#nova ruby and sol all get different things i'd like to be or things i currently regret being

[crimeronan]

ashdfdgsfaffsdsfs KITKAT STOP I LOVE YOUR CHARACTERS SO MUCH. my jaw is dropped. holy shit i have so much gender envy rn

:D thank u. they give me gender envy too. i love me some good power fantasies

[crimeronan]

hi, i wonder if you have advice on something?

i wanna get into writing but i have a huge mental block on writing characters/getting into their heads. like it always seems like i'll just come up with a copy of myself, or to avoid this i could shoot for the character to be nothing like me, but then it's boring - i still want to explore stuff that's relevant to me, just in moderation.

another solution could be to come up with plot first, and then characters would naturally fit around it, but i'd also be too bored with just plot without characters to come up with it lol

i'll be real, i think it's perfectly fine to explore characters who are a lot like you. there are some authors who have "writing transparent self-inserts into Situations" down to a science. like, stephen king did it enough times in a row that now he's famous enough to just write famous author stephen king into his books. unbelievably funny.

in some ways, i think the best (and maybe only) way to get around this mental block is to just write through it. your hangup is pretty specific but also echoes the same thing i feel whenever i try anything creative other than writing, in If I Do Not Execute This Exactly How I Want To Immediately Then I'm A Failureeee

it's okay to not know how to create completely unique, original, compelling, & well-written characters right from the get-go. this is a skill that takes trial and error!

as for my own process, i do consciously add and subtract character traits that are a lot like me when making OCs. sol is a transparent self-insert who gets to do a lot more murder than me, devin is a transparent self-insert who's just as sick but imo a lot kinder than me, nova is a transparent self-insert who's exactly what i Could be if i funneled a pathological need for attention into Being Awful, ruby ISN'T very much like me but DOES have the traits i most admire in other people, i feel about her the same way i feel about the ganseys and luzes in media.

distilling all of this Looks effortless, and it does come naturally to me NOW -- but it's built on a bedrock of Decades of writing, and reading, and media analysis, and learning. i've spent a really really really long time obsessively psychoanalyzing myself, and an equally long time picking apart exactly what i love about my favorite stories. it's taken a lot of practice!

aside from sheer practice, my other best advice is to look at the fictional characters and real people that you don't relate to At All..... and figure out what THEIR traits are. i know i'm less inclined to care about or analyze characters that i don't see myself in. but it's helpful to me to then figure out WHY i don't see myself in them -- and why some other people DO. that gives me a much better sense of the things that differentiate me from various peers! and it gives me a much better sense of how to write characters i don't relate to on a personal level, like ruby.

and even ruby shares some character traits with me. like the big big big feelings about language and diaspora and helping marginalized people. she just also deals with these feelings in ways that are different from me, and her flaws and fears and emotional bedrock are different from my own.

i think it's totally fine to write what you know, and it's totally fine if your stories are based around your own personal experience, and it's totally fine if you look to yourself for your initial OC inspiration. ESPECIALLY when you're just starting out. over time, you sort of naturally start to figure out what stories you like telling and how to build different characters. it's something that's Very Difficult to do if you're only studying without any practice.

you do not need to get everything perfect on the first try!