I don't explicitly make my characters resemble me, but I bleed through to the page and the screen, making them all have bits and pieces of me within them.
I think it's also virtually unavoidable as an artist. You are your own greatest reference afterall, and everything you interact with goes through your own subjective filter. You are your work as much as your work is yours.
They can have bits of my personal likeness. It is very hard to not put a bit of yourself into a character, I think you cannot because you inevitably will whether you realise it or not.
I personally do not purposely insert myself, it has no point in the story I am making and I worry it would make my writing suffer even more. If I am making a y/n fanfic, some story that relies on power or romantic fantasy, a comedy making fun of myself, or something inspired by my life experience, then I would.
If I was asked the same question ("Which one is you?") I'd point to something absurd like the characters' pet cat or something (who wouldn't want to be a cat?)
I'm like you. All my characters have something in common with me, but they aren't straight up self inserts 99% of the time. The exception is probably the female lead from my short story Rain Dance. The characters around her are imagined or combinations of people I've met, by she herself is almost wholly based o me at age 14-15. But that's largely because the story is almost an autobiographical retelling of the tropical storms I endured throughout my childhood
All art is the world filtered through an artist's brain. The characters and worlds they create are either a reflection of, or a reaction to, how they experience our world.
A character is born of the artist, but they are not the artist. Like the myth of Athena being born from Zeus's head (except now she comes out looking like an anime princess.)
Even self-inserts are not the artist. Robert Crumb, Joe Matt, and Seth were not as repulsive IRL. Grant Morrison is not nearly as cool. Much like your online persona it's all a construction based on how they think the world is and their role in it.
None of my characters are me as I wouldn't fit in the stories I wanna tell. I'm a dude that watches movies, reads, and does art. None of that would be fun to read. Plus I create characters to fit the story to make it interesting. They are sometimes inspired by people I know, but they all act to move the story along so I give them the personality to do that.
This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.
I’m another one of those who put a piece of themselves into every character they create. For me, it just helps me relate to them better. And if there’s a character who happens to be not like me at all, I base them on some attribute a friend of mine has. I always find a way to relate to my characters, even the villains. (Though I have to say, I draw the line at war criminals. I never give them anything from me or my friends. And almost all of the villains from the story I’m currently making are war criminals, so… there’s a lot of characters who aren’t me at all. But I don’t need to relate to them anyway, so it’s fine.)
So I have this one character that stemmed from a joke with a friend in my Spanish who is literally just me me except I’m a genetically engineered superhuman weapon (literally just named “The Weapon”) who is super powerful but only knows how to fly. I also have mind controlling sunglasses so the evil person can use me. But this character is a minor part of the “book” I’m writing atm and I literally just wrote myself getting bopped upside the head and thrown 30 ft while on fire um I’ll be fine
Same. I don't think it's even possible to write a character who has absolutely no similarities with you, unless you're making a caricature/flat character (which is also fine. Not every character in a story have to complex and nuanced), and some life experiences are so universal that no two people would be completely devoid of common ground, regardless of culture and upbringing.
As for myself, I tend write characters & protagonist in with this question in mind: "What kind of journey, developments, and/or self-discovery do I want to see this person go through?"
I've mentioned several times that most of my writing experience came from forum roleplays. I've always loved filling those character creation forms, trying to come up with interesting combinations based on the parameters given by the OP, then seeing how they fare in the world. In that sense, it's kind of like playing a role in a film. I never write deliberate self-inserts, but I might project a lot of myself on them depending on how invested I am in their journey.
The responses are varied, but it seems making a specific self insert is less common.
I've heard this question enough that I wondered if it was the opposite.
I wonder if because audience stand-ins are common, people assume most creators must also have a stand-in? Idk I've been thinking about this too much maybe haha