Forums → Art, Music, and Writing → Mary Sue (test your character here!)

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.