xFallenMisery
I have to disagree with this post. There's no such thing as a Mary-Sue, just the wrong context. What might be "mary-sue" in one setting might not be in a different one. There is
no way to create a totally perfect character.
I'm going to disagree with this disagreement.
biggrin There IS such a character type as a Mary Sue. It's kind of a trope in itself. And I've actually seen circumstances where this character can work. Honor Harrington and Victor Cachet from David Weber's stuff, for example (BTW if you look at "Godmod Sue" on TV Tropes EVERY SINGLE ENTRY in literature mentions Victor Cachat). Also Sherlock Holmes and The Doctor from Dr. Who. Basically, it's a character who is
special. Not just going through hard times, but deeply and uniquely significant in a way no other character measures up to. So very much so that the story isn't just about them. They dominate it.
Frankly, my theory is not that Mary Sues are bad characters, but that they're the only functioning thing in an otherwise broken story. It's like being the tallest tree in a field. When you're the only thing of interest in a story, the pissed off reader is going to latch on to you as the problem. You might not be, but you're the only thing they can see with any clarity. In a lot of the examples I see, the writer knows their writing isn't good enough. They try to fix it by latching on to the only interesting thing in the story and making it even more interesting, which just makes the tree get taller and the lightening more apt to take it out. If you want your "tree" to be safe you have to make sure the rest of the forest is just as high.
That's when a Mary Sue fails. Getting the right mix is a lot of work, and you'll find yourself constantly rethinking things, re-testing different sections to make sure it's not overpowering. It's not pleasant writing good action scenes, or negative characters, or dangerous ones, and because Mary Sues also tend to be self-inserts, you're really reluctant to put them in real danger.You'd be putting yourself in danger. World-building is boring, and it can be a lot of work to properly develop every single character as much as you need to. H.H., Sherlock and The Doctor are successful because their writers put the work in. They DO put them in real trouble. They also have a well rounded support cast who get almost as much development as they do, and when the manure hits the fan, they really need those supporting characters to fill in their blind spots. Also, for every significant gain they make, they have an equally significant loss. Honor tends to lose things like friends and limbs in every novel, for example. And when the stakes are high, they are HIGH. Sometimes "Oh crap, we're gonna lose the universe" level of high. Because if you're gonna have a Very Special Snowflake in the story, you have to have a Very Special Fire to put them at risk with.
So to answer the OP's original question, and I should say this is just CW's Theories on Writing and should be consumed with a grain of salt, you start this way: Pick out two stories you want to tell. Make one a Macro-cosmic kind of story (think Lord of the Rings, American Civil War, Earthquakes and Volcanos) and one a micro-cosmic kind of story, like a love story or a finding-yourself story. This way your main character has a personal goal, but your entire cast will also have a goal and will have to work towards the Macrocosmic stuff as a team. Then pick your main character by first picking the traits they'd have to have to accomplish both the Macrocosmic and microcosmic goals, and then picking a few traits that will be in direct conflict with your first set. Like if you're telling a mystery story, have your main character be really smart and good at piecing puzzles together, but disorganized so they keep losing important clues in the couch or something. Give them Primary Support Cast (this is usually a love interest) Secondary Support cast, Antagonist, Antagonist Cast, and the bit roles that will flesh out the story. Have some of the Support Cast have microcosmic goals at odds with your MC's micro-goal. Develop setting as needed, and then write the story.
And then put it away for a while. Even if it's just a comic strip script, put it down for a couple of months before you come back to it. Stuff will jump out at you the second time around. For example, I gave the MC in my novel a fake knee joint just to hold her back a bit, and on the second read-through I realized that if she lost the leg at the end (due to the many physical things she'll be doing as well as some character-related stupidity) it'd balance out the number of good things she's going to get when the story's over. That's why you always re-write. It's not so much to catch mistakes like misspellings and things like a ten-foot pole being eight feet long for a paragraph. It's so you can figure out which scenes to cut, which ones to strengthen, and the nine million opportunities for character and world building you missed the first time you wrote it. I've edited my novel six times, and I only just figured out how to fix a major character development problem in the last couple of weeks. And if I hadn't done those other six edits, I wouldn't have gotten it strong enough to realize that this area was a problem.
Also: Nobody cares what your characters look like. Nobody cares about their hair, or their clothes, or their tragic backstory, or their name. At least, not at first. First, we need to care about who they are, right now, and what they're doing, right now. Then we need to care about where they're going, and it's only after we have those two things set in stone (that we care about this person and their goals) that we start thinking about things like looks and history. So even if your main character turns into an ax murderer halfway through your first scene, focus on making him or her immediately likable on page one. You can shift to unlikable scumbag later.
One final note: Your first page, be it a novel, short story, comic book or whatever, should introduce the main character AND the essentials of his or her character. If it's a novel, I suggest having the main character and their most essential character trait shown in the first paragraph. The reason is, character development starts the second the character is "onscreen", whether the writer likes it or not, and the audience will assume they've gotten the essentials by the time the first scene is over. This is all subconscious stuff and it's not something you can control. If you don't start with a positive and important character trait immediately, the reader/viewer will latch onto the inadvertent stuff you didn't catch, and that's usually something negative, like selfishness. And you don't get a do-over. Again, this is why I suggest writing at least your first arc out, and then rewriting. You can figure out where you're going, and once you know that, you'll know where to start.
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