Your characters' personalities and your own

[sarillia]

How much of your character's personalities come from you?

I've heard some writers say that every character is a facet of themselves and I agree with that to a point. But some people put bits of themselves into their characters more consciously.

I tend to mix in conflicts that I've dealt with as subplots or character arcs. The character is not exactly like me so they deal with it differently but they are enough like me to be dealing with the same problem.

On the other end of the spectrum, I love writing characters who are very different from me. I've always been kind of insecure and I love writing really arrogant characters. Plus I just think it's fun to build a character starting with a fault and make them likeable anyway.

Do you enjoy writing characters who are like you or who are different from you or some combination?

Comments

[inkdust]

All of my characters have something of me in them, sometimes in more obvious ways and sometimes not so. One of absolute favorites is one I always viewed as quite different from me until I realized that I had taken some of my flaws and more hidden qualities and brought them to the forefront in her. In the end I think my favorite characters are the ones who resonate most, who I can best understand, and sometimes I think those are more similar to me and sometimes they're more different.

[serria]

I agree with what you've said. All developed characters have something from us in them, even if it isn't our surface personality. Some kind of flaw, strength, desire, quirk, way of thinking... I think it'd be hard to make a character that had nothing at all from the author.