: 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

@Sent2472441

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Surely there's more to you than "mental illness guy"? Consider what other parts of yourself you could project onto a character. A hobby of yours can be your character's main occupation. A childhood dream you gave up on could be your character's reality. An abstract fear of yours can be something your character has to contend with in his day-to-day.

For example, when I was 7, I wanted to be an astronaut. The main character of a novel I'm currently working on becomes a soldier in the space corps. So, he got all my childhood excitement about space and ran with it, but instead of my childhood curiosity and urge to explore, he got landed with war as his reality (again, something I have touched in RL, but amplified). He's outgoing, which is something I wish I had (so this time I'm projecting on him my aspiration), and he starts with a naive idealism that I have lost.
A different character is not quite as outgoing - he enjoys being around people, but doesn't quite know how to make the first step, he's often awkward. He starts out doodling continually, which I do, and eventually goes on to study graphic design, which I had no interest in doing.

Next, surely there are other people in your life than yourself? Friends, teachers, as well as people you dislike? Consider casting a good friend as the main character. Their struggles would be different from your own, right?
And not just the main character: J.K. Rowling has based Umbridge on a person she knew: she took the real person's love for twee, took her own dislike for that person, added a plot-appropriate reason for the dislike, and voilà!

Once you start constructing characters from bits and pieces of yourself and of other people you know, you essentially arrive at characters who are unique in their own right. A famous example: Sherlock Holmes combines the deductive skills of a surgeon Arthur Conan Doyle once new, with Conan Doyle's own passion for justice. Sherlock Holmes is one of the most iconic figures in English literature. Dr. Watson, in the meantime, received Conan Doyle's medical education and writing career. However, while both share elements of the author's personality, surely you would not claim that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are iterations of each other?

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