Mary Sues in Original Fantasy

I've been trying out some tests of Mary Sueness, such as this one and I've noticed that most of my characters are in the 30+ points range (rather/very Sueish--strangely my villains score about the same as my heroes).

I don't consider them to be Mary Sues, and I know that many major fantasy characters also score high. But, being the author, I'm not sure if I'm the best judge of my characters being Mary Sues ^_^

Has anyone else faced this problem? Does anyone have some good techniques for taking a more objective look at characters?

Have other people read your stuff, preferably in a writing group or workshop.

rcgamergirl ~ Very cool site. Thanks!

Only three more months to NaNo '09!

#2 Tigercrane
I agree, that can be very helpful for later stages.

I'm thinking more of the first draft stage, or mid-chapter, or even the start of character creation. I don't want to write a second or third draft just to find out that one of my major characters is a Mary Sue through the last half of the novel.

It's more of an editing issue really. If I determine that my character is starting to become absurdly successful/powerful while writing chapter three, it saves a lot of work. I can make some changes then, and not have to do major ability editing later. (Kind of like keeping game balance as a DM, if I realize that a weapon/spell will be too powerful before I give it as a quest item or loot, it saves having to make drastic changes later-- please excuse the DnD speak ^_^)

#3 Storeetllr
No problem!
I can't wait to get started on this year's novel! (Although I wish I had finished editing the last one--they keep on piling up...)

My husband was listening to NPR one morning and heard an interview with an author. I wish I knew who he had been -- but Russ told me about a set of answers the author gave when the interviewer started asking him about his characters. Things like 'are you the hero?' and 'who is the basis for your villain?'

He had interesting answers. He said that he was all the characters -- they all came from him, the hero on his good days and the villain on his bad, dark days.

Sometimes the Mary Sue tests aren't reliable and don't matter at all, in the end. Are your characters interesting? Is the story interesting? It all has to come from you in one form or another. Everything we write has a level of 'Mary Sue' in it because we can't write outside of who we are and what we know.

So concentrate on the story you want to tell, and don't worry about outside tests. It's the story that is all that will matter.

Thank you, that was very helpful. ^_^ I'll have to keep that in mind. I've noticed before that the more I learn about and accept parts of myself, the more alive my characters seem, but I've never had a good way of stating it.

I generally don't take the tests too seriously, but when my human mage got a higher score than a god from one of my other novels, I did get kind of worried.

I found that I hadn't defined his abilities very well. Once I did that, he was actually facing challenges instead of throwing random spells around to fix everything.

Oh yes -- defining the weaknesses of powerful characters is really important. If they can do anything at all with no 'payment' then there really isn't much of a story. (grin)

Granted I haven't written anything yet, but I took the Mary Sue test last night on how I imagine writing the main female character of my NaNo novel, and she is a non-Sue to the point where they suggested she might need some spicing up. *sigh* Ya just can't win. :)

Actually, I'm not really worried. The novel is historical fiction set around the time of the Opium War in China and includes drug dealers, spies, warlords, bandits, Buddhist martial arts monks, and ninjas (or the Chinese equivalent). How much more spicy could I make it and still call it "historical" fiction?