Young Writers Society

We all know that Mary Sues are one of the many issues that plague beginning writers. But weren't we all beginners at one point? Surely there must be many Sues that have gone unnoticed, lost to the sands of time or perhaps to the recycling bin of a shameful novice. Either way, let's celebrate our noob mistakes and talk about our Mary Sues here! And maybe, just maybe, we'll find one Sue to out Sue them all. I'll go first, but a bit of foreword before that.

Nooby Sues aren't the only Sues welcome. Talk about your Sues from any point in your writing process, be it in rough drafts or a problem you struggle with even now. Also talk about how said Sue changed how you write your stories, and is this Sue alive today?

Also, this thread shall define a Mary Sue as a character who...

...is the apple of the narrative's eye.
...has no deep repercussions from their backstories and/or actions.
...doesn't make mistakes. EVAR.
...is treated like the perfect human being (or whatever race they're of).

Now let's get this party started!

When I was but a wee lass I loved animals. I loved them so much in fact that I thought it would be the best thing evar if I wrote an entire story about sentient animals! I had it all planned out. There would be dozens of books, Magic Treehouse style, each one short and sweet and depicting great adventures. The best part about it, the most revolutionary idea I had, was that each installation in the series could stand alone so you wouldn't have to read dozens of books to enjoy them. It was perfection, I tell you!

Except for the fact that the main character was a Mary Sue.

Ignoring the other host of problems that plagued my early work (flat characters, characters that were jerks, too many characters (over a dozen), plot holes, etc.), this main character of mine was not only an idealized version of myself, but she was part dragon, part werewolf, part vampire, and I'm pretty sure there was a T-rex somewhere in there. But since the original files are long gone we shall never be sure. Also, being an idealized version of myself, she was never wrong and other characters always spoke highly of her. All. The. Time.

I eventually realized that said character's Sueishness was a really bad thing, so I did what any reasonable ten-year-old would do with a problem: kill it with fire. Lava, to be precise. I had said character just fall in some lava for no good reason. Big problem solved, everything good! Right?

WRONG!

Turns out that the rest of the cast was comprised only of flat characters, who were either uninteresting or flat out jerks. I realized that without my Mary Sue (who I hated now) everything else went to pieces. So instead of doing what any reasonable writer would do (a rewrite) I brought her back to life. Better yet, I made her a goddess while she was dead! Surely the other characters personalities would fall in line after she became a goddess! After all, her epic holiness would inspire them to a. not be jerks and b. stop being flat characters.

It was at that point that I realized how stupid things were getting and decided to quit while my self-esteem was still in tact. I quickly disposed of all copies of said story and regarded it as an old shame that would never see the light of day. Until now.

What did I learn from this Sue? The best medicine for a bad story is a rewrite, NOT killing the problem spots with fire.

So what are your stories?

lol Nice one.

I had a pretty painfully standard YA protagonist. To start the checklist:

- Abusive parents
- Rebellious princess (I know a few of you who are thinking "Kill it now!!")
- Forced into an arranged marriage she doesn't want
- Ends up falling in love with the guy anyway because he's just Perfect
- Most people don't understand her troubled heart
- Only one able to enter a magical country that's blocked access for decades
- Ends up defeating one of the most powerful magic rulers with only a fraction of the power they had (at... 16 or so? Villain was 40something)
- Had him fooled she wasn't a threat for awhile
- Goes off to save the country another three times before her 20th birthday
- Settles down with Mr Perfect and rules the country.

Yeeeeeeep.

Technically the guy was just as bad, too. Dad hated him, perfect younger brother, only refuge in his mother, Understands a tortured heart and goes out of his way to fix it because he thinks this girl is true love.

Now, none of these are inherently bad, but when all Issues at being abused go away thanks to one person saying "I love you" and they seriously had no reason to be that good at everything.

Rewriting involved the plot and magic system first. Then adding in a few characters to balance out the love/hates/misunderstands ratio, so it's a bit more balanced. Each character got a nice little bit of backstory for why they acted this way. Mr Perfect stopped being the love interest (I gave the character a sister for this). He also got enough backstory to get his own list of Issues, and a few of his attitudes changed.

Don't worry. One of the first things to go about her character was the rebellious princess part.

Everything I did keep started having repercussions. It also became much more subtle, so the abuse is only abuse if you look at it through the right lens, and her heart became less Troubled only to be replaced with a nice long list of realistically shown issues.

The story is honestly unrecognizable by this point. Mostly because of my endless plot rewrites. You might be a bit surprised to hear the above list used to define Kerani. ;P

What I learned from the early sue versions, though, is that making things the Absolute Worst All the Time is really bad. Things aren't all bad. People get over bad things. It basically forced me to go through and make things way more realistic.

There's also the whole concept of "research". Because you can pull off some fairly impressive characters if they have a reason for their traits. Which can make deceptively high Mary Sue test scores.

Ahah XD The mistakes of my youth.

Do I dare to admit it? Yes I do. I once, waaay back when I was, like, eight, wrote a story about a travelling space-cow-girl who could walk for miles after being shot and was hunted by intergalactic pirates for stealing the most valuable treasure in the universe.

This seems pretty interesting when you think it was written at the tender age of eight, until you realise the hilarity that my protragonist walked into a tavern (yes, the kind that serves alcohol) conveniently residing on a planet the size of luxemburg, so casually. She coughed up some blood (because that's what the tough guys did on tv) then ran out the other side of the tavern after being shot, jumped into her space ship and took off across the stars and landed on another mysterious planet where everybody knew who she was by the reputation she had of being the thief of evil sky pirates. The mysterious twelve year old stranger took out the bullet, bandaged it up, and hey presto, all good! Lucky it didn't hit any valuable organs because little me wouldn't have had a clue what to do then.

Did I mention she was also eight? At that age I thought 'if I'm old enough to pretend I'm doing all that then in a story she's old enough to actually do all that.'