[ SECRET POST #3371 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3371 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 059 secrets from Secret Submission Post #482.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: How do I NOT Write a Mary-Sue?

[(Anonymous)]

It's almost time for today's secrets to be posted, so I don't know whether you'll see this or not, OP.

If you feel your plot requires an OFC, then write one. But stop worrying so much about Not Making A Sue--as others have pointed out, every original female character, without fail, will be called a Sue by someone, and there's no shortage of people who call every female OC a Sue. There are people who think that long hair, or being an orphan, or having a skill, automatically make a character a Sue. You can't control any of that, so don't worry about it. Worry a little more about other things.

Stop worrying, for instance, about whether your OC's has enough flaws to "balance" her strengths, and more about whether the flaws are consistent with the rest of her character. It's easy to see when flaws have been stuck onto an OC to lower her score on a MS Litmus Test, rather than growing organically out of the same history and temperament that her strengths do. (For instance, you might have a teen character who is really smart. Perhaps her flaw is that she is lazy and disorganized--because she has never had to learn to structure her time or work in a systematic way.)

Stop worrying that you need to heap dust and ashes on your OC's head before she can be admitted to the presence of the canon characters. Making her "ugly, over 30, scarred, incompetent or weak" (as I once saw an OC ficcer advised to do) won't magically make her a better character--it will just make her ugly, scarred, over 30, incompetent or weak.

Stop worrying that things like being orphaned, or having a painful past "automatically" makes your character a Sue; concentrate on not manipulating the reader by making the OC an object of pity.

Stop worrying that being talented, or even competent, automatically makes her a Sue--what makes for Sueage is when her talents make her the center of attention all the time, and reduce the other characters to speechless admiration or poisonous envy.

Remember that what makes a Sue is that she is in the story to be the center of attention--either to be adored, or to be persecuted like Cinderella because of her superiority to everybody else. She isn't in the story to further it; she's there to extract either homage or pity. She's a narcissistic wish-fulfillment of the author--a vehicle for the author's hunger for admiration, or the author's self-pity.

Re: How do I NOT Write a Mary-Sue?

[(Anonymous)]

A day late but thank you. As a beta reader I am so tired of seeing people feel like they have to do a bunch of arbitrarily humbling to their character before they can exist.

Just let them be a character and do what they need to do. Don't overload them but you don't need to bring them down to below ground level just so someone will accept their presence.

Re: How do I NOT Write a Mary-Sue?

[(Anonymous)]

Just let them be a character and do what they need to do.

Yes, exactly. One sentence encapsulates it all!