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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/41228
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/41228
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

> ### Would it be out of place for me to model characters after my own experiences

I believe it would be. For practical reasons. How many times can you do that without getting repetitive, and making all your characters similar? Readers will get bored.

Also, _"what happened to you"_ may seem emotionally intense to you, but real life just doesn't serve stories very well. At 19 I was in a multiple roll-over car accident at 75 mph (the speed limit on a freeway), I was a passenger sitting at the window, and came out literally without a single scratch or bruise. Tim was driving, he broke both his knees and his left shoulder. An ambulance came, I kept Tim company in the hospital while he got some surgery. But so what? End of story; this doesn't tie into anything in my life story. It didn't stop my plans (other than getting home from the mall). It didn't motivate me to do anything, other than not getting into another car driven by Tim. It did not change me.

You want your character's experiences _designed_ to serve the plot. Unlike real life, in a novel things should happen _for a reason_, and the reason is to move the characters through the plot, and clearly make them who they are today, or the events are designed to _reveal_ who they are inside. Their trials are _tests_ of who they are.

If your own life experience helps you describe these invented experiences more realistically or vividly for the reader, then use that, but don't duplicate the experience, or crowbar in the experience. Understand you are writing to entertain readers, and what they read should **matter** to the plot.

The same applies to character development; we develop character traits with the plot in mind; sometimes these are traits to advance the plot (help solve the problem), or to complicate the plot. In that category of complications we can put negative traits that, in the end, we want our characters to change or overcome or get under control.

Some of their traits may need life-altering experiences; but don't include your own unless they will justify what happens in your plot.

Original score: 2