Yuffie's Writing How-To's

On SELF-INSERTION CHARACTERS

A big criticism of Twilight is that Bella is a self-insert of Meyer. They have the same skintone, hair, etc.

Let me challenge that criticism: Self-insertion is NOT a bad thing.

I self-insert all the time. All my characters have something of me in them. Cleon is my personality-clone (we have the same Meyer-Briggs personality to boot). Most authors do self-insert.

My favorite book is The Martian by Andy Weir, and in an interview he stated that the MC, Mark Watney, IS Weir in terms of personality. And Mark turned out to be a phenomenal character I loved reading about.

What failed with Bella is that Meyer didn't create a complete character. The self-inserted traits had nothing to do with whether or not Bella was a compelling character. Bella lacked personality, layers, roundness. If Meyer put her actual self, not just the physical features but also the personality, in the book as Bella, we would've gotten a human, well-rounded character. Does that make sense? Bella is pretty much an empty shell with Meyer's face.

(And from a perspective, that was what made it so popular, because then almost ANY female reader could slip into Bella's shoes and pretend they were in the story. HOWEVER, I would never recommend writing a personality-less character with the goal of appealing to a wider audience. While it worked for Twilight, it's lazy writing and is not likely to work again. Twilight is an exception to the rule, for whatever reason. Write awesome, well-rounded characters, you guys!)

So don't rag on self-insert characters. We all write them to some extent. The self-insertion wasn't the problem with Twilight it was the overall characterization. Self-insertion is NOT a bad thing.