http://www.springhole.net/quizzes/marysue.htm

This is a great web site to see if your character is a "Mary Sue" or in other words cliche.

That is a good resource (though I may be biased - my sister wrote that test), but I'd like to point out that there's a significant difference between Mary-Sue characters and cliché characters. Cliché characters are any characters whose personalities, appearances, or histories have been used to the point where no one wants to read about them - elves in a blood feud with dwarves, or reluctant and whiny but secretly ambitious peasant teens. Mary-Sue characters, on the other hand, are characters who are designed to wow the reader, often by impressing them with their mad skills and good looks or by demanding huge amounts of sympathy for their incredibly tragic upbringings or situations. (In some situations, however, the Mary-Sue is a reader surrogate; the writer takes a blank character and puts him/her into an incredible situation that many people would love to be in so that the reader can live out his/her fantasies vicariously.)

Also, before anyone actually takes the test, I would like to offer a friendly reminder: Having a few of these traits does not make your character a Mary-Sue. Having a character who is a Mary-Sue does not make you a bad writer. Everyone goes through a Mary-Sue phase.

What I'm trying to say is, if the test tells you your character is a Mary-Sue, please don't take it as an insult. No one, not even you, is above the occasional mess of Sue-age. Take it in stride and see what you can do to improve the character - or figure out whether you need to. In the hands of a masterful writer, a Mary-Sue can be very convincing.

Chances are good that you are not a masterful writer, though (particularly since you're here at ScriptFrenzy), so please don't take that as license to ignore your test results.

i would like to add i kind of hate the term 'mary-sue' because in my experience it has been used to denegrate any OC out of fanfics as being juvenile, and discourages what otherwise would be considered healthy fantasy and creativity. also many traits that can be considered 'mary-sue' traits, can often be found in classic stories. Stories like Matilda or the Narnia Chronicals (yes. i know they're children's books. they made movies out of them, didn't they?) Bella Swan from Twilight is a total 'marysue' character, and Edward too, come to that. Superman is a classic 'garystu.' so while i agree that trying to create a 'perfect' version of yourself might not be the best thing for your script, trying to create a close-to-perfect character, is often acceptable, depending on what you're writing and how you write it.

if the story is weak because you spend too much time crafting a perfect character who has no foils, and to whom nothing bad ever happens to, then it's probably more a problem with your plot, which you hang on to because of your affection the character, and hopefully, it will work itself out somewhere when you realize apart from this really cool, (really cute, really popular, really powerful, really ingenious) character, you have no story.

i guess what i'm trying to say is don't let the 'marysue' rules stop you from creating the kind of characters you would like or you would recoignize in your life. that's the fun of writing! just remember conflict makes a story, nobody likes the "perfect" people, and never become so invested you can't afford to kill your darlings (literally, on the page, or figuratively by cutting them out entirely) if you need to.

also, i did that test with 7 main characters from well known movies or books, and i don't think a single one passed. just putting that out there.

Not to start a riot, but has anyone run Bella Swan through that test?

that was the first one i did! total marysue. bestselling author.
try harry potter. seriously. or Luke Skywalker.

@ JMorgan: lol. That's pretty cool.
My main character got a 6. Possibly because he's fairly annoying. Psychologically interesting, but annoying. My villain scores a bit higher, because of his dead parent. Otherwise...

Oh, but I failed when I did it for myself. With a 56 (Kill it dead!). And no, I did not check any of the boxes about "does this character look like you?".

Yep, we've put Bella Sue - er, Bella Swan - through the test. She fails utterly. She is exactly what I was referring to by a reader-surrogate character - since she has very few defining character traits, the reader can "fill in the blanks" with his/her own traits. As long as everyone agrees that Edward is TEH DREEMBOATZ, the reader is kept happy and well-dazzled. Which is exactly why Twilight is a bestseller... and also why it is widely loathed by professional and amateur literary critics.

it's also kind of funny that Edward also fails that test. carefully ignoring questions that only the author would know, he still scored well past 100. so did Clark Kent. so did Harry Potter. So did Luke Skywalker. i really don't think you can blame one character for bad or cliched writing. like i said, if the 'perfection' of the character is more important to you than the conflict of the story, you probably shouldn't be writing the story to begin with. some of those questions made very little sense as to why they would be considered 'marysue' traits, and a whole bunch were specifically geared to female characters, which seems a bit biased to me. my own MC scored within the 'safe' zone (26) but probably only because she has a physical disability.

I guess thought even a Mary-Sue has their place in writing. I have one character who I will admit is a Mary Sue but at the same time the characters around her are not so it balances out.

Anne Marie

JanNo - Goal Winner 2009 - A life More Ordinary (Coming soon to Lulu :D)
FebNo – Goal Winner 2009 – Darkness and Light
EdMo – Goal Winner 2009

Hmm. I actually just did a test for Bella Swan and she got like 4 points... But I agree with whoever said that she "becomes" (reader surrogate?) the reader sometimes. Edit: And Edward got 43 points haha.

A few of my characters are probably Mary-Sue like, but right now I'm focusing on learning to keep their personalities constant (reasonably constant, of course) through a story.

Just did the test for my main character for Script Frenzy... he got a 30 initially, but I eliminated things to make him less Sue-ish, so he's at a 22 now hopefully.

I ran one of my characters through that test and she came as as a 3 but then again half the questions did not apply at all from the RPG section.

Most of the questions are geared toward female characters because Mary-Sues in fandom are nearly always female. There have been more exceptions recently, but the Gary-Stu is still a rather elusive beast.

Clark Kent, Luke Skywalker, and Harry Potter may qualify as Mary-Sues, but they have one redeeming quality: they were done well. They are neither a cheap imitation of another character or a poor attempt to impress the reader. Their Sue-like traits - by which I assume you mean their amazing powahs and tormented backstories - are an integral part of the plot, and do not detract attention from other, more important, aspects of the story. One of Luke's redeeming features is that while he is the main character, and he does end up becoming an Uber Jedi, his story and heritage does not tout itself as being more important than the rest of the story - and, in fact, tie in quite well with the entire plot. As for Clark and Harry... well, if they didn't have powers, there wouldn't even be a story worth telling. Superman would just be some kind of silly romantic drama that would have ended the first time Lois was kidnapped by an insane supervillain. If his home planet hadn't asploded when he was a baby, he would have grown up a completely unremarkable - and powerless - Kryptonian.

And, of course, the author's skill has to be taken into account. I believe I mentioned above that a Mary-Sue in the right hands can become a good and enjoyable character. Most amateur writers are not up to the task, yet they continually point to the success of their betters as proof that Sue-age does not matter. It is the last defense of the cornered, and should not be taken seriously.

My advice in this regard is as follows: If you have a character who seems to be a Sue, but you think that he/she will turn out to be a good character anyway, don't waste your time pointing at other writers, who are neither you nor working with your material. Sit down, write the story, and let your skill level speak for itself. And whatever you do, don't be above taking criticism to heart. The only thing more irritating than a Suethor is an arrogant Suethor.

The fact that I ran the test on several well-known male characters and they all failed the test sort of proves there are quite a few Gary-Stus in the literary world, doesn’t it? The fact that there are reasons behind each of these Gary-Stus being such as they are doesn’t change the fact that, if you’re going purely by the test, they fail. Any writer worth his/her salt can give a good reason why his/her character is just so damn good (looking/at everything/inside), but objectively speaking, they fail the test. All the characters I ran the test on were original characters from original projects, so I ignored all those questions relating to fandom, and still, many of the questions were exclusively for female characters. So for whatever reason, it’s harder to pass that test if your original character is female, then it is if your original character is male. And that is an unfortunate bias.

I didn’t actually mean anything mentioning the Sue-like traits of other characters, I was just reporting back the answers the test gave me because I thought it was funny. I wasn’t saying anything bad about any of those characters. I was making an interesting observation that, had anyone else written those characters, they might be called out as a ‘Suethor’, and yet these are best-selling authors. I was simply saying that I don’t think Mary Sue is the problem. Bad writing is bad writing, and there are many more varying ways to fix it then to just claim the character is blank and ‘obviously’ wish-fulfillment. We write to indulge in wish-fulfillment, one way or another. If you pay attention, Stephen King writes himself into almost every novel he’s ever written, in one form or another.

As to the authors skill, the test doesn’t take that into account at all. If a ‘good’ writer writes a Mary Sue, is it a Mary Sue at all? If good writers don’t write Mary Sues, then what are all these characters who fail that test? If it’s mark of talent and skill to not write a Mary Sue, why do so many great authors do it? Love her or hate her, Stephanie Meyer has 5 bestsellers to her name. And of course, George Lucas gets to remake the same movies over and over, and they still make him money, and J. K. Rowling can retire in comfort. I’m curious to why this is a bad argument. All of these authors had barely written anything (some, nothing at all) before this one big idea hit them, and then it all just happened. And nobody becomes a writer by saying “This author did this, but I am not going to, because I am just not that good.” I don’t think this business is about erring on the side of caution. Who’s to say who is and who isn’t ‘that good?’ We’re all on this crazy journey because we’re all secretly hoping we will be ‘that good.’

I only mean to say that I think people fretting over a Mary Sue is silly, not to mention restrictive, and that the test may not be all that great a tool in a lot of cases for a lot of reasons. For years, I avoided writing any stories about the disabled community, because I am in fact a person with a disability, and whenever I did, even when the disability had nothing to do with my own, I was asked if it was about me. And even when I said no, people didn’t believe me. I’m less afraid of the judgement now, but it still comes. I find accusations of Mary Sue to be pretty hard to prove, and even harder to correct, and all it does is make beginner writers afraid to tell their own stories. And I really hate to see that happen. I think people should just write their Mary Sues to their hearts content. See what s/he turns into. Because chances are if you don’t love your characters, nobody else will either.

I'm sad to say that my MC got a 90! Of course he is Captain James Kirk.

I got a grand total of 6! And I only have that many because of the character's pet dragon.

I'd like to run this through with Doctor Who :)

Edit: The Doctor scores 101 by my count. :D

Ah, but the problem with Mary Sues in amateur writing is that it doesn't matter whether the author loves them or not - the audience will want to puke.

I would love to go off on a huge tangent about Stephenie Meyer (who I neither love nor hate, really), but I'll keep it short: Books sold or not, she is a great example of how not to write for an audience.

I don't think there is a single character out there that isn't a "Mary Sue" to one extent or another.

Ahahaha.

That site is always entertaining.

I decided to test a character that I knew, despite her not being Mary Sueish really at all, would score really high.

She got a sixty-three.

xD

But then again, she's the anti-christ. She's dead sexy, a total bitch, and she's, well, the daughter of Satan. And she can throw chairs with her mind. :D

But seriously, it's a good resource most of the time. Just doesn't work for Lilith. xD

I think this test is sometimes better at determining whether or not your character is cliche, rather than a Mary Sue. As for those famous Mary Sues, I don't like any of them, so regardless of writing skill if you write a Mary Sue there are going to be readers who won't like the character because of that. A lot of it just has to do with personal taste, IMO.

Anyways, I did this on my characters because it's fun, and they range from 2 to 15.

Yes! All my characters are always mary sues. It sucks....

The test didn't apply to my screnzy at all, so just to amuse myself I put a character I know can be called a mary-sue through it. He scored a 99. Made me laugh. I can't kill him though, because the plot wouldn't exist without him. And I can't change the traits that make him seem Mary-Sueish because, again, there would be no plot.

One thing I didn't get was the part where it asked whether you care about the character. I don't think that has anything to do with the character being a Mary-Sue. I'm a character driven writer. If I didn't care about the character I wouldn't write about them.

I have a character like that, in one of my novels -- he only scored about 68 on that test, but still, none of that is avoidable because it's completely and totally necessary to the plot (and I'm not just saying that because I love him to death. really.)

... the thing about loving your characters is just an indicator of whether you're going about it the "right" way. You should love your characters... but perhaps not as children, because that could lead you to do stupid stuff. Like Breaking Dawn. Stephenie Meyer has said that she views Bella as her daughter. This led her to try and protect her and solve all her problems for her, making it a rather bad book. If you care about your characters and hurt them anyway because it makes them stronger...

... which leads to the point that this test isn't really useful if you can tell what about your character would make them a mary sue anyway, and you know that it doesn't make them a bad character if you write them right. so it's mostly just for fun/procrastination anyway. :]

Books sold or not, she is a great example of how not to write for an audience.

just going off on a bit of a tangent here -- I happen to think Stephenie Meyer is the perfect example of how to write for an audience -- a very specific target audience, which you, I'm sorry to say, are not part of. Twilight was targeted towards teen girls who want an Edward and can't tell good books from bad... and don't particularly care.

... that turned out a bit longer than I expected... whoops... :]

My characters for this SF aren't developed enough to run through that test yet (my characters tend to show their personalities AS I write them :P annoying little buggers). But I wanted to try something.

Horatio Caine: 57, and I only got through the first part.

>>>For years, I avoided writing any stories about the disabled community,
I have the same problem too. I have a series about high school cheer leading and everyone of my friends thinks the characters are based on them when they aren't. It can be annoying because when they "latch on" to a character they think is them and they don't like something that happens to their "characetr." :P

>>>I don't think there is a single character out there that isn't a "Mary Sue" to one extent or another.
True because as a writer you want your characters to be your version of the ideal person regardless of whether or not they actually are.

>>>I happen to think Stephenie Meyer is the perfect example of how to write for an audience
I agree. If you are not a)female and b)a teen aged girl and c)into romance novels you might not like it at all.

Oh, noes! Kallen (a character in my screenplay) got a twenty-three!!!

He speaks four languages fluently and plays seven instruments... stupid little rich-boy...

But then again, he does have a very unlikable personality, and IS widely hated... Hm.

My main character gets a 12.

I get a 73. What?

How is it I'm more Sue-ish than a pretty super-powered alien prince?

Oh right, because he's a wuss. Carry on then.

I think this is more useful in that it shows people what to look out for in their characters. Maybe some people didn't realize that having your main character beat down 100 armed guards at once was bad. ...Maybe. But not so good with the actual scoring, no.

Mine came out 0. not to say that I didn't check any, I did, but I also got points taken away. I expected this because the purpose of my character is an anti-hero. He really has no redeaming qualities.