alice quinn // writing help

mary sues

Please, can we move past Mary Sues, Jane Does, and John Does???

No more perfect brats. I can promise you I will not read anything that contains a Mary Sue, and many others wont, either.

Give your characters flaws, give them things they hate, give them conflicts, especially in their relationships. Give them realistic lives.

And be consistent! Your character cannot be something one chapter and the complete opposite the next. Yes, character development is a thing and should be used, but that happens over time, slowly. Your character can grow and learn, but they don't just change over night. Or within a chapter.

And remember, if your readers do not care about your characters, they will lose interest in the entire story. We don't want that. So make your characters memorable, but never perfect. Perfect ≠ memorable.

I'm also going to mention the chapters that some writers like to do as an intro chapter where they list anything and everything about the OC. You can do this for your own benefit, but either keep it unpublished or make a "meet my OC's" book. I will not read all of that in a random book, and neither will anyone else.

Before you call me a hypocrite, I did make a "character intros" chapter in each of my books in my Queen's Gambit series, but I kept facts about the characters short and sweet and I did it because ya girl made an ensemble cast for each book and was starting to get confused. It is not necessary to read and was just for reference if anyone got confused about any of the characters. For each character, I included their name, faceclaim, immediate family, occupation, blood status, and a quote.

If you make a character intro chapter like this, I'd recommend not giving much more information than that as I still believe it should be saved for a "meet my OC's" book.

You can find more information about planning and outlining characters and plots in the "planning" chapter of this book.