Readers often attribute the actions and attitudes of fictional characters to their authors. That’s great if your protagonist is brave, self-sacrificing, kind, and – because all characters need flaws – occasionally tardy. Not so great if your MC drinks too much, enjoys casual sex, has an outdated social attitude, or is just all around assholish.
Most writers have a little bit of all those things within them – generous, selfish, thoughtful self-indulgent, disciplined, bad-tempered. We contain multitudes. That’s good when it’s time to “write what you know”; you have a wealth of thoughts and emotions to draw from. That’s bad when readers think your MC’s every thought and action has come straight from your diary.
In an article for Writer’s Digest, Nikki Barthelmess says we can still write what we know or feel, but use “What if” scenarios to expand on our experiences to imagine characters entirely different from us. Barthelmess has often used main characters who are similar to her. Details of their ethnicity, family makeup, and life story reflect her own. When she began writing, she took a few details from her own life – the important topics she wished to explore in her novel – and stretched them to encompass entirely different characters and scenarios. “The more changes I made to some of these situations that started off like mine, the more the story and characters took on a life of their own,” Barthelmess writes.
Beginning writers often think “write what you know” means writing only about things that have happened to you personally. It might, but it doesn’t have to. “It can mean writing the feelings you’ve had—and yes, maybe some experiences—and using them to make authentic characters with meaningful journeys that readers can relate to and that will resonate with them,” Barthelmess says.
