095: Can You Put a Version of Yourself In Your Novel?

 

Can you put a version of yourself into your book? Learn the pros and cons of doing this, plus some common character pitfalls that are especially important to watch for if you're planning to base a character off yourself. 

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Can you put a version of yourself in your novel?

Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I am recording this podcast for bed, y'all. I'm just at a point in my pregnancy where I'm fine in the morning, I have a ton of energy in the morning and through lunch. And then by early afternoon, my back is killing my ribs sitting in my chair, and I just have to lay down -- so I was laying down in bed. And I just do not have energy to go back to my desk or back to my podcast closet upstairs. And so I have the mic in here. And I'm podcasting from bed. And honestly, it's kind of ideal like it. It's a vibe I might I might do this more often. I've done it before. But yeah, it's kind of fun to do.

 

So inserting yourself into fiction? Is this something you can do? The title is kind of misleading in a way because like, of course you can do whatever the hell you want. When you're writing, it's your book, you get to make the decisions. There's no one's approval that you have to get to write your book a certain way, like, go for it. If you want to write a book that is based on your life and just change names and some small details like you can absolutely do that. However, what I want to discuss in this episode is why sometimes that is not always a good thing. It's not recommended to do that. And just give you some things to consider so that if you are doing this, you know what to watch for.

 

I think that's the biggest thing is just being intentional. Knowing what the potential pitfalls are, and then making sure that you know, you're again, you're just doing this in an intentional way. So I'm gonna talk about a Mary Sue, briefly, because that's actually the very first exposure that I had to this idea of inserting yourself into fiction. If you have read fanfiction at all, I'm a big fan fiction lover -- have been into a few different fandoms over the years. Right now my biggest obsession well really the only fanfiction I read right now is Dramione. Which is funny because I'm not a Harry Potter fan. Like I, I read the books once years after they came out, I might have read them like five years ago, I think maybe seven or eight years ago, I don't know. As an adult, I read the books. I didn't read them as a kid. And I watched all the movies and really enjoyed them. But yeah, I was not a big Harry Potter fan, and started seeing some content and TikTok about Dramione, which is Draco and Hermione and was like, what, that seems odd.

 

Got pulled in by someone recommending a specific, thing and then just went insane. Anyways, that's not necessary for the point of this conversation. But if you have not read fanfiction, you might not be familiar with this term. So it's a term that's used to describe a character who because of the name Mary Sue is usually a woman who is seen as perfect and one dimensional, and somewhat like cookie cutter and honestly a little bit lacking in depth. There's also an element of a Mary Sue where they just are perfect in a lot of regards, like whether they're dealing with, if they're dealing with magic, they're like really good at magic, if they're dealing with something else -- some other kind of skill -- they're just like naturally gifted at all these things. They're beautiful, but they don't know it. Like all these. All these really good positive characteristics are assigned to them. And there's nothing to balance it out. Again, I mentioned being one dimensional, it's a character that just doesn't really have any flaws.

 

So this is something that I saw on the fanfiction space years ago where people would talk about this and they would talk about it as something that can happen when the author is inserting a version of themselves into the story. And this can happen a lot in fanfiction because an author who's writing a fanfic is so in love with these characters. And they're so in love with this world that this author is created that of course like it would be fun for them to be in the story. It would be fun for them to be in the world. And so when they're writing the usually female character, not always, but usually, they're inserting themselves into that. And then they get to experience all the things that this character experiences, they get to go on the, the emotional rollercoaster of dealing with this love interest, they get to deal with all the fun things that happen in this world.

 

So that's kind of the the origin of that. Now, there has been pushback against this term, Mary Sue, a lot of people argue like this is extremely sexist and misogynist, you know, you can have a capable, competent, female protagonist, and she's not a Mary Sue. And, you know, I'm not really going to get into too much of that. But I think the point being what what I focus on in the Mary Sue discussion is, okay, does this character have any flaws?

 

Do they have anything balancing out all of these wonderful characteristics and traits and skills and their physical appearance? Is there anything else balancing that out? Is there depth to the character? So when you are inserting yourself into, or a version of yourself, maybe it's not exactly who you are, but but you're basing the character off of yourself? That is something to be very, very mindful of. And I talk about strengths and weaknesses and flaws a lot on and talk about characters.

 

I mean, you can go back to any character episode, probably that I've done at this podcast, and you'll hear me talk about that, like, does this character have agency? Do they have a goal or a motivation? Is there something propelling them forward? Are they complex and realistic or authentic, and, you know, do they have any weaknesses at all, like that's what we want to see with any character. But it is especially important to make sure that your character is strong and well rounded in all of these aspects, when you are basing it off of yourself. And the reason that this can be harder to do is that we cannot see ourselves 100% clearly or objectively. You know, your level of self awareness might be different than mine might be different than someone else's.

 

We all have different levels of self awareness, when it comes to how we're presenting to other people are, who we are, at our core, what our natural strengths are, what our weaknesses are, what our challenges are, etc. But even for people who are very self aware and feel like they have a good understanding of themselves, it doesn't. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter, because that person still can't see themselves totally objectively. So it's hard to write that character in that way. Or I should say, it can be harder to fall into writing a character who isn't as strong and well rounded just because it's hard to do.

 

I remember I ran into kind of a version of this, when I wrote my first book, my first book was called Hidden Lake. And it was women's fiction. And it dealt with different generations of women like mother daughter dynamics. And the one of the protagonists was a girl named Leah, a woman named Leah, she was 25 or 26, I can't remember exactly how old I made her -- mid 20s. And I based her off of my own experience when I was kind of around the point that I was hitting rock bottom with my own drinking and mental health and just really having a tough time in my life. And I made Leah, an active alcoholic. So she was drinking a lot, just starting to have a lot of consequences because of it.

 

I even had Leah working in a library and I worked in a library, she did something different from what I did. But you know, there were, let's be honest, like there were a lot of, there's a lot of overlap. And I found that in the initial early pages of this, that Leah was coming across as too mild, and meek and flat, partly, I think, because I was just trying to insert a slightly different version of myself into this book. So I had to do some character work with her to figure out how she was very different for me, like what made her different. There were some things with her personality that made are different. There were some things with her experience her life that made her different.

 

There are a lot of things in her relationship with her family that were different that I didn't go through or deal with. So I had to really do, I think more legwork than I would have had to if I had not based her off of version of myself. And I think you know the character turned out fine in the end. But really, what I learned from that experience is, for me, at least going forward it's totally fine.

 

To draw upon my own experiences to inform a character and to inform a book, that's wonderful and lovely. And it will, I think the story was richer for it, the fact that I was writing about these things, and I had first hand experience with them. And we always insert something of ourselves into the stories that we write. I mean, it's almost impossible not to. But what's interesting actually is, after I wrote that first book, later on, I learned that this is kind of a common thing that a lot of writers do is that their first novel is, I want to say thinly veiled, a thinly veiled autobiography, because that's not really what it is, but but it's very common for first time authors to have a character in there who's very similar to them.

 

Yeah, so I will just say, based on my own experience, and then, you know, everything we've talked about, make sure that you are really doing that strong character work to develop really fleshed out full complex characters, in your novel anyways, but especially if you were drawing upon your own experience, and baking, basing a character off yourself. I've also had the experience, I can think of one, well, possibly a few. But I didn't know the client well enough to really know this. But I have had an experience working with a client, where it was very clear to me that the main character of their novel was them.

 

Down to the character looked exactly like this author did, this client did, their physical description was the exact same, their things that they would say were the same. And that ended up being my biggest feedback for the character, when I was doing an evaluation for this client is she's very flat and one dimensional and almost perfect. Like she responds perfectly in every situation. She's really, I'm struggling to come up with what a, what a flaw or weakness of her character is. It's not evident in any of this, she has this savior complex, where she wants to be saving characters in the book all the time, every character, every other character just loves and adores her.

 

And not to say that those were all characteristics of this person. Of course, they weren't. But it's just, yeah, you just really run the risk of having a character be flat. And the person, you know, was surprised by this, like, they were like, Oh, I guess I hadn't really, like thought about it that way. But now that I see all this evidence that you're pointing to, like, it makes sense, I guess I do need to give her more of a personality and make her stronger, and bring out some weaknesses, and, you know, have her be flawed.

 

So again, I just share that as another example of how sometimes inserting yourself into a book can be kind of kind of an issue. Again, just want to reiterate like you are totally fine to do whatever you want. If you want to insert yourself into your book, more power to you totally fine. Just be very cautious and mindful of that character.

 

And make sure that you're I mean, in general, again, like I said, it's important to make sure that any character you're writing is strong and well rounded and all of that, but just yeah, really, really pay attention to that when you are inserting yourself into a book. And this is something where getting beta reader feedback or a critique partner, just having someone else read the book once you are done. And once you've edited it already. And asking them specific questions about the main character. That's where that can be helpful as well. And you don't have to tell them like, Hey, I base this character off myself, make sure it's not, the character isn't terrible, but when you can't if you want, but ask them specific questions like, Is this character's personality coming across? Do they seem complex? Can you understand and empathize that with them?

 

Getting outside feedback can be can be helpful for that as well. Because, you know, we've got blind spots. We've got blind spots, and you definitely will have a somewhat of a blind spot if you're inserting yourself. All right, well, good luck. I'm going to stay in bed for a little while longer. I think I don't think I'm ready to get up yet. But I hope you have a fabulous day and I will catch you next week.

 

 

Katie Wolf