Mary-Sues.
Sometimes they are written well. Manytimes...ehhhh, not so much. There are some traits of mary-sues that no character can be without. Its when you hump all of the mary-sue traits together into one big pulsating ball of screeching horror when you run into trouble. I present to you an example.

A healthy mary-sue trait of a character: Your character carries around a sword that belonged to an ancestor of theirs and holds some sort of sentimental, perhaps mystical, value. Lots of sories incorporate this.

An unhealthy "oh-God-please-end-the-agony" mary-sue: Your character (who has green spikey hair and is a half demon/vampire/elf/wolf) carries around the giant 7 foot long Sword of Kills-Anything, and it burns with purple flame...and it belonged to their father, who was the king of the world.

See the difference there? Granted these are extremes, but the point has been made! There are many other mary-sue aspects, too. I have provided a link to a Mary-Sue Test.

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This will give you a faint idea whether your character is tolerable or if it is a bile-churning Mary-Sue (no offense to those of you with BILE-CHURNING MARY-SUE'S!!!!!!!!)

For fun, let us post our character's scores:

2 of my characters combined recieved a 13

Takai'is - Your Mary Sue Score: 8

Luke (main character in my story) - Your Mary Sue Score: 15

Heh, kind of expected Luke to have a higher score... Damn it, why did he have to get nursed back to health!

Well, both of my alien characters scored in the mid-twenties to mid-thirties, probably because of their obscene level of power and the omission of several notable flaws (such as "sociopath" or "pacifist").


Purely out of interest, I took it for myself (ignoring the questions comparing me to, well, me), and I got a 42. I guess I am too good to be true, like my fiancee tells me

Mokele

Holy [pass språket]! I followed Mokeles example, and took the test on myself.
My score was 65 ^^' I'm a Mary Sue... Noooooes!

Anyway, I've taken this on a couple of my characters, and one of them cored a negative result. Admittedly, he was a schisophrenic, insane religious fanatic, but anyways...
He got -4

5 points! (The Anti-Sue. Your character is the very antithesis of a Mary-Sue. Why are you even taking this test?)

Langor pulled in a 22, which is on the low-side of borderline-Sue :p

Elrohir got a big old 0, so he's all good.

Ethan got a 23, but I suspect it's because he's based off my D&D character.

My soul collector scored a 27, but I'm imagining that comes from the fact that he's immortal, and has his nice special powers despite living in the real world where those things aren't normal. Perhaps the fact he's immortal? that it was caused by divine intervention? that he happens to listen to rock music and writes in his free-time?

Eh, to be honest, the test makes me laugh a little.

I took it for my main character Ryezan and he got a 21. :/

I got a 28 and a 15

My character Aden got an 18.

Some of those questions are so funny. That's a great test.

That test is a liar D8
My Malin got a 33 So what if he's a reclusive genius, he's no mary-sue XD

AAAAAAAAAHHHHH

My character got a 25 so its not a lost cause phew

27 -cries in shame- I actually thought she wasn't too bad

513.... I just checked every box to see how high it would go

PhD Ninjology wrote:

Mary-Sues. Sometimes they are written well. Many times...ehhhh, not so much. There are some traits of mary-sues that no character can be without. Its when you hump all of the mary-sue traits together into one big pulsating ball of screeching horror when you run into trouble. I present to you an example.

The above is important... don't overlook it.

I think I've addressed this before. No one wants to read a story about your unremarkable neighbor "Bob". Fiction is about extraordinary people doing Extraordinary things.

If you avoid "Mary-Sue" Traits at all costs, your character will suffer from it. There is a fine line between Mary-Sue and cliche character traits. If your story is purely plot driven, then you could probably get away with a perfectly normal character, but if you want the reader to be intrigued even a little by your people, you've got to have at least some Mary Sue qualities. They are tried and true recognized behaviors that stimulate a desired response in a reader provided they are used in moderation.

So as far as the test goes, I'd say that having a low score is not a victory. I would rather see a character that falls in the mid to low range of a score around 20-35 (or so)

Don't make your characters "plain" just for the sake of avoiding cliche... cliches come into being because of one undeniable fact: Someone once found something that worked phenomenally well, and too many others copied it. It doesn't mean that the original idea was not brilliant. It was Just over used.

Part 2 of my rant

I've said this before too: Who are you writing for? Me?... your fellow writers?... your high-school English teacher?...

wrong, wrong wrong!!! You should be writing for the millions of readers out there, and they don't over-analyze things the way we do. They don't know and don't care what a Mary-Sue is. They also couldn't care less if you can diagram all of your sentences. They just want to be entertained.

What do the following characters have in common? Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, Eragon, John Langdon, Indiana Jones.

Two things: 1) They are some of the biggest Mary-Sues ever. 2) They are the biggest money makers ever.

So let's face the facts-- as writers, we cringe at the Mary-Sues, but the readers of the world cherish them. Do you think JK Rowlings is losing any sleep because Harry Potter scored a 135 on the Mary Sue test? I Bet not...it's easy to sleep on a pile of money.

Just write a good story, and don't get too caught up in the mechanics of writing theory. Your readers will thank you for it.

Kaisaris, my main female character in my oldest story is a really high score. Not sure why, and not getting rid of anything I've got for her. She's about as un-Mary Sue as they come. I think, but I might be biased, I've been developing her and her lover Aleshan for years.

I should do Aleshan, he would be hilariously offended by something like that. He'd be offended to have his lover and mate called a Mary Sue. And sociopathic Elven princes are not a good thing to offend.

*edit* The thing that probably got her was the questions are too black and white. I actually did take a lot of typical elements and morph them into twisted, bastardized versions of fantasy! Just realized that. The test makes me laugh to.

Aleshan, the character that already has a number of fans, is a 50. Being the immortal, powerful Elven prince with a hell of a lot of "magical" power didn't do good things for him there.

I don't think Indiana Jones counts as a Mary Sue. He's SUPPOSED to be a larger-than-life character. Also, Indiana Jones is sort of a genre study or even parody. Now for the rant I've been dying to do:

***

Ever since Anti-Shurtugal did their Mary-Sue analysis of Eragon, a lot of people have been talking about Mary Sues. A few misunderstandings have even popped up about it, and even schools of MarySueisms.

FIFTHWIND, for instance, says that we shouldn't worry if our characters score high on the Mary Sue test. And I agree. But that's because the Mary Sue tests are flawed to begin with.

You cannot take an arbitrary number of traits and make a checklist. In fantasy, for instance, prophecies are tropes of the genre for a REASON. They're useful tools in a story.

Being a Mary Sue isn't about checking things off on a list. It's about being an incoherent and overpowered mess of a character. It's about being a coolness device while expecting to be taken seriously.

It's not that characters shouldn't be cool. But they should be MORE than cool: they should be characters. There are exceptions to this, like Tarantino's or Frank Miller's stylized, cool and calm killers. But even their characters have flaws and a certain depth. And, again, these characters are SUPPOSED to be larger-than-life.

Mary-Sueness IS something that you should avoid. But I think we're all skilled enough here to not worry about that.

Some stories are just average people who just happen to get sucked into things but they aren't at all special and those stories are pretty good

I think the MOST overdone element of fantasy, and one that is often used in Mary-Sues, is the farm kid who by the end of the story finds out they are royalty. That irritated me so much in Tad Williams Memory, Thorn and Sorrow trilogy that it almost turned me off of a series I otherwise love.

Have a farm boy that stays a farm boy and still gets to marry the princess. Or a prince who marries a merchant's daughter. No "oh, they are really royalty, it's ok". I'm not saying it can never be used, it's just overused in my opinion.

That's my rant for this thread.

Mornara, that's just because lots of the books widely regarded as the "best" follow the hero cycle.

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is an age old format for story telling that started with ancient Greek stories of heroes such as Thesius and Odyseus.

Trust me, I know the Hero Cycle. I could repeat the Hero Cycle frontwards and backwards. That's the problem. Is it too much to ask to have an original plot element NOT found in every myth?

whoa! I'm not saying its a good thing... I'm just explaining why!

Nah, wasn't yellin at ya man. Just ranting! It is a very aggravating thing to me.

it is rather annoying, thats true! Problem is, people look at the top best-sellers (which follow the hero cycle, sadly) and go "hmmm... I'll go write a best-selling story that follows the hero cycle! 83"

As long as they continue to be best-sellers, you can't blame writers for pursuing it.

It's not a crime, it's the business of selling books.

true... but it can get awful annoying

I would love to get rich annoying you...

You could be the kind of writer who "rises above" and follows his own path and you might be lucky enough to be remembered for it.

OR

You could sell a buttload of books that are annoyingly cliche...

Hmmmmm..... tuff decision.

No, I just feel that it has stereotyped the genre. I'm not the most read person out there, but I do know that a lot of my friends won't read fantasy because it has gotten such a stereotyped reputation.

So by all means, write what works, but I personally love finding an author that doesn't follow the pattern.

Well, I suppose if you are a writer who does as a job, you want to get money

Now, if its a hobby...

Argh, you guys posted like 3 times between when I hit "reply" and "submit"!!!

I want to make a living of it. That being said, I can make my money other ways. I won't sell my soul for 20 pieces of silver. I would much prefer to write my way and be poor.