how to avoid writing a sue

[freefall]

Hello! My name is Freefall and I will be your teacher for today. We're going to learn about how to avoid writing a Mary-Sue! :D

First: remember, writing is about more than "cool characters". Cool characters don't make good stories, good writers make good stories. If you are a bad writer, having a cool character will not change this - if you are a good writer, you can make an uncool character become amazing through your writing.

When you're describing the character, it should NEVER come across as you telling the audience to like the character. Avoid using purely subjective terms or comparisons. If your character is graceful, simply say that they are graceful (and maybe add a detail or two, but only if they're important). Please don't say "her grace would have brought Anna Pavlova to tears" or any nonsense like that. Telling your audience to like the character usually ends with the exact opposite reaction.

Don't make up any "special" thing about your character throughout your roleplay/s. Figure out everything that could be considered special BEFORE you begin to roleplay. This includes things s/he is amazing at and exotic backstory elements.

When you are giving your character special traits, remember that traits must exist for a reason more plausible than "it's awesome". Come up with both negative and positive experiences your character has had and personality traits s/he has developed as a result, rather than just listing a bunch of awesome but unrelated abilities or quirks.

Don't let your character's perceptions and judgements always correlate with reality. You as a writer will know what's going to happen, but your character does not. Letting them always sense something's true nature, always guess correctly, or somehow know things they shouldn't, means you're practically allowing your character to break the fourth wall and take a peek at the script. I see this a LOT in roleplays - let's say character A is angry with character B, but they're hiding it by being silly and sarcastic. You decide to make character B notice that character A is angry. Please don't.

Don't give your character special treatment. They should suffer just like everyone else in the roleplay. If you honestly can't bear the idea of bad things happening to your character (or have the happen realistically), then you need to learn to not be so emotionally involved. Like the saying goes, "Murder your darlings."

Make sure your character has a personality. You're writing about a character, not a cat that does cool things. What does your character like or dislike? What does your character want in life? What is your character afraid of? How does your character feel around other characters? Who is your character when s/he's alone?

Don't just make the character's personality one that you think is awesome. Even the coolest characters in fiction have some depth to them. There are often some flaws to overcome, or that not everyone sees your character as cool. Better yet: don't go for a cool personality; go for a personality that'd make a great roleplay.

Your character can be cheerful and sad. Just don't make your character so happy or depressed they don't have any other depth. Your happy character could be naive. Your sad character could be happy about some things, they just don't show up a lot, and that makes your character sad.

Is your character incorruptible? There had better be a good reason. Perhaps your character gave into temptation in the past, and this hard lesson made your character now know better. Just SOMETHING.

Flaws must be significant - i.e., they must give your character some difficulties to overcome. Being cold, for example, counts as a significant flaw, because even though your character might otherwise be a good person, it will also mean s/he'll have a hard time approaching people.

If you have a hard time thinking of a good flaw, try thinking about deconstructing your character's strengths. Someone who doesn't think before doing the right thing may motivate the frightened masses into being heroes, but could jump to conclusions or be manipulated into thinking things that aren't true, and in turn make things worse. Someone who never complains could be seen as strong and be respected for not whining, but they could also ruin a romantic relationship by being passive aggressive. Take the strengths to their logical extreme and make them a double edged sword.

Additionally, flaws are often made or broken by how the other characters react to them. A character can be as objectively flawed as all get-out, but if the people around her ignore her faults (or even admire her for them), then they don't really count as flaws, because they're not making things more difficult for the character.

It's very unlikely for a warrior to be considered very "beautiful" or "handsome". These are cats that live in the wild, and so they won't have humans to bathe them and brush their fur and anything of the sort. Saying that they are "naturally" pretty despite endless days of hunting and fighting is unrealistic.

Always be aware of your character's physical limitations. A character should not be "just fine" after a days-long trek, nor should an warrior, no matter how strong or experienced, be able to fight for hours without getting tired.

Tragedies in the backstory is common, even for canon story characters. Remember, though: if your character is still affected by their tragic backstory, make sure you properly demonstrate why they're still hurt. Maybe it happened recently. Maybe it has something to do with trust, which can last a long time. Maybe it's an old wound reopened recently. Having a character angst over small slights, imaginary persecution or things that happened long ago just makes the sorrow look cheap.

Also try to avoid overused histories, such as "all his/her family died" or "s/he was born as a loner and joined the Clan", as they are extremely cliche and unrealistic in a normal warriors setting. It's VERY unlikely for a cat's whole family to have died, considering the warrior code and the fact that foxes/badgers/etc. aren't all that common and can be fought off easily by four or five cats. Loners/rouges joining the Clan, also, is very unlikely - Firestar was only brought to the Clan because Bluestar was desperate, and of course he would allow other outsiders to join. Most likely, the leader of the Clan is a full-blooded warrior, and will NOT allow outsiders into the Clan.

Don't make your character automatically amazing at something. If they are learning to hunt, they shouldn't manage to catch ten pieces of prey on their first patrol. Rather, you may wish to show minimal success. No matter what you do, give them more failures than anything else to show they are far from perfectly skilled at it. You want them to master hunting? Save it for when they're older - it's much more believable.

Your character screws something up; don't just wave it off. How your character reacts can be an important way to build your character. Does your character realise this was wrong? Is the character in denial? Does your character even care? But either way, the other characters should react according to their personalities. They should not easily forgive your character if they don't normally do that, unless they have a plot relevant reason for doing so. But tread carefully.

And that's all, for now. (: I hope you learned something from this and can make your characters less Mary-Sue and more realistic. Thanks for reading!

[Vespera]

Well, you just about hit the nail on the head. Congratulations! That was an epically blunt rendition of the Mary-sue tutorial and it's wonderful.

[Willow]

Very good one All new roleplayers should read this

[freefall]

Thank you! (:

[Willow]

No problem

[Tay]

Stickied for excellence. <3