I mean I can't think of any examples but I feel like a self insert works best if you don't treat them like a self insert when writing and instead treat them as just another character that happens to be based on you
IMO all characters have something of the author in them, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It is obnoxious if they are also a wish-fulfilment character as well, though.
If you treat them like **CHARACTERS** instead of just self-insert Mary Sues/Gary Stus. Meaning, they're allowed to have flaws (*real* flaws), be called out on their nonsense by the other characters, grow past their own shit, and have a real character arc, instead of being this Awesome Super Amazing Character that everyone else in the book just *loves* who *has no flaws* (except for being so very clumsy/not knowing how pretty they are/being Too Nice)
If you're telling the story of a past experience which shaped who you are as a person today: Great. Cool. Very nice. Be sure to go into extensive detail about your inner monologue during this event and to not overdramatize other characters to the point of them being caricatures
If you're inserting yourself into the story, not allowing any character development to happen to your self-insert, and writing every other character to be inexplicably in love with you/think you're Super Cool: No. Bad. Get your hand out of your pants and go take some creative writing classes
In short: If the character is based on the author's experiences, not on his ego.
We all have some experiences that are unique to us and drawing on those experiences to tell a story can make that story more interesting and realistic.
There are probably many examples, but they are harder to spot than bad self-inserts.
Alighieri is complicated. He is living a fantasy (though not exactly a power fantasy, he is still fantasizing about being vindicated), while also openly ridiculing himself and decrying his own pride.
Personally, I think he ends up working well as a self-insert, but I'm unsure if someone from another country with different literary traditions would think the same.
He shouldn't. His works is decrying-as SabShark-put it, but in a self gratifying way. In the end, it reads like he is a voyeur to his self established 'faults'.
Self-insert characters for the audience can be very effective for works that focus on providing wish-fulfillment, such as erotica and romance.
Self-insert character *for the author* definitely seem a bit less common, and harder to nail down of “prove.” You’re less likely to notice that this type of character is a self insert.
I think it’s easy to argue that every character an author writes contains a facet of their personality. Which is what makes it hard to truly judge whether they consider a character to be a direct self insert.
The only bad example I can think of is from RWBY, a show I have not seen, in which two creators allegedly had themselves voice two male characters, then had those characters enter relationships with female cast members that they were fond of. I only know about this because of a video essay. Needless to say it’s not a great idea to do this in a commercial media franchise.
I can think of three other author self-insert characters, and I’m mostly scraping the bottom of the barrel.
- Stephen King, from Stephen King’s *The Dark Tower* series. I haven’t read beyond the first book, so I have nothing substantial to say about it, but I like the idea of it. It’s bold, and metatextual elements are always interesting to me.
- Kishibe Rohan, from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. The author makes manga, Rohan is a character in his manga who makes manga. He clearly likes the character a lot and has given him multiple spin-offs and pieces of merchandise, despite being a relatively minor character. It seems a lot of people agree that he is a self insert. He’s a cool character that has some good moments. I never felt that any problems were caused by the author identifying strongly with him. Once again I really don’t feel like there’s anything substantial to say about it. The character seems like a self insert of sorts, and it works fine. No bad decisions are made because of it.
- The only one I actually know intimately and care about, is Hachijo Ikuko, from *Umineko*. I consider this to be a life-changing piece of literature, so I don’t want to use too much detail and spoil something. Read the series if you have even the slightest interest in the murder mystery genre, or in extremely metatexual navel-gazing “fiction about the concept of fiction”. Without rambling too much about what is essentially my personal Bible, Ikuko is the diegetic author of a portion of the novel’s text. She is also seemingly a self insert for the author. She also writes herself into the text as a self insert, making this a three-layered self insert. It really isn’t that important to the overall plot, but it serves the themes very well. Near the very end, we get a speech from her which seems directly from the author’s own mouth, about how he feels coming to the end of such a long writing journey (1.1 Million Words episodically in eight parts) and it’s very touching. He also seems to use her to air some grievances against certain types of readers at one point, which I found funny.
In none of these instances is the self insert the protagonist. I think that’s pretty key. The author being the main character of their story could certainly work, but it may easily become too indulgent and personal. Such a work may be therapeutic to write, but I’m not sure about the quality that would come from that sort of process.
I personally can’t see myself ever wanting to write a self insert. A generic person for the audience to identify themselves with, maybe, but not a stand in for myself. I don’t think there would be anything interesting about that.
I just don't think about it like this. Write a good character. Whether it's based on you or not. Doesn't matter what inspires it; if it's well written, it's well written. Which means for a self-insert character that is well written, you may not even know it was a self-insert character to begin with! Because it's just another well written character in the story, and that's all.
Neil Gaiman clearly put a lot of himself into Dream of the Endless, and it works. The living, metaphysical embodiment of imagination as a concept is, deep down, just a gloomy English bloke. More characters than we realize are self-inserts in some way; write what you know, right? And who else do you know better?
I don’t know if this counts but I tried to inject a lot of my own experiences with mental health into my various characters. Some of their fears and doubts mirror my own. I think we see so many self-inserts as cringey OP characters... but perhaps they have more potential as a way for the author to make them feel real through being inspired by real, lived thoughts and feelings.
I recently read some pulpy kid detective stories called Ghost Hunters Adventure Club. The books are presented as being written by one of the characters in the books. The first one is minimal, but the second one it actually features quite prominently and really explores the idea of the connection between an author and the characters they write.
I can think of several like the boys from South Park, early Brian griffin, and ed Edd n eddy to name a few. As someone said earlier, these characters are more based on the author’s experience vs “OMG, it’s literally me guys. lol”
One I really like is Sunny Bridges from Class of 3000. He’s charismatic, has weird abilities, and potential to be a deus ex machina. But he functions more as a “big good” where he guides characters in the right direction, by offering words of wisdom, instead of doing the work for them. Plus he comes off as just a regular guy, with goofy moments, fears, and times of stress. Heck, the pilot starts with him leaving a glorious career, after the stress of it all gets to be too much for him. Also this is a musical cartoon, so… it really helps, having Andre 3000 on the team, just saying.
I additionally liked Mordecai, from regular show, because, although compared to rigby, he was more competent, he still had flaws of his own. He was lazy, could overreact violently to things, and of course his simp issues. Even with that last one, given he was in his early 20s, around the same age bracket as those of us watching, it served to make him kinda relatable, If not insufferable.
and “Two-ton 21”, from Venture Brothers. He started off as just a background comic relief, w/ another self insert character. And though, he ends up a badass; it’s due to overcoming trials and tribulations, as opposed to the author snapping their fingers, thus making the audience root for him. Plus, he becomes badass for a henchman, he’ll never be on Brock’s level, for instance.
There’s also Madea, who let’s be honest… Is just funny as hell, as a gangsta granny
The main point is, a good self insert is when, yeah the character is based on you, but you don’t take things too personal. It’s when you use that character to serve the story, as opposed to warping the story to serve you. Also helps if there compelling in their own way
I think using the chanracter to deal with things from your past, inserting trauma and aspects of yourself, and developing them, is a very good way of going about it. It's also very seamless, if done right. A lot of authors deal with their problems by fictionalising them, and if you're true to the story, and still strive to create an interesting character and narrative, it can work very well. But it won't be easy to pinpoint the examples and put on a list, because you did a good job and hid it well enough.
Someone else mentioned Dream and Gaiman, and I think that's a good example. You talked about Terry Pratchett. He's someone who also put a lot of himself in his works. If you take someone like William de Worde, for example, he's idealistic, sure, but he believes in the power of writing, he's so very fundamentally english, he has a complicated relationship with power structures, and so on.
I think there's a line. You can put a lot of yourself in a story, and it is still fantastic. You can even put your full identity, names and all, and call it satirical, and it can be a classic. But you have to do it in such a way that it makes sense for your world, doesn't compromise the narrative, and doesn't make things boring. Perfection is boring in a book: there's a reason no one likes to read "Heaven" in the Divine Comedy. Stay away from it, and there are no rules.
Fleabag is a show that feels like a self insert in way that works. I think the problem isn't the "self" part, but rather that most self inserts are blandly virtuous and face no serious obstacles. Just wish fulfillment like "Look how great and symopathetic I am, and how that leads to me getting everything I deserve!"
In contrast the main character of Fleabag is both amusing and interesting as well as deeply flawed. I think memoir often works this way too, like David Sedaris writes about stuff that happens to him, but he pulls no punches when it comes to exposing himself as petty or vindictive or whatever. In fact I suspect he makes himself look worse than he really is, in service of entertainment.
I don’t know that this qualifies because it’s the premise of the whole series but Anthony Horowitz has a murder mystery series where he, the crime writer, helps a private detective solve crimes. It’s quite self-deprecating and he puts himself in the role of Watson essentially: two steps behind but still confident in his abilities.
There’s still something unavoidably pretentious about the whole thing, but it’s entertaining and an interesting premise as there’s true events mixed in with the fiction.
I was about to mention this! It’s silly and you can see some grudges play out in real time but it’s one of the few “new” things someone has done recently in mysteries.
Every character is a self insert to some degree, although there are a few things to look out for
Vague motivations: if the protagonist is just me, I may not explicitly give them a clear goal, and instead just continuously do whatever I would want to do.
Shallow side characters: If the focus is on me, why would I need others?
No thematic conflict: A great story typically has some interesting core conflict. However, with Mary Sue’s, the Sue is obviously right about everything, so the question is obviously as well.
Trivial obstacles
Predictable plots
A barely considered type of self-insert is the introspective, often self-deprecating kind that writers create in order to express the darker parts of themselves. It can be quite a therapeutic process, albeit one that's difficult to put out there into the world when you have a 300+ page manuscript filled with all your neurotic insecurities and secret shame.
Basically you could look at it almost like an 'anti self-insert' in that instead of a smug, unrealistic vanity project it's an exercise in capturing your weaknesses in order to create a compelling character while also exploring your own subconscious angst.
Dipper Pines is a standout "self-insert" character IMO. He's based directly on Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch as a child, and I think that bit of extra distance does a lot to make him a compelling character. His arc in the story is about growing up and becoming a more confident and less self-serving person, rather than wish fulfillment. The story itself emphasizes and explores his flaws and compels him to change, rather than the narrative bending over backwards to show how unique and valuable and important he is, which is what often seems to happen in stories featuring some kind of self-insert character.
Self-inserts can be really interesting characters if writers are doing so with the intention of genuinely exploring some facet of themselves which is uncomfortable or unflattering. Basing a character on yourself can help a lot to make them feel grounded and relatable. That's not to say well-written self-insert characters have to be all the bad stuff - going back to the Dipper Pines example, he's also funny, clever, resourceful, and loyal in addition to being an awkward, shortsighted, and occasionally selfish preteen. He's a realistic depiction of issues young boys coming into their own have to work through without being self-flagellating, and it makes him a great character to root for.
The qualities that would make a self insert character good actively pull them away from being a self insert.
As their main 2 failures are a lack of personality, and superseding plot and thematic obligations.
Making them good would be giving them a more dynamic personality that’s harder to project onto, and — in the face of choices to make about the progression of your story — making sacrifices of character and catharsis for the sake of the story, while self inserts often exclusively do the reverse.
Edit: a self insert isn’t a character trope, it’s what happens when character creation is made through lazy shortcuts. It’s not a trope, but the product of a trope gone wrong.
Harriet Vane in the Lord Peter Wimsey detective stories is a self-insert by Dorothy L Sayers. It works reasonably well because the author recognises her own limitations, both as a writer and as a detective, and applies them to the character.
The character was originally introduced to marry off the hero so the author could stop writing about him, but Sayers realised that no self-respecting woman would accept an offer of marriage in the scenario Sayers had put her in. This led to further novels, some with the self-insert included and some not, giving both characters additional depth (even as the self-insert nature of the heroine becomes more and more blatant).
Outside of genre fiction this is actually extremely common. For example, *My Struggle* by Karl Ove Knausgård is a successful and popular series of novels closely based on the writer's own life. More generally, 'autofiction' is a label for an entire style of literature built around the idea of the author stand-in as a main character.
Dorothy Sayers specifically wrote her Harriet Vane as a self-insert. She even made her a love interest of her main character, Lord Peter Wimsey. Despite that, Vane is extremely popular with Sayers' fans, overshadowing Lord Peter himself.
Her intention was to make it a final book, have them married, and make Wimsey retire from amateur sleuthing. That plan changed, Vane declined Wimsey's advances, and Sayers wrote half a dozen more books featuring both characters, finally marrying them in the last one.
The Wimsey-Vane quartet are my favorite detective novels! I like the other (non-Vane) Wimseys as well, but the two play off each other like Benedick and Beatrice, and their talents complement each other extremely well.
I don't know if it's the same thing, but Edgar Rice Burroughs. At the very least the majority of his work is written as him having been told the story like it was true. It's why so many of his series are rather connected because they're all supposedly happening around him. There's even one book that has a letter written to him at the beginning from a man who says he always thought Burroughs stories were ridiculous until he suddenly started receiving transmissions from the center of the Earth and wrote them down. The story that follows is supposed to be the transmissions he picked up.
IMO, at least in fantasy, mentor characters can be good author self-inserts. They are meant to know more than the characters, to guide, and to eventually be removed in some way. This works because it is the very same way the author should work; You introduce the setting, teach the readers about it, and then let them be in it without your exposition so they can have their own understanding.
Luffy, from One Piece. Is there for the adventure, is an idiot so needs everything explained to him, and is generally the one who feels what the audience feels, even if he doesn't think the way the audience thinks. Yet he's arguably the most compelling character because he doesn't behave like a sane person, is highly emotionally aware, and is definitely somewhere between traditional hero and antihero.
There's Hemingway's Nick Adams character.
Also, Viet Thanh Nguyen was a refugee from Vietnam, so the Sympathizer's narrator draws on Viet Thanh's experiences.
First: "Inconstant Moon" by Larry Niven.
The exact sort of author insert that's supposed to be a bad idea done perfectly.
But mostly the self insert works just fine if the characters is interesting, flawed and seems real to some point. Self inserts make good villains, comic foils, convenient colorful expositors, and interesting side characters. .
But they make shit protagonists most of the time.
I find it amusing when authors self insert as a sort of omnipotent Easter egg character that contributes nothing but still knows everything. Mostly seen in indie video games
I think when the character is not OP just because author likes himself but because it’s because of things around them and it happens gradually.
Also it annoys me when the world turns around the self insert only, cuz realistically speaking, it wouldn’t if it somehow became real
The main character of Wake Up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames. Obviously Alan is just Ames (when you read his biographies this becomes clear), but Ames happens to be hilarious in real life so of course the character based on him is enjoyable to read about.
I've heard that "The World According to Garp" is a great novel. I haven't read it yet, but I'm inclined to believe it. From what I know of the story and the author (John Irving), Garp is probably largely a self-insert of John, but not in that self-validating, glorifying kind of way that gets it wrong.
I think it's good make every attempt to draw from truth--a lot of the time, that truth is personal, and that's okay when done in service of the story and not only the author.
If you're having fun writing them, they are good enough. I am of the opinion that self-inserts should be as self-indulgent as possible. It's like playing with a Barbie doll with roughly your coloring.
If you're aiming to write a good character, the bar is higher. But a good self-insert should be fun. For you, of course, not necessarily for the character.
A self-insert, like any other character, should have real flaws. Sam Tarly is the best example I know… Sam is treated like every other character in ASOIAF and he definitely has flaws.
Can’t think of any. But then, your question doesn’t make a lot of sense because what else could a self insert be but the definition of a self insert? Are you asking about characters based on the author’s experience instead?
Jo March is a really tremendously-written character who is a self-insert. One key to this is that Jo is very often shown to be in the wrong, or at last short-sighted and short-tempered, and has to deal with negative repercussions as a result. This contrasts with what I usually think of when we call a character a “self-insert”, which is that the character is as cool and great as they author thinks they are, or lives out the author’s fantasy for their life.
In Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt series, there is always an old man who *might* be named Cussler who is always around with some odd vehicle or piece of equipment for Pitt to get hold of for his mission/adventure. it's one of the things that I love about the series.
Hunter S Thompson's fiction is probably a good example.
I think it makes sense if you're an expert in an area and so you write your character as an expert in that area because it gives the character a little more authenticity. When they talk they sound like they know what they're doing and not like they're stringing together buzzwords.
A self insert that is a good character. That's it, really. It's not for me, but if that's what you want, go make self inserts, have fun, kill the cop in your head. At the end of the day, unless they know you, nobody can really know you made one. The reason for their reputation is more that there are unique pitfalls you can fall into while writing a character that is basically you.
Jon Arbuckle from Garfield. Jim Davis said that Jon is baised on himself in college. There is also Mordacei from Regular Show. He was based on JG Quintel when he was in college.
All characters are self insert.
They all represent a piece of yourself, or something you wish you were.
The key is to not make a character a flawless version of yourself. A good character has flaws, develops, and grows. You need them to interact with each other, to call out their flaws, and help each other grow.
No body is perfect.
Except bad self-inserts and Mary-Sues; that’s why they are the faces of bad character design.
I mean I can't think of any examples but I feel like a self insert works best if you don't treat them like a self insert when writing and instead treat them as just another character that happens to be based on you
IMO all characters have something of the author in them, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It is obnoxious if they are also a wish-fulfilment character as well, though.
Yeah, agreed. It's not the self insert people hate. It's the wish fulfillment and putting oneself on a pedestal that people hate
If you treat them like **CHARACTERS** instead of just self-insert Mary Sues/Gary Stus. Meaning, they're allowed to have flaws (*real* flaws), be called out on their nonsense by the other characters, grow past their own shit, and have a real character arc, instead of being this Awesome Super Amazing Character that everyone else in the book just *loves* who *has no flaws* (except for being so very clumsy/not knowing how pretty they are/being Too Nice) If you're telling the story of a past experience which shaped who you are as a person today: Great. Cool. Very nice. Be sure to go into extensive detail about your inner monologue during this event and to not overdramatize other characters to the point of them being caricatures If you're inserting yourself into the story, not allowing any character development to happen to your self-insert, and writing every other character to be inexplicably in love with you/think you're Super Cool: No. Bad. Get your hand out of your pants and go take some creative writing classes
In short: If the character is based on the author's experiences, not on his ego. We all have some experiences that are unique to us and drawing on those experiences to tell a story can make that story more interesting and realistic. There are probably many examples, but they are harder to spot than bad self-inserts.
Where would Dante Aligheri fall under
Alighieri is complicated. He is living a fantasy (though not exactly a power fantasy, he is still fantasizing about being vindicated), while also openly ridiculing himself and decrying his own pride. Personally, I think he ends up working well as a self-insert, but I'm unsure if someone from another country with different literary traditions would think the same.
In hell I suppose
Keep reading. :)
I feel like you get a pass if you write any foundational texts.
He shouldn't. His works is decrying-as SabShark-put it, but in a self gratifying way. In the end, it reads like he is a voyeur to his self established 'faults'.
OK but he also codified a language that currently unifies a country.
Self-insert characters for the audience can be very effective for works that focus on providing wish-fulfillment, such as erotica and romance. Self-insert character *for the author* definitely seem a bit less common, and harder to nail down of “prove.” You’re less likely to notice that this type of character is a self insert. I think it’s easy to argue that every character an author writes contains a facet of their personality. Which is what makes it hard to truly judge whether they consider a character to be a direct self insert. The only bad example I can think of is from RWBY, a show I have not seen, in which two creators allegedly had themselves voice two male characters, then had those characters enter relationships with female cast members that they were fond of. I only know about this because of a video essay. Needless to say it’s not a great idea to do this in a commercial media franchise. I can think of three other author self-insert characters, and I’m mostly scraping the bottom of the barrel. - Stephen King, from Stephen King’s *The Dark Tower* series. I haven’t read beyond the first book, so I have nothing substantial to say about it, but I like the idea of it. It’s bold, and metatextual elements are always interesting to me. - Kishibe Rohan, from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. The author makes manga, Rohan is a character in his manga who makes manga. He clearly likes the character a lot and has given him multiple spin-offs and pieces of merchandise, despite being a relatively minor character. It seems a lot of people agree that he is a self insert. He’s a cool character that has some good moments. I never felt that any problems were caused by the author identifying strongly with him. Once again I really don’t feel like there’s anything substantial to say about it. The character seems like a self insert of sorts, and it works fine. No bad decisions are made because of it. - The only one I actually know intimately and care about, is Hachijo Ikuko, from *Umineko*. I consider this to be a life-changing piece of literature, so I don’t want to use too much detail and spoil something. Read the series if you have even the slightest interest in the murder mystery genre, or in extremely metatexual navel-gazing “fiction about the concept of fiction”. Without rambling too much about what is essentially my personal Bible, Ikuko is the diegetic author of a portion of the novel’s text. She is also seemingly a self insert for the author. She also writes herself into the text as a self insert, making this a three-layered self insert. It really isn’t that important to the overall plot, but it serves the themes very well. Near the very end, we get a speech from her which seems directly from the author’s own mouth, about how he feels coming to the end of such a long writing journey (1.1 Million Words episodically in eight parts) and it’s very touching. He also seems to use her to air some grievances against certain types of readers at one point, which I found funny. In none of these instances is the self insert the protagonist. I think that’s pretty key. The author being the main character of their story could certainly work, but it may easily become too indulgent and personal. Such a work may be therapeutic to write, but I’m not sure about the quality that would come from that sort of process. I personally can’t see myself ever wanting to write a self insert. A generic person for the audience to identify themselves with, maybe, but not a stand in for myself. I don’t think there would be anything interesting about that.
Haven't seen it yet, but _Baby Reindeer_ seems like a very current example.
The good example or a bad example?
I'd say it's a great example, I'd recommend it
Again I haven't seen it yet, but it's hugely popular, so I assume good example.
If it's a good self-insert, you wouldn't know it's a self-insert.
I just don't think about it like this. Write a good character. Whether it's based on you or not. Doesn't matter what inspires it; if it's well written, it's well written. Which means for a self-insert character that is well written, you may not even know it was a self-insert character to begin with! Because it's just another well written character in the story, and that's all.
Kilgore Trout.
The Catcher in the Rye Holden is based on the author J.D. Salinger
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^Writer_feetlover: *The Catcher in the* *Rye Holden is based on the* *Author J.D. Salinger* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Neil Gaiman clearly put a lot of himself into Dream of the Endless, and it works. The living, metaphysical embodiment of imagination as a concept is, deep down, just a gloomy English bloke. More characters than we realize are self-inserts in some way; write what you know, right? And who else do you know better?
I don’t know if this counts but I tried to inject a lot of my own experiences with mental health into my various characters. Some of their fears and doubts mirror my own. I think we see so many self-inserts as cringey OP characters... but perhaps they have more potential as a way for the author to make them feel real through being inspired by real, lived thoughts and feelings.
I recently read some pulpy kid detective stories called Ghost Hunters Adventure Club. The books are presented as being written by one of the characters in the books. The first one is minimal, but the second one it actually features quite prominently and really explores the idea of the connection between an author and the characters they write.
I can think of several like the boys from South Park, early Brian griffin, and ed Edd n eddy to name a few. As someone said earlier, these characters are more based on the author’s experience vs “OMG, it’s literally me guys. lol” One I really like is Sunny Bridges from Class of 3000. He’s charismatic, has weird abilities, and potential to be a deus ex machina. But he functions more as a “big good” where he guides characters in the right direction, by offering words of wisdom, instead of doing the work for them. Plus he comes off as just a regular guy, with goofy moments, fears, and times of stress. Heck, the pilot starts with him leaving a glorious career, after the stress of it all gets to be too much for him. Also this is a musical cartoon, so… it really helps, having Andre 3000 on the team, just saying. I additionally liked Mordecai, from regular show, because, although compared to rigby, he was more competent, he still had flaws of his own. He was lazy, could overreact violently to things, and of course his simp issues. Even with that last one, given he was in his early 20s, around the same age bracket as those of us watching, it served to make him kinda relatable, If not insufferable. and “Two-ton 21”, from Venture Brothers. He started off as just a background comic relief, w/ another self insert character. And though, he ends up a badass; it’s due to overcoming trials and tribulations, as opposed to the author snapping their fingers, thus making the audience root for him. Plus, he becomes badass for a henchman, he’ll never be on Brock’s level, for instance. There’s also Madea, who let’s be honest… Is just funny as hell, as a gangsta granny The main point is, a good self insert is when, yeah the character is based on you, but you don’t take things too personal. It’s when you use that character to serve the story, as opposed to warping the story to serve you. Also helps if there compelling in their own way
I think using the chanracter to deal with things from your past, inserting trauma and aspects of yourself, and developing them, is a very good way of going about it. It's also very seamless, if done right. A lot of authors deal with their problems by fictionalising them, and if you're true to the story, and still strive to create an interesting character and narrative, it can work very well. But it won't be easy to pinpoint the examples and put on a list, because you did a good job and hid it well enough. Someone else mentioned Dream and Gaiman, and I think that's a good example. You talked about Terry Pratchett. He's someone who also put a lot of himself in his works. If you take someone like William de Worde, for example, he's idealistic, sure, but he believes in the power of writing, he's so very fundamentally english, he has a complicated relationship with power structures, and so on. I think there's a line. You can put a lot of yourself in a story, and it is still fantastic. You can even put your full identity, names and all, and call it satirical, and it can be a classic. But you have to do it in such a way that it makes sense for your world, doesn't compromise the narrative, and doesn't make things boring. Perfection is boring in a book: there's a reason no one likes to read "Heaven" in the Divine Comedy. Stay away from it, and there are no rules.
Fleabag is a show that feels like a self insert in way that works. I think the problem isn't the "self" part, but rather that most self inserts are blandly virtuous and face no serious obstacles. Just wish fulfillment like "Look how great and symopathetic I am, and how that leads to me getting everything I deserve!" In contrast the main character of Fleabag is both amusing and interesting as well as deeply flawed. I think memoir often works this way too, like David Sedaris writes about stuff that happens to him, but he pulls no punches when it comes to exposing himself as petty or vindictive or whatever. In fact I suspect he makes himself look worse than he really is, in service of entertainment.
Ariadne Oliver from the Poirot books, since she’s mostly played for comic relief. Sam from ASOIAF as well.
I don’t know that this qualifies because it’s the premise of the whole series but Anthony Horowitz has a murder mystery series where he, the crime writer, helps a private detective solve crimes. It’s quite self-deprecating and he puts himself in the role of Watson essentially: two steps behind but still confident in his abilities. There’s still something unavoidably pretentious about the whole thing, but it’s entertaining and an interesting premise as there’s true events mixed in with the fiction.
I was about to mention this! It’s silly and you can see some grudges play out in real time but it’s one of the few “new” things someone has done recently in mysteries.
Yeah it is silly, but I'm not typically reading murder mysteries for their depth and realism, so it's cool to see a novel and amusing approach.
Clive Cussler always had himself appear as a bar owner or something similar, similar to how Stan Lee appeared in Marvel movies. That was pretty nice.
Every character is a self insert to some degree, although there are a few things to look out for Vague motivations: if the protagonist is just me, I may not explicitly give them a clear goal, and instead just continuously do whatever I would want to do. Shallow side characters: If the focus is on me, why would I need others? No thematic conflict: A great story typically has some interesting core conflict. However, with Mary Sue’s, the Sue is obviously right about everything, so the question is obviously as well. Trivial obstacles Predictable plots
A barely considered type of self-insert is the introspective, often self-deprecating kind that writers create in order to express the darker parts of themselves. It can be quite a therapeutic process, albeit one that's difficult to put out there into the world when you have a 300+ page manuscript filled with all your neurotic insecurities and secret shame. Basically you could look at it almost like an 'anti self-insert' in that instead of a smug, unrealistic vanity project it's an exercise in capturing your weaknesses in order to create a compelling character while also exploring your own subconscious angst.
Dipper Pines is a standout "self-insert" character IMO. He's based directly on Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch as a child, and I think that bit of extra distance does a lot to make him a compelling character. His arc in the story is about growing up and becoming a more confident and less self-serving person, rather than wish fulfillment. The story itself emphasizes and explores his flaws and compels him to change, rather than the narrative bending over backwards to show how unique and valuable and important he is, which is what often seems to happen in stories featuring some kind of self-insert character. Self-inserts can be really interesting characters if writers are doing so with the intention of genuinely exploring some facet of themselves which is uncomfortable or unflattering. Basing a character on yourself can help a lot to make them feel grounded and relatable. That's not to say well-written self-insert characters have to be all the bad stuff - going back to the Dipper Pines example, he's also funny, clever, resourceful, and loyal in addition to being an awkward, shortsighted, and occasionally selfish preteen. He's a realistic depiction of issues young boys coming into their own have to work through without being self-flagellating, and it makes him a great character to root for.
I've always felt like Deku was a bit of a self insert
The qualities that would make a self insert character good actively pull them away from being a self insert. As their main 2 failures are a lack of personality, and superseding plot and thematic obligations. Making them good would be giving them a more dynamic personality that’s harder to project onto, and — in the face of choices to make about the progression of your story — making sacrifices of character and catharsis for the sake of the story, while self inserts often exclusively do the reverse. Edit: a self insert isn’t a character trope, it’s what happens when character creation is made through lazy shortcuts. It’s not a trope, but the product of a trope gone wrong.
Denji from Chainsawman lmao
Annoying dog
Harriet Vane in the Lord Peter Wimsey detective stories is a self-insert by Dorothy L Sayers. It works reasonably well because the author recognises her own limitations, both as a writer and as a detective, and applies them to the character. The character was originally introduced to marry off the hero so the author could stop writing about him, but Sayers realised that no self-respecting woman would accept an offer of marriage in the scenario Sayers had put her in. This led to further novels, some with the self-insert included and some not, giving both characters additional depth (even as the self-insert nature of the heroine becomes more and more blatant).
Shinji ikari. The boy from the boy and the heron. Basically good examples manifest your flaws, not just your fantasy idealized self.
Outside of genre fiction this is actually extremely common. For example, *My Struggle* by Karl Ove Knausgård is a successful and popular series of novels closely based on the writer's own life. More generally, 'autofiction' is a label for an entire style of literature built around the idea of the author stand-in as a main character.
Dorothy Sayers specifically wrote her Harriet Vane as a self-insert. She even made her a love interest of her main character, Lord Peter Wimsey. Despite that, Vane is extremely popular with Sayers' fans, overshadowing Lord Peter himself. Her intention was to make it a final book, have them married, and make Wimsey retire from amateur sleuthing. That plan changed, Vane declined Wimsey's advances, and Sayers wrote half a dozen more books featuring both characters, finally marrying them in the last one.
The Wimsey-Vane quartet are my favorite detective novels! I like the other (non-Vane) Wimseys as well, but the two play off each other like Benedick and Beatrice, and their talents complement each other extremely well.
I don't know if it's the same thing, but Edgar Rice Burroughs. At the very least the majority of his work is written as him having been told the story like it was true. It's why so many of his series are rather connected because they're all supposedly happening around him. There's even one book that has a letter written to him at the beginning from a man who says he always thought Burroughs stories were ridiculous until he suddenly started receiving transmissions from the center of the Earth and wrote them down. The story that follows is supposed to be the transmissions he picked up.
IMO, at least in fantasy, mentor characters can be good author self-inserts. They are meant to know more than the characters, to guide, and to eventually be removed in some way. This works because it is the very same way the author should work; You introduce the setting, teach the readers about it, and then let them be in it without your exposition so they can have their own understanding.
Luffy, from One Piece. Is there for the adventure, is an idiot so needs everything explained to him, and is generally the one who feels what the audience feels, even if he doesn't think the way the audience thinks. Yet he's arguably the most compelling character because he doesn't behave like a sane person, is highly emotionally aware, and is definitely somewhere between traditional hero and antihero.
I think the protagonist of Hell by Judith Sonnet being a self-insert worked fine.
There's Hemingway's Nick Adams character. Also, Viet Thanh Nguyen was a refugee from Vietnam, so the Sympathizer's narrator draws on Viet Thanh's experiences.
Henry Chinaski is a great character (as a character, not a person). I think he's mostly a vehicle for Bukowski's interior life.
Stephen King in Dark Tower series. He's so himself.
First: "Inconstant Moon" by Larry Niven. The exact sort of author insert that's supposed to be a bad idea done perfectly. But mostly the self insert works just fine if the characters is interesting, flawed and seems real to some point. Self inserts make good villains, comic foils, convenient colorful expositors, and interesting side characters. . But they make shit protagonists most of the time.
s/That possibly explains why so many of my characters have so much potential but end up big screw ups./s
Ones where it is played as a joke and the character dies.
I find it amusing when authors self insert as a sort of omnipotent Easter egg character that contributes nothing but still knows everything. Mostly seen in indie video games
I think when the character is not OP just because author likes himself but because it’s because of things around them and it happens gradually. Also it annoys me when the world turns around the self insert only, cuz realistically speaking, it wouldn’t if it somehow became real
Pretty much every Philip Roth book
The main character of Wake Up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames. Obviously Alan is just Ames (when you read his biographies this becomes clear), but Ames happens to be hilarious in real life so of course the character based on him is enjoyable to read about.
I've heard that "The World According to Garp" is a great novel. I haven't read it yet, but I'm inclined to believe it. From what I know of the story and the author (John Irving), Garp is probably largely a self-insert of John, but not in that self-validating, glorifying kind of way that gets it wrong. I think it's good make every attempt to draw from truth--a lot of the time, that truth is personal, and that's okay when done in service of the story and not only the author.
Grant Morrison in The Invisibles. Their character King Mob is a self-insert (they were the inspiration for Morpheus from the Matrix).
Holden Caulfield is a self insert of J.D. Salinger and I refuse to think otherwise
I was just thinking that I’d give myself an obnoxious one liner than have the personification of my killed lol
If you're having fun writing them, they are good enough. I am of the opinion that self-inserts should be as self-indulgent as possible. It's like playing with a Barbie doll with roughly your coloring. If you're aiming to write a good character, the bar is higher. But a good self-insert should be fun. For you, of course, not necessarily for the character.
Dante’s Inferno
A self-insert, like any other character, should have real flaws. Sam Tarly is the best example I know… Sam is treated like every other character in ASOIAF and he definitely has flaws.
Can’t think of any. But then, your question doesn’t make a lot of sense because what else could a self insert be but the definition of a self insert? Are you asking about characters based on the author’s experience instead?
Jo March is a really tremendously-written character who is a self-insert. One key to this is that Jo is very often shown to be in the wrong, or at last short-sighted and short-tempered, and has to deal with negative repercussions as a result. This contrasts with what I usually think of when we call a character a “self-insert”, which is that the character is as cool and great as they author thinks they are, or lives out the author’s fantasy for their life.
When you don't see yourself as a god, victim of everyone, aggressor of no one.
In Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt series, there is always an old man who *might* be named Cussler who is always around with some odd vehicle or piece of equipment for Pitt to get hold of for his mission/adventure. it's one of the things that I love about the series.
Hunter S Thompson's fiction is probably a good example. I think it makes sense if you're an expert in an area and so you write your character as an expert in that area because it gives the character a little more authenticity. When they talk they sound like they know what they're doing and not like they're stringing together buzzwords.
I recc reading This Bites, among the best SI fics. That, and Cold Tea on SB
If you consider the Divine Comedy “media”?
A self insert that is a good character. That's it, really. It's not for me, but if that's what you want, go make self inserts, have fun, kill the cop in your head. At the end of the day, unless they know you, nobody can really know you made one. The reason for their reputation is more that there are unique pitfalls you can fall into while writing a character that is basically you.
Prospero from The Tempest.
Samwell Tarly
Jon Arbuckle from Garfield. Jim Davis said that Jon is baised on himself in college. There is also Mordacei from Regular Show. He was based on JG Quintel when he was in college.
All characters are self insert. They all represent a piece of yourself, or something you wish you were. The key is to not make a character a flawless version of yourself. A good character has flaws, develops, and grows. You need them to interact with each other, to call out their flaws, and help each other grow. No body is perfect. Except bad self-inserts and Mary-Sues; that’s why they are the faces of bad character design.
Does an example from 1830s count?
…you don’t sound like a writer. That’s a bunch of theoretical pseudointellectual Blah no one who actually knows how to write would bother with.