Consideration During Character Creation

While I was discussing with friends awhile ago, we touched upon the subject of "perfect characters" in writing. Although it isn't usually apparent in actual novelists works, plenty of beginners that write tend to create a kind of perfect character.

In the writing world, these characters are called "Mary Sues" and "Gary Stus".

This thread will serve as a reminder to writers out there not to create one of them.

Upon the general consensus, a Mary Sue (sometimes just 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. Perhaps the single underlying feature of all characters described as "Mary Sues" is that they are too ostentatious for the audience's taste, or that the author seems to favor the character too highly. The author may seem to push how exceptional and wonderful the "Mary Sue" character is on his or her audience, sometimes leading the audience to dislike or even resent the character fairly quickly; such a character could be described as an "author's pet".

These links are basically litmus tests for your character to decide how much of one they are.

http://www.springhole.net/quizzes/marysue.htm | http://www.ponylandpress.com/ms-test.html | http://www.katfeete.net/writing/marysue.html

Reminder that you have to be honest with yourself while taking them.

On a side note, all characters will have some sueness/stuness in them. It's unavoidable and natural. After all, no one wants an incredibly worthless character to begin with. But, after reading the results of said tests, you might need to make some adjustments to your character profile, adding or retracting some traits. There is a line between when it's alright, or when it's just too ideal.

At the same time, you need to take into consideration about the storyline and background that is associated with your characters, which might give pardons on why they are so overpowered.

Also, if your character has magical powers and/or is very powerful to begin with (due to storyline and setting), the test tends to add more points towards the "Mary Sue" category. I found this out while doing this for some of my old characters that were set in a fantasy world. This was also apparent with friends who had characters in the same kind of genre.

Keep on creating worlds that will play with our imagination.
-------- - Disgusting

Glad to report none of the characters I've ever created fall into this category.
All of them have pretty obvious flaws and at most times those flaws drive the story and is motivation for all the shit they do. Of course I do try NOT to do the opposite of making a perfect character. The only time I failed at that was in my story Fuck This Job. Everyone else has good qualities in them as well as flaws.

Maybe because I've never written an RPG-ish story to begin with, but my score is less than I expected. @_@

Do you want to post this in my "How to improve as a writer" thread? I think it would be helpful to many users, and would stay stickied.

One of my characters fell into the borderline Mary-Sue category (score : 28)

Well, that story which features him is going to be rewritten again after I finished all the remaining projects. Maybe you would find him more likeable on the remake version.

I'll add it. I just needed your permission.

Of course, this is more to this:

http://thepunchlineismachismo.com/archives/589