Rosa: A VERY Early Book

Although young enough (5? 6? 7?) that my mother took pity on my handwriting and transcribed the story on my behalf, I was already writing books.

The Infamous Mary Sue

Well, I guess it’s time to have a good ol’ chat about Mary Sues: history, definition, discussion, and ranking out of ten.

So let’s go.

HISTORY

In 1973, Paula Smith wrote a parody fan fiction called “A Trekkie’s Tale” making fun of the typical Star Trek: The Original Series fan fiction of the era.  Her protagonist’s name was Mary Sue, and she personified what we now think of as Mary Sues.

Originally, though, the term only referred to fan fiction characters.  It wasn’t until Star Trek: The Next Generation rolled around that the term began to be applied to canon characters as well.  It happened like this:

In TNG, the Enterprise is strictly run, and Captain Picard has very firm views on bridge protocol and who is and is not allowed on the bridge.  He also doesn’t like children.  Then 15-year-old Wesley Crusher comes along (“Wesley” being the show’s creator’s middle name).  Within short order, he’s not only frequently on the bridge, he’s also sometimes saving the Enterprise and Captain Picard seems fond of him.

And there was an outcry.  “Mary Sue!” the watcher’s screamed.  “He’s unbelievably talented and perfect.  No child could save the Enterprise!  He’s knocking Picard out of character! We hate him!”

Now, as a Trekkie myself, I don’t agree with this label, because I believe there are valid canon reasons why Wesley might be a special exception to Picard’s rules—specifically, that Wesley’s father was Picard’s friend and then died in circumstances that made Picard feel guilty.  As for him being perfect—well.  He is very skilled, but he also makes stupid mistakes sometimes.  As for him saving the Enterprise—who hasn’t saved her?  It makes sense that aliens might overlook a child or that the ship might have an unlikely hero.  Happens every other episode . . .

So I don’t think Wesley is a Mary Sue.  But I do believe that if the accusations were correct, he would be, because I’d define a Mary Sue like this:

DEFINITION

A Mary Sue is a character who is meant to be perceived as flawless and who warps the universe of the story around her.

So this is in two parts.  A character can’t be merely flawless.  Characters like Admiral Thrawn (the beloved baddie in several of Timothy Zahn’s Star Wars books) are flawless but they can be beaten or defeated, because they can’t warp the universe of the story.  Besides, people act in character around them: Luke Skywalker is clearly the same character regardless of whether he’s in the same scene or even in the same book as Thrawn.

“Mary Sue,” by the way, is the gender non-specific term, and “she” the gender non-specific pronoun.  You can also say “Marty Sam” or “Gary Stu” or other variations for the male version—but here, I’m using the generic. 

There’s this idea that Mary Sues are overwhelmingly female, but I haven’t found this to be the case.  True, females are more likely to write female ’Sues and there are more females in the literary world than males . . . but at least from my personal experience with popular published books, the male-female Mary Sue split is 50-50. 

BLAND VS. INSIDIOUS PART ONE: POSITIVE VS. NEGATIVE FANTASIES

Mary Sues are written as self-indulgent wish fulfillments and therefore the expression of fantasizing rather than imagining.  Since Mary Sues exist on a broad continuum of characters and writers, it’s hard to split them up into easy categories.  But I would like to briefly go into the concept of positive and negative fantasies. 

Positive fantasies are fantasies in which no one gets hurt: “I entered the piano competition and played perfectly and won and everyone loved me and then I got a record contract and toured and was rich and happy forever!”

Negative fantasies are those in which someone gets hurt—the protagonist, love interest, or villain.  So: “I entered the competition and played perfectly but the judges were unjust and I didn’t win and I’m terribly put upon” or “My love was kidnapped by a baddie and hurt and now I have to comfort him,” or “she was mean to me so I got terrible revenge, as was my right.” Generally, these are much more psychologically harmful to the fantasizer than positive fantasies. 

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MARY SUE

Something you might note about these examples is that the protagonist is always in the right.  This is one characteristic of the Mary Sue: she is always right and good and if you don’t like her it’s only because you’re mean or jealous or don’t know her well enough.  She deserves to have the world wrap around her, and so it is right that it does.

If this is sounding like the wish fulfillment of a narcissist, there’s a reason for that.  We all of us have some level of narcissism; and youth, inexperience, and thoughtlessness can make that manifest in ways we’ll later perceive as embarrassing.  Yes, I have written a Mary Sue.  She had fabulous red hair and color-changing eyes.

The more extreme and unhealthy the Mary Sue, the more the author personally identifies with them, because in many ways the author is (usually) the Mary Sue, and it’s her wishes that are being fulfilled.  Mary Sue authors therefore take personal offense at any indication that their character might have character flaws.

Ironic, yes?  Good characters are always flawed.

Mary Sue authors will also often become jealous of their love interest Mary Sues—but let’s give an example of that.

THE LOVE-INTEREST MARY SUE

There’s this book.  It’s very good—maybe 4 stars out of 5.  In it, we have a fabulous villain.  He’s the sort of villain who just enjoys being wicked.  And because he enjoys it so much, we the reader enjoy watching him.  We don’t want him to win—we like our protagonist too—but we want to read more with him because he’s just a terrific character.

Unfortunately, it seems the author felt so too.  My theory is that she fell in love with him.  You should always love your characters but never fall in love with them, or you might do what she did . . .

She wrote a sequel that was the villain’s backstory.  Turns out, he’s just a watered-down version of the protagonist from the first book.  "He’s not really bad.  He’s just misunderstood because he’s so extra special that he has to keep his specialness secret."

In short, he went from fabulous villain to Blandy McBland Bland.

And if that weren’t enough, the author retroactively reinterpreted the events of book one to totally discredit all our good guys because she couldn’t stand anyone, even her own characters, saying mean things about her Mary Sue.  And she’s very jealous of her relationship with her ’Sue and doesn’t want other readers getting too close . . .

See?  This is why people hate Mary Sues.  Not because they’re bad characters, but because they ruin what would otherwise have been good.  But let’s get back to—

BLAND VS. INSIDIOUS PART 2: DEFINING PERFECTION

Here’s the thing: I don’t hate the mild Mary Sue—i.e., the flawless character with positive fantasies.  She’s not good writing and doesn’t have much worth, but she’s not particularly harmful unless the reader takes her to delusional extremes.

But then you have the other sorts of Mary Sues.  The sorts that encourage people to revel in unhealthy, negative fantasies.  And that not only encourages bad traits; it’s simply not truthful.

You know that time someone said something mean to you and you later thought of a comeback and wish you’d said it?  Well, your Mary Sue always has a comeback.  She is constantly cutting people down.  And we’re meant to regard this nasty piece of work as “flawless”!  Or she’s captured and tortured and it’s so unjust.  And we’re meant to regard her torment as beautiful!  She’s the sort of person who is always right and so never has to learn from her mistakes.  The world revolves around her, and if anyone disagrees with her, it’s because they’re evil.  What a hero!

I’m sorry to say that I’ve known people who think they are always right.  They are just poor put-upon souls who are never to blame for anything.  And that's . . . not good.  It’s not good for them, and it hurts the people around them.

Mary Sues who are like this are insidious because they encourage and reinforce this type of behavior and thought-pattern through mental repetition and indulgence (in reader and writer).

So no, I don’t have a big problem with the occasional self-indulgent positive fantasy Mary Sue any more than I have a problem with occasionally eating a piece of cake.  But if you live off rotting cake that you scraped out of the Dumpster?  That’s a problem.

RANKING OUT OF 10

With all I’ve said, you might imagine that I’m going to rank the Mary Sue 0 out of 10, since she ranges from bad writing with no real benefits to bad writing with real detriments.  But I’m actually going to give her 2 stars out of 10.  Why?

Because for readers who haven’t yet become discerning or stopped to think about the real impact of Mary Sues, reading Mary Sues can be fun.  And this “fun” factor has brought people to reading who might never otherwise have read.  If it ended there—if people never read anything but Mary Sues—I wouldn’t account this a bonus.  But many readers then go on to read actual good books.

And so, Mary Sue, not for your sake but for the sake of you unintentionally doing some good, I’ll throw you a bone.  2/10.  You’re welcome.

The Maze Home: Childhood Story Art

"Avus" is Latin for "Grandfather," and is what we called my father's father.  Thanks to my mother for explaining the picture and to my grandmother ("Avia") for keeping the sticky note.

I love how, apparently, the normal locations within a town were "house," "ghost's house," "witch's house," and "church."
There isn't a date on the piece, but judging by my handwriting, I was between 6 and 8 years old.

Writing Violence

I really hesitated before posting this, but I think it is important, if you’re going to be writing any sort of violence (including action violence) to write it correctly.  Both for good writing and out of general respect.

So, to start: violence falls into two major categories: blunt and visceral.

Blunt violence is written in broad, vague terms.  For example:

He hit her.

She shot him in the shoulder.

He blew up the building.

Blunt violence is great for big flashy action sequences that you want to be fun, and not just for the psychopaths in your audience.  Think PG-13 action flicks—those are almost all blunt violence.  

You can intensify blunt violence by increasing the vulnerability of the victim (such as making her a woman or child or by having the person be naked or barefoot) or of the location (such as a bathroom, dentist’s office) or by edging it toward visceral violence by using more specific word choices:

He ripped out her throat.

She jammed the knife between his ribs.

In general, blunt violence is not meant to be taken too seriously, and no one but the most tender-hearted will be bothered by it.  It’s cartoonish, vague, and no one really gets hurt.  Your characters generally shrug off their injuries and go on with their lives with a Band-Aid and a one-liner.

Visceral violence is a different beast.  Visceral violence is written in incredibly specific—preferably medical—terms, and targets the more vulnerable areas of the body.  For example:

He slid a needle under the nailbed of her thumb.

He dug out the veins in the undersides of her wrists.

He pressed the burning end of his cigar into the arch of her foot.

Visceral violence is used to make violence horrible instead of fun.  The reader squirms uncomfortably and maybe isn’t sure if they want to keep reading. 

Visceral violence is also extremely memorable.  On a ghost tour I went on, our guide showed us a collection of real torture devices that had been used.  This was thirteen years ago, but I’ve always remembered what she said, because it was so visceral: torture is about making things go pop that were never meant to go pop.  The specific example I remember is nipples.

If you’re going to use visceral violence in your book, make sure you do it correctly.  Anything beyond the most minimal use of visceral violence is tasteless and gratuitous.  Visceral violence has its uses (shouldn’t we always think of violence as being horrible?) but should never be used except when extremely necessary.  Furthermore, for maximum impact, and to be respectful toward real sufferers of violence, the writer should focus on making the visceral violence as realistic as possible.  And this includes the traumatic emotional and physical aftermath.

This also increases the severity of the perceived violence, because violence is most effective when written as non-fiction.

I first came to this conclusion while reading The Amityville Horror, which is published as non-fiction.  Its actual content is barely PG, but I found it one of the scarier books I’d ever read . . . because of the factual way it was written.  I have since then read a couple of nonfiction books that have included torture, and they’ve hit me much, much harder than anything in literature.  In the memoir Tortured for Christ, which I only got halfway through because I simply couldn’t take any more, the author seldom describes any of the torture he endured; and when he does, he focuses primarily on the details of his humiliation rather than on the sensation of pain.  Frankly, he doesn’t have to tell us there was pain.  His wails of agony echo through every line of the book. 

The other book is the memoir Between Silk and Cyanide.  In that book, the author’s friend, the famous White Rabbit, Yeo-Thomas, is captured and tortured by the Nazis.  The author does not describe what happened to his friend.  He does not describe what his friend looks like.  He says, when Yeo-Thomas’s wife goes to the train station, that she’d been “warned” about Yeo-Thomas’s appearance.  And when Yeo-Thomas comes to visit him, the author only describes him as looking like an old man.  And afterwards, “I waited until his footsteps had shuffled away, and then was violently sick on behalf of mankind.” (pg 580 in the hard cover)

I literally cannot think about that without tears coming to my eyes. 

Sometimes, the most effective violence is that which is not written at all.

Thinklings Books: Publishing Quality Fantasy and Sci-Fi

Well, here it is: big announcement time.

I'm the new CEO of Thinklings Books, LLC, a publishing company dedicated to publishing quality fantasy and sci-fi.  And by "quality," I mean that, unlike traditional publishing companies, we publish books based on how good they are, not on the social media platforms of their authors.  That means great reads every time, guaranteed.

Speaking of social media . . .

facebook.com/ThinklingsBooks

We're working on boosting Thinklings Books' own social media platform, because we want to reach out to readers and writers worldwide.  My part of this is running our YouTube channel.  Our first video is up:

And future videos will come out at least every two weeks, with interesting and informative videos for readers and writers.  Please subscribe and join us in promoting really amazing writing and writers. :)

(But don't worry; I'll keep posting here, too.)

Where to Get Ideas

The old cliché of a question from fans and reporters to authors is, “Where do you get your ideas?”  Most authors find this a very difficult question to answer, simply because there isn’t one specific place they get their ideas.  “Ideas just come to me,” they say, or “out of my head” or “from anywhere.”

Yes, these things are true.  But what many of these questioners are actually asking is, “How can I get ideas for writing?”—for which none of those answers is helpful.  I would therefore like to give some actually useful advice for coming up with ideas and brainstorming when you feel stuck.

What ideas you get “out of your head” depends on what you put into your head.

One of the greatest dangers for a writer, when it comes to coming up with new ideas, is stagnation.  If you only read the same things, go to the same places, talk with the same people—it’s easy to dry up.  Diversity is the key here.  Choose to randomly go somewhere new.  Make sure you keep learning new things.  Occasionally read National Geographic or some other magazine of your choice from which you can learn things you not only never knew, but never knew you wanted to know.

Now consider: what do you spend a lot of time thinking about?  Are you thinking about a variety of topics, or just the same three to five things over and over again?  Do you think continuously about (from my own life), 1) your dog, 2) what you’re going to make for your next meal, 3) your current goal . . . and not much else?  If so, you are constraining your own brain.  Go find something different to think about.

Not sure what to think about?  Go to https://randomwordgenerator.com/.  Take the FIRST word it generates, and then go read the Wikipedia article on that word and learn something.

(Excuse me for a moment, I need to go read about “mouse.”)

Most really clever ideas are in fact the combination of two or more seemingly unconnected items.

The second random word I generated was “election,” so I have mouse + election.  So let’s write something.

The first mouse President of the United States was not, despite all expectations, named “Mickey.”

or

This is the tale of how a theme park/movie company came to rule the world.

or

We shuddered, terrified in our homes.  We’d thought the aliens had been bad, but then the mice had stepped up to protect us, and we found ourselves under far worse dictators.

or

Jimmy would never have elected to transform in a mouse, but he hadn’t had much say in the matter.

or . . . or  . . . or . . .

You see what I mean?  It took me all of two minutes to write those ideas, and I could’ve kept going for a very long time.  If I started to get stuck, all I had to do was a) learn more about mice and/or elections (don’t assume you know!  There may be interesting little facts you never guessed with hiding within articles), or b) grab a third random word (“tooth”).

The position of tooth fairy was, naturally, always held by the elected head of the mice.

This technique isn't only for new stories, by the way.  If you’re in the middle of a novel and come to a road block, this is one way to get through it: introduce a new, unexpected mouse (or other random factor).

Don’t starve your brain.  Read your genre.

This ties into the first factor, but from a specific angle.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: read more than you write.  Devour novels you adore that are in the same genre as you write.  Don’t read garbage; read what you love.  Remember that when you’re reading, you’re feeding your brain.  You can feed it nutritious food (quality prose with depth of story) or you can feed it junk food.  And the quality of your writing and of your brain refreshment will reflect that.

Earning Your Happy Ending

There is a thriller movie starring a famous actor based on a novella by a famous writer.  The main character is also a writer, and a major plot point in the movie is the importance of having the right ending.  It is not enough to slap an ending on; if it’s not the right ending, it’s not good enough.  It must be fixed.

Ironically, the movie has a different ending from the novella—and, in my opinion, a much better ending.  You see, the novella ends with a slapped-on happy ending: a minor cop character from a hundred pages earlier reappears at exactly the right moment, having figured everything out, and saves the day.  (See my last month’s post, Stop Cheating Your Reader.)  By contrast, the film ends with . . . no one coming to save the day.  The person in danger has to fight for life herself and win or—as in this case—lose on her own merits.

I like happy endings, personally.  I like my media to have the possibility of hope throughout the narrative, and to end happily.  But more important to me than something ending happily is it ending appropriately: no deus ex machina.

I once saw something write that a deus ex machina never works except in Diana Wynne Jones’s Dark Lord of Derkholm, but I would argue that that book doesn't have an ex machina: it clearly establishes at multiple points in the narrative that the gods in the world could take action under certain circumstances.  (On a side note, Dark Lord of Derkholm is one of my very favorite books by my absolute favorite author; 100% recommended.)  My point here is: having powerful characters come in at the last moment to lend aid isn’t cheating your ending or a deus ex machina if those powerful characters aren’t coming in out of nowhere—if they’re established throughout the book and then called upon.  The only time I think a deus ex machina isn’t horrifying is when done in a comedy or parody . . . but even then, presumably the rules of the universe have been established to show the audience that sharp turns and randomness can come out of nowhere, so it’s sticking with its premise.

And, for the record, I’ve always hated the ending to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

But I’m digressing.  Let’s go back to right endings.  In this case, to one of my own books: The Fifth Tunnel.  Many authors have a book they wanted to write before they died.  For me, it was The Fifth Tunnel (which I always called Waste Pit).  I was originally inspired by a dream when I was 12. Knowing I needed to write it, I figured I’d better get it over with soon in case I died early, so I wrote the first draft at 17.

The Fifth Tunnel does not have a traditionally happy ending.  In fact, it has by far the most tragic ending of all of my books.  It is full of melancholy and loneliness.  Although I did not understand this while writing it, in many ways, the book is about depression: about the downward, reinforcing spiral of depression and its inevitable end, if it is not stopped. 

When I told my mother, while I was writing it, the ending, she said she couldn’t believe any story could realistically end like that and she was sure it wouldn’t be right.  When she finally read the book, she was forced to concede that it was the perfect ending for the book—although she hated the ending and wished it were happy.  But I got her to agree that a "happy" ending wouldn't have been appropriate.

I wish the ending were happy, too.  I wish it could have been both right and happy, but it couldn’t—and, when given the opportunity, I will always choose right over happy.  In life and in books.

. . . and now I am feeling rather melancholy, although I didn’t mean to go down this path.  So I’ll just leave you, fair reader—and you, who may be a writer:

Let your ending be the right one.  Let it be the inevitable, truthful one.  Let it be the deserved one, the one that does not cheat or ex machina.  Let it fit your tone and your message and your characters.  Let it fit.  Please.  I would rather shed tears over honest sorrow than be left cold by false joy.

Although, mind, if the truthful ending is a happy one—I’d like that even better.