: Re: Not projecting myself onto my characters I have struggled with mental illness for my entire life. Writing has been an extremely helpful and important mode of self-expression for me, since I

@Phylliss352

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the majority of my characters are mentally ill

Is that true, or is it really only true of your main characters, or even of your protagonists? There's nothing wrong with a certain trait or character type being present in many or even all your stories; but if you're worried your stories are too similar, you could change how such characters feature in the stories. In other words, you don't have to sacrifice this topic of interest to you; you can eat your cake and have it. And arguably, it'll lead to even better exploration of the topic through writing.

For example, if I challenged myself to write several stories featuring type-X characters, one could do so with the protagonist, one with their sibling, one with their partner, one with someone they get on with at work, one with someone they don't get on with at work, one with a neighbour, one with a dangerous enemy, one with a more sitcom-style enemy, one with a casual acquaintance, one with someone known to a casual acquaintance...

And that's just options with one type-X character. They differ in the consequences this has for the plot, characterisation, main character's feel and so on, and even the way you write scenes, since you might not have an omniscient narrator. But they're similar in that they each only do X once, which of course needn't be how you limit yourself. Maybe there are two Xs, and their differences pose some interesting questions. (What if one's a hero and the other's a villain?) Or maybe there are several, brought together by circumstances none of them intended, so they thereby learn about each other.

I'm sure at least a few such try-everything ideas won't work for you, or anyone who finds this question later. Maybe one doesn't fit well with the X at hand, or maybe during writing one idea you decide to pivot. That's fantastic! It'll give you new ideas to explore, which is fun however it turns out.

it's analogous to the struggle against my illnesses that I face... I feel like I can no longer write a character that is unique or layered.

Don't worry, you can. Firstly, changing where such illness appears within the story - maybe it's the next character over, or maybe the world itself is radically unlike the one in your last story (what happens to the mentally ill in a utopia, dystopia, alien world, ancient China or Stone Age?), or maybe next time you'll model a character after an aspect of you other than a mental illness (be it as well as, or instead of, addressing such illness).

You're right about the need for unique, layered characters. But you're a unique, layered character. Remember that you-could-do-these list above? Another could be made just as long about aspects of you - your experiences, or anything they've shaped - worth including in a character. Indeed, if you list 10 facts about you, there are 120 ways to choose 3 of them, so there are more options than you think!

One last point: there are lots of other ways every story you write can be something new. Imagine tomorrow your hard drive failed and you lost your longest effort, and decided to write it from scratch. It wouldn't come out the same. Would it be first-person, third-person-limited or third-person-omniscient? Maybe you'll decide to change what you did before. Maybe you'll experiment with countless other variables, whether your next story is brand new or a rewrite of an old one. You can try the epistolary format, non-chronological order, an unsympathetic lead, a mystery, a twist, a setting or genre unlike anything you've done before...

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