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"Bad books on writing and thoughtless English professors solemnly tell beginners to write what you know , which explains why so many mediocre novels are about English professors contemplating adultery."
—Joe Haldeman
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, playwright, screenwriters, etc.)
Interestingly, such characters are only occasionally Author Avatars. As the page quote indicates, one of the main pieces of advice writers hear is "Write what you know", and since, as writers, they know writing, they have some idea how a writer would react in a given situation. It also helps get past the whole Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic problem, since a writer would be expected to know how to use big fancy words.
It may also be a Justified Trope in that many authors tend to work at their own pace, and therefore if they want to, can take time off at will. "Reporter" is a handy job for a protagonist to have if his creator wants to give him a good reason for snooping into dark dealings or conspiracies. "Columnist" is good for creating situations which bring the protagonist into contact with lots of people.
However, writers who don't write also don't get paid, which means this can become One Hour Work Week if the writer never actually gets around to doing any writing, or if they spend too much time doing something other than writing. Appears commonly when the setting revolves around a Show Within A Show. May lead to a Writers Block Montage.
Some people argue that Most Writers Are Writers is a fallacy, since ALL writers are writers by definition. Some people should shut up.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- Sumiregawa Nenene of Read Or Die.
- There's also a number of manga about making manga, or at least doujin: Genshiken, Comic Party, Doujin Work, Bakuman.
- Manga that contain characters that are writers are also plentiful: School Rumble, Junjo Romantica, Kodocha, Otaku no Musume-san.
- In Ichigo Mashimaro, Miu tries her hand at being a writer of manga, but her works are a bit surreal for Chika.
- Galaxy Express 999 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..
Comic Books
- Clark Kent and Lois Lane from the Superman mythos are both reporters
- Daniel Clowes (writer of Ghost World, among others) frequently writes about writers, and more often, artists. Enid Coleslaw of Ghost World was an artist, as is Dan Pussey of Pussey!, and it's alluded to in David Boring that the title character is a multimedia artist. The protagonist of Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron seems to be a filmmaker. At least two of the main characters (including arguably, the main character) of Ice Haven are writers. 20th Century 8Ball is a collection of short-stories from Clowes, MANY of which are about artists (Art School Confidential, Ink Studs, etc.).
- Spider. Fucking. Jerusalem.
Film
- Throw Mama From The Train.
- In Moulin Rouge!, Christian is a struggling writer.
- Barton Fink is about a writer suffering from writer's block, written while the Coens themselves were having difficulty with Miller's Crossing. This writer really wants to make arty, weighty, important movies about the plight of the common man, similar to his successful play, but gets assigned a wrestling picture instead.
- In the film Croupier the protagonist (played by Clive Owen, no less) 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.
- Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation is a particularly surreal take on this trope.
- Stranger Than Fiction also uses the device in an eerie, roundabout manner.
- Sunset Boulevard: 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.
- Shakespeare In Love, naturally.
Literature
- The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy: Ford Prefect is a writer. A writer for the titular hitchhiker's guide, so it's not the same as being a novelist, but there is of course plenty in common. His problems with his editors, who butchered a long, complex, beautifully-written article he spent fifteen years on into one word, are a major point in the series.
- And Arthur Dent worked for the BBC. Take a guess at who Douglas worked for.
- Richard Matheson's short story Mad House focuses on a writer with a nasty case of writer's block, among other problems.
- The protagonist of Larry Niven's Inferno, Allen Carpentier, is a Speculative Fiction writer, just like Niven. In some ways Carpentier seems to represent Niven, and expys 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.
- Jo March-Bhaer of Little Women
- Robert A Heinlein loves this trope. Among his protagonists who are writers who bear more than a passing resemblance to the author or friends of his:
- Jubal Harshaw of Stranger in a Strange Land, who writes in a variety of genres and media, under a bunch of pseudonyms.
- Hazel Stone of The Rolling Stones, who writes a pulpy sci-fi adventure TV series.
- The nameless protagonist of All You Zombies— , who spends some time writing stories for a "True Confessions" magazine, and gets the nickname "The Unwed Mother" partly from this fact.
- The protagonist of The Cat Who Walks Through Walls is a fiction writer who lives on a orbital space colony.
- The final chapter of The Number Of The Beast is a huge cross-dimensional convention attended by sci-fi authors and characters from multiple fictional universes.
- Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle features several sci-fi authors, including clear Author Avatar versions of both authors as well as one of Robert A Heinlein, brought together by the government to help think up ways to fight an alien invasion.
- Lucifer's Hammer by the same authors (and 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 Loads And Loads Of Characters living through the collapse of civilization after a major comet impact.
- Quite a few of Stephen King's protagonists are also writers.
- Novelists:
- Misery: Paul Sheldon
- Salem's Lot: Ben Mears
- The Dark Tower: He's written himself into the story.
- Word Processor of the Gods a short story in the collection Skeleton Crew
- The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet, also in Skeleton Crew: Reg Thorpe
- The Tommyknockers: Roberta "Bobbi" Anderson
- The Dark Half: Thad Beaumont
- IT: Bill Denbrough
- The Langoliers, a novella published in the collection Four Past Midnight: Bob Jenkins
- Secret Window, Secret Garden, also in Four Past Midnight: Mort Rainey
- Desperation, and The Regulators: Johnny Marinville
- Bag Of Bones: Mike Nonan is a novelist suffering from writer's block.
- Lisey's Story: Scott Landon (Lisey's deceased husband)
- The Body (AKA Stand By Me) Gordon Lachance
- Umney's Last Case, a short story in Nightmares and Dreamscapes
- The Road Virus Heads North, a short story in Everything's Eventual: Richard Kinell, a horror writer
- Non-novelist writers:
- The Colorado Kid: Three of the four main characters are reporters or otherwise work for a newspaper.
- Cell: Clayton Riddell is a writer of graphic novels.
- The Tommyknockers: Jim Gardener is a poet.
- 1408, short story in Everything's Eventual: Mike Enslin writes non-fiction books about haunted places.
- The Shining: Jack Torrance is working on a play and has a pile of short stories under his belt.
- Carrie: Sue Snell wrote a book about her experiences.
- The first book in the Legacy of Aldenanta series by John Ringo starts off with a clear Author Avatar sci-fi writer being called in as an expert by the government to help deal with the consequences of First Contact with aliens. A clear equivalent of David Weber also shows up in the same group.
- The male protagonist in Breakfast At Tiffanys was a writer.
- The World According To Garp.
- Kurt Vonnegut's novels have the recurring character of Kilgore Trout, though he's not exactly how the author consciously inserts himself into his stories.
- Isadora Wing, the protagonist of Erica Jong's Fear of Flying. It was loosely based on her own life.
- Mia Thermopolis in The Princess Diaries.
- Jake Woods and Clarence Abernathy, respective protagonists of the first two books in a trilogy by Randy Alcorn, are both newspaper columnists.
- In Jeff VanderMeer's Shriek: An Afterword the dual narrators 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.
- In Greg Bear's science fiction novel Queen of Angels, the story revolves around a novelist, playwright and poet, who has just killed eight people. Another main character is also a writer.
- Dean Koontz 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 Lightning, the main character is a novelist.
- Henry Fitzroy, the vampire from Tanya Huff's Blood series (turned into the TV show Blood Ties) is a romance novelist.
- In the TV version, he writes and draws graphic novels.
- Lily from The Secret Life Of Bees discovers and professes her talent for writing, mostly fiction.
- Emily, of the Emily Of New Moon books, knows she not only wants to be a writer, she is a writer with all of her self. 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, 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.
- William Goldman's The Color Of Light is about this trope. It goes a bit over the top in lampshading it, though.
Live Action TV
- The Dick Van Dyke Show: Rob Petrie is a television comedy writer.
- Murder She Wrote: Jessica Fletcher is a mystery writer.
- While not the main character, McGee of NCIS is a writer on the side, writing thinly veiled accounts of his adventures with the Gibbs Team.
- Tempe Brennan of Bones writes books based on a forensic anthropologist named Kathy Reichs - who is the author of the books upon which the show is based on.
- The protagonist of Castle.
- The two main characters of Spaced are Tim, a cartoonist, and Daisy, a writer.
- in Just Shoot Me 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, and advice column, and most of his boss' "autobiography".
- Rory of Gilmore Girls.
- To be more specific, she's a journalist.
- Sex And The City: Carrie is a newspaper columnist.
- Kolchak: The Night Stalker: Kolchak was a reporter.
- 30 Rock: Liz is an Author Avatar by Tina Fey's own admission.
- Dennis Potter was a writer who suffered from severe psoriatic arthritis. His best known work was the TV Series (later made into a movie) The Singing Detective, 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.
- The Five Man Band in How I Met Your Mother 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.
Musical
- Trixie True Teen Detective 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.
- The Musical of Little Women uses this, of course, following the book, but it's amusing 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.
Newspaper Comics
- Jon Arbuckle of Garfield, at least before he essentially became a full time Cloud Cuckoolander loser guy. In the cartoon, however, his profession regularly drives the conflict in the plot.
- Michael Patterson of For Better Or For Worse. His first novel is a best-seller.
- Sydney in Dykes To Watch Out For is an academic writer and there have been other minor characters like Deidre and Anjlai who write but main character and semi-Author Avatar Mo has creator Alison Bechdel's bibliophile tendencies instead of being a writer herself.
Video Games
- The protagonist from the Darkseed games is a writer.
- Toon Struck stars the aptly named Drew Blanc, a struggling cartoonist.
Webcomics
Western Animation
- Andy French of Mission Hill
- Ginger Foutley of As Told By Ginger was a writer. The show specified that she was a gifted poet, but it was inferred that she was an all-around talented writer.
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