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

[EmilyMiller]

I find "idealized" to be synonymous with "not relatable."

Idealized was maybe too strong a word to use. Made more interesting / intelligent / hottter…

 

[Britva415]

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.

What strains credulity varies among different readers. What seems to me like a perfectly familiar, understandable and realistic scenario, maybe one I have even lived, might seem to someone else to be outside their personal experience and their imagination of a scenario they could picture themselves in. So even stories of mine which aren't intended to be recognized as fantastical can still seem to some readers like some shit that couldn't ever really happen.

 

[Britva415]

Idealized was maybe too strong a word to use. Made more interesting / intelligent / hottter…

I get you. And, no, I don't consciously do that.

 

[Britva415]

Your worst case scenario self

TrainWreckMD

 

[BeechLeaf]

In my early writing my star character was beautiful, intelligent, and funny, and was going to have lots of fun sexy times with people both male and female. Therefore a silly projection and idealization. After I had actually written her for a while, and developed her, she became too important to me to be just this silly puppet. I had to save her from silliness by giving her neuroses, depression, bad temper, tears, enough to make her realistically human, the sort of attractive person we might actually know, not a ridiculous idealization. So it took work and pain for her to win the happiness she eventually got. She's mellowed since then.

 

[Britva415]

I don't consciously do that

I mean, maybe except to the extent that "having great sex right now" is an idealization

Also like someone else said, maybe the characters (and their partners) are better at it than I (and my partners) are. Maybe.

Mostly I think it's kind of like how superheroes never have to poop. They do - just not onscreen. Maybe my characters have a bit of that, in that the sex they're having is all good and no fumbling, performance whiffs, or communication breakdowns. You only see them at their very best.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Mostly I think it's kind of like how superheroes never have to poop. They do - just not onscreen. Maybe my characters have a bit of that, in that the sex they're having is all good and no fumbling, performance whiffs, or communication breakdowns. You only see them at their very best.

In Pranked: Barbie my heroine actually both poops and has her period, but I was consciously playing against standard porn tropes. (I'm stretching things: she gets enemas, so poop reference at least.)

In Winnings, now that I think about it, anal sex results in visible poo on the condom.

 

[Britva415]

In Pranked: Barbie my heroine actually both poops and has her period, but I was consciously playing against standard porn tropes. (I'm stretching things: she gets enemas, so poop reference at least.)

In Winnings, now that I think about it, anal sex results in visible poo on the condom.

In Genie's Wish part something, our protag made/helped/stimulated a girl to poop with a certain belly (bowel) massage instead of preparing with an enema for her first anal experience.

So yeah, poop happens and my characters aren't superheroes and the poop wasn't idealized either or even put on screen at all or fetishized or otherwise sexualized. Just a real regular thing that happens to real regular people.

"Regular" - ok, maybe to some that is an idealization. At any rate, the regularity wasn't addressed in the story.

 

[BladeSeanchai]

As a new writer here, I have a few characters in my back pocket but two are near mirror images of people i know in real life. I have a story in draft where the main character is my evil twin.

 

[big_cane_sugar]

Me too, but when I create those people, bits of me leak in.

I intended to add that to my post but I was in a hurry so I just left it out LOL.

Actually, I think my main characters are usually reductions of my self. But lately I've really been trying to get into other people's minds. The stories I'm working on right now feature an incel trying to imagine the thoughts and feelings of a philandering fuckboi and the women who want him. I'm explicitly asking the readers to question whether I've got it right: have I entered the mind of an incel, of a philandering fuckboi, of a woman who fucks him, of the people who hate or resent him?

A bit too literary maybe but I'm having fun with it.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

A fair few of my early stories in particular took a scenario I'd been in, and either stuck to the good reality, or improved upon less-exciting realities. So I ended up with my characters Laura and Rachel, who both have a lot of aspects of me, but different ones.

Other characters, I took traits from various people I knew and mixed them up, and over time I've got more confident at creating characters almost from scratch (but ensuring their traits are consistent with real people I've encountered). So by the time I started writing about Cat and Jake and Sarah, they aren't based on me at all. The board gaming, kink, and sarcasm level are all purely coincidental...

 

[EmilyMiller]

What strains credulity varies among different readers. What seems to me like a perfectly familiar, understandable and realistic scenario, maybe one I have even lived, might seem to someone else to be outside their personal experience and their imagination of a scenario they could picture themselves in. So even stories of mine which aren't intended to be recognized as fantastical can still seem to some readers like some shit that couldn't ever really happen.

This

 

[EmilyMiller]

In my early writing my star character was beautiful, intelligent, and funny, and was going to have lots of fun sexy times with people both male and female. Therefore a silly projection and idealization. After I had actually written her for a while, and developed her, she became too important to me to be just this silly puppet. I had to save her from silliness by giving her neuroses, depression, bad temper, tears, enough to make her realistically human, the sort of attractive person we might actually know, not a ridiculous idealization. So it took work and pain for her to win the happiness she eventually got. She's mellowed since then.

That sounds very, very familar

 

[EmilyMiller]

In Pranked: Barbie my heroine actually both poops and has her period, but I was consciously playing against standard porn tropes. (I'm stretching things: she gets enemas, so poop reference at least.)

In Winnings, now that I think about it, anal sex results in visible poo on the condom.

I’ve had characters have their periods - it was a plot point once.

 

[EmilyMiller]

A fair few of my early stories in particular took a scenario I'd been in, and either stuck to the good reality, or improved upon less-exciting realities. So I ended up with my characters Laura and Rachel, who both have a lot of aspects of me, but different ones.

Other characters, I took traits from various people I knew and mixed them up, and over time I've got more confident at creating characters almost from scratch (but ensuring their traits are consistent with real people I've encountered). So by the time I started writing about Cat and Jake and Sarah, they aren't based on me at all. The board gaming, kink, and sarcasm level are all purely coincidental...

It’s an evolution, right?

 

[AwkwardMD]

TrainWreckMD

Accurate

 

[Writer61]

There is something of me in my lead male characters, and some scenes in my stories reflect my own experiences and RL fantasies.

 

[feverdreamnine]

The main male character in each of my stories is some version of me to some extent. Not necessarily the same job or relationship status or life history, but he definitely has at least some side of my personality and attitudes. He’s someone I could easily imagine being at whatever age he’s presented, if life had gone slightly differently. Definitely not the best version of me, I hope. I hope he comes across as realistic.

The women in my stories are sometimes based, roughly, on women I’ve known, or some blend of various women I’ve known, at least as a starting point. Typically they, and the male lead based on me, tend to develop differently than I’d imagined, but they usually start out as a version of some real person.

I think what I’m mostly doing here is writing a few of my own fantasies, for my own enjoyment, and posting them here in case there’s anyone else that might enjoy them too.

 

[MrPixel]

What strains credulity varies among different readers. What seems to me like a perfectly familiar, understandable and realistic scenario, maybe one I have even lived, might seem to someone else to be outside their personal experience and their imagination of a scenario they could picture themselves in. So even stories of mine which aren't intended to be recognized as fantastical can still seem to some readers like some shit that couldn't ever really happen.

Exactly. I have a bunch of "been there, done that," and "...uh ...been there done that, too!" and "oh, shit, am I actually admitting to that?" in my writing. Had a rich life.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Exactly. I have a bunch of "been there, done that," and "...uh ...been there done that, too!" and "oh, shit, am I actually admitting to that?" in my writing. Had a rich life.

I have had people deny the possibility of things that I have done IRL, and then PM me to ask what an experience was like for me, when I’d made up some totally batshit crazy scenario .

 

[TheWritingGroup]

I have had people deny the possibility of things that I have done IRL ...

I refuse to believe that this could have happened to you in real life.