Self inserts are when you develop a character that is meant to be you inside of a fictional story. Most people make their first character a self-insert but this is not something that should be done. Not because it is hard, but because it is very conceited. Developing a character like this can lead to people thinking you are full of yourself, especially if the character is a main character. The simple truth is having a self-insert character can only lead to issues down the road. It may seem fun to put you in the story, but that just complicates things greatly. There are multiple ways that can be explored to create a self-insert character, but I would never recommend actually doing it. In my experience it causes several dead ends for characterization and plot. I will demonstrate a couple of examples of how a self-insert could be done correctly, and incorrectly.
First example of how to do it correctly is as follows. Have it just be a background character or a character you will rarely see. Like a merchant or random civilian. This is out of the way and harmless. Don’t bring attention to it either. That will take readers out of the story and can be seen as extremely annoying. As long as they don’t have too big of a part in the story everything should be okay.
Second example of how to do it correctly is as follows. Have it be a one off character. If it is a one off character then you can do whatever you want with it, within reason. It’s important not to treat your character too seriously. Doing that would lead to a massive disconnect from the main characters and your side character, as well as the story itself.
Moving on how it can be done incorrectly, there are quite a few ways it can go wrong, but I will only go over a couple of them here.
First of all, never make yourself insert a love interest for another character. That comes off as creepy and self-centered. As such it should be avoided at all costs. If not then it can lead to some extremely disgusting behavior.
Going on the final point I will go over, it’s important to not name the character after yourself. This would lead everyone to think you are very egotistical and self-centered. I would recommend avoiding using your actual name for a fictional character at all cost.
That’s all for this week I hope you found it informative.
Jarod's Writing Advice 