Is your main character always an aspect of yourself – in other words, are your characters just you? I’m not talking about Mary Sue characters – those are bad through and through. What about your characters that are well written – your decent characters – are they just you?
Basing your characters on real people can help to make interesting and well-rounded characters. Of course, you should use you as one of those people. I do that. I was reading back some old work and I noticed that all my characters were a little bit of me. Without meaning to I had written a series of main characters that were all white males with a similar background to me.
When Matt suggested I write a post for Thanet Creative, I was thinking about my writing. Is it just me that write me into every character?
- Are all of your characters just you with different hats on?
- If not how do you make your main characters not you?
- Do you write about genders, races, and orientations other than your own?
Making each character different
That got me thinking about how I make my characters different to each other. (or is that from each other? I can never work that one out).
I like to give my characters a specific quirk, something that troubles them, and a shortcoming. But if I take them out of the setting and put them in another story they stop seeming so different.
- Are your main characters unique?
- How do you make your characters different and interesting?
- What can writers do (especially us fan-fic writers) to make characters stand out?
Over to you, Thanet Creative: Readers…