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Topic: Transference of traits from writers

This is just a general discussion.

It accrued to me today that I've never written myself into a story of any kind.

But I give personal traits of myself to my characters all the time. Some of my personality, maybe a few traits in my appearance, sometimes my speech patterns but I try to keep that very limited otherwise my characters would all be identical.

I know it typical of artists to put a part of themselves into their work but how  concise are you off it when you write?

Just a curious question that popped into my head today

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Re: Transference of traits from writers

I tend to have to do a few revisions to carve more of my own personality traits off characters and rework it so it's more them and less me, depending on the theme.  Not quite as hard with LoB characters for me, but in other areas it can require several workings to cut characters away from each other into distinct entities from one another.

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Re: Transference of traits from writers

I usually use my own speech patterns and dialog for a character or two but I've never inserted a character I would consider myself in any story. I have given certain aspects of myself to characters though.

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Re: Transference of traits from writers

As I tend to go through characters like candy in my short stories, I try to vary them within reason.  In some of my previous longer (non-erotica) stories, several of the main characters had more than a passing resemblance to my personality or physicality.  After all, it's easiest to write what you know and who do you know better than yourself?  I even had some fun with that in a sequel, with the author getting pulled into the story looking like the main character.  As many people hated/feared the MC, he was in for quite a few rude awakenings.