It might seem like nonfiction writers get off easy when it comes to developing characters: We don’t have to create them from whole cloth, inventing layers of backstory and idiosyncrasy—the people we’re writing about already exist! But the work of translating a real person into a character on the page has its own messy, fraught challenges. There are the craft challenges of capturing the unknowable totality of a person (impossible) and the interpersonal challenges of facing people’s reactions to how you’ve described them (terrifying). Not to mention the exceedingly strange experience of turning yourself into a character, without the plausible deniability of autofiction.
Writing About the Self
In the early days of writing my memoir, Negative Space, I struggled to capture my teenage self. I had vague impressions of my past self as angry, feral, a snarling wraith of a girl. But what was under that hard shell? I could barely remember. I remembered that time from the perspective of someone who had lived through it and made it to the other side; I was busy looking forward, like most of us. But the memoirist has to stop and look back, to see her past self clearly, from the outside—as a character.
In developing the character of my past self, I asked all
