In my work in progress, I’m not only basing the villain on myself. I’m basing the hero on myself too.

It’s easy to base the villain on yourself because we are the first to point out our flaws. Basing the hero on yourself is much harder. Some writers use self-inserts for wish fulfillment. If you invest too much of yourself into a character, you can make that person too good (and too boring). There’s a reason why “main character energy” isn’t a compliment.

But writing is therapeutic to both writer and reader. The heroes we create can help readers find the heroism in themselves, especially in times like these. By using ourselves as the basis, we can create heroes who are more natural, more likable, and more human—if we do it properly.

Here are some things to consider when basing the hero on yourself. But first, you must be capable of honest self-reflection. If you’re the type of person who, let’s say, insists on being the center of attention when some team wins a hard-earned trophy and then take that trophy home as if you had won it, this exercise might not be for you.

What are your best traits?

You may have a great sense of humor. You may be the one who plans activities and keeps calm when things don’t go right. You may be someone people come to when they need to talk about their problems. The traits that make you likable are things readers like about a character.

You can turn these traits into superpowers to help the hero get through their challenges. It’s not magical powers or super-strength that make someone a hero. It’s the little, but important things, like earning people’s trust and persisting through setbacks, that can save the day.

When have you been heroic?

You might not have faced physical danger (like I have). But we all have moments where we have to take a big risk, or choose what is right over what is easy. A good hero makes the moral choice even when it is much easier and beneficial to them to go the other way. And if you’ve ever regretted making a wrong choice, your story gives you the opportunity for a redemptive “what if.”

What are your weaknesses?

Now that Superman has returned to the cultural zeitgeist, we can talk about kryptonite. Every hero has weaknesses and limitations. If a hero has unlimited power, victory would come too easily. And knowing that heroes have limits to their power reminds us that we still have power of our own. No one is so powerful that they can’t be weak, and no one is so weak that they can’t be powerful.

Giving your weaknesses to the hero gives you the opportunity to learn how to deal with them in real life. We can also discover ways to turn those weaknesses into strengths.

When have you triumphed against huge odds?

We may never get a chance to save the world (although we can each do a small part). But we have had moments when we’ve achieved something when the odds were stacked against us. For me, it was earning Eagle Scout after dealing with my parents’ divorce and time with a daddyball Scoutmaster, and when I earned my BA at CSUN while taking care of my mom after her stroke.

Think about how you were able to achieve your most important goals. What skills did you bring? What did you have to learn? How did you deal with setbacks? What kept you from giving up? Those are qualities you can bring to your character.

What are your stakes?

Most of us never go through life-and-death situations, but we’ve all had stakes that seemed greater than survival. We may gain or lose a relationship. We may either achieve our fondest goals or fail in abject humiliation. That’s why we need to raise the stakes beyond life-and-death. There are victories greater than living and fates worse than death.

Think about your greatest hopes and fears. How did you feel when the worst happened? What feelings did you have when you achieved your goals? What really determines the stakes in the story is how your character feels about them. If they matter to the hero, they will matter to the reader.

How can you create separation between you and your hero?

Regardless of how much of ourselves we put into our characters, we still need emotional separation from them  so we can let them go through whatever situations they face in our story. This separation avoids the problems with using self-inserts and creating a roman à clef.

My main character is a technical writer who experienced many of the issues in corporate life that I have. However, she isn’t a gender-swapped version of me. She’s a millennial (born in 1996) who has different perspectives and life experiences than I do. Her upbringing is unlike mine, and she interacts with the other characters in a different way than I would. She faces challenges I’d never face and has skills and insights I don’t.

Like my other stories, the more I develop her, the more different she becomes. As an author, my job is to set my characters loose in the story and write down what happens. Even I don’t know what they’ll do next. But this type of separation gives me the freedom to create the type of characters who fit best in my story.

How can you help readers find the hero in themselves?

Ultimately, our goal isn’t to be the hero of our story, but to help readers find the hero in themselves. Readers can relate as we share our strengths and weaknesses, hopes and fears, and moral choices and temptations. But these characteristics are only a starting point. When we bring our characters to life, they develop their own personalities and make their own choices in the story. That’s when a book transforms from us just telling a story to creating an experience we can share with our readers.

These are my goals for my work-in-progress. By creating heroes, I hope to inspire others to be heroic in difficult times.