Selfish? Pardon. I meant ‘based on oneself’.
Virtually all writers, I’m going to argue, use their own experiences, thoughts and perceptions to guide character.
No, this doesn’t mean they write about themselves; not at all. It simply means that the only way we have to comprehend and therefore write about human perceptions is to think and feel them ourselves. Let’s call that 10% of the process. The other 90% is, of course, extrapolative invention.
I’ve never had a broken leg or fallen out of an aeroplane. But I’ve hurt my toe and fallen off a horse. I’ve seeing the giddy wheee! of scenery blurring past and felt the crunch of iron-hard ground. The rest, I suspect, is internet research.
The beauty of having a self — an embodiment — is that you’re your own best information gathering device. The other beauty is that you can use this information to make even borrowed or stolen characters seem ‘real’. Selfish writing lives on the page because it gives the sense of an actual person, not a cypher.
Of course, you may not want ‘true’ characters, or even particularly lifelike ones. Your work might be subverting the idea of psychological realism, or playing with stock characters as a kind of sport. Your novel might be comedic or metaphysical. One size character-strategy doesn’t fit all.
But you can do worse than pay attention to being alive.
EXERCISES: