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]

I'm actually struggling a little bit with my current story because a number of superficial and circumstantial details about my main character are similar to mine - age, education, her initial living situation is a lot like mine in college, she can't cook - even though in the more significant aspects she's very different from me, and when my mom has read bits of my draft she always points these things out. So I have a considerable SHE'S NOT ME complex with this one, and I'm afraid that other people who know me will think that.