Sunday, February 08, 2009

The Universal Mary-Sue Litmus Test


Daphne mentioned the other day that she thought Stephenie Meyer's writing was :
... like an extended extended exercise in Mary Sue-ism ...
I did mention the term once before when I wrote about Jean Aul's Clan of the Cave Bears. But it occurred to me that if you are writing fiction you might want to check that you haven't fallen into the trap of creating glamorous alter egos for yourself.

Here, courtesy of The Writerium, is The Mary Sue Litmus Test so you can find out just how your character shapes up. Have fun!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oooh, I'm a big James Bond fan, but come to think of it, he does seem like Ian Fleming's Marty Stu. What do you think, Shar? :)

Anonymous said...

Why is that a problem? Mark Twain did that all the time, so did Ian Fleming and Jonathan Swift.

It doesn;t necessarily follow that if you create a glamourous alter image for yourself, you won't have a good book.