User:Gnostic/Gnostic's Notes: Character

The following is the first in a series of lectures about the art of writing, presented in the hopes of improving the writing abilities of all users on this wiki...

Character
Characters are the lifeblood of any good story, and can often make the difference between a story selling really well or quickly fading into obscurity. Could Mass Effect have become nearly as popular without Garrus, Wrex, or Joker? Of course not. That many of us on this wiki have tried to create some sort of substitute for a favorite canon character, or tried to tie our own characters to them, speaks to their memorability.

Creating characters is easy. You start with a name, or maybe just a few physical attributes or personality quirks, add in a little backstory, and if you're lucky, they practically start building themselves. Many of us base our main characters here on our Shepard characters from the games, and thus much of the legwork is done for us.

Creating enduring characters on the other hand, those who might outlive us long after we've stopped writing them or even stopped breathing, is significantly harder. In my somewhat prolific career here on MEFW, I would say I've only created maybe one character who could go on without me writing them. Of course, I'm my own most brutal critic.

Half of it is sheer luck. One of my all-time favorite authors, Sir Terry Pratchett, has said that many of his popular characters (and, having been writing for several decades, he's got quite a few popular characters) were originally created only because he needed them for one joke or one scene in a book, but somehow caught on with a huge number of fans, and thus he felt compelled to create more adventures for them.

The other half, of course, is hard work, and in this lecture-essay thing, I intend to expound upon what that entails.

The Perils of Mary Sue
Those of you who've been here for a while and having to put up with my administration might be aware that I have many pet peeves (spelling, grammar, and ignorance of canon being some of the larger ones.) But if there is one thing in fan-fiction that I hate more than spelling errors or non-adherence to canon, it is the Mary Sue.

For those who have no familiarity with the term, a "Mary Sue" (sometimes called "Marty Stu" if the character is male, although I personally see no reason to distinguish between them)  is an idealized character who serves as an author avatar.

Author avatars are not necessarily bad - many famous, well-respected authors use them, and because these avatars are based on real people, they can be more realistic than characters made out of whole cloth. Nor is idealization necessarily a sin, particularly in fan-fiction; average, realistic people with average, realistic limitations wouldn't last very long in most fantasy or science-fiction settings, which tend towards extremes.

The problem comes when these two concepts are mixed and the idealization is then turned up to 11. Mary Sue writers never seem to be happy with simply having their own character, but constantly strive to make that character as close to the center of the universe as possible.