Do your characters reflect your own idealized self and / or sexual or romantic partners?

[EmilyMiller]

The terse response? A new medication's side effects are distracting and the words about anything else refuse to come out of hiding at the moment. Maybe the appropriate verbosity will emerge once the nausea abates.

PM me if you want

 

[Rob_Royale]

Do you write characters who are like you want to be IRL?

Idealized? No.
Younger. Yep. As young man I was an athlete. 5'9" 170 lbs. And what girls my age called "cute". But girls my age weren't into cute, (at least the ones I was into) but the older ladies were. Sexually, I was with four older women before a girl my age. Which pretty much cemented my attraction to older women and explains my writing focus.
The young men in my stories are very much as I remember myself. Polite, well groomed, medium height, a little awkward and in shape. 35 years later, I've an extra 45 lbs but I can still sling an 85 lb bale of hay and I'm a lot less awkward. Usually.

Do you write characters who are your own dream sexual / romantic partner?

All four of those ladies made their way into my stories in one form or another, but after that some were based on the ladies I worked with or knew and were sexually attracted to.

 

[IsenRae]

Do you write characters who are like you want to be IRL? Do you write characters who are your own dream sexual / romantic partner? Or do you do the opposite and write about people wholly different to yourself and what you want in a partner? Maybe people who you’d never want to be intimate with IRL but somehow feel drawn to in a literary sense?

I write shorts to answer the following question:

What happens when the masks people use to control themselves finally break?

 

[EmilyMiller]

Idealized? No.
Younger. Yep. As young man I was an athlete. 5'9" 170 lbs. And what girls my age called "cute". But girls my age weren't into cute, (at least the ones I was into) but the older ladies were. Sexually, I was with four older women before a girl my age. Which pretty much cemented my attraction to older women and explains my writing focus.
The young men in my stories are very much as I remember myself. Polite, well groomed, medium height, a little awkward and in shape. 35 years later, I've an extra 45 lbs but I can still sling an 85 lb bale of hay and I'm a lot less awkward. Usually.

All four of those ladies made their way into my stories in one form or another, but after that some were based on the ladies I worked with or knew and were sexually attracted to.

One of the things I like about here was that I used to think my own sexual journey was kinda a weird outlier. But so many people have had interesting life experiences.

 

[EmilyMiller]

What happens when the masks people use to control themselves finally break?

In my case, a pool of melting jello

 

[PennyThompson]

None of my characters are autobiographical, but Scout and Victoria and Melanie and Story-Penny (though she is more fantastical than the others) all have a lot of me in them

 

[EmilyMiller]

None of my characters are autobiographical, but Scout and Victoria and Melanie and Story-Penny (though she is more fantastical than the others) all have a lot of me in them

This is not quite the revelation that you might take it to be

 

[PennyThompson]

This is not quite the revelation that you might take it to be

I am mysterious and nuanced, damnit!

 

[EmilyMiller]

I am mysterious and nuanced, damnit!

I’ll accept nuanced

 

[AG31]

Do you write characters who are like you want to be IRL? Do you write characters who are your own dream sexual / romantic partner? Or do you do the opposite and write about people wholly different to yourself and what you want in a partner? Maybe people who you’d never want to be intimate with IRL but somehow feel drawn to in a literary sense?

My characters are totally different from anything I'd want to experience in real life, either as myself or as an other. But I think they do represent some deep part of me.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

What's the opposite of "my idealized self"?

@SmoothMD's self.

Some of my characters include aspects or parts of me. Most obviously, Liz and I share biology backgrounds and a scientific mind set.

 

[AwkwardMD]

@SmoothMD's self.

Some of my characters include aspects or parts of me. Most obviously, Liz and I share biology backgrounds and a scientific mind set.

NiceMD

PoliteMD

 

[old_prof]

NiceMD

PoliteMD

AdeptMD
GracefulMD

 

[SkyBubble]

Do you write characters who are like you want to be IRL? Do you write characters who are your own dream sexual / romantic partner? Or do you do the opposite and write about people wholly different to yourself and what you want in a partner? Maybe people who you’d never want to be intimate with IRL but somehow feel drawn to in a literary sense?

A number of them are based on real women I've known.

 

[SkyBubble]

A lot of my characters have at least a few elements of me.

I think that's probably true of most of us, whether we intend it or not.

 

[TaniaTulle]

For me, no. I enjoy stepping into other people’s skin in a kind of fantasy sense.

I’ve had plenty of very different experiences over the years, both good and bad (and occasionally amazing), but nothing I’d change for the world. Those experiences definitely influenced and hints of them are in there somewhere. And plenty of people I’ve met or had relationships with have found their way into my stories too, some more explicitly than others. But most are just fantasy constructs, maybe not people who I would like as a partner, more who just fit the fantasy I see in my mind.

But I can’t say I’m in there in an autobiographical sense, idealised or otherwise. Are there parts of my psyche in there? Oh yes. But I like so many different flavours and tastes that I hope it lets me create all sorts of characters with different needs and wants.

Great thread idea though.

 

[Dodola]

It's been 999 days since my last confession...

 

[CalBishForNow]

When I stretch my literary muscles, my characters are idealized versions of me. On a normal day, they're just me, with a more interesting sex life than I have.

That's a little more self-deprecating than is strictly justified. "Interesting" doesn't mean good, and I've written some characters distinctly different from myself, and for that matter IRL my sex life isn't all that boring. But still, it's funny to think about other possible answers to the question.

 

[RetroFan]

I'm probably a bit different in that I write stories based in places I like and times I either like or am interested in. With my characters I like to think of an interesting situation for them to be in, or for a sexual pairing that you don't see often on Literotica and hope they appeal to readers. Often the characters are nothing like me and the experience is like nothing I have encountered in person frequently due to them being set years before I was born and in places I never lived in, I just hope to write a good, interesting and often amusing story that readers enjoy. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't but at least I can say I tried.

 

[Areala-chan]

All of my main characters have some element of myself in them, but usually altered to fit the story. I'm a huge bookworm, so there's usually someone in my story who likes reading, or poetry, or works in a bookstore/library, etc...

But there's also a lot of fun to be had stepping into the shoes of other types, and there are a number of hobbies and interests I have that haven't made it into a story just yet. I'm an enormous gaming nerd, but none of my MCs have been. Yet. One of these days...

 

[SmilingLez]

What's the opposite of "my idealized self"?

Your worst case scenario self

 

[anthrodisiac]

In terms of idealized self, not really. Bits and pieces of me make it into the characters, since it's almost impossible not to inject oneself into main characters unless you're putting a ton of effort into making sure absolutely nothing from you taints it. It's a tedious process to do, so I rarely put that much effort in. But I've never been big on self-inserts (cue jokes). Only one I've really done erotically was my neurospicy tamandua girl.

 

[BeechLeaf]

No. not specifically; I write fiction by creating fictional things. But everything I write (I'm speaking generally, not just the small amount I have here under this account) is in the here and now. I write about Earth and England today, not Mars or distant times, so the oak trees and art galleries and bisexuals that I insert are based on what I know of real life, fictionalized. None is based on a specific real thing, but I think of every pub I have known and then create a fictional pub from that knowledge. People, they're different in many ways (many of which I can't capture), and they're similar in others, and therefore similar to me, and therefore partly my own experience and character show up in my fictional characters, just as my fictional oaks and pubs resemble real ones. I'm not skilled enough to go too far beyond my own experience, but I think I can create distinct people who aren't me.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Thinking on it, I guess my stories do contain idealized versions of me. I'd much rather be a cute lizard or coati or archaeopteryx girl than a human in a silly, boring, broken body

 

[Britva415]

Do you write characters who are like you want to be IRL? Do you write characters who are your own dream sexual / romantic partner? Or do you do the opposite and write about people wholly different to yourself and what you want in a partner? Maybe people who you’d never want to be intimate with IRL but somehow feel drawn to in a literary sense?

I would say (and hope) that my characters aren't idealized.

Do they represent me or someone kind of like me? Yeah. Do they represent my partners or someone kind of like my partners, real or hypothetical? Yeah.

I try to make them real-ish, which to me is kind of the opposite of idealization. I find "idealized" to be synonymous with "not relatable."

I might sometimes put them in situations which strain credulity, I often don't, but when I do, the characters are hopefully not the incredulous part, and are hopefully credulous enough to make the situation believable. Even in that "one suspends disbelief" way.

Anyway, it's the characters which make this work. That's my intention, anyway. What makes my fantasy writing work is the relatability of the characters.

Idealized ones would fail to be interesting. This goes for what I like to read, as well as what I like to write.