Get outta here, Mary-Sue!

by Greening

Some tips to improve your writing and avoid Mary-Sues. It may prove worth the read, it may not. However I do hope that many of you visit this page and find it to be helpful - this is why I wrote this in the first place. If you do like it please reviwe so I know how you found it!

A/N: Since I've come across so many stories that desperately need to be ripped of one or the other very annoying character I've decided to post some tips on how to avoid Mary-Sues, along with some more general tips at the end.

Please post a review as you go (come on, I didn't have to go through hours of writing so you could improve your stories – you could as well give me some payment in the form of reviews!).

You can also check out my beta profile if you have anything that needs a quick look over.

Short Introduction

I've decided to write a short introduction, dedicating it to all of you who keep confusing "your" and "you're" and other words. Here goes:

Your = shows posession (your cat)

You're = you are (you're a cat)

Its = shows posession (its ears (the cat's))

It's = it is (it's a cat)

They're = they are (they're cats)

Their = shows posession (their cat)

There = specifies location (there is a cat)

Were = past of "are" (We were chasing the cat)

Where = specifies location (where is the cat?)

We're = we are (We're looking for that cat)

Loose = opposite of "fixed" (the cat's collar is hanging loose)

Lose = opposite of "keep" (the cat loses its collar)

Accept = to admit or agree (I accept that the cat is gone)

Ecxept = not included (we found every animal except the cat)

Affect = to influence (the cat's absence affects me deeply)

Effect = a consequence (the cat's absence had a massive effect on my moods)

Could've = could have (the cat could've gone to my friend's place)

!There's no "could of". If you write this you're missing the basics of english grammar.

Things you'll want to avoid and other tips

An otherwise good story is often ruined by screwing up the characters. There are two main dangers an author has to encounter when writing fanfiction:

Mary-Sue: an originally created character (OC – Original Character) may often end up being too perfect.

A character from canon is often toyed with so much that their personality is wrecked beyond recognition (OOC – Out Of Character). This is often the fault of a Mary-Sue, but not always.

To avoid such flaws – because let's be honest, many readers are instantly turned down by the sight of a Mary-Sue, even if the rest of the story is brilliant – I've collected a few tips to help you get rid of characters no reader should have to endure.

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Appearance

A typical Mary-Sue is overly beautiful, has an unusual hair and eye colour and seems adorable to everybody. You may want to avoid giving her such conspicuous physical traits, as it makes the character seem less and less legitimate. A typical Mary-Sue would probably look somewhere along these lines:

Her flaming red curls floated in the wind, and her icy blue eyes stared into his with such intensity that he couldn't help but think of the clear, cold ocean. Her perfectly round lips curved into a smile that made his world spin.

As a reader I'd probably close down the browser faster than you can say 'stop!' at this awful description. It's okay to have an OC who is pretty, but don't turn her into a goddess of beauty. Red hair is fine, flaming red hair that looks like fire in the night is NOT fine. Blue eyes are okay, icy blue eyes that look like the surface of a deep lake on a cold winter's day are NOT okay. You see where I'm going with this, right?

Another big issue when describing your character is the lack of subtleness. You don't want to spend half of your story describing how beautiful she looks and what clothes she's wearing today. As long as it's not essential for the story LEAVE IT OUT. You don't want to bore your readers with endless descriptions.

Of course you DO, however, want your reader to at least have a feeling of what your character looks like, and something along the lines of Her brown vest melted with the surrounding trees and would make it harder for enemies to spot her is okay, though there are far more discrete ways to do it.

Personality

She's always kind, adorable, brave, honest, a powerful fighter, and on top of that everybody likes her. SCREW THAT. If your character has more than two of these personality traits you've created a Mary-Sue. Congratulations, you may start inventing your OC from scratch. I know it's hard to give your heroine bad traits as well, but remember that she's human and thus has good AND bad sides. It's okay for her to be sweet or brave or honest or have a big heart – but not all of them at once. The key to a credible character lies in the balance between good and bad. She may be brave, but also have a short temper, or she might me arrogant or a liar. Let your imagination flow.

Not every character will like your OC – that's just how life goes. Screw the idea of everybody falling victim to her beauty and charm; it makes your character so much worse.

I've seen two types of persona in a Mary-Sue. The first is the idea of an immensely powerful fighter who doesn't want to use her power because she's afraid of hurting others. Here is a short summary I've randomly come up with:

Yuki is the jinchuuriki of the recently resurrected ten-tails. Due to her unique and powerful kekkei genkai she's the only one who can control the beast within her. But power has a prize: ever since the sealing she's been avoided by her friends, and so decides on going on a quest. Will she find new friendship and even a new love along the way?

I'm sorry if I've insulted anyone who has actually written a story like this – but my aim is to help and improve, and I fear you'll have to cope with this for now.

The second type of Mary-Sue I've seen more often than I'd like to admit is the sickeningly helpless kind. The character has to be frequently rescued by the hero (very often the author's favourite character), who will most probably fall hopelessly in love with her. A summary for this kind of story would probably be:

Yuki has been blind from the day she was born. One day she's abducted by the Akatsuki (probably again for some unique special power), but as much as she hates being held prisoner she finds herself falling head over heels for a certain Uchiha (whom fangirls seem to worship more than any other Akatsuki). But does he even acknowledge her existence? (Why would Akatsuki kidnap her and then forget about her existence? Seriously.)

Again, sorry if I insulted anybody with this.

Name

Giving your OC a unique name virtually screams Mary-Sue. You may have noticed that I used the name Yuki for both my summaries above. Although the name itself does sound pretty normal it's gotten sickly cute in my opinion, considering that it means 'snow', and snow is often a metaphor for pureness, white and innocence.

Also, you want to stick to your character's credibility. If she comes from our world her name will NOT be Arianna, Yakiko (except she's Japanese), Calathia or anything else unusual. Names such as Kate, Caroline or Hannah will work perfectly fine.

If she's from the Narutoverse (or any other fictional universe) make sure you RESEARCH the canon characters' names. Can you discover a certain pattern? Do the names have certain endings or meanings? Some male Japanese names for example tend to end in –maru (Akamaru, Kimimaru, Orochimaru) or –suke (Sasuke, Daisuke, Kosuke). But avoid choosing a name that has a cheesy meaning such as Hotori (firebird; although I do like the sound to that name) or Ai (love), although they may be real Japanese names.

Relationships

Very often a Mary-Sue will make other characters behave uncharacteristically. For example, Sasori will not want to kiss your OC every time she shows up (for crying out loud, he's a puppet), and Sasuke will probably not give a damn about her (let's face it, he's a cold-hearted bitch). It's hard to accept, but the sad truth: they're S-rank criminals for a reason, they've got better things to do than worry about a girl who keeps dragging them down.

I know it's very hard to keep them all in character (I myself am having trouble with this), especially when they have next to no personality in canon (Itachi, I'm looking at you there) or just had so little screen-time that a personality development was simply impossible. Everything we know about those characters is what others have to say about them, which I don't deem very reliable.

And I just don't see every Akatsuki member (it appears the Akatsuki are a magnet for Mary-Sues in fanfiction… next to superhot Sasuke of course) falling desperately in love with her.

Background

Oh yes, the backstory. This is so easy to screw up, but even easier to avoid in the first place. Your OC is not very likely to be a princess from a far-away land who fled her palace to escape an arranged marriage, and neither will she be an Uchiha who miraculously survived the massacre (or because Itachi loves her so much he couldn't kill her).

And the backstory is one of the (if not the) most important things in your story. It explains how your OC is the way she is, it might clarify why she has arachnophobia (fear of spiders) for example, or why she hates a certain person so much (think of Sasuke's relationship with his brother; he doesn't hate him out of nowhere).

Always keep it legit: you don't want to mess this up because it's a crucial point of your character development. As I mentioned above, I think Sasuke is the perfect example for this (although you don't have to go to such extremes as to kill off an entire clan for the sake of your story).

Please note that this applies to longer fics only. A legitimate background story takes time to develop, which you don't have in a oneshot.

Story Development

Every good story has character development. This is especially important for longer fics – you don't want your reader to have finished reading it with a huge question mark displayed on their face. Your characters will, at some point, have to go through some sort of change, revelation, etc. For example, the whole point of a quest is to figure something out: whether it is your inner self or some sort of treasure is of little importance, but your character WILL learn lots of things that influence her personality along the way.

This is also a thing you must consider when writing a oneshot. Most short stories only make sense if the main character goes through some kind of inner change or revelation. This may rank from a subtle hint (e.g.: "tomorrow I'll clean my room") to a life-changing decision ("I realized how dull life is so I'll commit suicide"); the spectre is wide, the possibilities endless.

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Genres

1. Romance. As a habit I first check the genres of a fanfic before I read it; and if it says 'romance' I skip it before anyone can force me to read it. I do know that many people enjoy reading romance, but a good one is hard to find – and even harder to write. Most of the stories of this genre tend to become too cheesy, especially if they drag on for long. On top of that I've come across the interesting phenomenon that girls don't like seeing their favourite character with someone other than them. So they might very well skip a summary if it starts with Sakura and Sasuke live a happy life together…

2. Horror. I think this is the hardest genre ever to write about. To keep up an eerie atmosphere is even more difficult than keeping romance un-cheesy. My tip here (if worth anything) is keeping the story short and vague. I don't actually know where this is coming from exactly, but while detailed descriptions (if kept short and focussed on the scene) do contribute to a spooky setting, descriptions of what's actually happening ruin the mood. It's what the character doesn't see that makes the reader having goose bumps.

The easiest thing about that genre is choosing the setting: night as opposed to day, a dark attic versus a sunny meadow. Although I think that the latter time of day/location can be used too, if done well.

Let me give you an example: little Sasuke sneaks into the abandoned Uchiha district shortly after sunset. Remember he's grief-struck and probably in some sort of trauma.

A cool breeze brushes his cheek and makes the leaves above rustle. He wraps his arms around himself, regretting not having brought a jacket. An uneasy feeling gets hold of him, sending shivers down his spine. He turns, half-expecting to see someone, but there's only the empty street.

This could be the beginning, the starting point of building up an eerie atmosphere. I deliberately chose to write in the present tense because it makes the setting appear more close, present. It could continue with Sasuke hearing things as he goes (footsteps, moaning, even his name softly whispered against the wind), and turning around to find nothing. It gradually gets darker, hence harder to see. He wishes for his Sharingan, regrets not having brought a weapon, because now he feels so vulnerable… Build up the atmosphere until you get to the climax (him actually seeing a figure, for example), then, after a moment of pure shock let him run for his life, not knowing if the thing is chasing after him (the readers then won't know either, making it more thrilling).

Of course, this is only one of infinitely many options: let your imagination flow!

3. Adventure. Well, this genre virtually requires some good action/fighting scenes, wild chases across a valley and a quest that has to be fulfilled. You have to be able to switch between writing styles as you go, changing from descriptive paragraphs to rapid battle or escape scenes. The first ones are often characterized by rather long sentences that may hold metaphors and aliases. Writing them doesn't require as much skill, but remember to not bore your reader with endless descriptions.

The latter are a lot more difficult. You'll have to switch to shorter sentences, but without making your story lose its fluency (very often when using short sentences it tends to sound like a first grader wrote them). In an action scene many things happen in a very short time, and that's the difficulty: summarizing them within few words (time-lapse). And then, when a fateful attack approaches the protagonist and they see it approaching in slow motion also requires a slight change in style: going from time-lapse to slow motion.

Again, I'll give you an example: Sakura is trying to escape a foe that is much stronger than her, but the enemy keeps charging at her and she must dodge every attack they throw at her.

I realized too late that he was chasing me into a trap. I was out of chakra, and while he still had plenty of it, my own body started to protest in pain against the strain I was putting on it.

I turned and threw two kunai at him in mindless desperation, but he dodged them easily. He was closing in – my legs got heavier with every step. I couldn't keep this up for long. I needed a plan.

A wall shot up from the soil in front of me, forcing me to stop. I'd need a lot of strength to jump over that thing – strength I didn't have. I was cornered.

I turned. There were no options left – I'd have to face him one on one. He stood there, motionless, waiting for me to make a move. An evil grin spread across his face as I realized how desperate my situation was.

"No resistance?" he teased, knowing I had no more strength left. Then he performed hand seals, too fast for me to follow yet I was caught up in the moment, not able to take my gaze off his hands. A ball of red and orange flames came flashing at me, and even though I knew they'd be my death I couldn't help thinking that they were beautiful.

Well, it might look something like this. I don't claim to be an exceptional action writer, but I think I've used some of the elements I mentioned above. To those of you who like Sakura: I'm sorry I killed her off! But really, this was just an example.

4. Drama/Tragedy/Angst. I think it's safe to say that you'll have to be prepared to let your characters go through some (a lot of) emotional pain and torture. After all, drama and tragedy go hand in hand with angst, and neither of the three are very pleasant. Drama perhaps not as much as the other two, but angst often describes a person being very, very lonely, and a tragedy mostly results in half of the characters dying. Here it's important to not exaggerate things. I've read fics where the protagonists were first abducted and/or experimented on or enslaved or tortured and after that they regularly had to be saved by people before fainting on a frequent basis. On top of that their injuries kind of never healed, or got torn open again by some twist in the story and they were way out of character. They were good fics in the beginning, but the spiral of hopelessness and pain just dragged on for far too long. You may want to avoid that.

5. Mystery/Crime. Especially for a crime story you'll have to come up with a legit storyline. For a good crime you'll have to plan everything (and by that I literally mean EVERYTHING) in advance, or else the story will have its illogical twists and continuity errors. It's simpler with mystery, though: you'll just have to not reveal everything right at the beginning and let your protagonist find out whatever the mystery is GRADUALLY.

I lied. It's not as simple as I put it. Significant clues must be dropped at the right times: if not, your reader will get bored because a) you keep every secret to yourself for too long or b) you drop the clues so mindlessly that they'll have the mystery figured out halfway through the story.

6. Humor/Parody. Well, a parody does just that: parodize canon. There are many examples in Naruto, mainly because the story has been dragging on for so long and thus has its own mistakes and not thought through plot lines (take Hashirama Senju's DNA for example: how come people can steal and use it, but it can't be passed on to his children and grandchildren? The guy's DNA is all over the place anyways as of late. Or take the fact that people seem to be trading eyes like I traded Pokémon cards in school when I was little). Another very good thing to make fun of are the fans themselves: annoying fangirls who, for some reason, are turned on by things such as incest, rape, arranged marriages… and fans in general who all seem to feell the desperate need to learn Japanese.

7. Family/Friends/Hurt/Comfort. Those three genres are very often seen together. But as the title says, you should STICK to friendship and/or family; I've seen some weird fics where siblings or best friends suddenly fall in love with each other although the genre label clearly stated something else. A family or friendship label isn't just there for decoration: it's kind of a safe haven for people who are sick of pairings and romance – don't destroy that by pairing up random characters; that stuff belongs in the romance section.

What's important in these genres is keeping the themes semi-serious. A fight between friends is okay, a war is NOT okay. The passing away of a relative is okay, the murder of the Hokage is NOT okay.

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General Tips

When writing a story you should generally always do some research. It helps making it so much more credible and makes the readers think you're an expert on whatever topic you choose. If you write a short story I have some more tips for you:

1. Keep the amount of characters involved low. Up to three people max, I'd say.

2. Don't leave the setting you've chosen. A short story takes place on ONE location only (there may be some exceptions to this rule) and the time span is never more than a few hours, a day at most. A good short story takes place in exactly the amount of time that it takes you to read it.

3. Stick to everyday situations: a short story that tries to be a novel is doomed to fail. Write about things you know, or have already experienced. This will increase credibility.

4. Don't be melodramatic. A protagonist standing at a cliff thinking about the many hours he and his lover spent there while he holds her urn in his shaking hands will seldom attract readers.

Punctuation

Punctuation is, so easy, to screw up, but don't make the mistake to not use any commas at all because that would be really weird awkward and confusing thus making the reader want to leave your story (yes, I made those punctuation mistakes in the previous sentence on purpose. Congrats if you've spotted them all).

Rules for punctuation are:

1. Use commas when listing things: "he's smart, tall and tired". "That would be really weird, awkward and confusing."

2. Use commas when dividing the main part of the sentence from the rest: "the flowers, so beautiful in their appearence, seem to be growing in thousands this year." "... and confusing, thus making the reader want to leave your story." "This, in fact, is true."

3. Use commas after direct speech or thoughts: "Yes," he said (but NOT "yes!," he said or "yes?," he asked). I wonder how she's doing right now, he thought. "Yes," he said, then added, "that's punctuation." (Last example: before direct speech commas are also used.)

4. Do NOT use punctuation in any other situations. I've seen people placing commas after appearingly random words in a sentence. In english, punctuation is used sparingly.

5. Apostrophes: use apostrophes only in the following exapmles: A) "He is smart" becomes "he's smart", B) "does not" becomes "doesn't (same for have, can, ... CAUTION: "shall not" becomes "shan't") and C) when indicating ownership "Kate's chocolate" (words that end in -s: genius'). Do NOT use apostrophes with anything else (e.g.: the bee's are small animals).

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A/N: Well, I hope I've helped you a little. If you want to know more you can leave a review and I'll gladly send you a response. Yes, reviews are always appreciated, loved, adored and generally worshipped. If I'm missing something and/or you spot something you're not happy with please tell me and I'll update this asap.

Love, greening