Who is Ray?
On Writing a Man Who Isn't Me
When writing a male main character for a survival/thriller—especially in a science fiction setting—I suppose there’s always a danger the author will create an idealized version of themselves. Maybe it’s even inevitable. After all, our characters come from within us. Even if you plan to model your protagonist on an external figure—a historical icon, a war hero, a scientist—you still filter them through your own thoughts, values, and emotions. A little of the author always creeps in.
But I’ve come to believe that’s not a flaw. It’s part of the alchemy of writing.
That’s how it was with Ray Decker, a central character in my novel Transmigrant. At first glance, he might be the kind of man I’d like to be—he’s strong, capable, driven, genetically engineered to survive, and just tall enough to loom in a crisis. He knows how to act when it counts. He can lead when others falter.
Me? I’m not genetically engineered. I’m just 5’11”. I’m older now, no longer as strong or physically capable as I once was. I don’t storm through problems. I endure them. I wait them out. I listen more than I speak, which wasn’t true when I was younger. Ray is short-tempered. I’m patient—probably because I’ve had to be.
But he has a reason to be short-tempered and inclined to act fast. He doesn’t have time to screw around. He doesn’t even count years the same way I do. He counts them backward. He’s at year 15 now. And when he reaches zero, he’ll be dead. Like his father before him. That’s what makes him decisive. He doesn’t get caught up in analysis paralysis. He simply acts. Right or wrong. He does it.
The more I think about it, the less like me he becomes.
Sure, he started as someone I admired. Someone I might have wanted to be in a different life or under different circumstances. But characters have a funny way of walking away from you. They grow. They resist. They evolve into their own people, and if you’re honest as a writer, you let them.
Ray may have been shaped by my hands—but he was never bound by them.
That, I think, is the magic of storytelling. You begin with fragments of yourself, or reflections of your hopes, or pieces of your past… and somewhere in the writing, something new is born. A voice not quite yours. A soul not quite borrowed. And if you’ve done it right, they become real—not because they are you, but because they aren’t.
So yes, when you write a protagonist, some part of you is always in the room. But that doesn’t make your character a self-insert. It makes them human.
And if you’re lucky, by the time you finish telling their story… they’ll surprise you.
Ray became the kind of man that not only resisted the establishment, but he resisted me and, in the end, he kind of wrote his own story. I think it’s a better story because of his contributions.
For more on Ray Decker, read Anomaly, a quick synopsis of his early life.
Transmigrant, a survival thriller in a science fiction setting, can be found on Amazon and Audible.
As of the time of this writing, I still have some free Audible credits left (US and UK) available in exchange for fair reviews.