Two steps backward, one step forwards

[thewhitelily]

I've only written 500 words tonight - and in actual fact, if I count the words I'm officially making redundant, I've gone about ten thousand into the red - but think I may have actually written more tonight than in the past week. I've pinpointed a problem I've been having and solved it, which means that masses of what I've already written will be discarded (it stays in the word count, but moves down to the end of the document where it won't be an official part of the story), but it also means that a whole set of wonderful possibilities and plot points have opened up to me.

The problem was, I'd grown to like one of my protagonists too much. I'd grown to like the way he ends up so much that I'd forgotten that he actually starts as a selfish, ungrateful, blind little shite, and the reason he's so fascinating is the learning process he goes through over the course of the story after he makes a seriously bad choice for minor, selfish, petty reasons.

But because I made him start too smart, he managed skip all the angst and do all his learning in his first on-screen appearance, never makes his character-defining bad choice, and he's been aimlessly wandering around, looking for a plot, inner monologuing about his own greatness, and being generally admired by everyone - even those who really, really shouldn't - ever since.

In other words, I've just written my very first Gary Stu. Urgh. I think I need a shower. A long shower. And then I shall write him again, but properly.

Comments

[thesurvivalist.livejournal.com]

It's ok. We all do it. I have a character that's a major misanthropic Mary Sue, but I write this off because she can never empathize with the audience/drives them off and isn't the central character.

So they're not always bad. Or maybe they are. It's not a big crisis.

[thewhitelily]

Thanks Brighty. And you're right, it's not always bad - especially since I can fix it easily enough. Feels good, actually, to be able to say "aaaah, *that*'s why they happen", because previously Sues had been a complete mystery to me. :)

Yay for the Gary Stu! ;-)

[pete-jones.livejournal.com]

Hiya,

Seems I've been gone far to long, and I don't even stand a chance of attempting to catch up with everyone -- but your Gary Stu comment caught my eye. (I also note that you're writing, which is more than I've managed to do in a while -- but I'll comment on that in my own journal in a minute or three.)

Anyway, just wanted to mention that I wrote a Mary Sue character in my '06 NaNo (which, sadly, remains unfinished at the moment.) However, I fully intended to write a Mary Sue -- and one of my characters is not only fully aware of what she is (her name is "Marisu" in case he needed a hint) but is faced with the problem of having to get her out of his way. I had fun writing it; I can only hope, once the novel is finally ready to be made public, that my readers have as much fun with those scenes as I did... ;-)

Re: Yay for the Gary Stu! ;-)

[pete-jones.livejournal.com]

(In fact I've apparently been gone so long I've forgotten how to spell "too"!)

Re: Yay for the Gary Stu! ;-)

[thewhitelily]

Hey! Great to see you back!

Ah, the wonderful parodic Mary Sue - I've got one of them two too, in a half-finished cowrite. Her name was Marionetta Sousaphonina - but everyone just called her Mari Sou. :) Ah, she was a lot of fun to write - sounds like yours was, too. :)

PS: Struck out typo was absolutely real, and I only just saw it before posting. *grin* Looks your absense-related amnesia is contagious!