Have You Met Mary Sue?

What makes a character compelling?

That’s one of the things that difficult to quantify, especially for a new writer. And in my opinion, the most important thing isn’t actually the character themselves; it’s whether or not the writer and the reader agree on their significance.

Of course, I could talk for an eternity about character creation and what makes characters dear to us, but right now I’m trying to focus on those million words I talked about last week. To recap, for the first million words that you write, you are still learning how to write. So let’s talk about what you’re learning about characters while you do all that work.

This is when you learn how to build a character. This is something that every writer does differently. Many people like to base their characters off people they know, but I’ve never done that. To be honest, I don’t even know how I would do that.

Creating characters was something I struggled with a lot when I was starting out. It’s very difficult to figure out how to invent a personality, let alone an authentic-feeling and dynamic one. It requires a lot of intuitive understanding of human psychology and how personalities are shaped by lives. That understanding is what you’re working towards during your first million words, and really, it’s probably something you’ll improve upon for as long as you keep writing.

For this, I’m going to bring in a character we all know: Mary Sue. Now, of course, Mary Sue is a very ambiguous term, and it doesn’t hold a lot of real meaning once you become a serious writer. Even the mantra of ‘a character must have flaws’ doesn’t hold much weight. Here, we’ll use the concept in its most basic form: a Mary Sue is, more likely than not, a baby writer’s first original character.

Here's the thing about Mary Sue. The problem is not the literal facts of her character, because any character can be pulled off if you have enough technical skill as a writer. The problem is that the writer adores her, and the reader can’t see why.

See, the world revolves around Mary Sue. Everywhere she goes, she receives sympathy, reverence, affection, and privilege. In other words, Mary Sue is not a character in a story. She is the very core of an original character – the passion and enthusiasm her writer holds for their own work. And that’s what you’re learning to temper. Mary Sue is a lesson in storycraft, because she can’t develop as a character. There is no forward motion for a character that wants for nothing.

As you work with Mary Sue, you’ll begin to gather the fodder that you will use to build characters in the future. Put her through her paces. Say that Mary Sue goes to school, and everyone loves her, and you think to yourself, but what if she was bullied? Or she’s in love with five different boys, and you think, this must be so hard for her. Conflict is the bread and butter of storytelling, but it can be difficult to create when you don’t know where to begin. By moving forward with a placeholder character, you can begin to find the conflicts that you are drawn toward, and you can decide what traits you want them to have and what they have to earn.

Now let’s also talk about phase two of beginner characters: characters that you love, but that no one else does. This is a very difficult phase for any writer, because we want everyone to love our characters as much as we do. But it takes time and skill to make that happen. And maybe it’s just because most of the amateur writers I knew were during my mid-teens, but in my experience, this character usually lives a life of absolute tragedy.

This, too, is a character development issue. They’re the polar opposite of Mary Sue: everything is hard, they’re suffering endlessly, and no happiness will ever reach them. (It’s a very mid-teen phenomenon.) At this point, you have learned how to introduce conflict into a character, and you know how to use those traits to drive the plot of the story. That’s very good! That skill will be vital to your success as a writer, and you’ll continue to refine it for years to come.

Your next task is to give your characters ambition. They need goals and drive. An unmotivated character is a boring character. This is where you learn how to weave your character’s personality into the plot. Eventually, you, too, will grow tired of your sadsack, and you’ll want to give them traits that you can love. That others can love. You can put in the traits that mean the most to you, erase the negative traits that drag them down, and slowly learn to shape them into a character that feels right to you.

And with that, you’ve developed your understanding of what makes a good character. You have passion, you have tragedy, and you have strength. And even if you don’t yet have the characters that you’ll build and love from this point forward, you do, at least, understand how they work together and the importance of each one.

For now, that’s everything I have to say about beginners’ characters, and I hope everything came across well. And it’s important to remember: you are not a bad writer. You’re building the skillset you need to succeed, and believe it or not, it takes a lot of different skills to weave such detailed and meaningful stories.

I’ll be back next week to talk about worldbuilding and development. If you have any questions, comments, or requests, feel free to leave them down below!