by Elaina Lyons

Have you ever noticed that your characters can occasionally act just like you? When I’m writing and I notice similarities, they’re typically negative.

I don’t write stereotypical heroes and villains; everything in my writing is highly subjective and open to interpretation. But it’s usually my less favorable characters that get my innate qualities. And they always get the personality characteristics I hate most about myself.

I think that’s because writing offers us a mirror, of sorts — a way to see ourselves through the eyes of others. It’s not only autobiographies that tell people about our lives. Fiction is just as revealing; it just exposes us in more veiled ways and through the expression of our characters.

So, truthfully, no matter how much some may say their characters are nothing like them, there have to be some inherent similarities. Why? Because we write what we know. This doesn’t mean our characters are us with different names. But it does mean we share bits of ourselves in our writing — sometimes through the antagonists, sometimes through the protagonists, and sometimes through the storyline itself.

We are what we write and what we write is who we are. Just as art imitates life, so too do our stories imitate our psyches.

So the next time you give your characters qualities you hate or ones you love, ask yourself if maybe, just maybe, those are things you hate or love about yourself, too.

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