Is Your Character Too Awesome?

[PlotHolio]

Most of you probably know about this, but I'm posting it anyway.

The Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test

This handy test will score your character. Higher scores mean your character is getting too awesome. Shoot for a lower score.

This test is designed to aid you, not destroy your vision of your character, so don't feel obligated to bring your score down beyond a certain point if your character feels right.

 

[OGone]

That took awhile but it turns out my main character is not awesome at all

What is awesome is your forum name btw, lol.

 

[Anders Ämting]

Oh God. Not that thing.

Look, that test has been around for quite a while and it's basically useless for evaluating characters. It's heavily scewed to punish characters for having any kind of admirable or impressive traits and it only barely takes any kind of context into account. The only way to get an acceptable score out of it is to make your character about as interesting as a piece of cardboard.

As a matter of fact, any heroic or fantastical character you put through that test is likely to score very high. I once ran Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender through this test and he scored 67 points, which is ridiculous. Scrooge McDuck scored a more moderate 44, which is still well into what the test considers a Mary Sue. I just ran the Doctor from Doctor Who through this and he scores an absurd 77 points.

And before you go "You probably just did it wrong", know that I skipped any question I obviously couldn't know since I'm not the author (Like "do you have the same opinions as your character?", and so on) plus any question I felt I didn't know for sure. So, I think I was actually very lenient. It doesn't even work as a decent guideline, is what I'm saying.

Heck, some of these questions don't even make sense. "Did you give your character a name you thought had a meaning appropriate for your character?" Of course I did! Other than randomly drawing names out of a hat, how else would I name my characters?

"Does your character sing or play the guitarr, harp or flute very well?" What the heck does that have to do with anything?

I've been over this before, at length, but to repeat myself: A character being Mary Sue has nothing to do with how "awesome" or "perfect" she is. That is a misconception that has proven very damaging to fiction writing in general. Mary Sueness is about having an unhealthy approach to your character, basically using him or her as a proxy for your own desires and feelings. You cannot determine if a character is Mary Sue or not just by quantifying traits. Your character does not magically cross the line just because she has a weird eye-color.

I have seen a Mary Sue test out there that actually seemed to do a decent job at detecting real Mary Sue characters. I'll see if I can find it again. For now, though, please don't take this test seriously.

 

[Mindfire]

Here are a couple of alternative Mary Sue tests:

The Writer's Mary Sue Test

Mary Sue Test

Is either of these the one you were thinking of Anders? If not, how do you think they fare compared to the other one?

 

[The Unseemly]

I'm really sorry, and am making an apology for anyone offended in advance, but I really have to agree with Anders, on any of the tests.

This test is so annoyingly perspective-bias based. The fact that a character is amsome or not, doesn't mean he has to do all these ridiculous things, haved a #YOLO name, and all that jazz. A character, should not be, out of all things, bias in any shape or form. If you want your character to be realisitic, you have to make him/her do his or her amount of stupidities, and no matter whether is MC, villan, or random background guy, they all have to have positives and negatives in their characteristics. These test do not evaluate on this.

 

[Feo Takahari]

Every time someone links this test, I find that since the last time I saw it, it's been edited to remove some issue. (Typically, these changes lower my characters' scores, so I'm all for that!)

I agree with pretty much everything the test designer has said about the test. That doesn't mean I take it as an absolute rule, but neither does she.

 

[Zero Angel]

When I first read the title of the thread, I was like, "Chyeah! That's kinda' the point "

I'm not opposed to any of the tests after trying out the first (scored a 41, even though he's basically a comic book hero in terms of power and ideals) and looking at the next two. I think maybe people get hung up on the details, when all three tests seem to try to weed out the author's approach to the character—albeit also using the awesomeness of the character against it if it doesn't have consequences. I'd say the only real issue I have with the first is that it's a simple one-dimensional scale, when there should probably be several different qualities making up the Mary Sue-ness of a character and a ranking in each.

 

[PlotHolio]

Anders, I know you're going to hate me on this one, but...

I think you did it wrong. Maybe you clicked all the language fluency boxes, when in fact the Doctor only knows one language and the TARDIS translates the rest for him. Other points are that Sonic Screwdrivers and TARDISs are not unique to the Doctor, but were previously available to the entire Time Lord race.

I ran one of my main characters through this test before I posted it, and he scored a 2 (mostly because being an exceptional sword-fighter and strategist for his age are not options on this particular test). The thing that makes him interesting is not all the cool stuff he can do and how his golden left eye has the power to see people's true feelings so he can become friends with the bad guys and convince them they were wrong all along (NOTE: He has no such eye). What makes him interesting is that I put a gigantic pile of excrement in front of him and his friends and they have to dig through it.

Also, I put The Doctor through, and I got an 11 (perhaps this is an omen relating to Matt Smith). I'm putting Aang through now.

EDIT: I got a 30 with Aang.

Context is a big one here. The two alternatives that Mindfire posted both ask me if my character (the one who scored a 2) wears black or leather a lot. In this case, the answer is yes, because it's his military uniform and he's proud of his position. To a certain extent, you need to think of these things on a case-by-case basis.

I still believe that all three of these tests are useful tools.

 

[Zero Angel]

Anders, I know you're going to hate me on this one, but...

I think you did it wrong. Maybe you clicked all the language fluency boxes, when in fact the Doctor only knows one language and the TARDIS translates the rest for him. Other points are that Sonic Screwdrivers and TARDISs are not unique to the Doctor, but were previously available to the entire Time Lord race.

I ran one of my main characters through this test before I posted it, and he scored a 2 (mostly because being an exceptional sword-fighter and strategist for his age are not options on this particular test). The thing that makes him interesting is not all the cool stuff he can do and how his golden left eye has the power to see people's true feelings so he can become friends with the bad guys and convince them they were wrong all along (NOTE: He has no such eye). What makes him interesting is that I put a gigantic pile of excrement in front of him and his friends and they have to dig through it.

Also, I put The Doctor through, and I got an 11 (perhaps this is an omen relating to Matt Smith). I'm putting Aang through now.

EDIT: I got a 30 with Aang.

Context is a big one here. The two alternatives that Mindfire posted both ask me if my character (the one who scored a 2) wears black or leather a lot. In this case, the answer is yes, because it's his military uniform and he's proud of his position. To a certain extent, you need to think of these things on a case-by-case basis.

I still believe that all three of these tests are useful tools.

Well, it's assumed the Doctor knows more languages because he has on occasion spoken them (breaking continuity, but whatever; I assume it's like someone saying "Sayonara" in English...)

 

[Anders Ämting]

Here are a couple of alternative Mary Sue tests:

The Writer's Mary Sue Test

Mary Sue Test

Is either of these the one you were thinking of Anders? If not, how do you think they fare compared to the other one?

It's the first one.

It still has several questions I think are entirely beside the point, but it's generally more focused on how you as the writer relate to the character. And even when running my most Sueish characters through it, the results do seem fair.

I'm not opposed to any of the tests after trying out the first (scored a 41, even though he's basically a comic book hero in terms of power and ideals)

Yeah, but that's kind of my point: The test judges all characters by the same standard. It doesn't care if your character is a super-hero or a time-traveling alien or whatever. It doesn't care if these traits actually make sense for the character.

Anders, I know you're going to hate me on this one, but...

Oh, I doubt that. I don't really hate people.

I may respect you a little less, though.

I think you did it wrong. Maybe you clicked all the language fluency boxes, when in fact the Doctor only knows one language and the TARDIS translates the rest for him.

First of all, that's basically the same thing as being an omniglot as far as the story is concerned. Wether he actually speaks all languages or has a universal translator makes no practical difference.

Second, he does claim to speak all languages even without the help of the TARDIS, and does talk to a lot of things that are not auto-translated. For crying out loud, the man speaks baby and horse.

Other points are that Sonic Screwdrivers and TARDISs are not unique to the Doctor,

True, which is why I did not click those options.

Also, I put The Doctor through, and I got an 11 (perhaps this is an omen relating to Matt Smith). I'm putting Aang through now.

EDIT: I got a 30 with Aang.

How is that even possible?

I just checked, he scores 46 on Section 1 alone.

I still believe that all three of these tests are useful tools.

The fact that you and I can get radically different results on the same character even though we are both trying to score as low as possible seems to suggest otherwise: Something this utterly unreliable and subjective cannot possible be considered a practical tool.

 

[Chilari]

PlotHolio, it sounds to me like you're finding excuses for taking these Mary Sue tests as seriously as you do. For example, for language fluency I would consider the Tardis translating to count for language fluency, because the effect is the same: the Doctor can understand all languages, enabling the writers to skip over that as an obstacle. As for your character wearing a lot of black and leather, I can't help but wonder - is it his military uniform because you think it's cool and decided to make it that way to enable him to wear black leather, or is there a practical purpose for it, such as needing dark colours because his unit is a night-time stealth unit? Because generally, military uniform colours have a reason for it. Modern uniforms have camoflage. The red coats of the British army in the past meant that injuries and blood weren't so obvious - and thus morale was maintained even after soldiers were injured.

I don't think these tests are useful. Why? Because they try to cover everything, and in doing so fail to allow the specific and the context-laden. For the record, I did take one of my characters through two of the tests, and got a low score on the first and a negative score on the second, so this isn't me being bolshy because I got a high score. Some cools things are okay, and to be honest I think a Mary Sue needs to be an uninteresting character that the author thinks is the best character ever, which might mean they've got these cool things going but no depth and no character development, or it might mean they're an author avatar with bells on (one thing the tests missed that I think can make a Mary Sue - is the character something you wish you were? A hanggliding teacher if you went hanggliding this one time and it was cool, for example).

In fact I think I need to make a blog post about this, because I honestly don't think these tests are useful. Fun, sure, but I think in some ways they can do more harm than good.

 

[PlotHolio]

I think you guys are the ones taking this way too seriously. You're ripping this topic apart based on your personal biases. You should remember that even though you know how to create well thought out and interesting characters, many of this forum's members are novice writers who want to learn how to do that kind of thing. You're treating it like an evil program because it doesn't have every imaginable context present in the questions, but it doesn't need to.

I think Feo and Zero Angel are the only people who get that it's simply a character creation aid, not Let Me Write Your Novel For You: The Game. It's on the same level as a fantasy name generator, which I know a lot of our members use. If you don't like what the quiz tells you, you don't have to follow it, but I posted it here because I'm sure someone will find it useful.

You're also implying that people who use these tests are bad writers because they can't tell a good idea from a bad one. I find that a little insulting, especially since it's coming from people who have been members of this forum for much longer than I have.

 

[Phietadix]

I think you guys are the ones taking this way too seriously. You're ripping this topic apart based on your personal biases. You should remember that even though you know how to create well thought out and interesting characters, many of this forum's members are novice writers who want to learn how to do that kind of thing. You're treating it like an evil program because it doesn't have every imaginable context present in the questions, but it doesn't need to.

I think Feo and Zero Angel are the only people who get that it's simply a character creation aid, not Let Me Write Your Novel For You: The Game. It's on the same level as a fantasy name generator, which I know a lot of our members use. If you don't like what the quiz tells you, you don't have to follow it, but I posted it here because I'm sure someone will find it useful.

You're also implying that people who use these tests are bad writers because they can't tell a good idea from a bad one. I find that a little insulting, especially since it's coming from people who have been members of this forum for much longer than I have.

He never implied that. It sounded to me that he was saying the test does more harm then good because it may cause a writer to abandon a perfectly good character. I happen to agree with him. Some of the questions seem a little pointless.

 

[Chilari]

*She.

Yes, what I mean is, if a new writer finds these tests and discovers their character has a high score, they're gonna go all out the other direction and end up with a boring character designed to get a low score. What I'm saying is, we should ignore these tests and try to create an interesting character organically, not measuring them against these criteria, which anyway doesn't effectively encapsulate what a Mary Sue is or provide a reliable answer.

I say this from experience. I first discovered the Mary Sue Litmus Test (or a precursor) when I was about 17, a starry-eyed young writer, and found my main character came alarmingly high. I sought excuses for some elements and retook the test until I got a score I thought acceptable, without actually changing things but just sort of inventing explanations for hy things are like that, some of which were shockingly contrived. For my next story, my protagonist was designed around getting a low score. I deliberately made my character fat, ugly, unlike me in what she knew and was good at, and I ended up with a character I couldn't get into, a character I didn't like and didn't want to write about. It took me years to move past this attitude, this anti-sue approach and just try and create real, interesting characters with understandable motivations. If I'd just tried to create real characters in the first place, instead of trying to avoid the dreaded Mary Sue, I could have saved myself a lot of trouble.

And that's why I say they do more harm that good. Seriously. Even up until 2011, when I was 23, I was struggling with characters because in the back of my mind I was always measuring them against the Mary Sue tests. It wasn't until October last year that I finally wrote a story containing a character who was free of the shadow of the Sue, because I didn't have the space in the short story to mess around with that stuff, I just had her motivation and her skills.

Edit: I said I'd blog about it. I have: The Dreaded Mary Sue.

 

[PlotHolio]

I understand that you don't like them, but they're not completely useless. You did not benefit from them. I did. The Litmus Test got me thinking about what I needed and didn't need in a character, and got me to dump some of my old characters and ideas. I don't regret doing it, because I was growing as a writer and some of my characters were laughably strong for no reason or had ridiculously Sue personalities (Evil for the sake of being evil, etc).

All those "pointless" questions are on there for a reason. Learning almost anything takes time and practice, so if your character knows how to play six musical instruments, speak four languages, hunt, cook, fence, and cast spells better than most others by the age of 15, that's not good.

I'm going to hazard a guess and say that at 17 you were not a member of this forum. Do you believe that, if you had been a member at the time and had this community available to you, you would have done the same things to your characters, or would you haven taken a more balanced approach?

 

[BWFoster78]

PlotHolio,

First of all, I agree with the above poster - Great name!

What I've found at my time on this forum is that people here get very sensitive about terminology. For example, if you state something as a general rule, they'll spend days arguing whether anything in writing should be called a rule rather than discussing the merits of the advice offered.

Perhaps you have run afoul of this phenomenon as well.

It seems that the main objection is to the test you recommended saying it is trying to help authors locate Mary Sues in their writing when, in fact, it appears to be more strongly focused on, perhaps, finding cliched characters.

So, perhaps you're trying to argue merit when others are trying to argue definition. I've had that experience more times that I care to count!

 

[Penpilot]

I understand that you don't like them, but they're not completely useless.

I don't think stuff like this is useless but it can be dangerous for a lot of reasons stated above. It's a tool, but like a lot of tools, if you don't know how to use it, someone ends up losing a finger or worse. I think that's why a lot of post caution in the use of things like this.

It's like someone bringing a chainsaw into the room. People are going to say don't turn that on unless you know how to use it.

All those "pointless" questions are on there for a reason. Learning almost anything takes time and practice, so if your character knows how to play six musical instruments, speak four languages, hunt, cook, fence, and cast spells better than most others by the age of 15, that's not good.

See those traits in themselves don't make a Mary Sue, and those traits in themselves as a group are neither good nor bad. They're just traits. How you used them to define your character and conflict are what will define Mary Sue or not.

For example. A Mary sue would be something like this.

I played six musical instruments, spoke four languages, could hunt, cook, fence, and cast spells that could devastate a city by the time I was fifteen. Leaders came to me for advice. Girls fell at my feet. I was a golden god ...

That's Mary sue.

This is not.

I played six musical instruments, spoke four languages, could hunt, cook, fence, and cast spells that could devastate a city by the time I was fifteen. But for the life of me, I couldn't ask Suzie Smith to the prom. I couldn't stay out past eleven, and if a movie had an R-rating, Mom still said no.

 

[Zero Angel]

Ooh, I have a GREAT new test for determining if a character is a Mary Sue or not...

Here it is:

If you're significantly worried that the character is too much like you, too much wish-fulfillment, and too much Mary Sue enough that you are dreading the results of a Mary Sue quiz, then you've probably got a Mary Sue character on your hands.​

I think the point that what is important in the so-called Mary Sue characters is your attitude towards the character is a good point. Regardless of if your character is technically a Mary Sue or not, chances are if you are concerned enough to take the quiz (as opposed to taking it out of curiosity), then there will be people out there that will label it a Mary Sue.

I always think of myself as a schizo (I realize this is not politically correct nor an accurate description), so all of my characters have some element of a "me" in them, but I definitely do think that getting overly defensive about your characters as though they were you is something to avoid. I don't think I've crossed over into that level of narcissism. I write to tell the story, not so that good things happen to my characters.

 

[Zero Angel]

Edit: I said I'd blog about it. I have: The Dreaded Mary Sue.

I should really pay better attention to signatures! Followed your blog.

 

[Zero Angel]

As a matter of fact, any heroic or fantastical character you put through that test is likely to score very high. I once ran Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender through this test and he scored 67 points, which is ridiculous. Scrooge McDuck scored a more moderate 44, which is still well into what the test considers a Mary Sue. I just ran the Doctor from Doctor Who through this and he scores an absurd 77 points.

I got an 89 before the de-Suiferers, then ended with a 73.