Is it wrong for a protagonist to be created after the author?

Even though the character only has but so many traits? I'll admit that I'm guilty of this, and aware that it is quite inelegant and unoriginal. I have written a story based on the people and events that have occurred in my life (something that I recall Naoko Takeuchi has done with Sailor Moon), but did add some elements of fantasy and action in it, but it wasn't out of any attempt of escapism, which I'm certain will be assumed out of doing so. Is it tacky to conjure up a character after its creator?

Nothing wrong with it! enjoy yourself :)

If you're talking about the full-fledged Author Avatar thing, I feel it's virtually impossible to avoid a certain degree of wish fulfillment when doing something like this, because humans just aren't that good at objective self-assessment - even if you try not to, it's hard to avoid making a character based off of yourself without idealizing them to some degree. I wouldn't recommend it.

If, on the other hand, you're only basing certain aspects of the character off of yourself, it can be a good way to flesh them out.

Not really. So long as it isn't a thinly-veiled Self-Insert. I don't think any author is immune to putting a trait of themselves into a character, protagonist or otherwise. I know I have one in my protagonist. Mathias Watkins in my book is left handed. I am left handed in reality. It was mostly conscious choice as I was wondering "Why are all protagonists in everything right-handed?" so I decided make him left handed. (I did the same decision when making Jessie.)

Now having nearly all swordsmanship on page be left handed...yeah that was just coincidence.

Many very successful characters are based in part on, or have a number of traits of, the author.

If you look at the real-life bios of many authors and compare their skills and ideologies with those of their characters, you'll find a lot of things in common.

Ian Fleming was a real-life spy and created James Bond - and that's just for starters.

Ernest Hemingway really was an ambulance driver in Italy during WWI. Writing what you know is the cornerstone of writing.

It's certainly perfectly fine since authors would be most familiar writing what they know and who they know.

Moreover, I'd like to contend that the Author Avatar, Escapist Character and Self-Insert archetypes are not inherently bad - and can in fact be good - so long as it does not unintentionally break Suspension of Disbelief; with the key word there being 'unintentionally'.

In short, go ahead and write yourself in if you want to. Just be mindful of how the character comes off and remember that it isn't actually you but just another character in your work.

edited 12th Aug '12 8:08:41 PM by peasant

I'm inclined to disagree with this, if by "good" you mean "adds something positive to the story it would have otherwise lacked". I'm not sure whether the direct self-insert (an Escapist Character is something different) ever does any good for a story. While it's usually badly executed, it isn't always - but even when it is done right, I'm not sure it does anything that a more original character couldn't.

Or, in other words, a full-scale self-insert won't necessarily hurt your story, but it won't help it either.

Never. It's natural.

And if you mean good as in - he is a very compelling and relatable character in the story, that is very possible. If it works for you.

edited 12th Aug '12 8:25:12 PM by QQQQQ

Oh, sure. My position is that basing a character entirely off yourself does nothing to make the character better, not that it makes them bad (although it does have more potential to do so then many ways of making a character).

I don't find that a very useful perspective, sorries.

Nope. Tropes Are Not Bad, OP. Most of my protagonists tend to be projections of myself in subtle ways. It's very easy to write what you know. There's nothing wrong with basing characters off of yourself of the people you know. Heck, I have a quite popular story that's entirely made up of 'proxy' characters and the main character is a quite blatent author avatar. (It makes sense in context.)

Of course, I'm not saying that you should do something like I did. On the other hand of the spectrum, I unwittingly gave traits from myself to the character Cain Stellark (especially in backstory, sadly).

Despite the mostly negative connotations that the author avatar trope page might lead you to believe, the trope isn't bad, but isn't good at the same time. Tropes Are Tools, and you should be free to use them as you like.

Each of my regular characters (protagonist or not) is representative of at least one aspect of my personality (I'm a conflicted individual)

Interestingly, my villains tend to be blatant projections of myself (if I ever go off the deep end, that is). I do not see it a bad thing.

I think it really bears repeating that, while not bad, this is a risky thing to do. Tropes Are Tools, but tools often need to be handled with care.

I also do this to a certain extent.

edited 12th Aug '12 8:48:24 PM by nrjxll

The "Write What You Know" thing can't be over-emphasised. Not only do I base characters on me (at least in part), I base other characters on people I know or I will base the relationships they have with one another on relationships I have with people.

I often create "composite" characters wherein this character might have THIS friend's interests and hobbies but THAT friend's relationship with me as his/her relationship with the protagonist.

As was said up above, remember that they're not you and your friends, they are characters in their own right, but by all means use what you know about yourself and your relationships to make the characters more believeable.

I'm curious how you'd come to the conclusion that risk-reward analysis isn't useful.

Each of my regular characters (protagonist or not) is representative of at least one aspect of my personality (I'm a conflicted individual)

I've found myself doing this, and a friend of mine uses this strategy (sometimes subconsciously) for EVERY character he writes. He writes Slice of Life stuff, so it actually works fairly well most of the time.

As others have said, tropes are tools. I think that basing characters on yourself/people you know is an important step towards creating characters out of whole cloth- being able to examine and replicate others/yourself with some fidelity is a highly useful skill that will ultimately help in building original characters. Characters who are different from you are still characters, and so many of the same tenants apply, though naturally knowing yourself is easier than knowing a character (at first).

edited 12th Aug '12 10:46:54 PM by CleverPun

I think we're talking about two different things, here.

If we're talking about Write What You Know and Write Who You Know, there really isn't anything wrong with it and it often helps to add a depth of realism if you can draw from your own experiences. It helps if you try to look for it when it happens, though.

Inserting into a story a character who is heavily and intentionally based on oneself, especially if they are a protagonist, can be very, very tricky and rarely turns out well.

This, too, is split into two main subtypes.

The first is a character whose reactions and relations with the world around it are directly connected with and influenced by oneself, outside the story. This is a full-blown Author Avatar; they very rarely work even in worlds running on Rule of Funny, Rule of Cool, etc., and they especially just do not work at all in any kind of serious story.

The other subtype is more of a self-awareness experiment than anything, and the few that I've seen have interested me greatly. Essentially it involves taking a character who, at the beginning of the story, is heavily and intentionally similar to the author, separating it from yourself in your head and assigning it the role of 'just another character, who happens to closely resemble me,' and writing their views, character, etc. changing throughout the story, just like any other.

Or, to be possibly less confusing: one is a branch from the author, there to make it easier to feel that the author is 'experiencing' the story. While not always horrible, sometimes even justified, it tends to reduce reader's enjoyment of and involvement in the story if they feel that it's really only written for one person to enjoy. It also tends to sacrifice character development, because the character is simply an extension of the author, and how much is the author going to be changed, challenged, and developed by the events of a playground world they've made to fulfill their wishes?

The other is more like a cutting from the author. Yes, they are similar in many ways, but they are also separate. The character is an attempt to analyze and think carefully about how the author would really react in such a situation, without a window to the real world to know that everything is going to be just fine.

It allows the author to change the character dynamically; they may have originated from the real world, but they're not tied to it. They're often a self-study and a test of realism, and they can make you ask some hard questions about yourself and people in general. For example, would you really spout off a Bond One-Liner after killing someone, or forget about it because your mentor told you that it was fine because it was necessary? What kind of person would you be if you did?.

Tl;dr version: Write Who/What You Know? Just fine, and in fact a natural part of writing. Self-study character? Tricky, experimental, potentially very interesting. Full-blown Author Avatar? Best avoided if at all possible.

edited 11th Dec '12 2:51:13 PM by CarnivorousMoogle

Yeah, I think I agree with this (and ).

To begin with, I've noticed a very obvious problem with basing protagonists too directly on myself: I'm just not a good character; I often find myself difficult to relate to and I'm ME. Despite that, my presence is heavily apparent in my characters, it's not really something I can avoid, but thankfully I'm diverse enough that I don't end up with a cast of clones.

I still think it's classier to obscure it if you can, though. Write what you know, sure, but it's the mark of a good author and a good human being to 'know' more than just themselves. That's the part I'm currently failing on.

edited 12th Dec '12 11:01:26 AM by Kesteven

As with many things in writing, the answer is "it depends".

What I would suggest is, describe your character to us. What is your character's personality like? What are your character's strengths and weaknesses? What do you think is most interesting, compelling, or unique about your character?

As writers we need to pour a part of ourselves into our characters but the problem arises when you as a person (character) don't really fit into the story. You don't want to shoehorn in a character you or otherwise if they clash with the story (unless you are focusing on said clash).

Looking at my cast personality wise I'm probably most similar to Zammela... and she's a five foot nothing spunky redhead. While I'm more of a 6 foot 8 inch lumbering oaf. The only real similarity between me and my main character is our skin color and his first name is similar to mine. (Oh noes Sue red flag kill it!)

I think if I rolled up all the quirks of the secondary cast you'd have a pretty definitive caricature of me as a person. But that was intentional. It's much easier to write someone if you can relate to them in some way... even if all you share with them is a single inconsequential detail.

My main characters draw a lot from me if it fits into the story - outlook on life, personality, hobbies if appropriate etc but there are differences dependent on the nature of the story (motorcycle-riding, airsoft-skirmishing computer geek doesn't fit too well into Medieval Alt-Hist Fantasy).

Only one is close to full-blown Author Avatar and even then, he's got differences, too - a few different events have happened in his life and he's got more money to spend than I do - but the events are things that could plausibly have happened or I would have chosen to do, given the option/money - and the money gets spent on things I'd be doing if I could afford them. (He's also got a fair number of my failings, too).

Considering that story is set in the exotic futuristic landscape of 2014 New Zealand, someone very much like me could plausibly exist.

I agree with pretty much all of the above. Nothing wrong with it, but you should remember that it is a character and not you. Nobody is perfect, so just make sure that your author avatar isn't either.