Mary Sue is such a lovely woman. She’s witty, extremely
talented in multitudes of fields, gorgeous, and can rise to take command of any
occasion. Everyone she’s ever spoken to, adores her without limit.
And that is why she must die, die, die!
According to the never-wrong Wikipedia, “A
Mary Sue... is a fictional
character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms,
lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as a wish-fulfillment
fantasy for the author or reader. It is generally accepted as a
character whose positive aspects overwhelm their other traits until they become
one-dimensional.”
It was with immense horror that I recently retrieved an
old manuscript from its “resting” drawer to discover that the heroine was a
bona fide Mary Sue. Though she’d begun life as an introverted native of Earth—a
rather backward planet in the galactic scheme of things—in this novel when she
unexpectedly traveled off-planet she became a Grand Leader of Men (and Women),
and deftly handled all things Intergalactic and mega-tech that faced her. The
people around her stood slack-jawed in wonder at her marvelousness. And beauty,
of course.
Insert heavy sigh here.
I never liked Star
Trek TNG’s Wesley Crusher. He is usually cited as the perfect example of a
male Mary Sue. Smirking sunnily, he could get the Enterprise out of any jam in
which it found itself, tra la. The one episode that gave him a significant flaw
occurred too late in the series for his salvation. To me he remained the Great
God Wesley.
I do not want any Great God Wesleys in my books, nor do I
want to read others’ books with him (or her) in it.
We deal with fantasy, even if it should get a bit scientific
around the edges (what Heinlein termed “pseudo-scientific fantasy”). More
importantly, we deal with characters and shaping stories around them. I’m a
plotter; it took me far too long to admit that character is the most important
part of a novel. A great character can set a reader’s imagination afire even
when given a poor plot. The same can’t be said for the opposite.
A Mary Sue is a kind of shortcut character cliché, but
more importantly she is cardboard. In her utter perfection, she has no
weaknesses. She isn’t human.
Recently I read an FF&P novel that had received high
praise. How surprising to find that the heroine was a blatant Mary Sue! Of
course the triple-alpha hero (and his band of merry alpha men) adored her, but
we really didn’t know the why of it, other than who wouldn’t adore Mary Sue?
What made her particularly special to him? Why did he love her as a person
instead of worship her from afar?
Worse, this particular Mary Sue reshaped herself according
to plot needs. Since she held so little substance, the plot defined her instead
of the other way around. If she began timid but then had to show P.T.
Barnum-level chutzpah for the plot to progress, she easily did so. Then when
the plot demanded that she be meek and helpless again, she did that.
This character didn’t go through a character arc. She
morphed a handful of times, flip-flopping and never developing a real
direction. She was never tested by anything because she was always an expert.
As a result—and this is the worst of it—the reader never got a chance to root
for her learning a new and better way to interact with her world. The reader
couldn’t hold their breath and then celebrate the final breakthrough with her.
She was perfect in the beginning as well as the end and all points in between.
Where’s the fun for the reader in that? Where’s the entertainment?
A great character should reveal definite faults and
limitations so that the reader can identify with them. Not necessarily with the
same exact faults, but with the shared humanity that those faults imply.
In the same way that the story shifts through its phases
from Act I through the Big Black Moment and into the climax and resolution, the
characters in it need to grow, returning in the final act to the original plot
question to view and react to it differently.
To misquote Spock: the needs of the character outweigh the
needs of the plot and the original story outline/idea. Just because Mary Sue
has to get from Altair to Vega by Sunday doesn’t mean that in addition to all
the other marvelous things she can do, she should have graduated top of her
class in starship navigation. Instead, she can encounter problems trying to
find a pilot who will get her to Vega on time. Perhaps he’ll teach her a little
navigation along the way so that when next she needs to be somewhere, maybe to
save his kidnapped hide, she can muddle through by herself. Or not. Perhaps,
defying the original premise, the character will rebel to learn her story
lesson better and much more entertainingly by not traveling to Vega at all. She
can thumb her nose at where the plot wants her to go. She can force it to
follow her in new directions.
The plot should support her arc and hint of multiple
possible paths for her. (An entertaining heroine will of course choose the most
difficult one.) A plot shouldn’t pick her up and transport her to her goal
while she sits around in cushioned comfort eating bon bons.
The character also needs to “share the wealth.” For my own
precious Mary Sue, I’ve already made notes to make her less skilled—in fact, completely
clueless in many areas—to allow the colorful characters around her to show off
their own talents while she sits back to learn from/appreciate them. Instead of
coming up with the entire idea of how to prevent a world invasion by bluffing
the enemy, she can say something that gives Our Hero the idea of a bluff, and
then add her own ideas along the way of how they can play aspects of the game.
This not only lessens the Mary Sue-ishness, but gives Our Hero more spotlight
time, allows Our Heroine still to have an active hand in the deviousness, and
gets them to share on many levels in formatting a plan—which may lead later to
sharing hijinks in bed!
So if it’s true that character is the most important
element of a book (it is!), and that Mary Sues are cardboard characters without
depth and thus diminish the entertainment a reader wants when they hit that
“buy” button—We should all set our cursors to “kill.” Death to our own Mary
Sues!
Thanks, Rebecca Zanetti,
for having me here today!
Blurb for Applesauce and
Moonbeams, whose hero and heroine are both rather hopeless non-Mary
Sues:
After a hit man blasts
telepathic psychiatrist David Lumen’s mind into the body of a pampered kitty on
its way home to the moon, David’s desperate plan to make himself whole again is
hampered by his new feline life. The only person close enough to communicate
with is struggling avant-garde artist, Pippin Applegate.
Pippin has problems of
her own. The Fashion Police ticket her unmercifully for appearing disheveled in
public, even though her accidents are never quite her fault. Her aunt is
pressuring her to quit art and become VP of the family’s Lunar apple business.
And now Pippin has to deal with a telepathic cat?
Together they spot
David’s body walking around... with the hit man’s mind inside. Can David regain
his true body when it’s leaving a trail of chaos and murder that leads to
Pippin’s make-or-break art show?
About
the author:
When you think of fiction's strong women and strange worlds, think Carol
A. Strickland. Carol has published four novels, three of which are FF&P. She has also
become an award-winning painter from her home in North Carolina. She exercises
this skill in her secondary hours (both of them) along with writing as she
waits for the lottery to free her 9-to-5 time to more fulfilling pursuits.
The e-versions of her books are inexpensive. Carol reminds all that
readers who post honest online reviews get a free pass into Heaven (if needed).
http://www.carolastrickland.com/fiction/index.html
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