Viewpoint Importance of “Self” in Character Creation - How similar are you to your character?

[Phoenix.]

I was just thinking about this as a conversation with a new RP partner naturally prompted it. But how similarly to yourself do you write your characters? I understand why it’s important - writing from personal experience keeps details realistic, grounded, and more relatable. But to what extent? Do you usually incorporate your hobbies? Perhaps, a part of your own life experience? Your background or cultural origins?

Or in contrast, do you play people who are pretty different from yourself? Or perhaps, strike a fine balance between similarities and differences?

I’m at the point of branching out. I’d like to think of characters that are very different from the “usual” suspects/types would be really fun to play and write about. Just throwing caution to the wind and going outside that comfort zone, you know? It kinda motivates me to see, really truly think about other people’s perspectives. And also to create a character with novel traits of their own.

For example, one of my newest characters is mild-aged man, disgruntled, and just trying to find meaning to his life after a tragedy. In reality, I couldn’t be any further in comparison. But I like to think about possibilities and indulge in the “What ifs..?”.

But what’s been your experience so far? When you write, do you put your own headspace into the driver’s seat? Or do you think about how your fictional character would go about it?

 

[nerdy tangents]

So character creation isn’t my primary focus when it comes to roleplays. Usually I focus more on fleshing out the world and create characters that serve that need.

However when I decide to do less world building heavy roleplays I usually like to incorporate some of my current interests as hobbies. I wouldn’t say personality wise my characters are anything like me (mostly cuz I’m an introvert with a healthy caution for shenanigans which makes for a pretty boring character tbh)

I certainly don’t mind getting into other mindsets, I find unlikeable or problematic characters to be fun to play whenever I get the chance.

 

[Phoenix.]

Ah, interesting, interesting!

I personally am a narrative driven writer. While dreaming up imaginary worlds is quite fun indeed, the endeavour rings hollow without characters as the real substance or glue that make it worth while. What is a pretty garden without an observer to interact with them. Its a description, in my humble opinion.

Personally, I‘m apt to have a scenario/plot in my mind before realizing characters. Its events/ideas/goals/interactions that first flow and then, characters. Then, the world is a back drop. All equally important, none irremovable, to make the RP immersive. Its works as a sum of its parts.

But for this question, my focus was on characters.

I don’t mind playing the foil actually. Heroes are fun, but villains or complex characters are what truly intrigue me. I like to challenge myself so I don’t mind.

I appreciate your input! And introverted characters can be a lot of fun too. Just not in the typical over zeal, enthusiastic sense. They have internal frame works that I find unique. I wouldn’t say you’d be boring at all!

 

[nerdy tangents]

Well I meant in the sense that I am very much a “keep myself to myself” kinda person. I am not only perfectly happy to hang out by myself I have no problem telling people to buzz off and leave me alone.

Which from a narrative perspective means you have a character who consistently taking themselves out of the action or refusing to interact with other people. That isn’t really fun to write against (having had the misfortune to play against exactly these character types it’s very frustrating)

So yeah I am not saying I’m a boring person IRL I’m saying any character that shares my core personality would be a nightmare for a roleplay setting and I wouldn’t inflict that on a partner.

 

[Phoenix.]

Understood.

That does sound like a challenge. Although to be honest, I have played against a character with similar character traits that you’ve described. It’s not uncommon. Withdrawn, reclusive, anti-social, completely weary of the judgement of others and hesitant to start a conversation with anyone for the fear of rejection? There are plenty of introverts who are comfortable playing introverts and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with having those qualities and basing a character off them. I think you may be projecting that your partner would struggle with dealing with your character‘s introversion. I could be wrong. Have you ever tried it - to role-play an introverted character with your traits? Has it gone awry?

I hope that I haven’t touched a nerve. I’m just genuinely curious.

In the RP that I mentioned previously, it wasn’t an easy task to get the characters to the point of seeing common ground, but my partner and I did get there eventually.

 

[Jannah]

I'm very much a character driven writer, which means I will write pretty diverse sets of characters. Very few of them have anything in common with me except for perhaps being the inquisitive types. I do hold intelligence in high regard so it's genuinely difficult for me to write characters that we would consider "dumb".

 

[counterfeitcowboy]

I feel I can safely say my characters tend to be very different people from me. I love to write stubborn, bullheaded, and redeemably ignorant people. I like writing characters who, bless their hearts, aren't that bright. (Okay, maybe that's not totally unlike me.) I will say, though, there are some interests I pretty much never give them. For example, my eyes glaze over when people talk about sports. I know nothing about them. I tend not to write sports fanatic characters, because I couldn't easily fake it, and I'm not interested in doing the research to make it believable. Other than that, the sky's the limit and I am glad not to have much in common with most of these characters.

 

[Melpomene]

Ah! Yes, I think every single character I have made has a piece of me inside of them. However, I have written a very diverse set of characters and I can say there may be some who are close to me personality wise, most of them are vastly different overall. Though all of them probably have one tidbit or interest that I have. Two of the most common traits I have given is intelligence and a love of cats. Because I really love cats. And so I write people snuggling cats often.

 

[Idea]

My characters are individuals in their own right- I flesh them out in accordance to who they are / who I want them to be, starting from a simple character concept, and generally following what I call the "golden rule of consistency". Where does X trait lead? Where does it come from? Avoiding contradictions and following those questions, one can create quite a fair amount of content, be it in a character, a setting, a plot or more or less anything else.

Now that being said, I do like to sprinkle a little of myself in my characters. Often this may be something like "oh the character needs a like, I can't think of anything in particular, so I'll just shove in something I'm interested in", other times it can be the character's own past and motivations exploring something I myself deal/dealt with in my life. It's almost always of those two types of things: Either I just added some tiny detail without much impact in the character, or it's simply that the way I think and things I've experienced influenced how the character I designed naturally turned out to be. Regardless, I always strive for a unique perspective to follow.

Also of note, I have tried playing self-inserts, or at least characters based on myself in the past. They were kind of a mess - real people are just extraordinarily complex and can but capture small facets of them. As with many things in stories, characters are simplifications and I think they are all the better as simplifications, because it helps give them purpose (plus it's actually achievable unlike the alternative). The second reason I stopped though, is because I've grown a disdain for attempts to impose reality upon fiction. From inserting politics, to demanding too much or too obscure realism, to people tangling up what happens between character and what happens between the players, among other examples. It's a taint, and it happens so often because of a survivor's fallacy, but if I go any more into this I'll start ranting... maybe I already did.

So, long story short: I am me, my characters are my characters. Sometimes characters take some aspects from me, but they are always small or blended into who the character is because it was a product of my way of thinking rather than being made with the specific intention to take after me. I leave self-inserts to thought exercise prompts like jumpchain.

 

[GojiBean]

In all honesty the concept of putting yourself into your characters is inherently unavoidable. Why? Because you're creating them. Whether you're conscious of it or not, you're in there.

The question of "to what extent" is definitely the right question to ask. And the answer is never black and white.

My best answer after 20+ years of roleplaying is: "It depends."

What does it depend on? Choice.

How much do I want this character to resemble me or a part of myself that I might otherwise not show as often as I feel I should in the real world? How much do I want to have the character utilize my martial arts knowledge or lack it entirely for the sake of being all but helpless and need to rely on other characters with the strength and skills to keep them alive? How much do I want them to be philosophical and introspective like I tend to be when analyzing myself and my life every few weeks? I'm in my early 30's, so how old do I want to go to explore a character whose no longer in his/her prime and getting up there to the point that they can't do what I can do (or what I used to be able to do) now?

At the end of the day there's no separating ourselves from our characters. We can try. Oh we can try. Trust me. I know. But really it doesn't matter how hard you try. You'll always find a piece of yourself in the characters buried beneath the surface.

Even when you make the character as far removed from your own personality, skillset, age, etc, you're in there somewhere.

But what's most important isn't how much of yourself comes through. The most important thing about any character is the character's soul and how true to it you remain while writing.

So, as best you can, enjoy as best you can the characters who are as far removed from who you are and what you can do and how you think. As you pointed out it gives you a wonderful opportunity to explore other perspectives and thought processes and mental gymnastics to figure out how best to portray someone who's nothing like you and force you to walk a mile (or a few thousand) in their shoes.

Cheers!

~ GojiBean

 

[TerrorKitty]

My characters are like my children in a way, there's some semblance of me in them surely. They came from my mind and there's nothing I can do to mitigate that fact, but as my creations, like children they're not me.

I put things I like in them or want to see in them but they have their own histories and lives. They're someone else.

My characters are almost never anything like me because they're not.

I don't have a semblance of self with them, we're in my mind, separate entities.

 

[Nihilum]

My characters are...very much not like me, to say the least. Actually I would be pretty concerned if they were. I like to think that I'm not a false-protagonist with vaguely psychopathic tendencies and a bounty on my head. Or a demented old guy who turns into a Bloodborne-esque monster and eats people without remembering any of it. Or a six-foot-two lean mean green machine punk that solves all their problems by punching and yelling really loudly. I wish I was, though. Or a old, war traumatized sniper from a dystopian paramilitary operation, or a-

...You get my point. Anyways, I write characters in a very broad spectrum so it's hard for them to inherit pieces of me. My oldest characters that I created a long time ago may have some traits that would point you in the direction of being mine - if not solely because I've written them for years and years - but other than that, there's nothing indicative that I made them. I find that more often than not, my sense of 'self' is reflected through narrative. This applies for most people too, I think, even if they don't actually recognize it; there's all kinds of friends that I can IMMEDIATELY recognize that that's their writing just because of the piece's narrative voice. It's kind of entertaining because once you pick up on a person's quirks and writing habits, you can't stop seeing it. I, for example, have a problem with making sarcastic comments in narration and character streams of consciousness.

I do think that characters reflecting yourself is something that fades as you get older, to return back to the original topic. It changes from person to person - obviously - but I think a lot of us end up losing that youthful tendency to play out our subconscious desires through our characters as we move on in life. My former main character, Venus, was written with my younger self's desire to be someone who could take the punches and not care what other people think. Anymore, my characters are just based on what I need for a plot or whatever spontaneous, terrible idea that's popped into my head this time.

 

[Meryl_ya]

My first few characters all have one of these stereotypes: quiet but will retort back when provoked, shy but caring to those that are close to them (my character). I used to make and play nice characters, vanilla, all those kinds of stuff, mainly because that was how I view myself. Now, whilst my characters are diverse, there's still a piece of me in each of them.

I have a character that's afraid to be in a stable relationship despite always wanting somebody where my character can show their romantic affections to, a character with existential crisis that desperately wants to be known and acknowledged even if she were to be the bad guys, and a character that prioritizes anyone with higher positions rather than her friend (she just has her priority straight yuno)

...now that I re-read what I just typed, I realized that my personality kinda sucks. RIP me-

 

[Yuri Greythorn]

For me personally, I use people in my real life as a base plate for my characters (Don't mind my pfp, that's from my edgy phase). My main Oc, Yuri, is meant to represent me. He knows my pain, my suffering, and I use him as an outlet. my character grows different with each passing day. He is essentially me, but stronger, faster, bigger, better. I created him in a fantasy world, years ago, to be invincible, it was a metaphor for what I wanted to be, how vulnerable I truely was at that point. But like me, he's grown up, he's moved passed his trauma, and he's learning from it still, after 10 years of modifying this character constantly, in the end, I am Yuri, Yuri is me, I want him to be known as a caring individual, but with issues, same as I want in life, I want world peace, same as him.

Another example, is My little sister, Kaydie, is Replaced by Nova GreyThorn. She has... Multi personality disorder to say the least, It's kind of horrifying. She goes from happy go lucky, to depressed, to Suddenly wanting to drink herself into oblivion to wanting to murder everyone around her. Nova has this trait, but she hasn't gotten to get to the point where she could -to an extend- control them, for Nova, they simply come out of nowhere. Nova is generally affiliated with general book smarts over street smarts just like my sister IRL

I can go on and on, I've made villains, heroes, the inbetweeners, god, mortals, universes, powers and so on so forth, but when it comes down to it, everyoone has their own style, some don't put themselves into their characters at all, others, use people as templates, and some make themselves, it all just comes down to YOU

 

[Merciless Medic]

So a lot of what everyone said here are how I do things. I do things on a spectrum based on how original I am (which, yes, that was sarcastic as I'm not very original lol), how much creativity juices I have, and whether I want to turn this character into a comfort character for myself or make them only a tool for whatever purpose I need them for. Comfort characters are still tools, but they have bits of me that I would like to be or have parts of things I'm struggling with that make me feel better as they are being helped as I vicariously live through them.

Characters who are only made to be tools don't undergo a lot of details and scrutiny like my comfort characters, but I still flesh them out and give them things that make them realistic or humanizing. Depending on whatever they are used for, I'll either give them a hobby or a like or a tic that brings about another side of them that doesn't see the light of day often and seems odd given what and who they normally are perceived as (or maybe they just have layers like an onion). I love making them at least seem human on the outside, even if I don't have a backstory fully created. But they generally don't have things I'm interested in. In fact, to make sure I don't get too attached to them, I give them things that I don't have and have a basic understanding of. Their personalities are usually formed from random people around me.

Of course, I may accidentally turn those tools into comfort characters if I spend too much time on them and I will eventually get attached to them (not that I'm complaining, but I do this way too often XD as a gag character or someone meant to only be a non-important side character somehow become more than their intended purpose).

When it comes to characters who have the most focus or the ones I play as consistently or for the majority of the time, they will have pieces of me. Whether it be hobbies, things I'm interested in, same political taste, same thought process, similar appearance, similar personality, things about them I wish I was, stuff they are going through that I'm currently going through myself or have already gone through, or any one of these aspects from people around me or traits/stuff I find enjoyable in a person. I have a few who are technically self-inserts, but their own backstories and families are different to mine, so they obviously grew up with different values and experiences in mind.

All in all, I see my comfort characters and self-inserts as their own characters who have taken aspects of myself or others around me. Or I've given them a concept or had them live through a concept I wanted to experiment with. I'm not my characters (I fell at some point thinking I was and I was depressed because of it), and they are certainly not me, even my self-inserts because they likely live in a fandom world where things are a bit different despite the numerous parallels to my own home life.

I'm also all about symbolism now lol, so I'm definitely going to be using that in my concepts and designs, no matter how subtle or obvious they are. XD

 

[BlueCandle]

I believe it is impossible to play a character that's wholly unlike oneself. Especially when a play goes on longer and a character gets more fleshed out, they tend to take on more specific traits that can be related back to their creator/player. I find that this is true for OCs as much as for canons, tbh - something drew you to that character, and the longer you play them, they are bound to take on some of your traits, opinions, or general demeanor. Not all, of course, or else we should not be *role*playing But that's one of the funnest ways to engage in fictional characters, I feel: the ability to work through issues with them that you may face, too, but in a different way.

 

[Hootle]

When creating characters or a story I don't make the characters like me. I may take particular events or experiences from my life or real world things and put in but never directly base them off of myself.

 

[BT_7274]

My characters are half half there. Some traits from me, some from other things. it all depends on how much I use said character. Say like my main pilot OC, Jackal. I use her the most, and she basically is just me as a pilot in Titanfall. She even has my main Titan chassis companion.

 

[Owl Knight]

My characters are almost always a combination of character archetypes I like (the world weary jaded father figure Ala Roland from The Dark Tower is large in mind right now) and my own personality. They say to write what you know *shrug*.

 

[Walliver]

I believe I’m similar to my character in many ways, they all have important pieces of my personality in them (ex: Killian carries my sense of lingering guilt and the trauma related to father figures). They’re an outlet for me to work out some of my toughest issues, a different lens to see the world through. And there are some characters that do just seem like aged-up versions of myself.
But hey, they’re my characters. Why shouldn’t they be like me?

 

[Crow]

If I were to simplify my answer, I do not consciously add or subtract anything of myself to a character. Mostly because I wing things or if I want a certain type of character, I go for it.

That only really applies to surface level stuff, character creation. When playing a character, it's inevitable. When you write a character doing things, you might end up basing it off your own experiences.

 

[MG Maggio]

Huh! I do give two of my characteristics to every main character I've ever made:

1. Lefthandedness
2. Queer

 

[Chim]

Ooh boy, I feel like I'm being called out.

Honestly speaking, if I don't get that 'attachment' to a character, I will probably never roleplay them again. And that attachment usually comes from me adding some traits that are also mine. Dislikes fish, hates cold, etc. It is easier to relate to a character and roleplay as it if it's somewhat similar to you, in my opinion.

But then there's the fact that if I were to roleplay a polar opposite of me it would take me ages just to get used to how that character should behave. During some time, I begin to incorporate my personal traits into characters subconsciously, which is a problem and I've noticed it. It's completely random, almost irrelevant to the character's development.

I have roleplayed as characters that were different from my own personality, had different traits and hobbies than me, and still, at some point in time, they began to shift into me. Even just for a single RP session. I've found it hard to create a character that doesn't feel vanilla to me, something that I haven't roleplayed as yet. But it's hard, knowing that it will happen again and I can't do anything about it, really.

 

[bastion]

With over 200 characters, it's probably no surprise that the majority aren't like me. Even my personas end up removed from myself, but usually in that distorted funhouse mirror kind of way. Still, I think it's impossible not to include little pieces of myself in every character. A lot of my characters are artists and protective of others. They're caretakers in some shape or another, whether it be that they act like everyone's dad or they're the universal emotional support. Even my most gremliny gremlin of a character helps others.

 

[BackSet]

Aside from maybe sharing my interests (I like making pop-culture references so it's easier if my character likes the same things I like) I'd say most of my characters are pretty different from myself. The one character I have that is "like me" is more so a parody of what young me thought I was like (oh yeah I was totally grumpy and brooding as a 13 year old) than what I'm actually like.

Most of my characters are also Asexual Aromantic just like me, with a few exceptions.