Hot Topics: Mary Sues (Conclusion)

Like the Mix Type Sue showed, these personalities and types I've been mentioning are just decorating and disguising the deeper problem. All of these “types” of characters can be written well with a skilled writer and storyteller at the helm. But as I wrote earlier all Mary Sues are at their cores the same. They live by their own rules and are exaggerations of realistic people. The worse thing about it is that Mary Suedom can make your character hard to relate to.

No one is perfect, perfectly feminine or perfectly badass. No one is horrible at everything at life and has no good qualities, and no one goes through life without getting properly in trouble for bad behavior or getting rewarded for their good acts.

Is Mary Suedom something you should be concerned about for your character(s)? Yes. Writing stories that readers can connect to is the whole point of wanting to share your work. But is your character a Mary Sue? Well just ask yourself these questions:


1. Are the rules of logic, reason and good sense consistently broken for this character? Are the only people who dislike her villains? Do the people in her life react to her behavior and choices in unrealistic and in out of character ways? Do her actions only result in good outcomes and never bad? If you answered yes to these questions you have a story bender on your hands and should fix that right away if it's a reoccurring theme. Now, a little bit of story bending occasionally won’t necessarily kill your character or your story, but only if your character is generally realistic and reasonably flawed otherwise.

2. Does she have good and bad qualities? Aka is she a realistic character? You have more fudge room here (especially on the good side if she's the hero), but make sure she has some flaws and some positives.


Of course, if the rules are only bent or broken for these characters one or two times, then it can be okay. But if it's an important moment in the plot, then you will like be accused of using deus ex machina, (which they’ll be another blog about), not necessarily of writing a Mary Sue. And that's not a good thing.

So how do you avoid Mary Sues? Basically give these characters weaknesses (or strengths accordingly), give them faults, give them hardships. And make sure they act based on those strength and weaknesses constantly throughout the story and in realistic ways. Also make sure that the other characters react to them in realistic ways based on their own personality faults and strengths (which especially means making sure characters that dislike the main character aren't always villains or unsympathetic). You shouldn’t just focus on how “awesome” your character is. Make your character feel human, real, relatable.

Of course there is variability in Sue-ness. There tends to be a level of Sue-ness each person can stand. In a more epic story it’s likely that the some readers won’t mind a character with Mary Sue tendencies (in both departments) and will enjoy how “awesome” your character is (Ferris is basically sue - still love that movie). Other readers, however, will want to throw your book across the room. In either case, your best bet is to make the character feel as real as possible, even if amazing things are happening around them or to them.

One last note, there’s often a lot of talk about Mary Sues appearance, their names and their stuff. Some sites say if your main character has wings or blue hair or goes by a Japanese name, they’re probably a Mary Sue. What’s important here isn’t the surface things themselves, but likely the self-indulgence (aka story bending) that concerns these writers. Ultimately they’re worried that your self-indulgence bleeds into the rest of the story. However if you can find a realistic reason for these physical things (the main character is part of a race of winged people, she dyed her hair blue, she decided to rename herself because she loves Japanese culture) then you’re probably safe, even if you might incite eye rolling from the reader.