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the mary-sue check; not just for fanfiction..
Topic Started: Oct 4 2005, 03:10 AM (315 Views)
emily_jae
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has your soul in tupperware..
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You ever been reading a book or story, or even watching a movie and there's a character you suddenly realize is the main character for some reason? OK maybe not, but let me elaborate:

The Mary-Sue. Not necessarily female, but let's say 'she' for clarity's sake. This is the character who is annoyingly perfect. She's brilliant, beautiful, strong, never really seems to react or make a mistake in anything. She's probably got some rare ability too. She's the one who you just get bored with, don't connect with, and ultimately just stop watching/reading about.

Now here's the thing: most of the mentioned characteristics is fine. It's when you find them in groups, like symptoms of something. a pain in your head, blurred vision, memory lapse and forgetfulness are all not too serious...unless you have them all at once...

So how to avoid writing Mary-Sue's...well let's start with how to write a good character. Some basics:

1) A good character must be someone the reader connects to. Not necessarily sympathize with, but make a connection with for good or bad.

Dolores Umbridge. If you've read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, you probably just cringed. At least. She is completely loathable, and I'd venture that she's one of the most hated characters in modern literature. BUT she is a very good character. We connect with her in that we HATE her. We all see in her elements of people we hate or have hated, and we have at times all been bullied and treated unfairly.

Neo. If you've seen the second and third matrix, you probably wondered at some point why he was still around. He's emotionally unattatched. We know he loves Trinity and hooray we get to watch them screw once. But do we connect with him? We have no reason for them to love each other, no motives. In the first one he's trying to find out what it is about himself that is different and he has choices to make that have terrifying consequences. But once those are made and done, he's suddenly just...there. I personally hated him, but not for the same reason I hated Umbridge. I hated that the movies are about him instead of someone interesting. (personally I wish the movies were about Agent Smith) Neo's 'the one', he's the savior, we all know that he's going to save the day. He has no crisis, no problems or weaknesses, just a job to do. He's just there...

...which brings me to point two.

2) A good character has a problem. They have issues. Call me a sadist, but problems and pain are interesting. Not in and of themselves, but it's how characters deal with the problem that is interesting right?

Would any of you read a book about a girl with a nice life and a kind loving family living in suburbia who gets the guy she likes, straight A's and models in her spare time? That's it actually, that's her entire life. BORING!! ok now let's say that this girl hears a voice in her head that tells her to kill the people she sees. She ignores it, but it's getting more and more insistent, and harder to ignore. She thinks she's going insane, and why is there a human skull in the attic? Now THAT'S interesting!!

I wrote a Mary-sue once. She was beautiful, talented, smart and perfect, got the guy and then died to support canon...yes it was fanfiction, forgive me. The longer I wrote her however, the more problems she acquired. I realized suddenly that she was no longer beautiful, she was merely pretty in an average kind of way. She was talented still, but she wasn't a genius anymore, and she was weak in other areas. Plus she suddenly had a huge problem, namely that her past is coming back to bite her. Plus, said talent is making the whole situation inevitable and she feels like she has no choices. It's frustrating for her.

See what I did? I brought her down to ground level. I'm not boasting here, I didn't mean to fix her...it just happened. She had changed, and in a round about way that brings me to my third point.

3) A good character needs to change somehow. To grow, to overcome the problem, or at least to change their attitude. As my writing teacher put it, 'there needs to be a change in value somehow'.

Now, I'd argue that this third point here is...not always necessary. Anyone seen the movie 'the Big Lebowski'? If I remember correctly, the main character really doesn't change or grow at all, but he's still a good character. It's true that the supporting characters are more interesting in a way, but he doesn't fail as a character. And does anything really change in that movie from the beginning to end? Not really...

But this is tricky to do. It's not easy to write a static character who is still interesting. With the above mentioned movie (which I might add is HILARIOUS, but not entirely appropriate...) it's more likely the fact that he's such a low-key guy in such outrageous circumstances, meeting insane people like the millionaire who has the same name as him and his porn-star trophy wife, and his feminist artist sister (who incidentally is Jullianne Moore and makes her entrance flying from the ceiling naked throwing paint at the wall). And his spastic, annoying best friend, John Goodman.

But in most movies and books, there is this shift in value. Even in such off the wall things like Napoleon Dynamite, a movie which is entirely character driven. At the end, when Napoleon asks Debbie to play tetherball, you might realize that he probably wouldn't have done that at the beginning of the movie. Or even Kip, who finally bites the bullet and moves out of his grandmothers to go off and marry his internet girlfriend.

4) A good character wants something. Or wants to want something. They say that we as humans are defined by our desires. This isn't selfish, this is just true. We don't always want for our own personal gain, but we do want constantly. What we want is important. And what your character wants is crucial.

Do they want to stop the bad guy? Do they want their mother back? Do they want to be normal? Do they want to be anything but normal? Do they want money? Fame? Just to survive? To improve themselves? To help someone? To fufill or escape their destiny? If you could sum up your story in a few lines, I bet you'd mention that someone wants something in one of those lines. Let's try a few:

Harry Potter is a boy with a strange destiny and rare powers. He wants to destroy Voldemort and save the world and people he loves.

Frodo Baggins is a regular little hobbit who gets a ring in his inheritance that turns out to be pure evil. He wants to destroy it...but he also wants to keep it and it's tearing him apart.

Obi-wan Kenobi is a talented young jedi who inherited a problem child from his dead master. He wants to raise this kid to be a good and powerful jedi, but this kid is bent on falling to the dark side no matter what he does. This kid himself wants to be powerful, wants to bring peace to the galaxy, and wants a girl he isn't allowed to have.

Need I say more?




Basically, you need to write humans. Ok, so if you're writing science fiction there may be some aliens, but even then, you need to have something to connect the characters to the reader. Not all of them, you may need some characters who exist solely to support an aspect of the story, or so fill up a front row desk, or to support the character. But these are secondary characters, who, while important, aren't as much as the main character. So how do we conciously revamp our Mary-sue's?

List their faults. Then add a whole bunch more. Think realistically. If she is breathtakingly beautiful, think about the breathtakingly beautiful people you've known. Are they usually geniuses? Or even nice people? I think about the 'beautiful people' I knew in high school and most of them went through guys so fast...they broke hearts on a regular basis, and then complained about it. The few who were decent people often complained that people made a lot of bad assumptions about them. People assumed that they were sluts, that they were stupid, trading on their looks, and guys assumed that they were easy and often tried to 'get them' just to show off. No-one has a perfect life. Not even the beautiful people.

Are they geniuses in every field? Now honestly, how many Science Majors also paint masterpieces? And how many talented artists can fix a computer with nothing but a toothpick and a glue gun? Pick a strength and emphasize their failings elsewhere. What subjects (if they're in school) do they struggle with? I know that I personally won an award in drama the same year I almost failed Math. And then how do they deal with their struggle, do they ignore it and hope it goes away or do they apply themselves untill they get better? Most of us do the first right? I know I did...

Does she have an emotional reaction? Does she get angry at her brother for dropping her discman? Does she laugh and then feel guilty when the short kid falls down the stairs? Does she have a crush on a teacher? Does she have something embarrassingly human? Did her dog drag her underwear out of the laundry and into the living room once?


Personally I hated perfect people. I knew a girl who not only was beautiful, smart, hard-working,and a star athlete, but she also got the guy. The guy I liked actually. And she loved to rub it in. Now turns out that the guy was actually a huge jerk, but that's not the point. The point is that if you're writing about someone like that, you'd better be sure that you're writing someone you want us to hate. Because we will.

Be honest. Are you just inserting yourself into the story? There's nothing wrong with this specifically, just make sure it's you in all your imperfect glory. You have faults, failings, embarrassments. If you are inserting yourself, insert YOURSELF, not the ideal 'you' that you wish you could be. The main problem with Mary-sue's is that they're idealizations, often of what the writer wishes they were, or thinks that people should be.



So yeah. Honestly examine your characters. Remember that guy who cut off his arm with a pocket knife so he could climb down the mountain to safety? Well if you need to cut out characters to fix your story, do it. It's unpleasant and messy, but it needs to be done. Being honest about a story is like doing surgery on yourself. But it's not nearly as painful as the critics.

Work hard people!
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Inkstained_Razorblade
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forever are our last goodbyes
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What's sad is, that's all that main stream pop culture movies and tv shows involve - mary-sues of some form or another. Think about it. They are all mary-sues. Crazy stuff. O_O

Good stuff by the way. Fantastic essay. Very helpful advice. I applaud you. *bows down to your greatness*
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emily_jae
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has your soul in tupperware..
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I know!! I was watching that new stargate series the other day and there's that one girl on it who was just annoying me for some reason and then it hit me: she's a mary-sue! she's beautiful, strong, has weird skills, is kind and wise and a good leader and basically everything that is good in the world. I was so disappointed...

Yeah it just goes to show that the formula for money-making movies is explosions and boobs, not well written characters. -throws up all over a random director-

:D
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Ida
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I'm... -
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Damn those suethors.
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