I have a confession to make. Much of the material I use for this blog is based on actual experiences and events from my life. It is, after all, called Ben’s Bitter Blog, and not Your Bitter Blog. That’s not to say I don’t exaggerate those events for dramatic effect, but most of the things I write are based on my life. This shouldn’t be a huge shock, nor should you come at me in the comments for doing it (you should definitely come at me in the comments). It should be acceptable and expected, since I named the blog after me and my nickname for myself.

If they ever do a movie about my Blog, besides me not recommending they do it, they would see that a lot of the story would necessarily have to revolve around me. The editors would have to do a lot of digging to find nuggets of interest between the hours of footage of me sitting on the couch and perusing the internet. Most of all, they would have to heavily dramatize many of the events using slow motion to just to get to the 60 minute mark.

Ben’s Bitter Blog the Movie would mostly revolve around my Friday mornings, typing things on the computer and making a lot of faces. The camera would probably be really shaky, and music really dramatic, in order to make writing truly ridiculous things on the computer, then erasing them dramatic enough for movie consumption. What they would have to realize is that I would have to be one of the main characters of the movie, and I would insert a lot of my own thoughts (bitter), emotions (bitter), and feelings (bitter) into the story.

I was listening to a YouTube video this week about how you should NOT insert yourself into a story, in the context of how bad Hollywood movies are these days. She was, of course, talking about other people, like Hollywood writers, and not me. Obviously, it’s not me that is ruining movies right now. That will come later, when my book gets optioned to be turned into a movie. Then, I plan on ruining Hollywood. There are a hundred reasons why movies are struggling, but her focus was about the principle of Self-Insertion. Come on, people. Get your minds out of the gutter. Her definition of self-insertion was when a writer inserts themselves either directly or indirectly as a fictional character. She went beyond that and also talked about how people insert their worldviews, or thoughts on politics, religion, or culture.

Before talking about self-insertion being entirely bad, she did say it was okay to include some of yourself as long as it wasn’t overpowering the story or completely breaking it. She also said it’s better to be subtle than reigning down your worldview like Thor reigning down his lightning. Inserting myself in Ben’s Bitter Blog the Movie is essential, but inserting my religious beliefs on a story about Thor, while changing everything about him that nothing to do with the comics or movies is probably bad for that kind of story.

It was quite a wake up call to me, because in my fiction book writing process, I’ve injected quite a bit of my attitude, thoughts, and feelings into my MC. Even more so, I’ve injected some of my feelings about my father into the MC’s father. And quite a lot of one of my former bosses horribleness into one of the main villains. If he ever sees the TV show, based on the movie, based on the books, based on the short story, based on the blog post I wrote once, he may sue me for basing my villain so directly on him.

I don’t care that much, because I will have so much money from the rights I get from the TV show, based on the movies, that were based on the book, based on the short story, based on the blog post I wrote once. I’ll keep him so tied up in counter suits and litigation that he will go bankrupt trying to get a few million from me. I’ve even cleverly disguised his horribleness by giving him one trait that he didn’t have in real life, compassion, so that he can’t claim that the character wasn’t 100% based on the complete monster he was. Because even real monsters have souls, and unlike my boss, who had less of a soul than a ginger.

I disagree with the YouTube video creator on a few issues about self-insertion though. The first issue I had with it, is that according to the Great Council of Writing, whose rules for writing are both absolute and completely flexible, say that you should “write what you know”. This rule immediately takes any possibility of writing about math off the table. It’s also going to make it almost impossible to include any women in any of my stories. In the 52 years I’ve lived on this planet, I’ve had a mom, a wife, a daughter, two sisters, grandma’s, dozens of co-workers, that were female, and I’ve yet to understand even one of them at all.

That’s going to be a problem, since one of my main characters is a woman. I’m going to have to hope that any woman that reads my story understands that this woman is a fictional character. I will have to claim that she is so unique of a woman that she says and does things that no woman would think or say ever. I will have to claim in the world which we inhabit in the story, woman are completely different from what they are in the real world, and they should relate to the character nonetheless.

As stated briefly above, it won’t be as bad for my story, because my book isn’t based on anything else, so I can do a lot of self-insertion in my book. I just need to remember to have auto correct on, so when the main character takes down dozens of skyscrapers to save the city, it doesn’t provide evidence that Bitter Ben actually did this in real life. I don’t want the authorities coming after me when they realize I really did destroy all of downtown Seattle.

Self-insertion, taken too far, can kill a story quite easily. As a writer it’s impossible to completely take yourself out of a story, but it is smart to distance yourself enough to where it makes sense to the story. For instance, my main character, while very much based on a younger version of me, is thankfully not 100% based on me. He has a sense of humor, has game with girls, and has a dash of not giving up whenever something hard happens.

While you are busy figuring out how to not self-insert yourself into every part of your story, I’ll be over here inserting Bitter Friday Giftures into your Friday…

I have…

Many of the stories you’ve heard on this blog…

However, many of the real life events…

When they do Ben’s Bitter Blog the movie…

More importantly…

When I was listening to a YouTube video this week…

Her focus was on the writing…

Not that kind of insertion…

She was talking about inserting…

Which can be a bad thing…

Even though the Great Council of Writing told you…

Although writing what you know is hard…

ARRRGGGHHHHH

Bitter Self-Inserting Ben