: 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
Why do you want to do this?
Any time a writer says he wants to do something unusual, my first question is, Why? If you have a good reason, if this unusual device highlights some important element of the plot or some such, than great, go for it. But if your reason is just "I think it would be cool to do something weird just for the sake of doing something weird" ... don't. The novelty of weirdness for weirdness sake tends to rub off very quickly, and then it just becomes a distracting or annoying gimmick.
In this case, making yourself the main character in a novel sounds like self-aggrandizement or childish play acting. "I want to pretend that I'm a super-hero!" or "I want everyone who reads this story to be amazed at what an extraordinary person I am". If that's what you're thinking, I'd just say, don't. If you have some good reason for it ... but I'm hard pressed to think of a good reason. Even if the story is a fictionalized account of your own life, you're better to just invent a character name.
I read a book by Philip Jose Farmer once that had a character named Peter Jairus Frigate who sounded suspiciously like Philip Jose Farmer. Note the same initials. I found it cloying and distracting.
On the other hand, Robert Heinlein has a book which makes a brief mention that the main character lives "across the street from the hermit, the original Hermit of Hollywood", and then he goes on with the story. I read once that Heinlein was sometimes called the "Hermit of Hollywood", so he was referring to himself. For a quick one-liner like that, okay, cute, a little joke between the author and his fans. Or like the way Hitchcock would often have a brief scene in his movies where you see Hitchcock standing at a bus stop or walking by. Again, cute little joke. But in neither case did he make himself a "real" character in the story.
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