Me, Myself, and My MC
Popular wisdom holds that writers expose themselves every time they put words on paper. Sometimes they divulge their inner secrets, beliefs, flaws, or quirks when they take us on a literary journey, allowing us to enter aspects of their personalities they may be hesitant to share even with family or friends.
Characters and their dialog, even their favorite music, TV shows, and foods can serve as proxy manifestations of the author. Of course, how much the author shares and where he or she draws the line is up to the individual writer.
When reading a novel, I often wonder how much any given character embodies the author’s own life experiences. For instance, should I assume an author is a bit of a smart-ass if a character is prone to wisecracks? Is the author channeling their religious or political convictions through their main character? To what extent does a character’s family strife—or bliss—mirror the author’s own past and present interactions with their relatives?
Through the first five novels of my Noelani Lee mystery series, I’ve kept a lid on how much of myself lives in her. For starters, she’s a Hawaiian woman closing in on 40, and I’m a suburban mainland white guy edging ever closer to 60.
Yet she and I have a few things in common. For one, we’re both agnostic. Noe and I also both have limits on how much stupidity, hypocrisy, and common, everyday bullshit we’re willing to tolerate. But our differences are glaring.
Noe’s been through two unsuccessful engagements and is still single, while I’ve been married for 30-plus years. She was a high school track star and a court reporter and worked at a law firm before hanging up her shingle; I’ve spent my non-athletic life in the Navy and working for newspapers and in PR. Noe neither drinks nor swears, while I love me some beer and am not above the occasional profanity. She also was the victim of sexual assault—an event that spurred her to pursue a career as a licensed private investigator—which is a horror I can’t even begin to imagine.
However, in my current work-in-progress, I’ve loosened the reins a bit and am infusing Noe with more me, warts and all. And it all comes down to family dynamics.
In the novel, Noe comes to grips with the failings of her father, who went to prison for life on racketeering charges when she was just 9 years-old; he was glaringly absent when she grew into adolescence and adulthood. On my end, my father and I had a decent relationship, but we weren’t what I would call “close.” We also were poles apart politically and sociologically. Neither of us made much of an effort to understand each other. We never communicated well; sure, I would call him to find out how he was doing, but in response, I got a weather report, conversations about sports, and complaints about various ailments. The benefit of hindsight tells me to expect this when a parent ages. Still, those phone calls did little to draw us closer, a situation exacerbated by the 2,500 physical miles between us.
That distance also hampered our relationship in more tangible ways, especially when he didn't show up for my master’s degree hooding ceremony in early 2004 at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, a short train ride from south-central Pennsylvania, citing the potential for snow and ice as his reason for not being there. (I should have just bought him the damn ticket.)
I bottled-up my frustrations and chalked it up to him being him and left a lot of other things unsaid when he died two years ago. But with Noe, I have an outlet for those repressed emotions. In the WIP, she unleashes three decades’ worth of infuriation and long-simmering resentment at her father in a way I, to be honest, wish I could have with my Dad. Not to be angry or a jackass, but more like, “Why didn’t you do more to support me and the choices I made and the things I’ve accomplished? Where were you all these years? Why did I have to find out second-hand that you were proud of me?”
Hmm. I might’ve shared more than I should have. Let’s just leave it right there.
But my question for you, fellow authors, is this: How much of yourself do you put in your characters both you MC and any secondary people populating your work? How do you funnel your emotions through them? What do they do, say, or believe that represent you in some way? Do you get a sense of catharsis from putting even a small bit of yourself in these people and their motivations, actions, etc.?