Compelling Characters – Mary Sue

First rule when building characters: Nobody is perfect—except Mary Sue.

Who is Mary Sue?

She is a character trope that becomes most apparent in amateur writing and was first recognised in fan fiction. A Mary Sue is a character without flaws, often claimed to be a self insert and wish-fulfillment for the writer.

Why avoid Mary Sue?

Readers want compelling characters because they want to insert themselves into them. A Mary Sue is not a likable character because of her complete lack of flaws which makes her difficult to identify with. We like to see ourselves in characters; we want to understand their motives and what made them who they are to understand ourselves better and learn from them.

• Give them flaws!
  This can be little details or what your plot revolves around. But characters should not have too many flaws and pose more as a villain of the story than a likable hero.

• Avoid stereotypes!
  Stereotypes deprive us of genuine details, which are more convincing and interesting. You can still use stereotypes as a form of characterisation if you write from a character’s pov and they perceive others that way, but make sure the reader understands that your narrator is unreliable and his perspective flawed.

• The first impression counts!
  Make your characters distinctive the first time they are mentioned and try to avoid similarities so they are memorable. Maybe give them a key feature that sets them apart from other characters (eg. speech, clothing, status), and let that feature impact the way they behave, carry themselves, react and appear to others.

Example: 

There rarely are two characters in the Potter Universe that have a name starting with the same letter, and even if they exist, they usually have a defining characteristic that sets them apart from others.

• Show characteristics in relationships and interactions!
  Humans rarely exist in a world alone, and often their characteristics show in their relationships and when interacting with others. Everyday interactions can often be very revealing so use them to built your characters.

Example: 

We all remember the quote: ”If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.” 

• Give the characters a motive!
  The backstory wound is an often used character trope which can help you built a motive. Essentially, it means that every character has a defining moment in their past that explains all their character traits and their motivation. This can be used very well if you look at Snape and Dumbledore as examples, but it can also be an easy excuse to create conflict. Try to create a whole backstory instead of simply building a character on one event alone.

• Write character development!
  There is nothing more satisfying than a character that grows into a better person. Give your main characters a character arch, but take one step at a time, and find a good motivation for them to be better.
  – Quick changes are unbelievable and the reader feels cheated.
  – Change involves hardships and failure. A character can only truly grow if they have lost everything and have to fight to regain it.
  – Decisions reveal a lot about character, so give them hard choices to make on their way to self-improvement. Let them make sacrifices no matter what they chose.

Self inserts—so bad?

Simple answer: No. Mary Sue is often criticised for being a self-insert, but that isn’t the reason she is so boring to read about. I do it all the time, and I bet you a thousand Galleons JKR probably did it more than once.

Mary Sue is a self insert for the writer, not the reader. Thus they feel excluded from that fantasy because it is not theirs. Use self-insertion instead to make a character more complex, think about your own flaws and behaviors to find out how your characters could react to something.