Monday, December 23, 2013

Do you Mary Sue?


I'm taking nine classes for the upcoming residency at Pine Manor College.  One of the classes focuses on speculative fiction, which, if you didn't know, is anything out of the normal realm.  It covers science-fiction, fantasy, horror, dystopian, and much, much more.  For this class, the professor assigned us all to take the Mary Sue Test prior to attending the residency.  It's actually a pretty cool little test.  I took it for my Death Man character and scored a 14.  I recommend everyone to take this test for at least one of their favorite original characters, and I doubly recommend this for those who dabble in the world of fan-fiction.

For people who don't know what Mary Sue means it is essentially inserting oneself into a story and creating a character that is impossibly perfect.  I think there is a masculine form of this term but just as Brony (a seemingly masculine term applied in general to those who enjoy My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic) covers everyone in the gender spectrum, so too does the term Mary Sue.  So take the test and see if your hero/in is too good to be true or too bland to be possible.  Post your scores if you like what you see or post them if you don't like then and give a comment on what you want to change for the character or if you feel that the score is unjustified for the specifics of your character.  Happy writing everyone and Happy Holidays, too!

This Deviant Artist hit the nail on the head in her depiction of a typical Mary Sue story.
Amanda LaFantasie © 2013

5 comments:

  1. I got 16 by using Zack. It was sort of difficult to answer some of the questions because it was a role play.

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    1. 16 is a good number and yeah some of the 'what happens at the end' questions would be hard to answer in that case *nods* - I had a hard time with some of those questions for Death Man because I have an idea of how I want it all to end but I haven't gotten there yet lol. And I worried he was going to score too highly because of his 'cool' weapon but the last section evened him out again XD

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  2. Chloe scored 23 and is safely within the 'well-balanced' section. YAY! I am going to book mark this test, thanks for posting it!

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  3. I went with the four main characters of my latest attempt at a novel. They scored as follows:
    Sandra Burke, cop: 10
    Mike Morrison, a human experiment: Somehow 7...
    Anaka Eklund, waitress and nerd: 10
    Skye Riversong, Native American, veterinary nurse: 8
    All of my characters are boring as hell o_o Maybe that's why I couldn't finish it

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