[Annamire]

I am a girl who adores "little known" characters and in canon OCs, it's a thing I can't shake.

Anyways, I tend to put a bit of myself into each character the Tolkien doesn't talk much about/OC and was wondering if anyone else did something like it.

For example, I am deathly terrified of spiders (to the point where my sister Rachel screams "Spider!" to make me jump on our dining room table screaming ) so I'll give a character a fear of spiders or something. Never to the point of self-insertion, but enough so that it makes it easier for me to relate to what the character goes through, and thus makes it easier for me to write.

Anyways, it's be interesting to know if anyone else does this/has similar quirks.

~Annamire

[SpaceWeavil]

The only one I remember was Celebrian in 'Alliance'. She ended up with quite a few of my personality traits, the poor thing (but at the same time, when I was writing that story I wanted to draw away from the portrayals of her as a cold-hearted woman who viciously abandoned Elrond, which I'd read a lot of. Not saying that interpretation is wrong, since we have no idea what Celebrian was like, but I wanted to do something different).

For other characters, I honestly can't remember (Rhapsody asked me once which stories I enjoyed writing and I realised that I can rarely remember much about my stories once they're finished). I tend to use little things here and there a lot, small experiences maybe rather than personality traits. For instance, when I had the teenage Witch King of Angmar running away from his parent's halls in 'And in the Darkness Bind Them' at one point, I drew a bit on the one attempt I made to run away as a child. That was a really tiny part of the story, but the experience I remembered let me add a bit of weight to it, I think.

I tend to look at writing like a form of acting - when I have to use a certain character's 'voice' to write, I kind of have to take on their personality, and to do that I use imagination and experience.

I expect that's more rambling than anyone actually wanted, but I'm putting off doing Jurisprudence...

[Rous]

This is interesting as most people do not want to discuss what could be construed as Mary Suism.

I tend to go to the opposite extreme. I give my characters the things I think I lack. Not to the point of unbelievability, but just strengths I wish I had. I think my life is pretty plain and pathetic, and I want my characters to have better than that. For example, I am very withdrawn and get my feelings easily hurt. Most of my characters come from humble beginnings, but show strength and courage, in moderation. I do not want super-heroes, but rather the one who rises above the circumstances.

Did that answer the question?

[ZeeDrippyVessel]

Interesting question and yes - one that could quickly explode into THe Mary Sue Argument.

Any writer worth their salt will write 1. What they know and 2. What they are attracted to. In short, they will write themselves or what they wish to be into a character somewhere. It might not be a 'self insert', but a bit of everyone's blood is in them.

But that's my 2 cents worth and it's not worth much. So nyah.

[Sulriel]

I expect a *real* self-insert could be interesting to read, depending on the author's life. It seems to me that the problem with MarySue is that she tends to be a fantastical self-indulgent insert. -and that isn't what's meant by 'write what you know'.

Typically, a writer can add levels of depth and believability to their fiction by "writing what they know" - that doesn't mean that you should write yourself into the story. What it means is to take elements of your life that are applicable to the story and use them to enhance the story. If you have a habit about yourself that you love or hate, you can use that to make a character more memorable. Maybe not the main character, but maybe so. If you're self-conscience about it, change it slightly. For example, if you have a habit of biting your nails, you could make one of your characters compulsive about cleaning their nails. -maybe they carry a small knife and have it out all the time cleaning their nails - or picking their teeth - or something obnoxious and slightly disgusting they have to remember not to do in polite company.

The difficult part tends to be in writing *personal* experiences from your *character's* point of view. You aren't writing about yourself, you are simply putting parts of yourself in the character. There is a huge difference. You have to take the personal experience and adjust it to your character's age and life and write it how they would experience it.

Simply being alive gives us all rich experiences to put in our characters and stories. Birth, death, love, loss, joy, pain. - to some extent we've all lived these things, either ourselves or through people close to us - use those things to enrich your stories instead of shying away from them. - again, - it isn't a matter of writing yourself into the story, but to provide a richer story through personal experience -

and not just emotion, but other kinds of knowledge and experience. Do your research, but for the most part it's the 'little things' that make the difference. Not just how her heart aches, or is numb, but how a seamstress's finger's feel when she's been sewing body bags closed for two days? If you don't sew, talk to someone who does to get those details. the needles and thread, the thimble, how the cloth chaps her skin.

take an archery lesson, even just one. find out which muscles ache. Maybe yours ache on the third draw, an Elf might last three days, but the same muscles would be sore.

every experience that you live enriches you in some way and by putting those in your stories will enrich your stories.

.... looks around for another example and falls off soapbox ....

[Rous]

I remember answering this in another setting. In my opinion, almost everything ever written would have to be self-insertion, to a degree. Otherwise, the written word would be droll and dry. I truly believe that most fiction is written because at some point, someone wanted to write a story with themselves as a character. I am not talking about Mary Sue here, but rather that part of us we think would be attractive to others, or repulsive, if that is what the writer is going for. Tell me that George Lucas does not wish, somewhere in the very depths of his imagination that he could be like Luke or Han.

[Sulriel]

[Rous]

[Sulriel]

[Alassante]

I think events you write about also touch your story deeply. I know in one of my stories I wrote about when Glorfindel first saw his daughter. I wrote from the heart the feelings I had when they first laid my baby boy in my arms. I had someone (a guy even!) PM me telling me that it made him want to go hug his daughter because he remembered feeling that way when he first saw her. So the closer the event is in life to you, the more impactful I think your writing can be. Unfortunatly most of the exciting stuff that happens in my fiction never happened to me. Maybe if I wrote original fiction rather than about elves, it might come closer to real life. Nah. I'm with Rous, my life is too boring. I pity the Mary Sue self-insert fashioned after me.

*I didn't get a soapbox - all I got was a Tide bottle - I tried to stand on it and squished it. Ah well....*

[Sulriel]