: Re: Can I use my legal name as the protagonist if I'm pitching my book to traditional publishers under a pen name? Can I use my legal name as the protagonist if I'm pitching my book to traditional

It seems unlikely that the story would be rejected outright based on that, but it would definitely raise some eyebrows.

A story and its characters (particularly its protagonists) are closely entwined. Each shapes the other. But a protagonist that is meant to represent a real person interferes with that dynamic. It anchors that character to a world outside the story, and the story warps around this anchor.

You can, of course, base characters on real world people. Authors do this all the time. But you must divorce the character from its initial inspiration if you want them to be able to grow properly. Using the name of a character's inspiration as the character's name is a red flag that the author has not properly separated the two.

There are considerations beyond publisher reaction

If your book were to be published and achieve any amount of fame (which is presumably your goal) it is certain that your real name will eventually be discovered and associated with the novel. It's said that there's no such thing as bad publicity, but the attention you get for this is unlikely to be positive.

I've actually seen this happen in a piece of web fiction. It was part of a shared universe, and one of the authors chose to use a character with their same name as their protagonist. The character received a great deal of vitriol from a section of the readership who saw the character as an author insert. There were, of course, complicating factors (there always are), but a significant portion of the negative reader response could likely have been avoided had the author simply chosen a different name for the character.

In summary,

Unless your protagonist's name is vital to the story, giving them your name seems like a great deal of risk for very little gain.

It's pretty easy to change a name during editing using find and replace. Write your story using whichever name is most comfortable to write with, and then change it later.

Load Full (0)

: Is it acceptable to use synonyms to achieve rhythm? There are some works that have a certain kind of voice, which is due to their rhythm. But is this due only to word order and like things,

@Pierce369

Load Full 3 Comments

: How to avoid repetition of phrases and words, and how to ensure work is grammatically sound? Is it better to save each chapter in a separate word document or all in one document? ^ was

@Pierce369

Load Full 2 Comments

: Copyrighting illustrations I paid to have created I wrote my first children's book. I hired an illustrator and paid for them to illustrate my book so I can self-publish and create the book

@Pierce369

Load Full 1 Comments

: Re: Can I use my legal name as the protagonist if I'm pitching my book to traditional publishers under a pen name? Can I use my legal name as the protagonist if I'm pitching my book to traditional

More posts by @Pierce369

: Is it acceptable to use synonyms to achieve rhythm? There are some works that have a certain kind of voice, which is due to their rhythm. But is this due only to word order and like things,

: How to avoid repetition of phrases and words, and how to ensure work is grammatically sound? Is it better to save each chapter in a separate word document or all in one document? ^ was

: Copyrighting illustrations I paid to have created I wrote my first children's book. I hired an illustrator and paid for them to illustrate my book so I can self-publish and create the book

:

Login to post a comment!

0 Comments

Back to top