ForumsArt, Music, and WritingMary Sue (test your character here!)

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Strop
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Strop
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Bard

Phew, I just almost got pwnt by a vacuum cleaner c.c

Anyway, Mary Sue was a 70s TV show character in which the premise was essentially that no matter what happened, she would always come out on top. This was found to have no literary credibility and therefore since then the term "Mary Sue" is taken to mean a character that is unrealistic for the world it inhabits because it appeals to so many cliches or has unreasonable powers/abilities. In general if your character is recognised as a Mary Sue, this is a sign of an incomplete character, immature or drastically overdone writing though sometimes this is more undesirable than other times.

Specifically Mary Sues are contextual and apply more to fanfiction characters as the typical Mary Sue author would be one who wants to write their character into a popular universe so much that they end up hijacking it to the extent that people just roll their eyes and call them a crap writer. However, the same characteristics carry over across various types of writing, so I've found the following guide to be extremely helpful:

The Mary-Sue litmus test

This guide is very handy if you are interested in developing a multi-dimensional character that people would actually be interested to read about without puking. As the author of this quiz does say, it's not perfect and a high score does not necessarily mean you have to kill the character or change it, but personally I encourage a healthy sense of detachment from your character's story so you are still able to tell what actually makes good writing and what just makes us say "yeah, right."

You are welcome to post your scores here and make comments naturally. For example, Orlestat, who is the main character in a novel I've just decided to rewrite (yes, rewrite) an entire book of, comes in at 17, which for my purposes is spot on. But he started out closer to a 30, and it took me a lot of angst and chipping away to get him right. Strop, on the other hand, comes in at 34 mostly because Strop is a highly autobiographical character and the target audience of the stuff he is involved in is already familiar with him, so I'm confident of getting away with that despite the score.

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Zophia
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Zophia
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Hallow scored 44.
But I could get him down to 28, if I was a bit more cautious about what should count, given the setting he is in...
Dragons live to long to make believable characters in this test's context.

Well, basicly, Mary Sue shouldn't be applied to orriginal fantasy. It's a term that came from fanfic where adolecent girls suddenly introduce a non cannon character that then goes and fulfills their fantasys while defying the rules of the story universe. In original fantasy, well pretty much any main character is going to be a Mary Sue to some extent. It just makes things so much more intresting.
From this.

Cenere and I chatted a bit about what a character who could score 0 in that test would be like...

Main characters are chosen because they stand out. You tell the story where the story is, if nothing unusual or at least interesting happens, there is no story. And most such things will tally up in that Mary Sue test...
Just my opinion. It's still fun, though.
I'm gonna find my most overpowered character and test it later...
Cenere
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Jester

Okay, went through this as strictly as I could, which made the score somewhat better than yesterday:
21 for Kai~ 18 without his language abilities.

And this is mainly for fanfiction characters. With original characters, some of this is needed to make the character interesting. I saw a blog with someone trying the test on themselves, gaining scores from 35 to 55 (KILL THEM DEAD), so really, it is the way the character is portraited more than what traits they have.

UNLESS it is fanfiction characters, because then you got a problem; often at least.


Found another one, not saying it is better, but it gives a - funnier answer, and might give an idea of how the relationship and likelyness between the character and you is. And it gives funny mental images:
Kai is only a little like you. He isn't really very cool: he blends into crowds, he hangs out on the fringes at parties, and wearing shades after dark makes him run into things. He may have sometimes thought that he was special, or destined for greater things, but probably dismissed the idea as a fantasy. He's had more than his fair share of hard knocks, and probably spends more time than he ought moaning about it. And he's gotten no slack from you.

In general, you care deeply about Kai, but you're smart enough to let him stand on his own, without burdening him with your personal fantasies or propping him up with idealization and over-dramatization. Kai is a healthy character with a promising career ahead of him.

Found here

Zophia
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Overkill on the test Cenere linked to.

Arf isn't a character: he's you, or you as you'd like to be. He is so impossibly hip that he has difficulty seeing over his own pelvis; he'll probably die young, but ****, will it have been a good life. He'd have to be pretty dense to miss the signs that he is destined for great things; he can hardly take a walk without tripping over a sword in a stone or a mysterious old woman wanting to tell his fortune. He's had a rough life - to say the least! Angst? Histronics? His speciality. And you, his creator, have spoilt him rotten and given him everything he wanted.

You identify far too heavily with Arf, and defend him from all sides, never realizing that in your quest to make him perfect you are alienating your readers. Back off and take a break. Try writing the story from the viewpoint of a different character, one you have less sympathy with... or writing a different story and coming back to this one.

I checked pretty much every box I could.

And underkill:
Awr is nothing like you. She is not at all cool; in fact, she thinks cool is a temperature reading, and when she says "Oh, I just put on whatever old thing's lying around," she means "on the floor, where I threw it last night - but I turned the underwear inside out first." There's never been anything special about her that she could see; boy, is she in for a surprise. She's got no emotional scars to speak of. And she's gotten no slack from you.

In general, you've kept yourself a goodly distance from Awr and given her plenty of room - maybe a little too much. Don't distance yourself so far from Awr that you stop caring what happens to her.

Didn't check a single box.
Strop
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Strop
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Bard

Hey nice, I'll go do that test and get back to you.

A high score on the Mary Sue Litmus is only worrying if you want it to be...and if you're doing fanfiction.

Cenere and I chatted a bit about what a character who could score 0 in that test would be like...


They would be like Ted the Generic Guy from Dilbert. This is why the 0-16 range is designated "could do with a little spicing up without hurting the character any." Because chances are you need to spice it up unless you're writing a modern-day fiction in the vein of, say, Seinfeld (which is a TV serial but hey, it works).
Strop
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Strop
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Bard

I like the breakdown and analysis of the test but some of the questioning leaves loopholes, but hey, no test is perfect.

Dragons live to long to make believable characters in this test's context.


I also struggle with characters that live much longer than usual but sometimes you can get away with it if, say, it is absolutely essential to the story. As opposed to being immortal because it's cool but still having the mind of a teenager or something.
Cenere
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At least Sururrians are a race with general longer life:P I have reasons!! *tictic*

Strop
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That would mean that you have to tick the boxes for questions regarding any special characteristics of your character's race >:P

woody_7007
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I got a 6 for my character. Seems like i could 'spice him up' according to the site, but i like him the way he is, i thinl he's more realistic that way.

Strop
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Bard

You have a character woody? Do tell!

Gantic
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I don't see to what extent in original fantasy this applies. Science fiction I can see, but not original fantasy where it's supposed to be like that.

Taking two characters: one's 72 and the other's 70. Nothing I've written here. They can both take out entire armies and are extremely powerful and can kill without mercy, except one can kill the other cause he is immortal depending on how you look at it. Is it right to put an avatar of a supreme being of dual nature and a supreme unrelated evil through the test? Whom are also mythological/legendary beings in the 21st century equivalent in that universe?

woody_7007
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I have been writing a short work on him. I named him after an RAF pilot i met at an air show when i was 9, called David Cooper. The story i have been writing has nothing to do with him at all though. Its a fictional adventure about a pilot in the Balkans conflict. I have been thinking about him for a while now and have got into quite a bit of detail. I could tell you his age, his past proffessions, his likes and dislikes, about his family and his hobbies etc. I've basically been trying to make him as realistic as possible without making it boring, but with a score of 6 according to the test he may be too bland. I posted the fist part of the story on here yesterday actually, but that's only the beginning of the prologue. I will post the rest of it tonight hopefully.

Strop
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Strop
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Bard

I don't see to what extent in original fantasy this applies.


Fortunately the test specifies that we are talking about attributes that are unusual for their world, which means that it all depends on the rules of the universe you've set ("Sue-ness is relative&quot. Which, for fantasy, can mean either everything or nothing at all depending on what kind of fantasy it is.

The original Mary Sue just happened to be such that she pulled the entire fiction out of balance, so that's what we're concerned with here.
Strop
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Strop
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Bard

but with a score of 6 according to the test he may be too bland


Like Cenere said earlier, that would depend on how you've elected to write...if it's in a realistic setting with realistic people and you want character driven development, that's great. In that case a little gimmick might already be too much.
woody_7007
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Like Cenere said earlier, that would depend on how you've elected to write...if it's in a realistic setting with realistic people and you want character driven development, that's great. In that case a little gimmick might already be too much.


Yes it's a very realistic setting. I would say that the character is very important in my story as it's in the first person. I have placed a high level of importance on description, not of just the character but everything around him to make the reader feel like they are there, at least that was my intention.

I just hope the character seems real as it is based on a real conflict.
Zophia
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They would be like Ted the Generic Guy from Dilbert.
Never heard of him, but lulz.

I also struggle with characters that live much longer than usual but sometimes you can get away with it if, say, it is absolutely essential to the story. As opposed to being immortal because it's cool but still having the mind of a teenager or something.
Yeah, that's Mary Sue. Creatures who live insanely long but also gain the appropriate Wis and other level-ups (...) can be perfectly believable, as long as they fit into the setting they exist in.

Taking two characters: one's 72 and the other's 70. Nothing I've written here. They can both take out entire armies and are extremely powerful and can kill without mercy, except one can kill the other cause he is immortal depending on how you look at it. Is it right to put an avatar of a supreme being of dual nature and a supreme unrelated evil through the test? Whom are also mythological/legendary beings in the 21st century equivalent in that universe?
See, some settings need these totally and insanely overpowered creatures. They usually serve better as an opponent rather than the main character of a story, but it all depends on how they are portrayed. One might have immense powers, but if they never take true advantage of them, who's gonna care?

Fortunately the test specifies that we are talking about attributes that are unusual for their world, which means that it all depends on the rules of the universe you've set ("Sue-ness is relative&quot. Which, for fantasy, can mean either everything or nothing at all depending on what kind of fantasy it is.

The original Mary Sue just happened to be such that she pulled the entire fiction out of balance, so that's what we're concerned with here.
Given that one of the worlds I have pretty much serves as the scrapbook of my ideas (ALL of my ideas except for a few supr...no, I just thought of a way to implement those too; ALL of my ideas), it's extremely difficult to create a true Mary Sue in that world. It would most likely just be totally misplaced, but random teleportation does occur, so it could happen.

*wishes I had time and focus to read woody's story*
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