Mary Sue – Who Is She And Why She’s Bad News For Your Story

She’s got your favorite name, she’s got soulful eyes that change color, she’s the most beautiful girl ever. Everybody loves her – pets, kids, parents and all the guys (even the bad guy wants to sleep with her and falls in love with her and might even change sides for her.) She’s Miss. Perfect, and anyone who dares to insult her must pay. She’s the perfect version of you.

 

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Mary Sue concept comes from fan fiction and is a self- insertion of the author into the fandom. She have of course existed in original fiction long before fan fiction. Only in fan fiction she is often much more obvious and annoying.

Mary Sue is often named things like; Raven, Hunter, Saphira, Serena, Arwen, Ivory, Alexandra, Glory, Violet, Elisabeth or any combination of these and similar names. Sereabeth or Elexandria or maybe Ravshpire. She also has a lot of names –(Like: Raven Serenbeth Holyadria Samson Black) like five or six of them and they all mean something that has to do with her character.  At least one of the names is one the author call himself or wish she was called. Or maybe one of her/his screen names…

She of course is stunningly beautiful and the author spends A LOT of time describing her with difficult words no one really knows what they mean but they sound pretty. She has purple or maybe golden hair (or Raven black with pink high lights works too), emerald, violet or even color changing eyes and probably a special birthmarks or tattoo.  Also, she’s got a sad past, mostly with dead parents and abusive (half of the time sexually abusive) step-dads or boyfriends. She is a tortured soul and everyone must agree that the way people have treated her in the past is awful.

She not only exceptional in the looks department, but she also has a special destiny and powers far beyond anyone else. When she goes to fight the bad guy she defeats him without any real problem – or if she fails she angsts about it for several paragraph and a minor character (since everyone but Mary Sue is minor character) has to tell it wasn’t her fault and she doesn’t have to worry because everyone still likes her.

She can also sing and play lots of instruments for no good reason and has lots of money also for no real reason.

Now you’re starting to worry – if you can’t have a nice, lovable, attractive character with a special destiny, named something cool, what fun is your book going to be? You don’t want your hero to have crocked teeth (of course guys can be Mary Sues – or Gary Stu as they are mostly called,) lots of zits and average powers. You want her to be a superhero.

Don’t worry. Everything is okay in moderation, and most heroes have some Mary Sue attributes.  The trick is not to let them take over.

Your hero can be attractive – just don’t let the whole first page be about just how awesome his muscles look or how expensive all his clothes are. She can be an orphan raised by mean people, but don’t let them be horrible abusive people that are out to get her because you want the reader to feel bad for her. If they are mean there has to be a reason. Your hero can have special powers and an odd scar (you remember Harry Potter right?) but he has to have flaws (but being clumsy like Bella Swan is not a flaw – sorry S. Mayer –it’s a semi-cute quality. Being blind, anger management problems, being dishonest, a germaphobic, uncontrollable blushing, having a fear of commitment or just being very selfish, are flaws.)

There are lots of Mary Sue test you can take, but a lot of characters in fantasy will score high because most of the time in fantasy there are prophecies about chosen ones and special powers and marking. You can mostly ignore a high score, just as long as your character still is a character not a stereotype or the perfect you. Just make sure you’re being honest with yourself!

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The First Book Comes…First!?!

I spend a serious amount of time trying to find books to read. I mean I sometimes spend more time looking for something to read than actually reading it. One of the things I hate most about lists (mostly on blogs and forums) is that people sometimes list their favorite book in a series instead of the first one – like if this for example:

My favorite fantasy books

1. Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix

2. The Good, the Bad and the Undead

3. River Marked.

And so on.

All of these are some other number rather than the first in the series. And I so wish people would post the first in a series. At least with book series where you need to read the first few books to “get” the world. (That would make the list – 1. HP & Philosopher’s stone 2. Dead Witch Walking 3. Moon Called)

I get that some people might just love one of the books super duper much. But frankly it makes it a lot hard to figure out if you read book# 1 of the series and hated it or if you might want to read book 1 before reading  the suggested book which nr #X in the series. So when not referring to a spec topic, why not just put the first book in a series first? If you love some books of the series more you can mentioned that in your “read why” section maybe?

It might sound be weird and a little wonky of me but I want to read a book, I don’t want to start with nr. 5 in the series. I want the one first and then the rest. Especially with books that are a SERIES. Which a lot of Urban Fantasy and Fantasy books are and what I read most.

At the same time I get that if you’re searching for ‘hunky millionaire’ books, you might just want books with hunky millionaires and not all books might feature that (even in the same series.) This is more common with more stand alone romance novels with a new couple in every book. Then I think it’s totally fine.. I mean sometimes you just want to read about a hunky rich dude, right?

But you gotta admit it’s kind of weird when you got to ‘best young adult novels’ and get Catching Fire instead of the Hunger Games as number one. As Goodreads thankfully these days always have the series along with the title in a (parenthesis) this is less of a problem than it used to be back in the “good old days of yore” when you looked up lists on blogs and forums more often than not. But still for me the first book still comes, well, first.