How to Spot (and Kill) Your Mary Sue Characters
by K. M. Weiland
At the heart of all good fiction beats the heart of a good character. But—naturally—there’s a flip side to this coin. If this heart of your story is beating inside of the chest of Fiction’s Most Wanted, the nefarious Mary Sue, your story isn’t likely to get out from under the sassafras tree, no matter how great your plot and your dialogue may be.
So just who is this Mary Sue person—and why has she got a price on her head? “Mary Sue” (or “Marty Stu” if the character in question is male) is a term coined for characters who suffer from a number of symptoms—all of them lethal to your story. Your character might be a Mary Sue if…
· She has no flaws to speak of.
· She’s a fictionalized version of the author.
· She saves the day every. single. time.
· She’s drop-dead gorgeous.
· She’s a fictionalized version of who the author wishes to be.
In short, a Mary Sue is a character who lives in the black and white planes of the paper thin. She’s idealized to the point that she’s unrealistic as a person and, worse, uninteresting as a character, since she is unable to give the reader interesting moral conundrums to chew on or internal conflict to relate to as she attempts to overcome flaws.
Authors want readers to fall in love with our characters, and we’d like to enjoy their company as well, since we’re going to be spending months of our time locked in our offices with them. But, in our attempts, to make sure our characters are winsome, fun, and sympathetic, we can sometimes lose sight of the somewhat ironic fact that likability and personal perfection aren’t necessarily synonymous.
As imperfect people, readers love reading about imperfect characters. We want flaws, we want warts, we want failures. We want conflict, and Mary Sues—in all their saccharine glory—can’t provide it. A story is an arc, a progression, a growth. Readers want to see your character grow, and he can’t grow unless he begins the story from a place of lack.
Now, before we get all fired up and start pounding out all kinds of grubby, gross, and grouchy characters, remember that, as in all things fiction, balance is the key. Realism means balancing the good and the bad. So make your character drop-dead gorgeous, but also make her a total klutz. Make your character a grand theft auto convict, but also make him a faithful contributor to the Old Ladies’ Bingo for Charity Society.
Finding this balance can take trial and error. Enlist beta readers who can make sure you’re representing the character on the page just as you imagine him—pitchfork, halo, and all. In the end, you’re likely to discover that writing flawed characters is ten times more fun than writing unrealistically perfect Mary Sues, just as your readers are ten times as likely to enjoy reading them. ~BE
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Thoughts for Katie?
K.M. Weiland is the author of the historical western A Man Called Outlaw and the medieval epic Behold the Dawn. She enjoys mentoring other authors through her writing tips, her book Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success, and her instructional CD Conquering Writer’s Block and Summoning Inspiration.
