About Mary Sue

There's been a debate raging amongst people I know (well, "raging" is probably a bit of an overstatement) about the presence of Mary Sue characters in published, non-fanfiction writing. Accusations are being leveled at some well-respected -- i.e., literary writers -- of indulging in Mary Sue-ness. For those not in the know, the origins of the Mary Sue character and phenomenon are explained here. As a result, writers are starting to worry whether their works-in-progress display even the slightest hint of Sue-ness. I find this infuriating, and here's why.

I think there is a real danger of letting the "Sue" Nazis suck the life out of fiction. Living out one's fantasies on the page may or may not be "Sue." However, when a writer gets so fearful of having that hideous appellation attached to their name or their work that they make a conscious effort to strip their characters, or at least their protagonists, of any resemblance to themselves, they're de-humanizing those characters. Every writer must draw from his or her own humanity in order to create fully-realized characters. Everything -- I mean everything -- you've read in a good book bears the stamp of its author in some fashion or another. The characters, the story arcs, the style. It's all the writer and everything he or she has seen and experienced in life.

Teh suck arrives when the writer ignores all real experience, and starts writing from vicarious experience. Then you get the tired re-hashes of television shows, fictionalized emotions, manufactured opinions and dreams. Every single story has already been told. The only unique each thing writer has to offer to that story is herself or himself. Divest the writer from the story, and you've divested the story of life.

Let me explain a little what I mean about "vicarious experience."

In the year following my divorce, every piece of fiction I wrote was about relationships gone bad. What's worse, I didn't realize it until I sat down months later and read through every one of them to try and pick some to send to a local short story chapbook contest. It never even occurred to me while I was writing that I was working out my issues in my fiction. Some of the stories were good, some of them were not so good, but all of them were about real emotions. At least I got that part right.

I'm not a believer in "naive fiction," which was described in an essay I remember reading in Tin House as something like, "If you're a cop, you must write about cops. If you're a salesclerk, you write about being a salesclerk." I think you can explore other realms of experience in your fiction, but we're all humans and we all have the same emotional core. We all experience heartbreak, lust, grief, humiliation, confusion, and awe. Different things inspire these emotions in different people, but the core emotion is the same. Even if you've never lost a parent, you know, way deep down, you have experienced some loss that shook you to your soul. So I don't think you have to have been orphaned to write about the loss of an orphan in your story. You just need to dig down deep into your own emotional memory to pull that feeling up, to develop empathy for your characters. Your memory of loss will breathe life into your paper-and-ink orphan and give her flesh and blood for the reader. But it has to come from you. In this world of the page, you are God.