~ in which our author describes the tempting allure of putting too much of oneself into a character ~

Fairly early on during the first draft of Metal, Salt & Sand, I found myself falling victim to that rare indulgence in writing that few other professionals have to worry about. That of cloning oneself. Dictating the lives of my very own creations, beings that I had dreamt up from scratch, made me visit my own insecurities and personality traits on them. A satisfying method of catharsis no? It sounds like a brilliant way to exorcise your demons. Having your characters do the things you wish you could, or having them react as you would in their situations? Brilliant. I suspect that a lot of fan fiction starts out that way…but with far more fetishes.

But soon I realised that the majority of my characters sounded rather similar, to the point where they were all simply pale reflections of myself.

There was the arrogant version of me (although that’s fairly close to the real article), there was the depressed version, the naive version, the angry version. You get the picture. And contrary to my own internal monologue, a world full of me is a pretty boring place to live. It also meant I was loathe to kill my darlings as it were, or even visit hardship upon them. Their trials and tribulations were more accurately described as their antics and mishaps.

So back to the drawing board I went. No longer did they all respond with a fantastic quip as I would in real life to everything spoken in their direction (there’s that arrogance), nor did they survive every exchange or fight unscathed. I really worked on making them distinctive people. To this end, I trialled an exercise whereby I imagined them in similar situations, introduced an obstacle or calamity and then assessed how each would react. I wanted to make sure that their reactions had precedent and reason to justify them. What makes them do what they do? I found myself thinking that I succeeded when I thought “I wouldn’t do it that way but I understand where they’re coming from”. Which I suppose is the only way you can invest in any character whether it is your own or not.

And that’s my goal as a writer. Investment. If I can make readers dread turning a page because it’s unclear whether a character will survive then I’ll have achieved at least part of what I set out to do.