Now, most people know that one of the most common mistakes made by new authors (particularly fan-fic authors) is making the hero of the story a Mary Sue (Gary Stu, Self Insert, or whatever other term you like). However, what a lot of people fail to grasp is that desperately attempting to screw up your characters to ensure they aren’t going to be seen as Marys is just as bad, if not worse, then writing a Mary in the first place.
I understand that there are tests you can put your character through that will supposedly establish if she is a Mary. You know the sort of thing – add a point if she knows magic, add two points if she has a special name, add eight points if everyone loves her. You can lower your character’s score by giving her flaws and other issues, and the aim is to get the total score as low as possible.
I cannot stress strongly enough what a BAD, BAD, BAD, BAD way to write a character this is. You don’t put a character together like an equation. You don’t give her a negative score for positive attributes and a positive score for negative attributes, and then jiggle the figures until the character profile fits within the “not a Mary” category. If you do things like this, you will end up with completely false characters with a string of bizarre personality traits.
These tests simply do not work, because real living human beings aren’t put together like robots. Some people are nice, and happy, and pretty, and good at almost everything; some people are complete scum. That’s real life. You should write your character profiles from the ground up – let your characters live their lives. Write histories. Let them get bullied, or be bullied, or whatever else. Allow them to become real people. If you do this properly, then the personalities they have developed will dictate how your story progresses.
And if one of your characters grows up to be a Mary, let her be a Mary. Don’t suddenly throw in characters that hate her just to keep that all important Mary-score down to an acceptable level. If one of your other well thought out characters will love Mary, let that character love her. If you force traits on people for the sake of a margin, you aren’t writing realistically any more.
Quite simply, let characters be what they want to be. Let their personalities determine how they react to each other. Even if one of your characters is a Mary, your book as a whole will be so much more believable than if you gave her a hunchback for “balance”.
As an aside, I tend to group characters into three distinct types. (Technically there are many categories of character: protagonist, antagonist, spear-carrier, flat, round, etc., but all of these tend to fall into three overall types.) If every character in your story fits into the same category, you might want to look at the way you are producing your characters, because you may be unintentionally (or intentionally) forcing them to be what you want them to be, rather than what THEY want to be.
1. Characters you want to be. These characters tend to be the ones that have the least amount of horrible things happening to them. They are generally well-liked, and are most likely to be accused of being a Mary. They tend to survive until the end of the book, because no-one wants to be the dead guy.
2. Characters you want to be friends with. Not necessarily because they are nice. Perhaps they are just the sort of people that are most likely to keep you alive when the zombies attack; or perhaps they are so ugly they make you look better.
3. Characters you want to punch in the mouth. Ranging from the mildly irritating, to the plain evil.
No matter what you do, your characters need to FEEL right. Your characters should have minds of their own, and you should never lumber them with faults or unpleasant traits for no good reason. Furthermore, every character should be engaging. You will notice there is no category listed for “boring or inconsequential characters”. That’s because, if your story is good enough, your reader will want to read about everyone you have created.
Never write to a formula, and do not let your fear of the Mary Sue get in the way of writing a truthful, realistic character.
Addie on 1 November 2008, 19:06 said:
Carbon,
This is a WONDERFUL article! Just what I’ve been feeling about Mary Sues. I completely agree, constructing characters based on the points they get can approach a write-by-numbers deal.
Some people are gifted and beautiful and likeable all at once and that’s just the way it is. If the author’s obsessed with glorifying them (cough Cullens), it can get a little boring, but if they’re just shown as they are …
Anyway, two thumbs up!
Snow White Queen on 1 November 2008, 19:23 said:
Nice article…I’ve been facing this problem myself, and I have to admit, some of the questions on M-S tests are stupid.
For example, my story takes place in a world where a specific race has magic, so when a character from that race has magic too, it automatically raises their score, even if it’s normal for them.
And you get points if they’re the same gender as you…it’s ridiculous in many ways.
I think I’m done with those litmus tests now…although ironically, the character I based on myself (he’s the opposite gender, but I took many of my characteristics and put it into him) got the lowest score.
And I wasn’t even trying to de-Sueify him!
Virgil on 1 November 2008, 19:55 said:
Good article Carbon. As always, real people work the best for templates.
GC on 2 November 2008, 17:51 said:
You know, one Gary Stu I’ve always liked is Jake from the Animorphs. It’s a perfect example of what you said, the way he develops through the series…
Kitty on 2 November 2008, 18:19 said:
Litmus tests are more like guidelines instead of hard-and-fast rules. I took one of those with Harry Potter—yep, he got definite Mary Sue points, but he’s clearly not one.
It’s just best not to take those too seriously xP
Elanorea on 4 November 2008, 05:37 said:
“For example, my story takes place in a world where a specific race has magic, so when a character from that race has magic too, it automatically raises their score, even if it’s normal for them.”
Most litmus tests have a note to the effect that if some characteristic is normal for the race/universe, it doesn’t give Mary Sue points.
But yes, I agree that Litmus tests definitely shouldn’t be taken as the be-all, end-all guide to character development, they’re mostly there to be taken for fun. If you are unable to tell whether a character is a Mary Sue without the help of a test, you probably shouldn’t be writing at all.
And taking the test with characters from others’ works can often be misleading, since if you’re not the author you won’t know all the details and motivations behind a character. Of course, it can still be fun, especially if the character is a really obvious Mary Sue ;).
Rand on 5 November 2008, 20:19 said:
thank you. has anyone here read Raising Ophelia?
Rand on 6 November 2008, 18:49 said:
Thank you! That’s cool- I’m about to make my character thoroughly despicable now.
2) Bella, wow, her middle name’s Mary Sue.
SallyB on 10 November 2008, 23:25 said:
Rand-
Wait, do you mean Reviving Ophelia? Because I’ve read that (and heard of a somewhat related book called Raising Cain), although I don’t see how it relates.
Re the article: I agree wholeheartedly that the Mary Sue litmus tests are horrible as rubrics for your charachters. But then again, they aren’t supossed to be – and I would disagree with your unqualified statement that they’re no good at all. Mary Sue tests measure the usual symptoms, not the character itself (after all, as you so aptly pointed out, you can’t quantify or dissemble a personality). They’re mostly aimed at writers unfamiliar with the concept, and they don’t really work when you’re familiar with the common Sue attributes and work to avoid them without really changing who your charachter is.
In other words, litmus tests are still handy for new writers trying to detect the strange and mysterious beings known as Mary Sues. But they measure the common symptoms only, and fixing your charahcter by tweaking the symptoms is like trying to cure a fever-causing disease solely by wearing an ice pack on your head.
Carbon Copy on 13 November 2008, 20:54 said:
Hi SallyB – thanks for your comments.
The point of this article was to make clear that it doesn’t matter if your character is a Mary Sue. As long as the character is interesting and engaging, nothing else matters. What good does putting your character through a test do? The test can tell you if the character is a Mary Sue, but it can’t tell you if the character is a good one. Why should you HAVE to “work to avoid” common Mary Sue “symptoms”? Let your characters be what they want to be, and they will become real.
It’s hard to qualify a statement like “these tests are no good”, but I’m talking from personal experience, and the experiences of others.
I know there are lots of young authors who are so terrified of creating a Mary Sue that they will do anything to make sure characters score low in these tests. That is simply a bad way to write. The tests are not good creative tools, but people use them as if they are. This article is a warning against stifling your own creativity in that kind of way.
There is no quick and easy way to write good characters, and I stand by my statement that these tests have no value.
Jenny on 17 June 2009, 06:25 said:
The tests themselves, no.
I will admit to using it as a springboard though for critique.
However, say the question is ‘Is your character named after you?’
I’ll ask the author ‘Does your character’s name bear any resemblance to yours? How? Why? Where? When? What? Who?’ or something along those lines.
It may be that in their setting, their name is a ‘Tom’, ‘Dick’, ‘Harry’, type name.
Danielle on 17 June 2009, 13:19 said:
I used to like these tests. I used to run every character I came up with through at least one of the Mary Sue tests, and I was usually disappointed with my results. Then, a few days ago, I decided to run Harry Potter through the Fantasy Cliche Meter and the Original Fiction Mary Sue Litmus Test.
On the Fantasy Cliche Meter, Harry scored a 62, where anything above 56 says “Look, forget it. Please stop making my beloved genre look any more idiotic than it already does. What, do you think writing fantasy is a ‘Let’s see how hackneyed and trite I can make this…’ contest?”
On the Mary Sue Test, Harry scored a 47. On this scale, any character who scored between 36 and 55 “needs some work in order to be believable. But despair not; you should still be able to salvage [him] with a little effort. Don’t give up.”
Makes me glad Rowling never used these tests.
KeriaHoshigaki on 4 July 2009, 13:24 said:
these tests are pretty stupid. I mean, how is a character a mary-sue for being a long lost relative of someone? thats basically saying, YOU MUST CREATE YOUR OWN FAMILIES OF CHARACTERS. stupid! I mean, run naruto characters through these tests and it will tell you theyre all mary-sues/gary-stus/whatevers. but the one time you can tell is basically how you said. i mean, heres an example of a rubbish story with a mary-sue, everyone knows its crap: twilight (and series) i read twilight, got bored half to death. read the second book; almost died of boredom on the first page. skipped to breaking dawn, heres what its like: “m bella swan, most new vampires go crazy over a speck of blood but i have enough control to resist 100000 gallons of it. I can also put up a barrier to protect from mental attacks, i have a hot boyfriend and am just friends with everyone”
christians would say: well god made her for a reason.
i would reply: yeah, everyone makes mistakes including god.
no offense to christians, but i am jashinist, btw.
Danielle on 6 July 2009, 18:22 said:
@ Keria:
God doesn’t make mistakes. Of course, Bella was created by SMeyers, who needed someone to live out her lifelong fantasy of marrying a vampire, giving birth to a demon baby, and becoming a vampire herself. So Bella’s only purpose in life was to be a Mary-Sue and drive everyone crazy, and she fulfilled this purpose to the highest degree. headdesk
Aldrea945 on 4 September 2009, 21:36 said:
Cool way of putting it. I have been over your articles again and again. Burns Twilight and Eragon. The only relatively good part in Twilight is the fight scene.
@GC:
I love the Animorphs, so I don’t honestly believe Anyone in that’s a Mary Sue. But I won’t say your wrong. I can’t honestly say I’ve read everything on them.
fffan on 5 May 2010, 05:01 said:
“Characters you want to be friends with. Not necessarily because they are nice. Perhaps they are just the sort of people that are most likely to keep you alive when the zombies attack; or perhaps they are so ugly they make you look better.”
That sir, is a quotable quote.
Deborah on 4 November 2010, 11:03 said:
thank you. I am so sick of people calling ‘Sue/Stu’ every time a character has magic powers.
Tim on 19 May 2013, 07:24 said:
What.
Seriously, nothing is right here at all.
No, it isn’t. This is an absolute failure to understand the purpose of these tests or how you’re supposed to use them.
The purpose of a litmus test is to tell you the pH of a substance, and that’s all. It doesn’t tell you if you’ve mixed it correctly, it certainly doesn’t tell you that you should throw a whole bunch of some random acid in to make it less alkaline.
The Mary Sue tests are the same. The questions determine a pattern in a character; excessive focus on specialness. A little specialness makes a character interesting, but when they are defined entirely by their specialness they are a hollow shell with no humanity, no authenticity.
You can’t just get rid of the pattern by ticking all the boxes that give minus points, you have to scrap the character and start over and learn from it.
And at no point did you consider maybe that’s not what the test is actually for?
No, they are not. People are not nice, happy, pretty or good at everything all the time. Everyone nice has days when they don’t want to get out of bed. Everyone happy has been sad, annoyed, angry, bored and every other human emotion. Everyone pretty has to work for that and make sacrifices for it. Everyone good at something has to practice and study and work for it. Mary Sues are shit characters because human beings are not like that.
That kid in school who was good at swimming? You saw the trophies and everyone respecting him and you wished you were him, right?
Did you ever see him swimming endless lengths in a dark, empty pool while you were enjoying yourself with your friends? Did you think about the pressure he was under to succeed, the knowledge that he could do his workouts faster and maybe see his friends if he just gave into the temptation and took steroids?
That girl with all the friends, you wished you were her?
Ever think of the times she just wanted to stay home but didn’t want to let them down? What it’s like to have two friends fight and demand you take sides? When someone stops talking to you and you don’t know why? Having a lot of friends is great when everything’s going right, when it’s not it’s suddenly like trying to keep fifty plates spinning in three different rooms.
You think it’s great to play the violin? Enjoy your long practice sessions, dose of Fiddler’s Neck and high chance of RSI. Want to be rich and famous? Ever notice all the fun those people have with drug addiction, cult membership, creepy fans, the press digging through their garbage and stalking them everywhere they go, body image issues and ultimate suicide at the ripe old age of 34?
Mary-Sue characters are hopeless because they don’t ring true. They don’t struggle to be good, they embody it. They don’t work towards becoming talented, they are born talented. They live with all the benefits and none of the drawbacks. They earn nothing because they don’t struggle, they deserve nothing because they don’t earn it.
The two are mutually exclusive. Good characters who are supposed to be fallible mortals are defined by things other than how special and wonderful they are.
No, nobody is like that. If you don’t understand that their life contains difficulty then you have failed to empathise with them.
swenson on 19 May 2013, 14:02 said:
I’m not completely on board with the article’s bashing of MS tests, which I agree can be helpful, but at the same time I do recognize there’s a problem in some parts of the internet (and the real world) where people are so terrified of this idea of Mary Sues that they insist characters must have no special traits at all and accuse any characters they dislike of being Mary Sues.
The problem is really that people don’t properly interpret Mary Sue tests. You look at the most famous one, the Springhole Mary Sue Litmus Test, it clearly states at the beginning “Please, please, please remember that these are the symptoms, not the disease. Just because something is on the test does not mean that it’s inherently bad and should be avoided at all costs.” and “At best, I can only offer [this test] as a guide, not an instruction manual.” If someone using the test fails to notice these
But, of course, a character can be a Sue while getting a low score on the test, and they can be a well-rounded character while getting an enormous score on the test. Personally I think the best test is pretty much the original: if a character distorts the world around them, they’re a Sue. If they’re the BESTEST EVER at everything and the MOST BEAUTIFUL EVER and everyone is in love with them and they never suffer any problems that ordinary people would (PTSD, drunkenness, gaining weight, breaking bones, getting sick, arguments, etc. etc.) and the story centers on them and only them and they’re the only person who really matters… well, that would be what I classify as a Sue.
Tim on 19 May 2013, 22:10 said:
Well, sure, but most of this article is dedicated to how there is no use at all to the tests (because the author is using them wrong) and the usual hugfox guff about how imaginary characters must be allowed to “be themselves” as if that’s somehow possible without your input. Plus I find the idea that “some people are just like that” absurdly superficial.
I have noticed that as my writing got better there’s a tendency for scores to get lower; testing a character I recall making as a teenager I got a score of over a hundred on the Springhole test, whereas even characters who’ve changed the world in my current setting don’t beat 30.
Yeah, I think the Springhole test is more specifically about trying too hard to make a character unique by focusing entirely on how unusual they are, which is a bad writing habit but doesn’t always result in a traditional Mary Sue (just usually). Harry Potter might not be a traditional Sue, but to a grown man he is something of an eye-rolling character at times with the myriad ways in which he’s marked as the bestest wizard ever. I think you could have halved the number of things that were “special” about him without harming the character; he didn’t have to get the most important job in his Quidditch team, or have the special non-disfiguring (and evil-detecting) scar, or have his foster family be dicks to him for no reason, or…
Fireshark on 19 May 2013, 23:33 said:
I think Mary Sue tests are fine as long as everyone can remember that there is no one way to write, and nobody has the authority to dictate what you should do. So while the creator of springhole.net may be very intelligent and experienced, they can only provide guidelines based on their ideas, rather than some sort of objective standard to judge a character by.
I mean, do the people who worry over poor MS test results also follow all the other guidelines on the website? I don’t particularly like the idea that everything I write has to be socially conscious, and I don’t see the need for endless privilege checklists. Therefore, I just ignore those parts of the site.
Seriously, it’s just a web page. It’s only important to the degree that it represents the kind of people who’ll be reading your story.
Tim on 20 May 2013, 08:54 said:
I don’t know, things like food-coloured skin, only describing someone’s skintone if it’s not white, writing satire about things you don’t understand and such are things you should watch out for regardless.
swenson on 20 May 2013, 09:57 said:
I want a hugfox. It sounds snuggly.
Yep. The traits aren’t the disease, they’re the symptoms.
Yeah, but I think there’s a difference between putting some thought in to not being a jerk and worrying about the big checklist of Things Not To Do—the same as there’s a difference between putting some thought into making a character interesting and well-rounded and worrying about the big checklist of Mary Sue traits.
However, like the MS test, I think things like privilege checklists (dear goodness, we have an actual term for that) can be helpful by raising our awareness of “hey, maybe these are things I should think about before using” or getting us to think about why we put X or Y in the story to begin with.
OOOH! I thought of a really, really good analogy for MS tests. It’s like when you put all of your horrible symptoms into WebMD and it inevitably tells you that you’ve got cancer or kidney failure or whatever. But that doesn’t automatically mean you do have a horrible disease, and in fact you probably don’t.
Fireshark on 20 May 2013, 17:48 said:
Oh yeah, absolutely. But the author also thinks written accents and human-dragon bonding are offensive, and that all make-believe species are analogous to real-life minorities. They also wish that more stories about racism/prejudice dealt with microagressions, despite the fact that those aren’t systematic oppression and aren’t particularly interesting to read fiction about. The author even goes so far as to suggest you don’t understand racism/sexism/whatever if you think the main problem is overt discrimination.
I agree with privilege as a concept, I just don’t think random internet strangers understand the advantages and disadvantages I have in real life. Still, people should certainly try not to take anything for granted.
Tim on 21 May 2013, 14:28 said:
Foxes can make the ^.^ face.Yeah, I mean a lot of Social Justice stuff just results in impossible damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situations like the thing with Dambusters and the name of 617 Squadron’s dog (it was a black labrador called “Nigger,” and the word was also the codephrase for breaching the Mohne Dam), where if you do mention it you’re being insensitive and if you don’t you’re erasing a history of discrimination. This leads to some obvious questions about what you are supposed to do to tell the story.
Ultimately if you try to incorporate every viewpoint you end up saying nothing.
Like you said, the best use of checklists like these is to ensure that you’re aware of every decision you’ve made in your writing rather than just repeating things that you think are essential truths. It avoids fuckups like Eragon’s “poor” family being poor only from the perspective of an upper-middle-class kid, which doesn’t ring true even for people who aren’t actual medieval peasants.
Like I’ve said before, understanding the underlying logic of advice is more important than anything else.
—————————————————————————————-
Well, IIRC How Not To Write A Novel also advises against written accents for the more simple reason that they’re annoying to read, and I think I get where that bonding thing is coming from. It seems to me to be mostly regarding the one-sided Paolini-style bonding where you say it’s a beautiful and meaningful mutual relationship but it’s more or less depicted as having a dragon slave.
Well, it’s pretty correct to say that in the West today the main problem isn’t overt discrimination, but people not thinking about what they’re writing. Like I’m sure the creators of The Smurfs weren’t trying to suggest that men are defined by their abilities but women only by their gender, or anyone trying to make it so the ratio of male to female characters in children’s television is 7:1, but that’s how it came out.
Fireshark on 21 May 2013, 14:47 said:
I dunno, I’m just a lot more concerned over genocide, female genital mutilation, honor killing, the caste system, sex-selective abortion, and that sort of thing. Where I live it’s true that the worst is people being thoughtless or insensitive, but I’d much rather read about an issue like those serious ones than about someone who got slightly annoyed because someone said something dumb.
Fireshark on 21 May 2013, 14:51 said:
Although there is still plenty of overt discrimination against gay people, transgender people, Muslims, etc. I’d still rather hear about that than someone’s list of “microagressions.” (Chrome doesnt even think that’s a real word).
Tim on 21 May 2013, 15:13 said:
Well sure, but to argue those are the only manifestations is getting into what some SJ types do, which is effectively “I’m not a racist because I’m not currently lynching a black person.” You know, like Rummel in the Never Again series with his creepy fetishising of the Asian love interest which isn’t racist because look, racists do these things and I know these things are bad!
Well sure, about half that list is just ultra-touchy people complaining.
Ashley on 21 June 2018, 15:11 said:
If my character’s who I want to give a punch on (not really, she’s prideful she’ll murder me), because she’s cruel, evil, money thirsty, very prideful, tries to murder her whole family just for money (and did killed half of them off, UGH) but will people think she’s a Mary Sue at first cos she is really attractive, smart, will make you think she’s sweet and innocent at first, and worst of all the narrator is in love with her (at first)?
TMary on 21 June 2018, 15:14 said:
Eh, they might think she is at first, but then be surprised (pleasantly or not) when they discover what she’s really like. To me “Mary Sue” is when it’s obvious that the story revolves around this character – nothing bad is allowed to happen to them, even when it should, and nobody is allowed to dislike them, even when they shoukd. You seem like you’re fine :)