Characters The Essential Guide to OC's: The Mini Challenge Revival - Prompt the Fourth!

Personally, when I'm making up (or creating, if I'm feeling sentimental) a character, I don't worry for a second that I may have created a Mary Sue. Ever. But then, I've been writing for a few or ten years, so while I don't claim to be an expert, I daresay I can do it well enough. Maybe it helps that I don't write about the chosen ones who save the galaxy. My characters have much more personal, smaller, ordinary stories. Save the town, not the universe, I guess.

And so far, I've never been accused of creating a Mary Sue. Actually, that rather surprises me. I'm still expecting to get a "Your OC is a total MARY SUE!", or condescending "con-crit" like a pat on the head, over at ff.net any day now.

But I still wouldn't care.

In fact, I would probably laugh at them.

Basically, I feel the term Mary Sue is so overused, I'm almost tempted to suggest it's time for it to go out of usage. Whatever meaning it had, I think it has lost. It used to refer to the girl with purple eyes and black hair to her ankles who was half unicorn and slept with the whole fellowship and made them fall madly in love with her... Oh, you know. The character whose one dimension is too good to be true. But now? It seems to be applied, though I've never seen it done here, to just about every OC who is reasonably attractive, can hold their own even around the official characters, and can spell "dog" correctly.

On other forums, I've seen people who are so afraid that their original characters might be the dreaded Sue, that they make them into, basically, incompetent nonentities, without a single positive or interesting characteristic. Somehow, I doubt many people are interested in reading about that sort of character. (And yes, I am thinking of one girl in particular who was patting herself on the back because her plain, stupid, talent free, illiterate OC wasn't even allowed to angst about her pitiful condition.)

So yes, the litmus tests are meant for fun, I get that. But for some people, they are quite serious, and they let the scores determine how they approach their characters. And no, I won't use these tests for my characters anymore, not even for amusement, for that reason.

Oh, and I've noticed that the Mary Sue term has gone into usage in the fantasy/science fiction writing community more and more, which probably isn't very surprising, given how closely connected the two communities tend to be. But it makes even less sense for writers to fret that their characters are Mary Sues, are out of line for being "too" smart or good looking, in their own universes. (But let's just say that if they try to drag the Sue calling into literary fiction, where autobiographical characters are everywhere and not called self-inserts, I'm taking out the staff Gandalf lets me borrow for this sort of thing.)

As far as I'm concerned, there are characters who are well written, and there are those who are not. That's about it.



*Edited to tame my tendency to rant.

 

The question you have to ask yourself is this: what's the difference between between a well written, well developed character and a Mary Sue/Gary Stu? From what people have been saying here, it seems that any character that is well developed is a Mary Sue/Gary Stu simply because we can't have a character that isn't Luke, Han, Leia, Obi-Wan, Anakin etc, to be interesting. It's kind of insulting in a way and goes back to what I tried to point out eariler with the Corran/Myri quote from Exile. Yeah, my character Flik is a Jedi from the Old Republic, who happens to survive the Jedi Purge and goes on to live into the time when Luke is trying to rebuild the Order and because of that, he does have more knowledge of the Force (mainly because he was trained when the Order was at it's peak, so to speak, rather than because he's more powerful than Luke, etc), but because he lets Luke take his own path and doesn't appear to him trying to take over the darn thing, or pushing his (excsue the pun), nose in where it's not wanted, that's the difference between having a decent OC and having a Mary Sue/Gary Stu.

The thing about fantasy and sci-fi is that characters are meant to be out there in some way. They are supposed to be aliens, elves, werewolves, shapeshifters, vampires, dragons, or any other non-human creature/sapient being that you can think of. That's why people like the genre. If all I wanted to do was read a novel about some boring, twenty-going on thrity-something office worker, I'd read Brigit Jone's Diary or something dull like that. But I don't want to and why, when it comes to writing in said genre (if it's fan fiction or original), should we have to start writing boring, unintelligent, ugly characters just so the main canon ones can be risen higher than they have any right to be?

Just to make things clear, though, I don't think George Lucas' Luke, for instance, is a Gary Stu, neither do I think that anyone single author has made him into a Gary Stu either, it's when you gather all the material together into one big pile that makes him so.

 

QFT.

The term seems to blanket such a wide (and constantly altered) range of character traits that the term itself is, in reality, irrelevant.

Initially it was used to describe original characters added to fictional canon, just on the basis of being "related" or "involved" with one of the major canon characters. Apparently this is seen as creating a one-dimensional character that can't really stand on its own without that canon relationship. This thinking boiled down to the following definition of a Mary Sue:

1. If your original character has any relationship with a canon character; lover, friend, relative, co-worker, etc.; then he/she may be a Mary Sue.


Then it expanded, and included not just those OCs who had relationships, but any OC who was also "mildly to overly" attractive, or had a easy going personality. But physical features don't stop there.

An author may give his or her fanfic creation a physical attribute that makes them "stick-out" amongst their canon brethren; such as purple hair, or bright green eyes; and the definition expanded.

2. Your OC is attractive inside and/or out; or has some sort of physical trait that gives them "pause-ability"; then he/ she may be a Mary Sue


But categorizing an OC as Mary Sue did not stop at relationships, or looks; it included their core personality. When an original character begins to strongly resemble their author; or even has similarities in the name; it can be labeled a Mary Sue.

The justification, an author can be accused of inserting themselves into a story, if for no other reason than to make their own lives seem less "mundane". Forget drawing off personal experience for your OC, because any connection to your own life makes him/her a Mary Sue.


3. Any connection that can be made between the author and the OC, no matter how trivial (same first letter in the last name for example) and your character may be an Mary Sue.

There are one or two more instances when an Original Character in fanfic (or any fiction for that matter) can be labeled a Mary Sue; some of which are more mature topics I'd rather not touch upon. (never know when younger eyes are about)

The point is, the Mary Sue Litmus Test is NOT a standard bearer, and sould either be taken jokingly or with a grain of salt. Granted there is some validity to the test, but it's not "perfect" either. There is no such thing as an absolutley "Original Character", because as writers we are influenced by our environment; whether it be a medium such as movies, books, and television; or events and people in our everyday lives. You have to have something to draw upon to make those characters seem real.

Hopefully Wolf, you don't think anyone is trying to insult you here; but I get your point. I think people are posting what they've heard elsewhere as a definition to what a Mary Sue is, and feel like they may be looked down upon if they can even draw a connection. A lot of people use the canon as a jumping-off spot for

 

The simplest test - and it's not perfect, either, but it's short - is whether or not the OC steals the show from the canon characters. This means that an OC in a deliberately OC-centric fic is probably exempt, although it depends a little bit on the story. Otherwise, the OC needs to have a reason to be there, but shouldn't suck all the life (and characterization) from canon characters and shouldn't be doing better than the canon characters unless it's perfectly logical for him/her to do so. Your OC Jedi Master ought to be a better duelist than a canon Padawan, for instance, without a good reason for writing it a different way.

Another way to put it would be: if your OC was a newly introduced character in profic, would it fly?

 

Only if your OC has wings....

When you look at the recent Legacy of the Force books, you'll find that increasingly the Skywalkers and Solos are taking over just about everything. It might sound like a daft statement to make because as I don't need to point out that they are the central characters, but it seems all the other characters, unless it happens to be Alema Rar or Luminya aren't even mentioned in any significant way anymore (or if they are, it's done in a way that makes them look stupid). Everyone seems to forget that although Luke Skywalker destroyed the first Death Star, it was a couple of "normal" characters that did in the second, even if they did have a little help (from non-Jedi, I might add), and of course, Rogue Squadron managed to take Coruscant and in the process give the New Republic the legitimacy that it needed, and all without the Skywalkers and Solos in sight. Because the novels have become so narrow these days in the characters that have a significant role in them it's made them dull. Also, people seem to forget that no matter how great a Jedi is, he or she would fail if he / she didn't have the support of "normal" characters.

My advice to authors if they find that people are critising their OCs, is to play Avril Lavinge's new album - it's useful in deflating the egos of both OCs and central or popular canon characters.

 

I'm beginning to think that this Mary Sue/Gary Stu thing is really all about perspective. I know that none of my OC's could hold their own against the titans of the canon-verse, and I like to keep it that way. It makes them more 'down to (insert planet of your choice)', and more fallible. I like having characters that aren't saving the universe because they want to; it's because they have to, or they're screwed. They are selfish people, like most of the people I know. If they're saving a planet, it's usually because of the hefty paycheck. Or they've done it by accident (like I had happen in one fic), or they just fail miserably and move on, lugging along the emotional baggage that naturally comes with that sort of thing.

Maybe this kind of outlook is cynical, but it's worked, especially when writing for Imperials or from the bad guy point of view. But if you're trying to write from the standpoint of the idealistic hero, give the guy a gaping Achilles heel, or some kind of kryptonite. For every victory, make sure there's a painful defeat lurking out there. Luke lost his share of battles against the Empire, he couldn't stop them from taking Echo base, heck, he even got his hand sliced off.

So I just make sure I give my OC's a good wallop to remind them that they're not gods. They're OCs. Win some, lose some. It all evens out in the end.

 

I think that's the best way to do it; giving them flaws makes them more real.

 

Precisely my point. Only, I think the problem that's more common, with my own writing, at least, is that I make my characters too flawed. Then the characters just become unpleasant, and you want to stop reading. I know this involves canon characters, but I recall one fic with the meek, inept Cosmo forced to team up with a gruff, aggressive Boba Fett. I realized halfway through that while I was writing Fett as the typical anti-hero, compared to Cosmo, who was as I mentioned before, timid and loser-ish, Fett became this horrible, horrible person by contrast. People could identify with Cosmo the second-stringer (I think), but not with Fett, who was callous and mean.

There's a line you've got to draw someplace, to stop your characters from becoming villains. Then again, with Anakin (if I may borrow another canon reference), you've got a decent hero, with OMGSPESHULPOWERS, but he's not the Council's favorite Jedi, and for good reason. He's arrogant and selfish, at least compared to a lot of the other Jedi. So that journey down the Dark Side could still make for a cool story. As a matter of fact, I would suspect Gary Stus of that type to be more susceptible to the Dark Side.

 

If you're going to have a villian, you need to give him or her a motivation to be a villian that the reader can identify with and, to a certain extent, have some sympathy for.

I've always found bounty hunters interesting because although they are portreyed as villians, when you actually dig deeper, you'll find that they do have a code of honour and go after the bad guys that normal, run of the mill law enforcement guys won't or can't touch. Some do make the "mistake" of going after Rebels for instance, or in the case of Greedo, it does attract some naive idiots that are blinded either by the excitement or glory of being a bounty hunter. There are also some psychos who are in the profession just to make things interesting. I'll let others decide on who they are!

 

My characters are pretty much all messed up in some way... the Kannon Cousins are probably the only two that are normal. I like to have a protagonist that is doing evil things, yet he is fighting an evil government. Don't necessarily feel the same way as Manion about making characters too villianish. But then again I am writing a more twisted tale. I don't want to associate with the villian, I want to oppose them.

You forgot an important class of bounty hunter, Wolf, the one who is in it for the money. I like those the best. All they want is the money and they are willing to pull any job to get it.

 

I've had a rough day, but I'll go ahead an humbly offer my thoughts on this topic. A Mary Sue is simply put a very poorly written character. Mary Sues are very amateurish author avatars--the kind that end up going to the mall with Legolas and teaching Anakin how to fight lightsaber duels. Mary Sues hang out in high schools, mansions and other places suitable for a Hannah Montana film. I've never really understood the big debate over the definition of a Mary Sue. And instead of echoing a lot of other sentiments already expressed, I'd just like to add that I agree with everything already said by Pandora and Ale.

What I think is really at work here is that there are some people who are so afraid of original characters or otherwise simply incapable of understanding why someone would rather create original characters to use in fanfic as opposed to rehashing the same ol'stuff with the canon characters. Mary Sue paranoia helps to keep good non-OC writers from venturing into the realm of more creative original fic. Don't get me wrong Mary Sue is out there, but all in all I don't think she's the Osama Bin Laden of fanfic that we've made her out to be.

 

Don't you mean the Britnay Spears of Fan Fiction?

Sorry, Rau_Fang (it's that anti-corparte greed gene I have making me forget that some characters are just plain greedy.)

There are loads of valid reasons why people write OCs as opposed to canon characters. Although I write mostly in the realm of OCs, I'm not opposed to writing minor canon characters that you don't see often, if at all. Just as a central/popular canon writer wouldn't understand the need to write OCs, I can't understand the need to write about a character that you could read about if you picked up almost any one of the novels you can find in a bookshop. Just two opposing veiw points, I guess.

 

I'm back, finally

I agree with pretty much everyone here.


Yet another productive contribution from Futon?

I particularly appreciate this line of thought. I'm about to blaspheme here, but Jedi characters to me have the potential to become incredibly dull incredibly quickly. I almost find them the least interesting part of Star Wars. I can't stand the line-toeing that they all seem to go through and the moral navel-gazing that a Jedi is seemingly required to do. I've argued this point in another thread, but 'The Force' is far too often used as an excuse for everything. I get very shirty when a fic (or indeed, a published novel, or perhaps a LFL film) deigns to suggest that The Force has command of the universe and nothing any non-Jedi can do will affect this. I know it's a nice plot device that the fate of the galaxy can be personified as to who wins between the bad super-mortal and the good super-mortal, but where does that leave the galaxy? Were I living in it, I'd be secretly hoping they both killed each other so that I didn't have to be ruled over by any mysterious force.

My point here being that normal folk are so, so often overlooked that OC writers may feel the need to force-sensitise their characters or they cant play a significant role in things. The novels support this idea. The movies support this idea. One notably exception in my eyes happens to be the second Knights of the Old Republic game. I loved what they were trying to say with Kreia - about her wanting to destroy the Force because of the atrocities committed in its name. Shame it wasn't truly fleshed out.

I'm rambling and off topic, I apologise

Another good point. Your Sci-Fi characters need to be interesting and 'cool' for want of another word. Otherwise they're real world characters.

Allow me to make a proposal to the thread. A little while ago I read a great essay about character development that lumped characters into two categories - 'Flat' and 'Round'. These were for original fiction but can be applied here just as easily. A basic breakdown of the two went something like this (and I'm going from memory here. If someone can correct me, please just step in).

A Flat Character is one that undergoes no change. It exists to satisfy the immediate needs of the author - that being, to move the plot along, to catalyse some other character's development, to be killed effortlessly by another character to make it look better by comparison. Your classic flat character is the 'guy in the red shirt' from Star Trek - he goes on the away missions so he can be killed instead of Kirk. In Star Wars, a good example might be Dex from the Diner. "Here Obi-Wan, give me that plot point so I can send you to your next plot destination."

Flat characters exist in every story and are necessary. But if your central character is fl

 

Good points, Luton (even though you used canon characters ). That's the problem with this all encompassing Mary Sue fear. There are different kinds of characters. You have to have some that merely have walk on roles and some that have more important parts. In my own writing, I use a lot of flat and round characters of different degrees AND I'm going to add to the confusion and introduce an oblong character--a supporting character with considerable depth whose depth is steadily revealed to the audience over the course of the story.


The Flat: In The Keeper of Secrets early on I introduce this obnoxious couple, the Cashions, with whom one of the principal characters has lived. The Cashions pop up every so often to make some sort of social commentary or push the plot along a little bit for Mai--Mrs. Cashion was the first to suggest that one character had a daughter who was mentally unstable--and then they disappear into the background. They're not poorly written, they're just flat. The reader knows they're childless and have kind of a fussy henpecked marriage and that's about it--just enough to understand Mrs. Cashion's motivation for being a gossip.

The Round: Also from The Keeper of Secrets is a reoccurring OC Mazaricky MaclaMahoney. He's usually around for comic relief in my other stories, but in TKoS he's there for a bit more. He undergoes a major change towards the end of the story--and for his character it's completely life changing. Completely Round. (I won't say any more on this character so as not to spoil it).


I also have quite a bit of oblong characters--neither flat nor round. My oblong characters are ones that through the course of the story the reader unravels their motivations and develops the ability to see things from their perspective. It's not about information dumping however or how much information is divulged about a particular character. Take for example another character from TKoS, Colonel Zullivan. The reader never really knows a great deal about Zully's internal thoughts or feelings, but you know that he's dedicated to his friends and will see things through. And while it might be argued that he is a bit flat (as he is usually seen in conjunction with another principal character, Lambarde) there's enough out there about Zully that reader can see past the action soldier/spends too much time in the nudey bar exterior and appreciate his real motivations of friendship and loyalty.

 

Those are really interesting break-downs

 

Interesting points, Futon!

To keep my Jedi in check, I usually make sure that they fail when they try to do something alone, or that if they do succeed in accomplishing something without the help of others, that they pay a high price in doing so.

This is a little off topic here, but over on another Star Wars site that I go to alot, we had this discussion recently about what you could get a Jedi to do that didn't involve them being the traditctional warrior Jedi that we see in most of the novels and films. We came up with some interesting stuff - most of it are ideas generated from the article on Wookieepedia about them: for example, in the Old Republic some of the Jedi were archaeologists or like Bariss Offe, were healers. There's a list of other stuff there, but I'm not going to go into that - the idea that they did other stuff intrigued me and it made me wonder why we didn't see anymore of that in stories. It makes them seem a bit more normal, doesn't?

 

I agree that the image of a Jedi as a superhero that can save all gets tiring after a while. That's why the one Jedi character I have is an utter failure. I like how in Futon's fics, they emphasize that the Force isn't responsible for everything. (At least, that's what I think they emphasize. Correct me if I'm wrong.) As a matter of fact, it is my opinion that in the films, the prophecy of 'the Chosen One' was a load of garbage. A self-fulfilling prophecy that only came to be because the Jedi thought it would, not because the Force willed it. In which case, the Jedi were the ones that dug themselves into their own grave. Maybe it was a wake-up call to show that they weren't all-powerful. Of course, that's just my opinion.

 

I was afraid that my OC was falling into a trap of the Mary Sue character type. But can you be a Mary Sue if you are a slave to your own emotions and ideals that make you weak, despite your streangths? Maybe not.

I agree that a hero character needs a heap of baggage and "issues", Superman without Kryptonite just wouldn't work. And Anakin without the Dark Side wouldn't work either, just like Luke wouldn't work without his past, or perfect Jedi Obi-Wan without his mistakes.

I think what redeems a Mary Sue/Gary Stue is the mistakes they don't know they are making, but the readers can clearly see. The audience will root for a good character to succede, but will not care about the failures of a Mary Sue/Gary Stue character.

Perfect example: Lana Leng in "Smallville", can't stand that girl. Rooting for her death.

 

I think we're all getting to hooked up on character development. Sometimes a character might go through something and not change at all and the flatness of that character can be just as fascinating as a character who's gone through change. I don't necessary see flatness as a Mary Sue-curse...

 

I don't think Superman works as a character, anyway - I'm more of a Spiderman and Wolverine person myself. I like Spiderman because I can identify with his nerdiness....(what I mean by that is when he runs after the school bus and keeps losing his jobs because on the way to work he has to stop to catch a scumy man criminal, etc) and that he does make mistakes, like failing to catch the crook that led to his uncle's death... I like Wolverine because he doesn't even realise that he's a hero.

 

Hopping back in this thread a) to defend Superman, because while he's not as complicated as more modern heroes... I still love Clark Kent. He's cute in that old-fashioned way. Even though Lana Lang is irritating, and I'm not even done with the third season yet. b) I'm here to talk about Mary Sues and non-traditional Jedi roles, because that seems to be the topic at hand.

My primary OC Jedi, Leiraya Moran, is a peacenik organic farmer. She deals in fruit, except for times like when her best friend goes missing and she goes searching for him. As it turns out, I think I mostly made her a Jedi so she can thumb her nose at them, and swing a shiny sword around for purely aesthetic effect. She's got different ideas about the Force, but it's not the be-all and end-all of her slice of the galaxy. Her best friend, Kylan Sheffield, also has his reasons for doing what he does, but they don't involve the Force. I can't really say much more about it, but he undergoes some huge character changes before his story ends. He's much more of a traditionalist than Leiraya, but I'd say he identifies more as a soldier of Corellia who uses the Force, rather than a soldier of the Force who is from Corellia.

Mary Sues: I don't have a whole lot to add. I pretty much agree with what's been said thus far.

*brushes dust off writing implements* ahh, now that I'm free from school, I have no time commitments. This means it's time to write more OC stories!

 

Hmm...change vs. no change in a character...

In recent years I've been taught that a main character in a story (especially one longer than, say, a viggie) must change in some way, shape or form. If there was no change to that character, then "what's the point?" (Asked rhetorically. ) Since then, I've gone into each of my stories with the idea and objective in mind that the protagonist cannot be exactly the same person in the last sentence as he was in the opening sentence. In one or two stories, I ran into issues where the protagonist knew he should change for the better, but his initial beliefs were rooted too deeply for him to actually change at that moment. I agonized about that for a long time--"oh no, I can't make him change while keeping him in-character, but he's got to change, darn it! I can't end the story without it."

Even more recently I came across this webpage, which addresses some of what yodas_waiter just said: linky-link. The definitions on this website for "flat" and "round" are a bit different (and honestly, trying to read them made my head hurt), but in this particular page it deals with static vs. dynamic characters--no major change vs. major change, so I feel it can apply to one of the discussions here at least somewhat. My favorite part about this page is a spiffy chart that shows what it does to a plot if the character does not change. In the right situations, it can be good for a story, or it can even be the point of a story, if the character does not change. (Although it could be argued that even those static characters could be considered dynamic by the end of the story by going even deeper into their respective static traits, but I won't get into that. )

All this made more sense before I started typing it. grr. Suffice to say that I still consciously or subconsciously aim for the subtle- or not-so-subtle change of one or more main characters per story, but like anything, exceptions can be made. I have a ton of flat characters--used for plot support, limited to cameo appearances, can be summed up in one or two sentences with good and/or bad personality aspects, etc. If they change during their short appearance time, it's either an accident or a purposeful catalyst for main character change. My much smaller group of main characters is round (I hope)--they're more apt to have noticeable changes over time, and it's a little harder to describe them in simplistic terms because of different layers that they have. If they don't change during a lengthy story, there had better be a reason for it (IMHO).

-Thumper

 

To add to what DHW was saying, I have a coupke characters who aren't technically OCs but they're minor enough characters that I can write them the way I want without canon-ness interfering. Anyway, they're Corellian Jedi from before the fall of the Republic, and in canon it was mentioned that they do their own thing (get married, have kids and jobs, etc.) so they way I interpreted that was that being a Jedi was a side-job. So they use the Force, but it's not the be-all end-all that most Jedi see it as. So I don't think that having Force-sensetive OCs or characters is necessarily giving in or making them more MS-y, but that it just depends on how you have the characters use the Force.

 

The canon OC. Those are always fun.

As an OC writer, the taunting image of the Mary Sue/Gary Stu stereotype has always been one step ahead of me. The fear of my characters being deemed too perfect has forced me to tone down various aspects of characters. It is also in my opinion why some people tend to avoid OC-centric stories like the plague.

 

Silly people.

Truth be told, I'm just not a very good writer when it comes to Jedi. They just end up being too powerful, so I just try to avoid them. There are exceptions, of course, but generally, Jedi are a sore subject for me.