Let’s Mary Sue/Marty Stu!

Suppose you were the hero of your own book:

Give a brief introductory description.
What are your most important qualities for your story?
What is your quest/what is it you need to accomplish?
Who/what is your antagonist?
How will you try to meet your goal?
What weaknesses of yours will get in the way?
What do you learn about yourself?
Do you accomplish your goal?

Flawed Characters

I’m thinking of the DC vs Marvel universe movie franchises, specifically two characters that are green: The Hulk (Marvel) vs. The Green Lantern (DC).

According to The Hulk’s origin story, Bruce Banner is a mild-mannered physicist who gets clobbered by gamma rays, and turns into a huge, green creature of the ID when he gets angry. As such, he’s a great superhero if one keeps him from smashing innocent bystanders and buildings. Bruce loathes his alter-ego, and this conflict adds depth and feelings of compassion toward his character.

The Green Lantern is a feckless dudebro who finds a lantern and a ring that link him to a network of intergalactic peacekeepers and superpowers. Readers are left wondering if a feckless dudebro should be allowed superpowers. Worse, though, is that we are left with the Hero’s Journey of a privileged male getting more privilege.

One of these is the more interesting character, and it’s not the dudebro.

We want our characters, especially our heroes, to have flaws that get in the way of their quest.

Dan Brown’s books (Inferno, etc.) feature a protagonist named Robert Langdon, who seems at times childishly helpless in his books, which is an intriguing flaw. He comes off as almost on the autism spectrum — focused on cryptology and solving puzzles, a bit clueless about people, led by the hand at times. However, Brown glosses over this with female characters who fall in love with him at the same time they want to mother him*, so there are no consequences of his flaw to him. In addition, everyone thinks he’s this cultured, articulate genius

Bella Swan in the Twilight series has an almost minuscule flaw — she’s clumsy. Unless she walks through mountains and upon tightropes without a net and almost falls while returning the Treasure of the Incas to the Incas, this flaw won’t affect her meaningfully. This is part of why Bella is discounted as being a Mary Sue, a perfect character designed as wish fulfillment for the author**.

Examples of good character flaws? In mystery, J.D. Robb created Eve Dallas, a horrifically abused child who grew up to be a good cop, but regularly struggles with nightmares about her past, difficulties in fathoming the rules of relationships, and being triggered by events from her professional life. Any character in Lord of the Rings (with the exception of Merry and Pippin) have baggage — Boromir is so focused on saving his country he is blinded to evil; Aragorn really, really wants to be king; Galadriel is tempted by power, Frodo struggles mightily with the Ring; Eowyn has a painful crush on Aragorn, who marries Arwen in a pragmatic marriage.***

We love reading character flaws, because imperfect characters becoming heroes give us the reassurance that we too, with all of our character flaws, can become heroes.

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* I wish other people considered unrealistic, but there is this charge laid upon American women to “change” their husbands, who don’t want to be changed. And who can blame either for this dynamic?

** The second reason is because female authors are routinely denigrated as writing Mary Sue characters, with the critics not noting that near-perfect characters like James T. Kirk (classic Star trek) and the aforementioned Robert Langdon are Marty Stus, the male equivalent of Mary Sue.

*** The movies portrayed Aragorn and Arwen as a love match. The book is much more pragmatic about that marriage. I wish the movie had followed the book in this case, because the triangle would have much more poignancy.

Marketability — I don’t know if I want it.

I got three more rejections day before yesterday. Some days are bad.

But I’ve decided (at least for now) that writing to be marketable may not be something I want to aim for. I’ve observed bookshelves and read articles and have noticed what is marketable in science fiction/fantasy. I may be biased (disclosure: pacifist Quaker, pro-diversity), but the trends I’ve found discourage me:

Military SF or sword and sorcery battle-based fantasy — for example, Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga, The Lord of the Rings, David Weber’s Honor Harrington series. The battle provides the tension, the climax — the whole plot.
Male authors — many emerging female writers of the 50’s-60’s used gender-neutral or male names to publish: for example, Andre Norton and Marion Zimmer Bradley. We have obviously female authors now, but many are writing strong male leads (such as in Bujold’s Vokorsigan saga again) This is not unique to SF/F: my terminal degree was in an almost entirely female field, and the most lauded work in the field was written by a male outside the field, who received a Nobel Prize for a piece of work that uses circular arguments and misuses the human sciences knowledge base. There are certainly examples of female authors — but many female authors still are discouraged from writing in SF/F. My favorite authors — Sharon Shinn and Connie Willis — have succeeded in the field. (If you’re reading this, drop a line and tell me how you did it.)
Male lead characters — preferably alpha male. A strong, accomplished male lead gets tagged as a “Competent Man”– Luke Skywalker from the Star Wars saga; a strong female lead is dismissed as a “Mary Sue” — Rey from the Star Wars saga. Yes, not all fanboys are calling Rey or Black Widow or the female lead of almost every story “Mary Sue”, but agents don’t want to take risks. They want guaranteed sellers, and it’s easier to dismiss a character as a “Mary Sue” than to risk putting their bets on saleability. Women writers report being scared of writing female characters. By the way, in the mostly female romance genre, a true “Mary Sue” like Bella from Twilight is perfectly acceptable.
No three-dimensional relationships to anchor the tale in humanity — we have the term “love interest” instead. A love interest lives in the background, doesn’t have to be well-developed. The “love interest” is almost invariably female. Or if they’re male, they’re often the savior.

My problem is that I know these trends, and I write to subvert these trends.

I want to communicate that bloodshed isn’t the only way to settle things. Even the “War is Hell” plots treat war as necessary. I’m a pacifist.
I’m obviously a female author, although “Lauren” might be gender-neutral enough that agents don’t know that.
My leads are almost always female with a full range of gender manifestations, and my male characters run the gamut from very alpha male to androgynous. One of my strong characters is a true androgyne genetically.
The most important thing is that I write these things without treating them as more important than the plot. I assume that pacifism is a possible option, just as military SF assumes war is the only option.
I assume multicultural and non-white groups are the norm.
I assume the protagonist can have a supportive relationship rather than a girl back home waiting for him. I don’t preach, I just describe.

But then there are the ideas that go around in my head as I send queries. “Is it worth it? Is my writing good enough? Is my work too strange to be taken seriously? Is it not SF enough? Do I have to start writing romance? (Oh God, no; I hate writing sex scenes. Everyone’s orgasms are over the top every time, and how can you name genitalia without sounding ludicrous?) These alone might be causing my suffering every time I get rejected, because it’s hard to shut the monologue up. The thing is, I won’t know until I work with a developmental editor, because it will take one to help me understand if it’s my writing or not.
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I have an idea for a shirt: “Writing is my dysfunctional lover”. Anyone want one? A t-shirt, I mean 🙂

Inside Out, Outside In

Everything you write in a journal can give you insight on yourself. It can also give you insight on your stories.
Everything you write in your stories can give you insight on your story. It can also give you insight on yourself.

(This is not to say that you are the main character in your stories, as you are in your journal. Or you might be — Mary Sue and Marty Stu stories are not necessarily bad if the story is well-written. For those unacquainted with fan fic, a Mary Sue/Marty Stu story features a protagonist who charms everyone, becomes indispensible and gets the girl/guy/gender fluid individual. He or she has no discernable faults. The story gives you the impression that the main character is an extension of the writer. It’s best to avoid writing Marty Stu/Mary Sue because it’s hard to write well. However, James T. Kirk in the Star Trek reboot fits this profile rather nicely.)

You inform the emotions of your characters based on your emotions and your take on others’ emotions. How could you not? Everything you learn about emotional complexity from life, often explored through journaling, sneaks into your story as you try to inject emotional realism. Conversely, sometimes you read that page or ten you’ve written and say, “That reminds me of me.”

I came to this realization studying yesterday’s tempestuous missive in this blog. Hours after I wrote it, three words jumped at me: “I love everyone.” I realized what I actually said was, “I want everyone to love me.” After becoming really embarassed for giving that away, I claimed that neediness, and then thought, “Now, wouldn’t that make a Mary Sue more intriguing?”

To spiral back to the beginning, everything you write in a journal can give you insight on yourself. It can also give you insight on your stories. Everything you write in your stories can give you insight on your story. It can also give you insight on yourself. It takes writing and introspection.