having writer's block that is impeding her next book. |
| 144 | * ''Film/SecretWindow'': The story is about a successful author suffering from writer's block and depression. |
| 145 | * ''Film/BreakfastAtTiffanys'': The male lead is a writer who has not had anything published in five years since writing a book of vignettes titled ''Nine Lives''. |
| 146 | * The main character in ''Film/MidnightInParis'' is a writer trying to put the finishing touches on his novel. |
| 147 | * ''Film/IfYouBelieve'': Susan, the protagonist, is an editor working for a publishing house and Tom is a lawyer who gave up his career to become a writer. Susan ends up editing his first novel. |
| 148 | * William Hurt's character in ''Film/{{Smoke}} (1995)'' is a novelist whose career came to a halt after the tragic death of his wife. The character is named Paul Benjamin, a reference to the film's writer Paul Auster, whose second forename is Benjamin. |
| 149 | * ''Film/CabinByTheLake'' centers around a scriptwriter's problems to write a satisfying conclusion to his story... and is also a serial killer. |
| 150 | * ''Film/InTheMouthOfMadness'': Sutter Cane is the most popular (horror) writer who ever lived and he's ''the villain'' no less. At its core, the film looks at what the awesome power of writing [[RewritingReality means to the characters who occupy the novels themselves]]. |
| 151 | * Baltimore Hall of ''Film/{{Twixt}}'' is a writer, with the difficulties of writing a plot and avoiding being pigeonholed in one's genre being almost as center-stage as the vampire-related killings. |
| 152 | * Both ''Film/SwimmingWithSharks'' and ''Film/ThePlayer'' are centered around some producers in Hollywood, and of course, the trouble they get from writers. |
| 153 | * ''Film/SetItUp'': Harper, one of the protagonists, is an aspiring sports journalist. Her boss, Kirsten, is a prominent one. |
| 154 | * ''Film/TheGuernseyLiteraryAndPotatoPeelPieSociety'': Juliet is an up-and-coming writer fresh off the success of her second book, and tries to write an article throughout the film. |
| 155 | * ''Film/PaperbackHero'': Creator/HughJackman plays Jack, a truck driver who secretly writes romance novels under the name of his female best friend Ruby Vale. |
| 156 | * The main viewpoint character of ''Film/WhiteHunterBlackHeart'' is writer Pete Verill, an AuthorAvatar for Peter Veriel (and the whole story is based on his experiences working on ''Film/TheAfricanQueen'' in Africa). |
| 157 | * ''Film/LoveHard'': Natalie is a columnist for a ShallowNewsSiteSatire, a job that gives her leeway to fly across the country for an online crush because she can write about it. |
| 158 | * The female lead of ''Film/Coda2019'', Helen, is a music critic, and the film is framed around her attempting to profile Henry. |
| 159 | * Super me (2019) is a movie about Sang Yu, a financially broken writer, and all the movie remarks [[Main/ShowDontTell how he is a "good writer"]]. |
| 160 | * Creator/AlexGarland's ''Film/CivilWar2024'' is about a group of war journalists covering the SecondAmericanCivilWar. |
| 161 | [[/folder]] |
| 162 | |
| 163 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 164 | * ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' is itself the FramingDevice variant of this. Which is why so many other fantasy writers/stories do it. [[Creator/JRRTolkien Tolkien]] claimed to be the translator of a book originally written by Frodo (and also Frodo's original manuscript was lost, and Tolkien was actually translating a work copied by an anonymous human). Slightly averted in that Tolkien wasn't a professional writer (he was a professor of Philology, or as the Americans say it, Historical Linguistics). But since Tolkien is primarily known as a writer (despite having researched and edited a section of the Oxford English Dictionary and revolutionized his professional field), it seems fair to list this here. He probably invoked it because he realized he wasn't the world's best writer and because he was trying to make a mythology (which he pretty much succeeded in doing, more or less). Frodo can be seen writing the book at the beginning of the movie, and then hands it to Sam in the last scene before getting on the ship to Valinor. In-universe, Frodo is of course continuing a family tradition: with Bilbo Baggins having authored ''Literature/TheHobbit''. Bilbo writing his book is actually the reason why Frodo goes on his adventures to begin with: because Bilbo decides to skip the second part of his birthday party in order to take his finished book to Rivendell (it was Lord Elrond who originally requested the book). When he does so, he leaves the Ring behind: Gandalf then seizes the moment to convince Frodo to undertake the journey to destroy the Ring. |
| 165 | ** Tolkien also invoked the trope outside of his books. He had a professor alter ego called Lowdham, and an academic in-universe alter ego Pengolodh, which names he used to write articles about his invented world without tooting his own horn. |
| 166 | * Morag Gunn, the protagonist of Creator/MargaretLaurence's novel ''Literature/TheDiviners1974'', is a writer. |
| 167 | * ''Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'': |
| 168 | ** Ford Prefect's job as a writer for the eponymous EncyclopediaExposita provides him with an excuse to go on his dangerously irresponsible adventures. His problems with his editors (who butchered a long, complex, beautifully written article he spent fifteen years on into two words) are a major point in the series. |
| 169 | ** And Arthur Dent worked for the BBC. Take a guess at who Douglas worked for. This gets [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] in the Quandary Phase of [[Radio/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy1978 the radio series]], where Arthur's producer is played by the original producer of ''Hitchhiker's'', Geoffrey Perkins. A significantly DownplayedTrope in this case, however: in the first volume of the novel this fact is confined to a single brief mention that he "worked in local radio" that never really comes up again afterwards, and indeed Adams never quite gets around to going into specifics, so Arthur could just as easily have been a sound engineer or even a presenter. |
| 170 | * The ''Literature/{{Raffles}}'' stories are framed as memoirs by Raffles's friend Bunny Manders, who, outside of being a writer, works as a journalist in the stories proper. |
| 171 | * Creator/RichardMatheson: |
| 172 | ** "Literature/MadHouse" focuses on a writer with a nasty case of writer's block, among other problems. |
| 173 | ** And the protagonist in ''Film/WhatDreamsMayCome'' was a writer for television. He was made a pediatrician in [[TheFilmOfTheBook the movie]]. |
| 174 | * Creator/PatMurphy: |
| 175 | ** In ''Literature/AdventuresInSpaceAndTimeWithMaxMerriwell'', the title character is an author who meets living avatars of his PenNames on a cruise. The other characters all take a writing workshop with him. The character Pat Murphy (Pat Murphy often names characters after herself) writes a blog called The Bad Grrl's Guide to physics. Murphy is a science writer. |
| 176 | ** In ''Literature/WildGirls'', two twelve-year-old girls write a story together. When they win a writing contest, they get to take a writing workshop with the eccentric Vera Volante. |
| 177 | * Creator/LarryNiven and Creator/JerryPournelle: |
| 178 | ** Allen Carpentier, the protagonist of ''Literature/InfernoLarryNivenAndJerryPournelle'', is a Speculative Fiction writer, just like Niven and Pournelle. In some ways, Carpentier seems to represent Niven (more so than Pournelle), and [[{{Expy}} expies]] of many other SF authors and other then-famous personages appear in the story, but at the same time, Carpentier's depiction is used to savage personal shortcomings that Niven himself might reasonably have. |
| 179 | ** ''Literature/{{Footfall}}'' features several sci-fi authors, including clear AuthorAvatar versions of both authors as well as one of Creator/RobertAHeinlein, brought together by the government to help think up ways to fight an alien invasion. |
| 180 | ** ''Literature/LucifersHammer'' (partly based on a scene from the first draft of ''Footfall'' that their editor demanded they expand into a novel in its own right) features writers and journalists among the characters living through the collapse of civilization after a major comet impact. |
| 181 | * Jo March (later Bhaer) of ''Literature/LittleWomen'' is pretty much a perfect example of an AuthorAvatar (although [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools in general, done quite well]]). |
| 182 | * Creator/RobertAHeinlein loves this trope. Among his protagonists who are writers who bear more than a passing resemblance to the author or friends of his: |
| 183 | ** Jubal Harshaw of ''Literature/StrangerInAStrangeLand'', who writes in a variety of genres and media, under a bunch of pseudonyms. |
| 184 | ** Hazel Stone of ''Literature/TheRollingStones1952'', who writes a pulpy sci-fi adventure TV series. |
| 185 | ** The nameless protagonist of ''Literature/AllYouZombies'', who spends some time writing stories for a "True Confessions" magazine, and gets the nickname "The Unmarried Mother" partly from this fact. |
| 186 | ** The protagonist of ''Literature/TheCatWhoWalksThroughWalls'' is a fiction writer who lives on an orbital space colony. |
| 187 | ** The final chapter of ''Literature/TheNumberOfTheBeast'' is a huge cross-dimensional convention attended by sci-fi authors and characters from multiple fictional universes. |
| 188 | * Quite a few of Creator/StephenKing's protagonists are also writers. |
| 189 | ** Novelists: |
| 190 | *** ''Literature/{{Misery}}'': Paul Sheldon is the author of a best-selling series of Victorian-era romance novels surrounding the heroine character Misery Chastain. The antagonist, a fan of his books, doesn't like the way he tried to conclude the series and goes off the deep end. |
| 191 | *** ''Literature/SalemsLot'': Ben Mears |
| 192 | *** ''Franchise/TheDarkTower'': He's written himself into the story (though not as the protagonist). |
| 193 | *** "Word Processor of the Gods", a short story in the collection ''Literature/SkeletonCrew''. |
| 194 | *** "The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet", also in ''Skeleton Crew'': Reg Thorpe |
| 195 | *** ''Literature/TheTommyknockers'': Roberta "Bobbi" Anderson, a writer of Westerns [[spoiler: although it's a bit of a misdirection, as she actually becomes the first victim, and her friend Gard, a poet, steps in as the true protagonist.]] |
| 196 | *** ''Literature/TheDarkHalf'': Thad Beaumont |
| 197 | *** ''Literature/{{It}}'': Bill Denbrough, a horror writer. |
| 198 | *** "Literature/TheLangoliers", a novella published in the collection ''Literature/FourPastMidnight'': Bob Jenkins is a mystery writer who does some GenreSavvy analysis of the situation. |
| 199 | *** "Secret Window, Secret Garden", also in ''Literature/FourPastMidnight'': Mort Rainey |
| 200 | *** ''Literature/{{Desperation}}'', and ''Literature/TheRegulators'': Johnny Marinville |
| 201 | *** ''Literature/BagOfBones'': Mike Noonan is a novelist suffering from writer's block. |
| 202 | *** ''Literature/LiseysStory'': Scott Landon (Lisey's deceased husband) |
| 203 | *** "The Body" (AKA ''Film/StandByMe'') Gordon Lachance |
| 204 | *** "Umney's Last Case", a short story in ''Literature/NightmaresAndDreamscapes'' |
| 205 | *** "The Road Virus Heads North", a short story in ''Literature/EverythingsEventual'': Richard Kinell, a horror writer. |
| 206 | *** "Big Driver", a short story in ''Literature/FullDarkNoStars'': Tess, a mystery writer. |
| 207 | ** Non-novelist writers: |
| 208 | *** Selena St. George in ''Literature/DoloresClaiborne'' is a journalist. |
| 209 | *** ''The Colorado Kid'': Three of the four main characters are reporters or otherwise work for a newspaper. |
| 210 | *** ''Literature/{{CELL}}'': Clayton Riddell is a writer of graphic novels. |
| 211 | *** ''Literature/TheTommyknockers'': Jim Gardener is a poet. |
| 212 | *** "Literature/FourteenOhEight", a short story in ''Everything's Eventual'': Mike Enslin writes non-fiction books about haunted places. |
| 213 | *** ''Literature/TheShining'': Jack Torrance is working on a play and has a pile of short stories under his belt. |
| 214 | *** ''Literature/{{Carrie}}'': Sue Snell wrote a book about her experiences. |
| 215 | *** ''Literature/TheStand'': Harold Lauder is an amateur writer. He writes fantasy stories in the second person plural, and later a personal diary. |
| 216 | *** ''Literature/TheGreenMile'': Paul Edgecombe is the narrator, a main character, and also writes a huge portion of the book. |
| 217 | *** In ''Literature/DoctorSleep'', Chetta is a poet and her granddaughter's husband is a history professor taking a sabbatical to write a book. |
| 218 | ** The protagonist in ''Literature/{{Joyland}}'' is a magazine writer/editor. |
| 219 | * Stephen King's son, Creator/JoeHill, has got in on the act to some degree, too. Though his first two novels bucked the trend by having main characters who were musicians, his third novel ''Literature/{{NOS4A2}}'' follows the protagonist from childhood and has her grow up to become a successful author and illustrator of children's books. A number of his short story protagonists are writers too, such as the main character of "[[Literature/TwentiethCenturyGhosts Best New Horror]]". |
| 220 | * The first book in the ''Literature/LegacyOfTheAldenata'' series by ''Creator/JohnRingo'' starts off with a clear AuthorAvatar sci-fi writer being called in as an expert by the government to help deal with the consequences of FirstContact with aliens. A clear equivalent of Creator/DavidWeber is mentioned as being in the same group. |
| 221 | * The primary protagonist of the ''Literature/TroyRising'' series by Creator/JohnRingo, Tyler Vernon, was originally the author of a webcomic called ''[=TradeHard=]''. By the end of the first book, he is by several orders of magnitude [[Main/Fiction500 the richest man in the world]], who (as is mentioned several times) "talks to the US President when Vernon makes the time in Vernon's schedule". |
| 222 | * The male protagonist in ''Literature/BreakfastAtTiffanys'' was a writer. |
| 223 | * Creator/JohnIrving loves this trope. |
| 224 | ** ''Literature/TheWorldAccordingToGarp''. Garp's first two novels have plots that are similar to Irving's first two novels. In fact, a rejection letter Garp receives for one of his stories was one that Irving received in RealLife for the same story. |
| 225 | ** The narrator of Irving's ''The 158 Pound Marriage'' is a semi-successful author of historical fiction. The novel describes but also results from an author's frustrating, year-long research trip to Vienna, which yielded no intriguing fictional narratives but did yield a hot wife. |
| 226 | ** ''Literature/AWidowForOneYear''. Ruth Cole, the protagonist, is a successful writer. Her father, who is a main character in both sections of the book, is a writer/illustrator of Not for Children children's books. Her long-lost mother writes detective fiction. |
| 227 | ** The youngest sister in ''Literature/TheHotelNewHampshire'' writes a book. |
| 228 | ** Daniel Baciagalupo in ''Last Night in Twisted River'' is a novelist. A novelist whose books include one on [[Literature/APrayerForOwenMeany Vietnam]], and another on [[Literature/TheCiderHouseRules abortion]]. |
| 229 | * Creator/KurtVonnegut: |
| 230 | ** His novels have the recurring character of Kilgore Trout, though ''he's'' not exactly how the author [[LemonyNarrator consciously inserts himself into his stories]]. (Actually, if Trout is based on anybody, he is based on Creator/TheodoreSturgeon, of SturgeonsLaw.) |
| 231 | ** The main character in his novel ''Literature/CatsCradle'' is a writer who starts out doing research for a book he's planning to write about the day the first atomic bomb was dropped on [[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki Hiroshima]]. Later in the story, he takes an assignment from a magazine to visit the island of [[BananaRepublic San Lorenzo]] and write an article on it, where he gets more than he bargained for. |
| 232 | * Creator/EricaJong: |
| 233 | ** ''Literature/FearOfFlying'' and its sequels, ''How to Save Your Own Life'' and ''Parachutes and Kisses'': Isadora Wing is loosely based on Jong and the stories on her personal life. |
| 234 | ** ''[[Literature/SapphosLeap Sappho's Leap]]'' is about the poet Sappho. |
| 235 | %% ZCE:* Mia Thermopolis in ''Literature/ThePrincessDiaries''. |
| 236 | * Jake Woods and Clarence Abernathy, respective protagonists of the first two books in a trilogy by Randy Alcorn, are both newspaper columnists. |
| 237 | * The dual narrators of the ''Literature/{{Ambergris}}'' book ''Shriek: An Afterword'' are an ex-gallerist and an ex-historian respectively, and both earned their living for much of their lives as freelance writers of various essays and articles. Since the book is a fictional autobiography, the financial problems associated with the profession are often in the foreground. |
| 238 | * Creator/GregBear's science fiction novel ''Queen of Angels'' revolves around a novelist, playwright, and poet, who has just killed eight people. Another main character is also a writer. |
| 239 | * Creator/DeanKoontz seems to be quite fond of this trope; to name just a few examples, the protagonist of his book ''Cold Fire'' is a reporter, and in ''Literature/{{Lightning}}'', the main character is a novelist. |
| 240 | * Henry Fitzroy, the vampire from Tanya Huff's ''Literature/BloodBooks'' series (turned into the TV show ''Series/BloodTies2007''), is a romance novelist. In the TV version, he writes and draws graphic novels. |
| 241 | * Lily from ''Literature/TheSecretLifeOfBees'' discovers and professes her talent for writing, mostly fiction. |
| 242 | * L. M. Montgomery often used this trope: |
| 243 | ** Anne Shirley in ''Literature/AnneOfGreenGables'' publishes various short stories that are published. Several times in the series people accuse her of writing friends and family into her stories. The Anne books are in many ways autobiographical with Anne's life reflecting many events in L. M. Montgomery's life including the deaths of her children. |
| 244 | ** In ''Literature/TheBlueCastle'' has a mysterious writer who ends up with a close connection to the main characters. |
| 245 | ** ''Literature/ATangledWeb1931'' there is an unseen book-writing lady that is mentioned. Some characters live in the hope that she will "write them into a story". Others live in terror of her doing exactly the same thing. |
| 246 | ** Emily, of the ''Literature/EmilyOfNewMoon'' books, knows she not only wants to be a writer, she ''is'' a writer with all of herself. The people around her can use this need to manipulate her if they want -- promising her that she can go to college, no strings attached, but only ''if'' she gives up writing fiction for the entire time. And in the third book, [[spoiler:Dean Priest tells her that ''A Seller of Dreams'' is, basically, "cute," because he's jealous of her writing and wants her to give it up, even though he realizes it is an unfinished masterpiece.]] |
| 247 | * Creator/WilliamGoldman's ''The Color Of Light'' is about this trope. It goes a bit over the top in lampshading it, though. |
| 248 | * [[Literature/ArabianNights Scheherazade]] gives the impression of being some Arab bard's ideal woman. |
| 249 | * [[Franchise/SherlockHolmes Dr. Watson]] is, of course, a medical professional, but it's on account of his writings about Holmes that Holmes is so well known. Of course, the stories he writes that make Holmes famous are the same ones that ''we read'', so this could be the world's first meta example of the trope. |
| 250 | ** Being one of the few doubled tropes on this page, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was also a doctor. Naturally a doctor-writer would write about a doctor-writer. |
| 251 | ** Bram Stoker's ''{{Dracula}}'' goes even further. It's presented as a series of journal entries and articles compiled by Mina Harker, and the construction of the book itself assists the heroes in uncovering Dracula's secrets. So the writing of the book is actually a plot point within the book. |
| 252 | * Judy Abbott, the heroine of ''Literature/DaddyLongLegs'', goes to college specifically because of her writing. Her anonymous benefactor likes a funny essay she wrote about the orphanage where she grew up, and agrees to sponsor her education so she can become a writer. Over the course of the story, she becomes a published author of short stories and then novels. |
| 253 | * The narrator in Nikos Kazantzakis's stunning novel ''Film/ZorbaTheGreek'' is a writer, an attribute for which Zorba often pokes fun at him. |
| 254 | * The narrator of the framing story in ''Literature/LifeOfPi'' is an author who wrote a historical fiction novel that should technically have been amazing, but to him was so unlikely to raise any eyebrows in book publishing that he tossed the entire manuscript. Then at a café he met someone who told him about a young Indian man named Piscine... |
| 255 | * In Creator/VladimirNabokov's ''Literature/{{Lolita}}'', the narrator Humbert Humbert is a literature professor, and although he never refers to novels that he has actually published, he does tell Charlotte Haze that he was working on a novel when she finds some very suspect entries in his journal. |
| 256 | ** He is writing a rather large scholarly piece on the works of Rimbaud, Verlaine, and Baudelaire, whichis actually published early on in the novel. This is a common trope for Nabokov, at least for his English language novels; almost every one of them features some sort of writer as the protagonist. As we approach the end of his career, the number of similarities between this writer/protagonist is notably increased. [[LampshadeHanging Nabokov notes this]], and frequently takes a poke at his protagonists for being shades of a more 'real' life. |
| 257 | ** According to legend, the implications that this trope presents almost led Nabokov to destroy his materials for Lolita, on the fear that people would think [[AuthorAvatar he was actually Humbert]]. |
| 258 | ** One of Nabokov's books actually begins with a scene the protagonist is watching out his window that he decides [[LampshadeHanging he wants to use to start his novel someday]]. |
| 259 | * In Tempe O'Kun's ''Literature/{{Windfall}}'' Max is an aspiring writer, while Kylie's mother Laura was the lead writer on the ShowWithinAShow that they acted in. |
| 260 | * The lead of Creator/PGWodehouse's ''Life Among the Chickens'' is a writer named James Garnet. Early in the story, he shares a train carriage with a pretty young woman who (unbeknownst to her) is reading his novel, and says to her father that she likes the protagonist. [[LampshadeHanging The following quote]] forces the reader to frown at the novel and go "hang a minute!" |
| 261 | -->"But I like Arthur," said Phyllis, and she smiled--the first time Garnet had seen her do so.\ |
| 262 | Garnet also smiled to himself. Arthur was the hero. He was a young writer. Ergo, Arthur was himself. |
| 263 | ** Also, both members of the AlphaCouple in Wodehouse's ''[[Literature/BlandingsCastle Something Fresh]]'' are writers for the same pulp magazine publisher. In fact, Ashe Marson's character Gridley Quayle becomes a minor plot point because Freddie, son of the Earl of Emsworth, is a huge fan of his, [[ItMakesSenseInContext which makes Freddie all too willing to give Ashe the prized scarab he stole from his father, who in turn stole it from Ashe's employer by accident]]. |
| 264 | * One of Literature/HerculePoirot's friends in ''Third Girl'' is a middle-aged mystery-writing Englishwoman, much like Creator/AgathaChristie, who tries a spot of amateur detecting. And, in accordance with the tropes of the genre, [[spoiler:is clonked over the head shortly thereafter.]] |
| 265 | ** Creator/AgathaChristie has several characters who are writers, including Ariadne Oliver and Miss Marple's nephew Raymond West, both of whom appear repeatedly in supporting roles throughout her stories. |
| 266 | * The narrator-protagonist of ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds'' is an academic author. H.G. Wells wrote a lot of non-fiction alongside his novels and short stories, though he is less known for the former today. |
| 267 | * The protagonist in Creator/TerryPratchett's non-Literature/{{Discworld}} short story "Final Reward" is the author of a long-selling series of barbarian fantasy novels. |
| 268 | ** From the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novels, William De Worde started off as a [[ItMakesSenseInContext freelance letter writer]], then later becomes a newspaper publisher and journalist in ''Literature/TheTruth''. Appropriate when one realizes that Pratchett was originally a journalist himself. |
| 269 | ** In ''Literature/{{Maskerade}}'', Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg travel to Ankh-Morpork after they learn Nanny's been cheated out of royalties from her risque cookbook. The throwaway gag about spelling "famine" with seven letters is a ShoutOut to the same error that occurred in RealLife. |
| 270 | ** In ''Literature/{{Snuff}}'', Vimes has to meet with a famous children's book writer Miss Beedle. Walking up to her house, he muses that he has no idea what writers do at home. Possibly sit in their nightgown drinking champagne. A footnote remarks that this is [[BlatantLies completely true]]. |
| 271 | * The protagonist of ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfThomasCovenant'' is a successful writer whose life quickly turns to shit. When things start getting better, he refuses to believe it is real... |
| 272 | * ''Literature/TheTomorrowSeries'': Both Ellie and Chris are writers. |
| 273 | * French author Creator/BernardWerber loves to put writers as characters: journalists and novelists are all over the place, it seems. |
| 274 | * British author and cartoonist Ros Asquith has done this several times. Letty in the Literature/TeenageWorrier series (although her dream is to become a film director, she frequently mentions that she is a published author as well), Cordelia in the ''Girl Writer'' series, and Flowkwee in ''Letters From an Alien Schoolboy'' are all examples. |
| 275 | * An JustForFun/{{egregious}} example is Jonathan Franzen's ''Literature/{{Freedom}}'', whose story is largely told from the perspective of Patty Berglund writing her autobiography. Even though Patty knows she isn't too smart and otherwise shies away from intellectual life, she seems to write about as well as Jonathan Franzen does in the rest of the novel. |
| 276 | * Although her calling in life is to be a Guardian, Creator/MercedesLackey creation Literature/DianaTregarde's income comes from writing romance novels. |
| 277 | ** Her AuthorAvatar in the ''Literature/HeraldsOfValdemar'' series is a historian and chronicler, as well. She only gets a speaking role in the ''Exile'' series, however. |
| 278 | * ''House [[Literature/HouseOfLeaves of Leaves]]'' is a more indirect use of this trope. To quote the quote on its [[Literature/HouseOfLeaves page]], "It's a book about a book about a film about a [[color:blue:house]] that is a labyrinth." |
| 279 | * Betsy in the ''Literature/BetsyTacy'' series is all about telling stories in the early books, then naturally progresses to a writer as she grows older. She shares her passion for writing with her future husband. This makes sense, as Betsy was basically an {{Expy}} of the writer Maud Hart Lovelace, who was also married to another passionate writer. |
| 280 | * The narrator-protagonist of Carol Shields's ''Unless'' is a writer and translator. |
| 281 | * ''[[Literature/TheRedTree2009 The Red Tree]]'' follows Sara Crowe, a writer suffering from an intense block after the [[TheLostLenore suicide of her girlfriend]]. |
| 282 | * In ''Literature/TheBookOfJoe'', the protagonist is Joe Goffman, a successful author struggling with his writer's block. |
| 283 | * In ''Literature/{{Fame}}'', there's only a single character in the entire novel who doesn't see himself as a writer or character. The rest of the cast consists of three writers, a forum addict, a number of fictional characters, a world-famous actor, a man who invents his own new life, and a woman who ends up as a fictional character against her will. |
| 284 | * Literature/LordPeterWimsey's love interest Harriet Vane is a mystery writer. And that's not the only similarity between her and Dorothy Sayers. |
| 285 | * ''Wonder Boys'' -- both [[Literature/WonderBoys novel]] and [[Film/WonderBoys film]] -- is about an English professor who is stuck in the middle of writing an endless, soul-sucking DoorStopper of a novel. |
| 286 | * Charlie Bucktin, the main (but not titular) character of Craig Silvey's ''Jasper Jones'', is an aspiring author. And so is his dad. |
| 287 | * Tosca Lee's ''Literature/DemonAMemoir'' is premised around not one, but two main characters as writers: one, an editor who has tried and failed for years to write novels, and second, a demon with a marvelous storytelling gift but no ability to physically write and publish his story. Hence, a partnership (of sorts?) is born.… |
| 288 | * ''Literature/KillTimeOrDieTrying'', being based on real events, most of which the authors were present for, features the authors themselves as characters. {{Subverted}}, in that the fact their being writers is barely mentioned, apparently to avoid spoiling the fun of trying to figure out which characters are the authors. |
| 289 | * Jack [=McEvoy=] in the Creator/MichaelConnelly novels ''Literature/ThePoet'' and ''Literature/TheScarecrow'' is a journalist just as Michael Connelly was before becoming a mystery writer. Said reporter ends up uncovering serial killers in both stories. |
| 290 | * A very literal example of this trope, Stephen Glass, former journalist for ''The New Republic'' and who is most well-known for partially or wholly fabricating many of his stories, went on to write a semi-fictional novel about a journalist who is caught fabricating his stories. |
| 291 | * [[Literature/SacreyasLegacy Ben Mason]] was a poet before he was turned into a zombie. |
| 292 | * Meg in ''This Tragic Universe'', by Scarlett Thomas, is a StarvingArtist paying the bills (just) with ghostwritten genre fiction while trying to write a "proper" novel that has gone through multiple rewrites over several years. (And yes, she's contemplating adultery). |
| 293 | * In many a ChivalricRomance, the narrator praises generosity to minstrels, and the porter -- who, being in charge of the door, could keep minstrels out -- is often the ButtMonkey of the tale. |
| 294 | * Creator/TomHolt has two in ''My Hero!''; the protagonist is a writer of HeroicFantasy adventure stories, and the second is a mysteriously-vanished western writer who has gotten TrappedInTVLand and needs the help of the first to escape from the story. |
| 295 | * ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfTheImaginariumGeographica'' takes this trope and runs wild with it. The main characters, as revealed at the end of the first book, are [[spoiler: Creator/CharlesWilliams, Creator/CSLewis, and Creator/JRRTolkien—additionally, Creator/HGWells, [[Literature/PeterPan James Barrie]], and other notable authors are prominent side characters]]. They are initiated as Caretakers of a fantastic dimension called the Archipelago and the Imaginarium Geographica, which is an atlas of everything that ever existed in myth and fable, which ultimately results in each of them deciding IShouldWriteABookAboutThis [[spoiler:(which become [[Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia the classics]] [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings we know]] today)]]. |
| 296 | * In the new [[Literature/ADiscoveryOfWitches All Souls Trilogy]], the main character Diana Bishop is a historian (with a specialty in Alchemic Texts) who just so happens to be a witch, an extremely powerful one, who pretty much holds the fate of the three creature races -- witch, deamon and vampire -- and maybe the world in her hands. The author, Deborah Harkness, is ''also'' a historian -- this is her first fiction work. Taking that into account, we can see Harkness having the same reaction to Matthew Clairmont, a vampire; he's about fifteen hundred years old? THINK OF THE HISTORY HE'S LIVED THROUGH!! |
| 297 | * The ''Mervyn Stone'' series by Nev Fountain. Whodunnits about the former script editor of a cancelled sci-fi series by a playwright and ''Series/DoctorWho'' audio-drama writer. |
| 298 | * ''Literature/TheLastDragonChronicles'': David's a geology student, but becomes a writer through Gadzooks' help. [[WordOfGod d'Lacey confesses]] that David is a kind of AuthorAvatar. [[spoiler: Then it turns out that David is an in-universe fictional character who was written into existence by his landlady's ex-boyfriend.]] |
| 299 | * In ''Literature/TheMasterAndMargarita'', the Master is a writer of a particularly un-Soviet persuasion, just like the author himself. And many antagonists/victims of demonic pranks are politically motivated literary critics, the same sort of people who made Bulgakov's life miserable. |
| 300 | * In ''Literature/TheTrailOfCthulhu'', four of the six protagonists have professions relatives to writer. Shrewsbury, Clairborne Boyd, and Horvath Blayne are scientists focused on humanities (the former about occultism, the two latter about ethnology), Nayland Colum is a novelist. Indirectly, Andrew Phelan has been hired by Shrewsbury because he has some skills in a secretary job, among other things. The less relevant protagonist to this trope is Abel Keane, who is a theology student aiming to become a priest. |
| 301 | * In Helen Cresswell's ''Literature/TheBagthorpeSaga'', Mr Bagthorpe is a scriptwriter for Creator/TheBBC. |
| 302 | * The narrator's father in Jean Robinson's ''The Strange But Wonderful Cosmic Awareness of Duffy Moon'' writes a cooking column under the name Grace Gallagher. |
| 303 | * Yuri Zhivago of ''Literature/DoctorZhivago'' is an aspiring poet and novelist, something he seems to have been inspired to do by his uncle, Kolya Vedenyapin. Indeed, the third main plotline concerning his life, alongside his love life and his struggles in the midst of the Russian Revolution, is his striving to become a renowned writer. |
| 304 | * Creator/MaryHigginsClark's novels often feature female protagonists who are writers. A few examples: Sharon Martin (''A Stranger Is Watching'') is a newspaper columnist, Menley Nichols (''Remember Me'') writes children's books, and Jean Sheridan (''Nighttime Is My Time'') is a historical writer. |
| 305 | * Writer Stephen Gordon, the protagonist of ''Literature/TheWellOfLoneliness'', doubles as an AuthorAvatar. |
| 306 | * Rhona, the protagonist of ''Literature/AHarvestOfWar'' has written a shelf's worth of books. |
| 307 | * Nicodemus, the narrator and protagonist of ''Literature/TheLettersFromNicodemus'', works as a writer of haggadas (parables or moral lessons). |
| 308 | * The alien Paul in ''Literature/AlienInASmallTown'' earns his living writing his observations about human culture from an outsider's point of view. |
| 309 | * The lead character of ''Literature/TheWalkerPapers'' is Joanne Walker, a mechanic turned shaman turned beat cop turned detective. She has an incongruous degree in English literature and nerds over language in-character. |
| 310 | * Cody Lennox in "[[Literature/KaneSeries At First Just Ghostly]]" is an American writer visiting a London s-f/fantasy convention. He's burnt-out, drinks too much, and cannot come to grips with the loss of his wife. |
| 311 | * TheProtagonist and narrator of Debra Adelaide's novel ''The Household Guide to Dying'' is an author of popular how-to books, the "household guides" to things including gardening and laundry. And when she finds out she is dying of metastatic cancer, she sets out to write her last book, the titular ''Household Guide to Dying''. |
| 312 | * TheProtagonist of Andrew Nicoll's novel ''The Love and Death of Caterina'' is one Luciano Hernando Valdez, a highly popular and respected writer from an unnamed Latin American country. The problem is that he is suffering from writer's block and all he has from his new novel is "a thin yellow cat crossed the road". And then he meets Caterina, a young student who admires him and also writes. |
| 313 | * Creator/PhilipRoth wrote a series of novels about Nathan Zuckerman, who, like Roth, is a famous Jewish-American novelist, who was born in 1933, grew up in Newark, and had his greatest success with a [[Literature/PortnoysComplaint controversial, sexually explicit book]]. |
| 314 | * Creator/IsaacAsimov: |
| 315 | ** "Literature/TheDeadPast": Nimmo is a science writer, and extols the virtues of such InUniverse. He takes the information from scientists, synthesizes it into a narrative, and creates explanations that non-specialized readers can follow. It affords him [[JackOfAllTrades a broad basis of scientific understanding]], rather than [[CripplingOverspecialization a narrow view]]. Creator/IsaacAsimov has shared [[WordOfGod that this is how he views himself]], a Science writer more than a ScienceFiction writer. |
| 316 | ** "Literature/GalleySlave": Published in 1958, this story revolves around the work of a galley slave for a university. By this time, Dr Asimov had collaborated several times on creating university textbooks for publisher Creator/WalkerAndWilkins, as well as being the sole author for several other nonfiction books on the subjects of physics and chemistry. The story goes into quite a bit of detail as the antagonist bringing a lawsuit against US Robotics is at risk of losing his reputation on the basis of the proofs created by EZ-27. Professor Ninheimer's rant at the end goes into detail about the joy of writing. |
| 317 | ** "Literature/HellFire1956": The story is told from the [[PointOfView third-person limited/omniscient perspective]], but the focus for most of it is Alvin Horner, a reporter from the ''Continental Press''. |
| 318 | ** "Literature/KidStuff": Jan Prentiss is a writer, like Dr Asimov, writing for a BlandNameProduct version of the same PulpMagazine that printed this story. |
| 319 | ** "Literature/Nightfall1941": Theremon 762 is a newspaper reporter who has come to the astronomy tower to report on [[TotalEclipseOfThePlot the eclipse]], and he's used as an audience proxy, [[TheWatson providing someone the astronomers can explain things to]]. |
| 320 | * An example with a dark twist: Winston Smith, the unassuming protagonist of ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'', works as a writer for the Ministry of Truth, his specific job being to [[OrwellianRetcon redact inconvenient news stories or incorrect predictions made by the ruling Party]], and [[PropagandaMachine replace it with propaganda he is told to make up from whole cloth]]. He says that his writing is the high point of his life. His love interest, Julia, is also a writer, albeit of [[IKEAErotica amateur pornographic novels]] and [[BreadAndCircuses other tripe meant to keep the populace distracted and happy]]. Author Creator/GeorgeOrwell was a highly experienced writer, and was wearily self-aware about the nature of the literary world, and it shows best here. Orwell also worked for the Creator/{{BBC}} during [=WW2=], and observed Britain's wartime propaganda broadcasting at first hand. [[TakeThat In some respects]], the Ministry of Truth is, pretty much exactly, the wartime [=BBC=]. |
| 321 | * In the science fiction novel ''Literature/TheNightMayor'', the protagonists, Susan Bishopric and Tom Tunney, are authors of computer-based interactive narratives, the closest thing to being a writer in a world where recreational reading has pretty much died out. Several scenes have Susan reflecting on aspects of the writer's life, such as dealing with the same old questions from fans and interviewers, and the annoyance of a key plot point being nullified by the march of science shortly after publication. |
| 322 | * Sir Mark Turner from Courtney Milan's ''Unclaimed'' is the Victorian moralist author of a popular treatise on chastity... whose [[CelebrityIsOverrated interactions]] with his [[LoonyFan adoring fans]] sometimes have the comic ring of experience. "[[ImNotAHeroIm I'm not a saint.]] I'm not a holy man. I just wrote a book." "Your humility, sir--your good nature. Truly, you are an example to us all," Tolliver insisted. |
| 323 | * The ''Literature/NikkiHeat'' books (a {{Defictionalization}} of the ShowWithinAShow books from ''Series/{{Castle|2009}}'') feature deuteragonist and AuthorAvatar Jameson Rook, who's a journalist rather than a novelist, but otherwise is a clear SelfInsert of Richard Castle. |
| 324 | * ''Literature/DeGriezelbus'': The BigBad Paul Onnoval is a horror author and something of ADarkerMe of Paul van Loon himself, while several of Onnoval's InUniverse stories feature similar authors. One story goes for a bit of SelfDeprecation with an author who hires a secretary to handle all his fan mail, who turns out to be a demon that gives his fans a spell that turns them into monsters. In another one, a sinister author invites one of his fans to a fictional town where the creatures in his stories are allowed to live but cannot leave, before revealing that the fan is [[NoticingTheFourthWall also fictional]]. |
| 325 | * ''Literature/AdrianMole'' fancies himself as a writer, as well as a diarist. In his StylisticSuck novel ''Lo! The Flat Hills of my Homeland'', his protagonist Jake writes a novel ''Sparg from Krong'', in which Sparg writes a novel ''A Book with no Language''. |
| 326 | * [[Creator/MargeryLawrence Margery Lawrence's]] ''Literature/MilesPennoyer'' mysteries are largely framed as accounts of cases solved by Pennoyer that are later relayed to his friend and personal chronicler Jerome Latimer. The character of Latimer introduces himself in the "foreword" of the first collection as a former solicitor and current writer of moderate success. |
| 327 | * Taken to a new level by Creator/ElleryQueen, a mystery novelist whose main protagonist is a mystery novelist named Ellery Queen. Despite the direct connection, Ellery (the character) isn't an AuthorAvatar; Ellery the character is a well-spoken gentile writing while living off a large inheritence[[labelnote:*]]The Ellery character [[CharacterizationMarchesOn began life]] as an {{Expy}} of S. S. Van Dine's Literature/PhiloVance[[/labelnote]], while Queen the pen name was a collaboration between two working class New York Jews; the connection was purely a marketing gimmick. |
| 328 | ** Because Ellery Queen is [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff popular in Japan]], many popular Japanese writers have done the same pen name-protagonist connection, inluding Reito Nikaidou, Rintarou Norizuki, and Alice Arisugawa, who goes a step further by writing *two* series featuring writers named Alice Arisugawa, who are also the authors of each others' MutuallyFictional series, thus making them examples InUniverse as well. |
| 329 | * ''Literature/TheImpossibleUs'': We meet Nick as his career evolves from freelance editor to novelist ([[invoked]][[CreatorKiller one published novel]] in his past notwithstanding), including a brief scene meeting his agent. |
| 330 | * Creator/CarlHiaasen has used this trope in a few of his novels. |
| 331 | ** In his first solo novel, ''Literature/TouristSeason'', Brian Keyes, the main character, is a former reporter turned PrivateDetective, while the BigBad is an opinion writer for the same newspaper the main character used to work at. |
| 332 | ** His fourth novel, ''Literature/NativeTongue'', is about Joe Winder, a former newspaper reporter who is now writing PR for a theme park that serves as a TakeThat towards Ride/WaltDisneyWorld. |
| 333 | ** In his sixth novel, ''Literature/StormyWeather'', two of the main characters, newlyweds (though not for long) Max and Bonnie Lamb work for a PR firm, and in her BackStory, we learn Bonnie was a journalism major who went into PR when she couldn't find much work in journalism. |
| 334 | ** In his seventh novel ''Literature/LuckyYou'', Tom Krome, one of the main characters is a former investigative reporter now working for a small town newspaper who covers what seems like a fluff story - a part-time veterinarian's assistant wins the lottery - that turns into something more. |
| 335 | ** His ninth novel, ''Literature/BasketCase'', is about Jack Tagger, a former investigative reporter who has been banished to the obituary desk after insulting the new owner of the paper. |
| 336 | * In ''Literature/November9'', dual protagonist Ben is a writer who aspires to get published someday. During their first meeting, Fallon challenges him to write a romance novel given he previously stated he had little interest in or experience with the genre, and he decides to write a story based upon his own relationship with Fallon. Also scattered throughout the novel are examples of Ben's poetry, where he discusses his inner thoughts and feelings. |
| 337 | * The heroine of ''Literature/HisDarkMaterials'' does not write novels, but her talent for improvising yarns (usually deceitful, overly-dramatic ones) with little or no time to prepare is one of her greatest strengths. More blatantly, the series ends with [[spoiler:the cosmos being reshaped so that ''progression through the afterlife'']] depends in part on your ability to tell stories. |
| 338 | [[/folder]] |
| 339 | |
| 340 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 341 | * ''Series/TheDickVanDykeShow'': Rob Petrie is a television comedy writer. |
| 342 | * ''Series/MurderSheWrote'': Jessica Fletcher is a mystery writer. |
| 343 | * While not the main character, [=McGee=] of ''Series/{{NCIS}}'' is a popular novelist on the side, writing thinly veiled accounts of his adventures with the [[WriteWhoYouKnow Gibbs Team]]. |
| 344 | * Temperance Brennan of ''Series/{{Bones}}'' is a forensic anthropologist who also uses her professional expertise to write books based on a "fictional" forensic anthropologist named Kathy Reichs -- who is the real-life author of the [[AdaptationDisplacement books upon which the show is based.]] |
| 345 | * The protagonist of ''Series/Castle2009'' writes mystery novels for a living, and because of his [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections connections]], he gets to spend a lot of time with the police, getting inspiration while offering his own professional insight. And if that wasn't enough, he writes about a [[AuthorAvatar writer]] who follows the NYPD around. |
| 346 | * The two main characters of ''Series/{{Spaced}}'' are Tim, an artist who wants to write his own comic book, and Daisy, a print author with no ideas. |
| 347 | * ''Series/GetShorty'' is mostly about getting funding for and making a movie. |
| 348 | * In ''Series/JustShootMe'', everyone works for a magazine. The only one in the main cast who is a writer by profession is Maya, although Dennis has shown some writing prowess, penning (among other things) at least two screenplays, a few songs, an advice column, and most of his boss's "autobiography". |
| 349 | * Rory of ''Series/GilmoreGirls'' is a journalist. |
| 350 | * ''Series/SexAndTheCity'': Carrie is a newspaper columnist. |
| 351 | * In both ''Series/KolchakTheNightStalker'' and its short-lived retool ''Night Stalker'', Kolchak was a reporter. |
| 352 | * Canadian channel TVO used to run a program called ''Write On,'' which offered grammar lessons as short TV sketches. Yes, it's about as strange as it sounds, but the characters were journalists. You can view an episode [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtVCoJQ6tlg here]] |
| 353 | * ''Series/ThirtyRock'': Liz (TV writer) is an AuthorAvatar by Creator/TinaFey's own admission. |
| 354 | * Creator/DennisPotter was a writer who suffered from severe psoriatic arthritis. His best-known work was the TV series (later made into a movie) ''Series/TheSingingDetective'', about a writer who suffers from psoriatic arthritis. A difference is that the writer in the TV series wrote pulp detective fiction, while Potter mostly wrote rather surreal TV series. |
| 355 | * The cast in ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'' aren't writers by trade, but they do enjoy spending ''hours'' brainstorming sit-com joke lines. On top of that, Barney is a popular blogger, Marshall writes songs as a hobby, and Ted and Barney compose dueling poems in ''The Sexless Innkeeper.'' |
| 356 | ** Ted may be an architect, but he does love to wax douchey about literature and poetry. |
| 357 | * During his retirement from the FBI, David Rossi of ''Series/CriminalMinds'' supported himself as an author and lecturer. Although he is a nonfiction writer similar to the real-life profiler John Douglas. |
| 358 | * Ryan Hardy of ''Series/TheFollowing'' became a non-fiction author after being forced to retire from the FBI due to his injury. |
| 359 | * The father in ''Series/EightSimpleRules'' was a sports columnist. |
| 360 | * Raymond, of ''Series/EverybodyLovesRaymond'', is also a newspaper columnist. |
| 361 | * The main protagonist of the show ''Series/BoredToDeath'' is a struggling writer who even has the same name as the creator of the show (Jonathan Ames). |
| 362 | * Jerry on ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'' is, like his RealLife counterpart, a comedian; many episodes show Jerry struggling to write new material for his act. When, in the episode "The Pitch", he and George pitch a "show about nothing" to NBC execs, this is a direct parody of the creation of the show by the real Jerry and Larry David. |
| 363 | * ''Series/{{Californication}}'': Hank Moody has written several novels and at least one screenplay (though he loathed the film adaptation), and is suffering from writer's block at the start of the series. |
| 364 | * Gabrielle from ''Series/XenaWarriorPrincess'' may not have been a writer in the same way the others are, but as a bard and chronicler of Xena's adventures, it's probably as close as we get. There's even an episode about her writing a story about Xena. Virgil, Joxer's son, is a poet, much like his real-life namesake. |
| 365 | * The first season of ''Series/MadMen'' revealed that most of the men in Sterling-Cooper have secret novels or plays they are working on. When one of them manages to get his short story published, he earns the immediate envy and respect of everyone else in the office. |
| 366 | * ''Series/TheLAComplex'' was all about struggling young actors. |
| 367 | * Kip and Henry from ''Series/BosomBuddies'' worked in advertising. Henry was a copywriter (and Kip an artist). Henry believed their experiences living in drag would "make a great book." |
| 368 | * In ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', the captain's son Jake starts working as a journalist and writing short stories and novels in his spare time by about the middle of the series. |
| 369 | ** The episode [[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS02E16Shadowplay "Shadowplay"]] has Ben Sisko's son Jake trying to work up the courage to tell his father he wants to be a writer instead of joining Starfleet. Ben accepts this once Jake finally tells him |
| 370 | ** And in [[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS04E21TheMuse "The Muse"]] has a literal [[TheMuse muse]] [[EmotionEater feeding off]] Jake writing. Creator Creator/RonMoore even commented "...the notion of this exotic, beautiful, older woman who comes to you and gets excited by watching you write is like the most ridiculous idea! Only a writer would come up with that." [[http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Muse_(episode) Memory-alpha]] |
| 371 | ** Also, in [[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS06E13FarBeyondTheStars "Far Beyond the Stars"]], Sisko experiences some type of vision or hallucination of an alternate reality in which he is a writer for a science fiction magazine in the 1950s. Many of the other major characters are also writers or otherwise affiliated with the magazine. Rather ironically, one of the main characters whose alter ego is ''not'' a writer is...Jake Sisko, the writer. (Likely this is because it was important to the story that "Benny Russell" be the only Black member on staff.) |
| 372 | * In ''Mama ist Unmöglich'', Mama is a popular mystery writer. She has friends in the police and sometimes runs into fans as well. |
| 373 | * In ''Series/TheAffair'', Noah has just published his first book when the story begins and is thinking about the second. His father-in-law Bruce Butler is a famous writer who remarks with contempt that everybody has a book in them, but almost no one has two. |
| 374 | * Parodied and PlayedForDrama in ''Series/TheXFiles'' episode "Milagro," where Mulder's next-door neighbor is a writer who's a self-indulgent, pretentious fantasist. But it turns sinister when he reveals [[StalkerWithACrush he's writing a book in which Scully is his love interest and he moved next door to Mulder in order to see more of her.]] |
| 375 | * ''Series/MastersOfHorror'': The episode "Valerie on the Stairs", which is based on a Creator/CliveBarker short story, concerns a writer moving into a boarding house for struggling writers and coming face to face with [[RefugeeFromTVLand characters who escaped from]] a RoundRobin story written by the other residents. [[spoiler:Finally, he realizes that he was also invented by the residents and ceases to exist when the story finishes, making it a case of a writer writing about writers writing about a writer.]] |
| 376 | * ''Series/SabrinaTheTeenageWitch'''s favourite subject is English, and she writes for the school paper, later majoring in journalism in college. One episode uniquely draws a distinction between journalism and fiction writing, as Sabrina struggles to give her stories good CharacterDevelopment. |
| 377 | * ''Series/JaneTheVirgin'': Jane is an aspiring romance novel writer. |
| 378 | * ''Series/GossipGirl'''s Dan Humphrey is an aspiring writer. |
| 379 | * ''Series/PartyOfFive'' makes one of Julia's main characteristics her love of writing. Given the sheer amount of drama in her day-to-day life, she's bound to have a lot to write about. She ends the series with a book deal. |
| 380 | * ''Series/OnceUponATime'' introduces August, who carries around a manual typewriter with him and claims to be in Storybrooke doing research. [[spoiler: This is just a cover and he's actually a grown-up Pinocchio here to make Emma believe in herself again]]. |
| 381 | * ''Series/MillionYenWomen'': The protagonist Shin is a fiction writer. |
| 382 | * ''Series/GetShorty'': The story revolves around gangsters creating a film, with an emphasis on developing the screenplay. One of the gangsters gets credited as the screenwriter and is tasked with making changes to the script, even though he's really not a writer. |
| 383 | * ''Series/TheSecretLifeOfUs'': The original main character, Evan Wilde, is a novelist who manages to get published early in the second season. |
| 384 | * ''Series/MadamSecretary'': Liz's sole official act as acting president in the season 2 premiere is to pardon a journalist imprisoned for defying a court order to give up her source (prompted by her son doing a school project on the journalist). |
| 385 | * ''Series/TheLordOfTheRingsTheRingsOfPower'': Elrond is a scholar and was introduced writing a speech for Gil-galad. |
| 386 | [[/folder]] |
| 387 | |
| 388 | [[folder:Music]] |
| 389 | * Referenced in the song "Paperback Writer" by Music/TheBeatles, in which a man who wants to be a paperback writer has written a book about a man who wants to be a paperback writer. |
| 390 | [[/folder]] |
| 391 | |
| 392 | [[folder:Theatre]] |
| 393 | * ''Theatre/TrixieTrueTeenDetective'' has Joe Sneed, a writer who wants to write hard-boiled detective novels, but is stuck working in a syndicate stable writing perky-girl-detective stories instead. |
| 394 | * TheMusical of ''Theatre/LittleWomen'' uses this, of course, following the book, but it's amusingly evident when Jo, in the song "Weekly Volcano Press," supposedly reading aloud her story, reads something that sounds more like a script for a ''musical'' ("The forest is dark and spooky. Clarissa enters, her clothes in disarray...") than a past-tense short story normally would. |
| 395 | * Mark from ''Theatre/{{Rent}}'' is a would-be filmmaker who has written a few screenplays (which he burns). His friend Roger spends the musical singing about how he wants to write a song. |
| 396 | * The protagonist of ''Theatre/CityOfAngels'' is a writer trying to adapt his novel into a FilmNoir. The antagonist is a [[ExecutiveMeddling meddling executive]]. |
| 397 | * Occurs twice in the canon of Music/StephenSondheim: the Broadway songwriting team of Franklin Shepard and Charley Kringas in ''Theatre/MerrilyWeRollAlong'', whilst both Georges in ''Theatre/SundayInTheParkWithGeorge'' are artists who struggle to be understood and accepted by their peers, [[AuthorAvatar much like Sondheim himself.]] |
| 398 | * Cliff Bradshaw in ''Theatre/{{Cabaret}}'' -- naturally enough, because the show ultimately derives from novelist Christopher Isherwood's memoirs kept while he was living in Weimar Berlin. |
| 399 | * In ''Theatre/FlyByNightMusical'' almost all the characters have some connection to musical theatre and/or songs. Harold is a songwriter and a guitarist, his father is an opera enthusiast, Daphne is a singer/actress, and Joey Storms is a Broadway playwright. |
| 400 | * ''Theatre/TheSeagull'' starts with Konstantin trying to impress his mother with a play he wrote and directed. His failure drives the rest of the play. |
| 401 | * ''Theatre/MySisterEileen'' and its musical adaptation ''Theatre/WonderfulTown'' have the aspiring young writer Ruth Sherwood, based, of course, on the Ruth [=McKenney=] who wrote the non-fictional stories which inspired the play. |
| 402 | * The FramingDevice of ''Theatre/ManOfLaMancha'' has Miguel de Cervantes himself having to make up parts of his story of Don Quixote as he goes along. |
| 403 | * Andrew from ''Theatre/{{Sleuth}}'' has become wealthy as a successful writer of popular, though now old-fashioned, crime fiction novels, which feature an aristocratic amateur detective, St. John Lord Merridew. |
| 404 | [[/folder]] |
| 405 | |
| 406 | [[folder:Video Games]] |
| 407 | * VideoGame/AlanWake is a Creator/StephenKing-esque writer who gets caught up in a scenario similar to his books. ''Webcomic/PennyArcade'' [[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/06/02/ explains]]. |
| 408 | ** The game also has a more direct invocation of this trope by having a character that's a game developer (who's in an insane asylum... with some pretty fun dialog). Interestingly, this happens very rarely in video games which seems to imply that video games seem to be one of the media that bucks the trend. Why this is is another question. |
| 409 | ** The books Alan is famous for are noir-inspired crime thrillers that are basically ''VideoGame/MaxPayne'', Remedy's previous series. They even have the same voice actor playing the character during voice-over "excerpts" of the books. A reader of Alan's says he's "a little heavy on the metaphors", which is the previous games' best-known feature. |
| 410 | * Interestingly, ''VideoGame/{{Catherine}}'' is a video game where the protagonist is a video game designer. |
| 411 | ** And for a bonus, romantic fidelity is big part of the story. |
| 412 | * ''VideoGame/ComixZone'' is about a comic book writer whose BigBad managed to trap him inside his own comic book. |
| 413 | * The title character in the Dana Knightstone series is a historical novelist. |
| 414 | * The protagonist from the ''VideoGame/DarkSeed'' games is a writer. |
| 415 | * Varric Tethras from ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'' and ''VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition'' writes books on the side, which are often thinly veiled retellings of his friends' adventures. The FramingDevice in ''II'' is his telling a story about [[PlayerCharacter Hawke]], and a side quest in ''Inquisition'' is about tracking down the last chapter of his attempt at a RomanceNovel. |
| 416 | * The ''Dead Reckoning'' series of {{hidden object game}}s from Eipix Entertainment usually has a writer of some sort as the {{player character}}. For example, in ''Sleight of Murder,'' the protagonist is a screenwriter, while in ''Death Between the Lines'' they're a novelist. |
| 417 | * ''VideoGame/FatalFrame'': |
| 418 | ** ''[[VideoGame/FatalFrameI The first game]]'' has Junsei Takamine, who [[CuriosityKilledTheCast enters the cursed Himuro mansion for the sake of research for his next book.]] [[CruelAndUnusualDeath It ends horribly for him.]] |
| 419 | ** Kei Amakura from ''[[VideoGame/FatalFrameIII The Tormented]]'' is a non-fiction writer. |
| 420 | ** ''[[VideoGame/FatalFrameMaidenOfBlackWater The fifth game]]'' has Ren Hojo, an anthor who heads into Mt. Hikami after coming across a photograph of a young girl he keeps seeing in his dreams. |
| 421 | ** The main character in ''Manor Memoirs'' is a writer having difficulties with her latest book. |
| 422 | * The titular character of the ''VideoGame/GabrielKnight'' series writes supernatural mysteries which are "loosely based" on his own experiences. |
| 423 | * Adrienne Delaney from ''VideoGame/{{Phantasmagoria}}'' is a best-selling novelist, particularly well known for her book ''Blue Moon Rising''. |
| 424 | * The only named protagonist of ''VideoGame/HistoryCivilWarSecretMissions'', Edward “Eric” Hogger, aspires to become a writer before the Civil War. The back-up short story of the game details possibly a page from Eric’s diary. |
| 425 | * The protagonist of ''VideoGame/{{Scratches}}'', Michael Arthate, is a rising horror writer; In ''Last Visit'' the protagonist is an unnamed reporter. |
| 426 | * ''VideoGame/{{Segagaga}}'' is about running Creator/{{Sega}} as a company, producing and distributing games. Played with, however, as the characters in the company's games are real and help with development (Amigo from ''VideoGame/SambaDeAmigo'' is a high-level programmer, for instance), the development process itself plays out like a normal video game, and past SEGA systems are actually spaceship-like weapons. |
| 427 | * Harry Mason from ''VideoGame/SilentHill1''. Possibly not a very good one. |
| 428 | * ''VideoGame/TokyoTattooGirls'' was developed by a subsidiary of the Nikkatsu movie company, and one of its main protagonists is Chocho Choufu, an aspiring actress that adores the types of movies Nikkatsu creates. |
| 429 | * ''VideoGame/{{Toonstruck}}'' stars the aptly named [[PunnyName Drew Blanc]], a struggling cartoonist. |
| 430 | * Gets VERY meta in ''VisualNovel/UminekoWhenTheyCry''. [[spoiler: The games are, in fact, an IN-STORY novel, written by...THE CULPRIT, who in one scene in the manga version, is shown becoming the Witch Beatrice, as she realizes she can move people around like pawns on a gameboard. Though, 3-6 are written by a different person...who is also one of the main characters.]] |
| 431 | * The character ''VideoGame/{{Omori}}'' from the video game title of the same name is a teenager with a penchant for writing and doodling. He literally has a book where he jots down his observations of his foes in a rather creative, yet dark way. He even has a skill where he can make an enemy sad with the use of a sad poem. This is a holdover from his original appearance in the ''Webcomic/{{Omoriboy}}'' comics, where he owned and wrote a blog in addition to his usual writing and drawing. |
| 432 | [[/folder]] |
| 433 | |
| 434 | [[folder:Webcomics]] |
| 435 | * Slick from ''Webcomic/{{Sinfest}}'' is sometimes seen trying to write a literary masterpiece. He also does poetry slams in the earlier strips. |
| 436 | * Davan of ''Webcomic/SomethingPositive'' is, for a time, the writer of a webcomic. He also has a regular job as the personal assistant of a theatrical producer; this job on occasion makes use of his writing skills, such as when he has to rewrite a show's script. |
| 437 | * The Shakespeare character in ''Webcomic/IrregularWebcomic'' works in an office doing some sort of writing, and writes ''Literature/HarryPotter'' FanFiction on the side. |
| 438 | ** Well, he is Creator/WilliamShakespeare, you know. |
| 439 | * Lynda Levac of ''Webcomic/PennyAndAggie'' is a columnist for a parenting website. |
| 440 | * David in ''Webcomic/LivingWithInsanity''. |
| 441 | * In the modern arc of ''Webcomic/ArthurKingOfTimeAndSpace'', [[Myth/KingArthur Arthur]] writes a webcomic, as did Myth/{{Merlin}} [[spoiler:until his death]]. |
| 442 | * Parson Gotti, the protagonist (See what they did there?) of ''Webcomic/{{Erfworld}}'', has a webcomic [[{{Defictionalization}} of his own (kinda)]], [[http://www.hamstard.com/ hamstard.com]]. He's also [[GenreSavvy a strategy gamer in what amounts to a world built on strategy game tropes]]. |
| 443 | * Webcomic/DocRat has a minor character who makes comics. |
| 444 | * Two of the five main characters of ''[[{{Webcomic/Morphe}} morphE]]'' are writers. Tyler Dawn is an English major who was trying to get published and Asia Ellis is a reporter. |
| 445 | * Gary, one of the lead trio of ''Webcomic/MenageA3'', is a wannabe comics artist. In addition, Yuki, a major secondary character, is a wannabe comics writer (and the daughter of a manga creator), and sometimes collaborates with Gary. On top of that, Yuki, plus lead character Zii and secondary character Sonya, are in a band -- and the comic's co-writer Creator/GiseleLagace used to be a professional musician. (Sonya, the band's bass player, even looks a bit like Giz, who played bass.) |
| 446 | * The protagonist of ''Webcomic/CantSeeCantHearButLove'', Geun Soo, is a comic artist forced to quit after he starts going blind. |
| 447 | [[/folder]] |
| 448 | |
| 449 | [[folder:Web Original]] |
| 450 | * A ''Website/{{Cracked}}'' article discusses how Hollywood films get other professions wrong by extrapolating from the experiences of Hollywood writers: [[http://www.cracked.com/article_19611_6-things-movies-love-to-get-wrong-about-workplace.html 6 Things Movies Love to Get Wrong About the Workplace]]. |
| 451 | * The Icebox Radio Theatre is based out of the small town of International Falls, Minnesota. Their biggest show is ''Radio Icebox'', a comedy-drama about a radio station set in the small town of Icebox, Minnesota, starring -- among others -- the creator of IBRT, Jeff Adams, as JJ, the station manager. The other show is ''Scoop Sisters Mysteries'', about women running a paper in the small town of Icebox, Minnesota, who keep stumbling into mysteries. This seems to be a different Icebox from ''Radio Icebox'', as are all the other shorts they keep making[[note]]The ones set in Icebox. Which seems like most of them.[[/note]]. |
| 452 | ** Both series have made a point about how hard it is to run such old media (radio theatre and print newspapers, respectively) in this high-tech, fast-paced, get it done yesterday world. IBRT doesn't have the benefit of the strange meteor in the lake that blocks outside radio and TV signals (and attracts weirdness). Presumably. |
| 453 | * Not writers, but the cast of WebVideo/MarbleHornets is mostly made of film students. |
| 454 | * ''WebVideo/WitchCraftSMP'': Like her content creator counterpart, El documents her experiences in the competition to become Supreme Witch in the form of videos which she shares with others. [[spoiler:In the epilogue, she finds her calling in content creation, and uses her illusion magic to manipulate the algorithm and make herself world-famous.]] |
| 455 | [[/folder]] |
| 456 | |
| 457 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 458 | * Andy French of ''WesternAnimation/MissionHill'' works at a mattress store, but he's an aspiring cartoonist. At least one episode deals with his discouragement over all the rejections he's gotten sending his comics to various magazines. |
| 459 | * Ginger Foutley of ''WesternAnimation/AsToldByGinger'' was a writer. The show specified that she was a gifted poet, but it was inferred that she was an all-around talented writer. She starts writing songs as she gets older. |
| 460 | * Mikey on ''WesternAnimation/{{Recess}}'' is a writer of epic poetry. |
| 461 | * ''{{WesternAnimation/Rugrats}}'' - Susie's father Randy is a writer for the Dummy Bears TV show in-universe. |
| 462 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Doug}}'' is a writer and cartoonist; in fact, many episodes open and close with him writing in his journal. |
| 463 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Daria}}'' is a talented writer, while her best friend Jane is an artist. |
| 464 | * Brian from ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' writes as a hobby, although he's not very good. |
| 465 | * ''WesternAnimation/BoJackHorseman'' creator Raphael Bob Waksberg noted this [[https://www.vulture.com/2018/09/raphael-bob-waksberg-bojack-horseman-apology-tours.html in an interview]], observing that the show spent a lot of time satirising the production and acting sides of Hollywood but not much of the writers and that as a result, it could come across a little self-congratulatory. Therefore in season five, they introduced the character of Flip, the creator of a gritty prestige drama who is totally convinced of his own tortured genius despite most of his scripts [[StylisticSuck coming out nonsensical]]. In a more traditional version of this trope, Diane is a genuinely earnest and capable writer. |
| 466 | [[/folder]] |
| 467 | |
| 468 | ---- |
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/context.php
FollowingContext Main / MostWritersAreWriters
Go To
- Show Spoilers
- Night Vision
- Sticky Header
- Wide Load
