For Those That Submit Stories On This Site

[Kantarii]

When you are writing your stories, do you incorporate personality traits and characteristics from yourself into the characters in your stories?

I've tried to write and describe totally fictional characters in my stories and give them their own life, but at some point in my stories the characters eventually take on aspects of my own persona either from my past or my present.

I can't really see that as a bad thing. Just wanna hear what others have to say on the subject.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Generally my protagonist has significant chunks of me in him (both truth and fantasy) when I'm writing a male lead. It follows to some extent that my female characters are either bits and pieces of my past, with varying degrees of fantasy and embroidery, or completely fabricated (wish fulfilment). I like to think the real elements shine through, but I don't know if they do or not.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I have a grad degree in psychology, and studied psychology since 1967. My treatment of people is way beyond what most of us get about our friends and family and acquaintances. It takes me about 15 minutes to learn everything about you worth knowing, and 99% of it isn't much. Youre a coward and lazy and dishonest, and likely to break all the commandments if no one is looking. I start from THERE, and my characters conform to my theories. The best of them are frauds and despicable.

I cant imagine anyone interested in me. I strive to be flawless and dangerous...like my hero Robert E. Lee. He had no friends, and neither do I.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Sure and the females are all bits and pieces of women I know in real life. But most of them (my characters) are completely made up.

 

[Serafina1210]

I have a grad degree in psychology, and studied psychology since 1967. My treatment of people is way beyond what most of us get about our friends and family and acquaintances. It takes me about 15 minutes to learn everything about you worth knowing, and 99% of it isn't much. Youre a coward and lazy and dishonest, and likely to break all the commandments if no one is looking. I start from THERE, and my characters conform to my theories. The best of them are frauds and despicable.

I cant imagine anyone interested in me. I strive to be flawless and dangerous...like my hero Robert E. Lee. He had no friends, and neither do I.

Jesus Christ. You gotta stop reading Chandler over and over. You're starting to think you're Philip Marlowe.

 

[sr71plt]

Chandler! Chandler! Chandler! Raymond Chandler, he's our man. If Raymond can't do it, no one can!

On the OP question, I think there are those (few) writing a lot who can keep themselves out of what they're writing on rare occasion, but I think some of them makes it into almost everything they write.

Living where I do and being a book editor, I get to hear best-seller authors speak a lot. If you gave me blind books by Gresham, Baldacci, Jan Karon, or Rita Mae Brown, I could match the book to the author just on the basis of the social commentary they provide--which is coming out of them or that affects them enough for them to include in their writing. Rita Mae Brown hits you like a hammer with her views on most everything.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Jesus Christ. You gotta stop reading Chandler over and over. You're starting to think you're Philip Marlowe.

I created a title for PILOT: THE POET OF SODOMY.

 

[Bramblethorn]

When you are writing your stories, do you incorporate personality traits and characteristics from yourself into the characters in your stories?

I've tried to write and describe totally fictional characters in my stories and give them their own life, but at some point in my stories the characters eventually take on aspects of my own persona either from my past or my present.

Hard to avoid. Most of my major characters have a bit of me in them, but I like to think there's enough of me that I can find several different bits to use.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

When you are writing your stories, do you incorporate personality traits and characteristics from yourself into the characters in your stories? ...

I have a couple of characters who have aspects of me in them, and quite a lot that aren't me or anything like me. I often write from a female's perspective and that's not me at all. My favorite character to write about was a woman who suffered from what might be called psychic damage, and autism; I found her fascinating and she ended up with a ton of complexity for an otherwise minor character.

The most interesting characters are the ones I meet while writing - I know I've hit gold when they show unexpected traits, and a pattern begins to emerge without me being conscious of it at first. And those are never anything like me.

 

[MagicaPractica]

Yeah, more so earlier on, and now the more I've learned to identify traits the more it's a little bit of different people, including myself. Hrm, I think I may have created a monster or two.

 

[sr71plt]

I created a title for PILOT: THE POET OF SODOMY.

Didn't take you long to show that you don't have me on ignore as you claimed on the GB today.

Nice try at gay bashing, not that anything you could post would touch me.

In keeping with the thread, no, James B Johnson isn't able to keep his trailer trash persona out of anything he writes.

 

[TxRad]

Here at Lit, yes there is a bunch of me in my stories.

When I went mainstream I've tried to keep me out of it. It makes for more interesting characters.

 

[HeyAll]

No, because I am boring, and I want the stories to be good. : )

But I do sometimes reference a character watching the same tv shows that I watch, which is about as close as I get to my own life.

The main thing is I try to make the characters right for whatever the story needs. For instance, if she's a detective, her personality would be different than a college student character.

 

[Olddirtyman]

I don't think that it's actually possible to create a character that doesn't have some aspect or another of your own personality in it.

 

[tomlitilia]

My male characters are supposedly influenced by different sides of my own personality, but none of them are me. The females are sometimes influenced by women I've known, but usually they are just figures of my imagination.

 

[oggbashan]

None of my characters are me.

None of my characters are any of my friends or acquaintances.

But both help me to construct characters who are fictional but based on characteristics of people I know, had known, had met, had read about, and me. A characteristic of single real individual might be the inspiration for the start of building a character, but the end result isn't that person.

For example: The characters Janet/Dorcas in my story Lavender started with a 1960s memory of a friend's mother who lived in South Devon. The real person was kind, helpful, had a great sense of humour, and was underestimated by her children until much later in their lives.

But Janet and Dorcas are NOT her. My affectionate memory of her was the trigger for creating Janet and Dorcas. I wanted to write a story about someone who was a mix of that memory and other Devon women I had met, then use my imagination to build the whole. The first woman might have been the inspiration. The eventual character(s) had maybe 5% of her, and 75% was my imagination.

If you want to look at Janet/Dorcas, this is the link. Warning - it's 5 Lit pages long!

https://www.literotica.com/s/lavender-3

 

[Rollinbones]

Sometimes I like to take a character trait that I've stumbled across in real life and build a character around it. Sometimes that trait is mine or someone known to me but just one part of that whole person.

Real people are generally far too rounded to be good reading, though some spectacularly broken ones exist but they hard for me to make believable on paper.

 

[lovecraft68]

For the simply erotic pieces, not really. Those characters are sort of throwaway to me and I give them some personality, but nothing invested of me.

On more serious works, yes, there's a lot of my traits and views. In SWB especially, the character of Mark had some of my personal history as well as my 'religious views' and the life long battle with anger issues.

I believe however the character that I've created which most reflects me would be "Abigail". I recently pulled her full length solo piece, but she's still on here in my SWB sequel.

Although she's female, she's very me through and through down to the evident and borderline pathological hatred of a certain type of man, utter disdain for 'god' and mentality of takers take until their taken.

I think that because in real life actions have to be avoided because of consequence, I live vicariously through her.

 

[EverLux]

The most interesting characters are the ones I meet while writing - I know I've hit gold when they show unexpected traits, and a pattern begins to emerge without me being conscious of it at first. And those are never anything like me.

I've only just started writing, but that is the most surprising part of the process for me. Now I understand why authors sometimes talk about their characters as if they're real people--you slowly get to know them as you create them, and if you really like a particular character, a sort of bond forms.

As for the OP--So far, my favorite character has been the one that's least like me. Oh, to be that bold...

(p.s. First time poster, here. Not sure if I got the quoting thing right)

 

[oggbashan]

For the simply erotic pieces, not really. Those characters are sort of throwaway to me and I give them some personality, but nothing invested of me.

...

In most of my stories there are characters and cardboard cut-out characters.

The cardboard ones are only there to help with the story. They have little personality or independent existence, only serving as foils for the main characters. They could change their names. Their dialogue could be transferred to a different cardboard character. That wouldn't matter because they are only there as part of the scenery.

In my Lavender story referred to in my earlier post, Ian's brother and sister-in-law are those sort of characters. The brother could be a cousin, a friend, a hotel manager - it wouldn't matter. Those two are just an excuse for Ian to meet Janet again. Other characters in the story - the garage proprietor and his wife, the agricultural business manager - they are just walk on and walk off parts. Ian's ex-'wife' Marie is off stage for the whole story.

It helps the story if the minor characters have some identifying personality but they shouldn't be so interesting that they derail the plot, or the interaction between the main characters, who in the story Lavender are Ian, Janet and Dorcas. Those three have to have personalities and must be interesting to the reader.

BUT - that's just the way I do it. There are many other ways of writing characters, many ways of introducing and developing them. If it works? It's good.

Sometimes I find that my cardboard characters refuse to stay in their role and demand a story of their own. That doesn't change their position in the original story. Or main characters could reappear as bit-players in another story. Again that doesn't make them more important in the second story.

 

[MarkoAaron]

Never use myself as foundation for a character. But I do emulate my female characters from girls I know or know of. Girls I thought were very attractive or a girl who's personality really clicked with a character idea.

As a frustrated male, who's been turned down. I decided to put those girls in a story, either way she's getting fucked

 

[Jay321]

Its very hard not to write myself into stories, either erotic or not. My erotic stories are based on things that work for me. Just as an example, I don't care for gay male sex, so I can't write it.

I wrote one non-erotic story based on something I was doing that although unlikely, could have killed me. >BAM< inspiration. It was about 10 pages in Word, wrote it in a little over an hour. Another, I was fighting some figurative demons in my head, 50 pages in Word later, a story that about 7 people have read, because of how much it reveals of myself.

Even if I don't make myself the main character, I am in there somewhere. I wrote one here based on a suggestion from the forum (https://www.literotica.com/s/valedictorian) I put myself as the suitor that she chose.

Can I write and leave myself completely out of it? Probably, but no one, including myself, would want to read it.

Not that I am comparing myself, but look how many of Stephen King's main characters are writers.

 

[JLCC]

My character development skills are not great. I do draw from myself and also included an enhanced version of me in two stories.

My female characters are written as though Vargas was doing it: somewhat idealized, what I would want to see in a girl.

 

[LWulf]

You cannot write about something or someone outside your scope of understanding. If you did, it would be disjointed, without parallels and very likely wouldn't read very well.

You can try to describe characters outside your own persona, but until that character's choices make sense to you, you won't be able to describe them well enough to make them seem realistic.

 

[sr71plt]

You cannot write about something or someone outside your scope of understanding. If you did, it would be disjointed, without parallels and very likely wouldn't read very well.

Umm, there are those who do. It's called a form of fantasy and/or Sci-fi. Very popular.