• Your character's name is your name, a name you wish you had, or a name you planned on giving a future child.
  • Naming your character after yourself is usually a dead-on sign that your ego is aboard.
  • Next time, get a phone book and pick a random name, or use a random name generator. Don't spend more than fifteen minutes searching.

• Your character's appearance was deliberately modeled after yourself, or how you wish you looked.
  • Don't do this. Just don't. There is no reason or excuse for it.

• You describe your character in photographic detail, possibly with flowery terms or purple prose.
  • Most readers don't care about what your character looks like as much as you do. Readers don't need, or necessarily even want to read a description that essentially examines your character under a microscope.
  • A good way to keep descriptions short and sweet, yet adequately descriptive, is by describing three or five of the character's most outstanding features.
  • Purple prose does not make good literature. You will most likely be better off keeping green eyes "green" and black hair "black." This keeps the story flowing at a brisk pace.
  • The roleplaying equivalent of this would be inserting bouts of purple prose describing your character every few posts. That's that the introductory post is for.
  • Gamemasters, literacy does not entail purple prose, unless you're willing to call Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, and J.K. Rowling "illiterate."

• Your character is psychologically you, or how you think you would be in your character's shoes.
  • While putting a small part of yourself into your character is a good thing, there's a difference between a small part and the whole thing.

• You think of your character a friend, a child, or even as yourself.
  • Your character is not your friend or child, nor should you see them as such. You should look at your character as a tool used to build a good story.

• Your character does things you wish you could do because you wish you could do them.
  • Another telltale sign that you are living our your fantasies via your character.

• You give your character traits that make him/her stand out from the norm, such as exotically-colored eyes or an exceptional skill of some kind - for no other reason than to make your character stand out.
  • Most people want to stand out for something positive, but giving your character physical gimmicks is just ostentatious. Make sure there's a darned good reason for it to be in your story.
  • An explanation (EG, "her eyes are purple because she ate a lot of magical berries when she was young") is not a reason for it to be in your story.

• Your character is liked or admired in some way by every character who counts. Any character who doesn't is either evil or misguided.
  • In the real world, it doesn't work like this. Nobody is liked by everyone. If Bob doesn't like Jim, that doesn't make Bob evil or misguided; it could just be that from Bob's point of view Jim talks about his fishing trips too much, and Bob hates fishing. From Jim's point of view, Bob is a misguided soul who has yet to discover the joys of anglery. Quite frankly, Bob would spend his time on his real passion - painting. Bob and Jim are both good people in their own right... they just don't get along with each other.

• Your character falls in love with the man or woman of your dreams.
  • If your main character falls in love with your Prince or Princess Charming, this is a good sign that your ego is is going on a date.

• You give your character unusually bad circumstances in his/her life to make the readers sympathize with your character.
  • Is your character's sucky past actually important to the plot, or is its only purpose to gain sympathy from the reader?
  • Is your character's past incredibly sucky? Like as in only one in a zillion people have it this bad?

• Your character usually (if not always) comes out on top in the end, whether it's in battle or in debate.
  • We all want to succeed. When we take it out on our characters, the audience will know exactly what's going on, and they won't be amused.

• Your character serves as a mouthpiece for your personal beliefs and thoughts on things in general.
  • The audience can tell when a character is preaching to them, and they rarely react well.

• When someone doesn't like your character, you take it personally.
  • Your character is not (or shouldn't be) you.