(I just skimmed the comments and so this may have been said already):
I always considered a Mary Sue to be not only putting yourself into the story, but putting some extreme (usually idealized) version of yourself in, where the Mary Sue character starts to derail all the rest of the story. Not just that you can't get interested because of all this blather about the Mary Sue but that she/he honestly disrupts the plotline and makes the other canon characters act in an unbelievable way.
I consider it to be kind of a similar phenomenon to something I see in published fiction a lot, which is when an author falls in love with their character. Suddenly this character can do no wrong, they're incredibly cool at every turn and the author must tell us why, and everything about the character must be seen as good. This usually kills a book--and it's usually pretty easy to see just by reading the one book. There are very few exceptions.
In high school we read this short story by woody allen (I cannot remember the name of it) where there's this guy, Percy the magician, who has a magic box. If he puts you into the box, you go into the book. (Jasper Fforde has a whole series of books that also have this concept but I hadn't read those then.) You literally put yourself into the book. In class we had to write a short story where we did this. I remembered this, years later. The first fanfic I ever wrote (having no idea that fanfic existed) was to write a percy's box story. The surprising thing is that while I went in because I was heartbroken by the ending of a book and I really wanted to show up and fix everything, I found that when I was writing it I was overwhelmed and I was writing my character as tongue-tied and clumsy and not doing everything right. Because it really felt like I was there, and so I was intimidated.
That was perhaps mildly insane but it contributed to my thinking about Mary Sues. Some writing is like a dream, where the story takes prescedence and you let the characters be themselves, even if they get out of hand. Some writing is like a fantasy, where you really want something to happen so you force it into being, tweaking things so that everything comes out just like you want. Writing that is fantasy tends to be writing for yourself. Only you are likely to like it. That's how I think Mary Sues go, and those books where the author has totally fallen for the character and is simply writing a personal fantasy about it.
So this marysueish character of yours may have all your faults and may be you--but the question is whether you can still treat her (or was it him?) like a real character, or whether you start rooting for that character or wanting the whole story to be about him. If it's just you, in a story... the question is whether you can be a good enough writer (or detatched enough, or insane enough, or however you want to say it) to still write a good story and not let your protectiveness or narcissism of the character that is you get in the way.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-08-23 09:11 am (UTC)I always considered a Mary Sue to be not only putting yourself into the story, but putting some extreme (usually idealized) version of yourself in, where the Mary Sue character starts to derail all the rest of the story. Not just that you can't get interested because of all this blather about the Mary Sue but that she/he honestly disrupts the plotline and makes the other canon characters act in an unbelievable way.
I consider it to be kind of a similar phenomenon to something I see in published fiction a lot, which is when an author falls in love with their character. Suddenly this character can do no wrong, they're incredibly cool at every turn and the author must tell us why, and everything about the character must be seen as good. This usually kills a book--and it's usually pretty easy to see just by reading the one book. There are very few exceptions.
In high school we read this short story by woody allen (I cannot remember the name of it) where there's this guy, Percy the magician, who has a magic box. If he puts you into the box, you go into the book. (Jasper Fforde has a whole series of books that also have this concept but I hadn't read those then.) You literally put yourself into the book. In class we had to write a short story where we did this. I remembered this, years later. The first fanfic I ever wrote (having no idea that fanfic existed) was to write a percy's box story. The surprising thing is that while I went in because I was heartbroken by the ending of a book and I really wanted to show up and fix everything, I found that when I was writing it I was overwhelmed and I was writing my character as tongue-tied and clumsy and not doing everything right. Because it really felt like I was there, and so I was intimidated.
That was perhaps mildly insane but it contributed to my thinking about Mary Sues. Some writing is like a dream, where the story takes prescedence and you let the characters be themselves, even if they get out of hand. Some writing is like a fantasy, where you really want something to happen so you force it into being, tweaking things so that everything comes out just like you want. Writing that is fantasy tends to be writing for yourself. Only you are likely to like it. That's how I think Mary Sues go, and those books where the author has totally fallen for the character and is simply writing a personal fantasy about it.
So this marysueish character of yours may have all your faults and may be you--but the question is whether you can still treat her (or was it him?) like a real character, or whether you start rooting for that character or wanting the whole story to be about him. If it's just you, in a story... the question is whether you can be a good enough writer (or detatched enough, or insane enough, or however you want to say it) to still write a good story and not let your protectiveness or narcissism of the character that is you get in the way.