Beginner Writers - Self-Insert Characters

So this month I'm doing another quick little series...this time I'll be talking about the things we do as beginner writers. And I won't just be bashing those things, as I truly believe there are skills to be learned.

But I'd be interested to know how many of y'all also did these things? Did you ever stop, and why? Any advice for beginning writers?

One thing I've noticed a lot of beginner writers do (or my little sisters, when they're telling stories)...is we make the characters after ourselves and friends. I think it comes from a lot of things.

For one, we tend to write what we know. But we're just starting, and we're not familiar with creating characters out of "nowhere" so we fall back to something familiar...ourselves. We want to create a character....well....they're our same gender, same general description (or maybe what we wish we looked like), and probably the same personality (or else what we wish we were like).

The other characters are our best friends. The villain may be that person/sibling we really don't like in real life (he/she is going to be sorry they did that mean thing once they realize they're about to be the bad person in the next bestselling novel, hahaha).

I think it also comes from the reason we're writing. We love reading. We love entering new worlds and going on adventures. So it's only natural that as we begin our own journey as a writer, the main character is "us" and they're going to go on those adventures we always dreamed of doing.

We think "it would be so cool to jump into a puddle and end up in another world" and the character becomes a not-so-subtle copy of ourselves because we're not used to writing from another personality or worldview yet. We're writing how we would see this experience. What things we would notice, enjoy, and fear.

And this is fine. This is good. It's okay to write like this.

Because we're still learning.

Someday we'll get better at describing events, actions, things, places from the POV of a character who sees things different from ourselves. Our creative thinking will have grown with practice, and we'll be able to get into the heads of all kinds of characters.

But for now, leave these beginner writers to their first steps. Let them write for themselves. Let them enjoy that "totally them but with cool powers" character. Let them learn how to describe things and get things down on paper/word doc. Let them enjoy these first books.

Someday they might cringe in horror when they go back to read these first stories. But they'll still smile, because they'll remember the fun they had writing them. Back when writing felt like a superpower, when they didn't have deadlines to meet or certain standards to reach. Back when grammar and correct formatting and character arcs and plots were unheard of. Those were the fun days, yah, my old writing friends?

But make no mistake, beginning writers will have to learn to move on if they want to become published someday. They'll need to learn how to write characters with real problems and flaws. They'll need to learn how to correctly use quotes and when to start a new paragraph.

When I first started writing, all the characters were based off me and my friends. Eventually I realized the fun of making up my own characters, not based off anyone and moved away from copying people. Fast-forward to 5 years later, when I'm letting my mom read the first chapter of Words of Bravery and she puts the papers down and asks, "Now, Marywyn, who is she supposed to be?"

That was kind of humiliating, honestly. Made me so glad I'm no longer doing that, though I suspect some people may still try to read into things and guess "who" the characters are supposed to "be".

I also remember reading an indie book a year or two back, and after reading it, thinking...okay, so the MC in this book reminds me a little too much of those beginning characters my friends and I wrote: she was a little too perfect and powerful, and her chief flaw was like....um, she's awkward and clumsy? And then the villain reminded me of the villain from a movie....and then the characters fall in love. And I put the book down thinking...okay, so the author just wrote a story about "his/herself" convincing the villain from this movie to be good and they fall in love...and the author just changed the names before publishing, haha.

Don't be that person, guys. Because it shows.

Enjoy writing that character that is probably you. Enjoy your beginner writer steps. But do continue to learn and grow and study this writing craft. Become the best writer you can be.