Mary Sue-ism: How to Put Yourself into Your Writing, Without Writing Yourself as the Main Character

In my
previous post, I wrote about knowing yourself in order to write with passion
and emotion. Maria
pointed out that sometimes writers take this too far, and she was absolutely
right. The thing with fiction is that everything should be done in moderation.
Dialogue, description, action, emotion, characters; they all have their place
and time, and using anything to an extreme will ruin your story. Inserting too
much of yourself into your novel and your characters can push you over the line
from passionate to nauseating, because it usually creates a Mary Sue.






So, just
what is a Mary Sue? It’s basically a character created to be admired, envied or
pitied, rather than one your reader can empathize with. One of those “too-good-for-this-shithole-planet”
characters designed to be a role model, but failing at it miserably. Instead
they come off as sanctimonious and too good to be true. Mary Sues are the
author’s pets. Whatever the character wants, needs and desires comes to them
with ease. How could an author create such an annoying character? It’s easily
done, particularly when we take self-insertion too far. When we try to identify
too much with the character, we often run the risk of creating a Mary Sue.



Let’s be
clear, though, that self-insertion is not bad. If it was, then no novel would
be worth reading. We can’t write believable and relatable fiction without
inserting a bit of ourselves into our novels. The characters we create all
contain a piece of ourselves, whether it’s the bad or the good pieces. There’s
no other way to breathe life into your character than to put yourself in his
shoes. But the trick to creating a character that is us, but not us, is to use
only small pieces of ourselves, and only from certain parts of our subconscious.



What the fuck?



I’ll
explain in my usual long, rambling, convoluted way.



I read
somewhere that Freud believed that all literature is self-insertion at its
heart, and all stories are a simply a writer’s wish-fulfillment. The difference
between good literature and bad is in how well the writer can mask his
self-insertion by giving the work some type of social value. While I
feel Freud was batshit crazy about a lot of things, which any decent
psychiatrist should be, I think he hit the nail on the head. If all of the
characters we create contain some small amount of ourselves, then self-insertion
to the point of Mary Sue-ism is only the extreme end of something that is
natural and positive. Blatant self-insertion is bad writing, but
subtle self-insertion is good writing. Are you still with me? Okay, let’s
examine Mary Sue-ism.



Mary
Sue-ism is not averted by making your characters suffer. Readers just hate this
shit and you end up worse off than just letting that perky, perfect character
la-di-da her way through life. (PS: Mary Sue’s can also be male, just so you
know) Tedious wish-fulfillment and martyrdom are pretty much the same thing.



Mary Sues
are named after you, work at a job you wish you had, possess all your good traits
or the traits you wish you had, dress like you, think like you, and act like
you.



Mary Sues
are perfect, unbeatable, and overwhelmingly awesome. They’re gorgeous, tough,
can kick ass and take names. They
cannot lose and they get everything they want and then some. Their faults are
inconsequential for the most part, like maybe they have big feet or can’t spell
Mississipi. (See what I did there?) They tend to portray themselves as really
cool, and no one is really cool except Clive…maybe Alexander. Oh and let’s not
forget Richard. But I’ve fallen off the track here….



Mary Sues
have cliché qualities, ridiculously deep backstory, or cliché plots.



Orphaned at the tender age of seven, she has
unusual eyes the color of lavender, through which she can see into the minds
and hearts of others but she hates this gift and tries not to use it. She will
die, but then be resurrected by the god who can’t bear to see her light
extinguished so soon.



Hey, you
might not write something this awful, but even a little cliché opens the door
to that bottomless pit of yawning desperation. So, are you guilty of blatant
self-insertion? That depends. Do you find yourself defending your characters
with any of these statements:



The
character isn’t me, she only looks/talks like me and has a name similar/the
same as mine and loves/hates all the same things I do.


My
character has flaws. He’s not perfect. There’s a ton of things he’s not very
good at doing. (Sadly, the character flaws usually include caring too much or
giving his all despite the cost to himself—puhleeeeeease. Just because your
character can’t sing to save his life isn’t relevant to the story, so it’s a
useless “flaw.”)






Why are such characters bad? Writers that
craft characters that are basically avatars of themselves lack the skill and
imagination to create anything else. Self-insertion is not the mark of a bad
writer. In fact, self-insertion done to the right degree indicates a very
skilled writer. But the self-insertion is usually intentional in cases of
skill, and it’s always relevant to the story.



My belief
is that writers guilty of Mary Sue-ism want to be liked, so they make their
character (aka: the mirror of themselves) likable. All the other characters
want to be close to this character, and the writer believes this will make the
reader like the character too. This usually works the opposite way, though.
Readers don’t want you to give them someone to like or admire, they want a
character they can identify with.
Nobody wants to see someone else’s wishes come true. Pfft. There’s no fun in
that. A good writer puts the reader into the role of protagonist, but Mary Sues
are designed so that nobody can relate to them except the author. They’re meant
to be observed and admired from the outside. See how that might be annoying?



Never fool
yourself into thinking that drama can camouflage Mary-Sue-ism. It only makes it
more obvious. And for the love of Pete, let the character
enjoy his good fortune if you’re going to make him the luckiest bastard on the
planet. Those guilt-ridden, morose assholes that can’t enjoy good fortune are beyond
annoying. A real person would be all “Right on, man!” if something good
happened. Don’t fool yourself into thinking your characters are more appealing
or interesting just because they suffer from conscience or whatever you like to
call it.



Mary
Sue-ism is easily avoided if when you create a character, you consider how he relates to the story. Do you need this character to make it
work, or are you writing the story to suit the character? If you’re doing the
latter, ask yourself why the character deserves to be in the spotlight. If the
answer is because she’s so beyond awesome that readers will just eat her up,
then you’re treading into Mary Sue waters. It’s also helpful to ask yourself how
well you take criticism of your character. If you find you take it personally, then that is a big flashing sign saying “Mary Sue
right here!”



But Renee, you still haven’t explained how self-insertion
is done properly.



Sorry. Now
that we know what Mary Sue-ism entails, let’s look at how knowing yourself, and
putting that self in your writing is a good thing. Imagine you don't know yourself
past what everyone sees on the outside; the mask you wear when going out in the
world. You might insist you feel no envy toward that disgustingly perfect model
on this month’s Cosmo cover, the one who has a boatload of money and men lining
up to do God knows what with her, but you’re lying. You lie so well, you start
believing it. And you lie about other shit too. You convince yourself there’s
goodness in everyone, that some unknown bloke living in the clouds has a plan
for everyone, and your neighbor would never steal your weed-whacker, even
though you see it in his shed. You refuse to believe that the person inside of
you is anything but a good person. You don’t acknowledge the uglies
hiding under your skin.



If you
write a book based on this strong character you strive to be, readers would
see through to the shallow person you are.



But when
you allow the inner voice of your subconscious to speak to you, and lower your rose-colored shield, you’re able to talk with that voice,
to argue, cry, and laugh with it. Your subconscious becomes a trusted friend;
the kind you’ll never know outside of yourself. When you get to know this
person inside of you, the book you write will not be mere text. It’ll be written
from the real you, warts and all. A writer
cannot create memorable stories and characters unless she’s removed her skin
and viewed herself without the pretty trappings society has forced her to wear.
She might not like what she sees. Hell, most of us know what a letdown we are
to our egos. We see a stranger at first, but soon we appreciate the grit and
scars that hide behind our skin. To insert ourselves into our writing properly,
we must write with this self in mind, because readers can easily identify with
that. We all have ugly bits beneath our skin. It’s what makes us human.



No, it doesn't mean that you craft a character that is like you. It’s not
about writing a character like you physically or even intellectually. It’s not
about what you wish you were or what you think other people want you to be. It’s
about writing about the feelings you’ve experienced. That’s the self-insertion
readers want. We write about a vast number of things, but the feelings that show
through that writing are the only thing we can claim as ours and no one else’s. This is not Mary Sue-ism, because
it’s not skin deep. It’s far beyond that.



There. Is
that coherent and whatnot? Have I left anything out?