Before all your comments and the links I read fade from my memory, I\u2019m going to jump ahead to Kara\u2019s question last week, How do you avoid writing Mary Sue’s?<\/i> Later, Kara also wrote, By “Mary Sue”, I mean a character that’s perfect in every single way.<\/i><\/p>\n
F asked, And, adding to that – how do you make your character ‘human’? Imperfect, with flaws, etc. I mean, I really don’t want to just insert a flaw for the heck of it, but that’s what I’ve done. That, or made the MC similar to me…and that’s not good. Have you ever had that problem? The character being too similar to yourself?<\/i> Further on, F added, It’s the author basically writing herself\/himself into the role, or rather, a glorified version of themselves. I’m scared that most of my characters are just extensions of various parts of me that I wrote unconsciously, and I don’t want that! I want original, UNRELATABLE characters.<\/i><\/p>\n
And later on Rose wrote, …I’m also interested in a “how to” on making characters relatable-to.<\/i><\/p>\n
I had the uncomfortable feeling as I read the definitions that Ella of Ella Enchanted<\/i> might be a Mary Sue. She\u2019s beautiful and everybody who\u2019s good loves her. Some people have a talent for picking up languages, but Ella is almost magical at it.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s Aza in Fairest<\/i>. Although she\u2019s ugly she can out-sing Maria Callas.<\/p>\n
For Ella Enchanted<\/i> more than any of my other books I drew on books I\u2019d loved, and I suppose some of them had main characters with Mary Sue qualities. For example, Anne, the heroine of Anne of Green Gables<\/i> by L.M. Montgomery, which I reread a thousand times when I was little, has a tragic back story. People are constantly finding something special in her, particularly when they look in her enormous green eyes. And, as she grows older, she becomes stunningly gorgeous. Put this way, she seems a total Mary Sue. But Anne is engaging. As a child she talks too much and uses ridiculously big words. She has a temper, holds a grudge, and is immovably stubborn.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re writing a sympathetic main character it may be impossible to avoid all Mary Sue or Gary Stu-ishness. For instance, if Warren is likable, other characters are going to like him. In fact, you may have to show him being liked to convince the reader that he is appealing. However, some may not take to him, and here is a chance to avoid the Gary Stu. You can make a person who doesn\u2019t like him sympathetic too, thus showing that not everybody who fails to fall for Warren is rotten.<\/p>\n
As for beauty, perfection is probably not as attractive as mild imperfection. Your main character can have a weak chin or over-sized ears. When I wrote Aza I made her physically unattractive but I didn\u2019t give her terrible weeping eczema or brown and crooked teeth, which might make the reader recoil rather than slip inside her. <\/p>\n
Oops! My advice is sounding formulaic, so I\u2019ll mention a memoir I read some years ago called Autobiography of a Face<\/i> by Lucy Grealy (high school and up). The author had a kind of cancer as a child that eroded her jaw. She writes about her reconstructive surgery, the degeneration of the surgery, her feelings about being disturbing to look at. The narrator\u2019s voice is engaging. I was certainly on her side on the page, but I was forced to wonder how I would respond to her in person. I recommend this book. The writing is excellent and there\u2019s lots to think about.<\/p>\n
If I remember right, some of the power of Autobiography of a Face<\/i> comes from the author\u2019s suffering. An ingredient in the Mary Sue problem may be loving a main character too much to let her get hurt. We know Mary Sue has to be challenged or there will be no story, so we make something bad happen. But because we don\u2019t want her to feel pain, we give her an ability that enables her to overcome the misfortune, or we bring in some other plot development to mitigate her misery. Then we recognize that the bad thing fell flat. We escalate the next difficulty and make what ensues dreadful in an oversized way. Afterward, we have to save her again, which lands us in a cycle of rising misery that may even become comical.<\/p>\n
Scaling back is probably the answer. Say Don is actually a superhero. He\u2019s inhumanly strong. This is okay if he\u2019s also shy. Or impulsive. Suppose he\u2019s not good at sizing up situations and keeps rescuing people who are doing fine, and suppose some of these people are friends or schoolmates. Resist the impulse to make him so adorable they immediately forget he crashed through a window to save them from a tiger that actually was a dog. Let one of them tell him an unpleasant truth about himself. He may be strong and kindhearted, but he\u2019s also a busybody. Let him feel hurt, and let the hurt linger. Let him not learn from it immediately. Have him repeat the same mistake a few times.<\/p>\n
The small things make a reader identify. Imagine that Valerie\u2019s mission is to achieve world peace and she actually succeeds. The reader will share her triumph only if he sees the failures that precede success. Show her fussing over the conference room before the big meeting and yelling at an assistant. One of the world leaders is a chain smoker. Valerie thinks smoking is a vile habit. She takes the ashtray out of the conference room then brings it back and repeats this a couple of times. She carries in a fan, then worries the fan will offend the smoker. She places his chair at a distance from everyone else\u2019s and worries again. The reader fears that a cigarette and Valerie\u2019s attitude may cause World War III, and he invests in the outcome. His caring comes partly from the big ideas, the important goal, but largely from the tiny moments.<\/p>\n
As for characters who are too much like you – I don\u2019t see this as a problem. You should<\/i> mine yourself for character traits, in my opinion, not an idealized you but the real one. And don\u2019t let modesty make you worse than you really are, either. You are the person you know best, the one you experience directly. Why eliminate your most available source? Ask yourself what makes you likable and what gets you into trouble. It doesn\u2019t matter if others disagree with your assessment. You\u2019re looking for material, not an accurate psychological profile.<\/p>\n
Wilma in The Wish<\/i> is more like me than any of my other main characters, particularly in her need to be liked. Near the end she pretty much begs three popular girls to like her. All my characters when they\u2019re funny have my sense of humor. How could I write humor that wasn\u2019t my own? Or any emotion, now that I think of it.<\/p>\n
And as for entirely original characters, I don\u2019t think they\u2019re possible. It\u2019s like when I used to paint I\u2019d sometimes wish for a new color. Some birds can see a color we can\u2019t, and aliens may think in ways that are entirely foreign, but if they\u2019re entirely foreign no human writer can write them.<\/p>\n
However, we can write characters that surprise the reader. Suppose Merry Lou\u2019s train has hit another train. She\u2019s trapped in a sleeper compartment with another passenger who\u2019s severely injured. Alas, she doesn\u2019t have superhuman strength and the sight of blood makes her queasy. What can she do?<\/p>\n
Naturally, I would start by making a list. I\u2019d also think about what\u2019s available to her in the compartment and within reach outside the train window. I\u2019d wonder how I might respond in such an emergency and how people I know might respond. As I considered the scene I wouldn\u2019t rule out the possibility that Mary Sue may fail or may only partially succeed. She may be totally useless in this crisis. The passenger may die and then she’ll have to deal with that. Afterward, another passenger can ask her why the heck she didn\u2019t use her cell phone, and she can realize she forgot she had it. Or maybe she has an iPhone and surfs the net for first-aid tips, wasting precious minutes while the passenger loses consciousness. Or maybe she pulls off a rescue at the last moment.<\/p>\n
Young adult writer Kimberly Willis Holt is a master at characterization. I particularly remember When Zachary Beaver Came to Town<\/i> (middle school and up), which is well worth reading and studying. Wicked<\/i> (high school and up) by Gregory Maguire shakes and rattles with surprising characters. In Doodlebug<\/i> (upper elementary and up) by Karen Romano Young, which just came out, the main character Doreen is a delight – fresh, unique – and the reader fuses with her. Some of the fusion comes from the drawings but more comes from the level of intimacy the author draws us into. This is another one to study.<\/p>\n
Also, I suggest you read outside your comfort zone occasionally. I confess that I don\u2019t seek out even good books I\u2019m not likely to enjoy, but sometimes I have to read them, and often they help my writing.<\/p>\n
Wow, this has been a long post! Try the situation above, Merry Lou stuck in a train, as a prompt, and here\u2019s another one:<\/p>\n
This time Merry Lou has gotten into warrior school, scoring higher on her entrance exam than any other candidate in the school\u2019s history. She\u2019s gorgeous. Everybody loves her. She can read thoughts. Her reflexes are faster than Superman\u2019s. Now make her go to her first class and do everything wrong and totally embarrass herself.<\/p>\n
Have fun and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Before all your comments and the links I read fade from my memory, I\u2019m going to jump ahead to Kara\u2019s question last week, How do you avoid writing Mary Sue’s? Later, Kara also wrote, By “Mary Sue”, I mean a character that’s perfect in every single way. F asked, And, adding to that – how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[238,239,240,241],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":488,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions\/488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}