Storycraft: The Mary Sue, Paragon, and Everyman character types

folks David Stewart here it's time to talk a little bit about start crafting the art of making stories this video in the series it's a little bit of a response to one of my viewers here Donna severa who is from Mexico and wanted to know how do I avoid writing Mary Sue characters so I'm going to use that as a platform to talk about three big character types that Mary Sue the Paragon character and the everyman and one of those that Mary Sue is one that you are probably wanting to avoid in your writing or your your story creation whatever format you happen to be doing it in so let's start with the Mary Sue the Mary Sue a Mary Sue is a character type that is very strongly associated with fan fiction and it's kind of sort of tropic in fan fiction and it started with Star Trek fan fiction there's this idea of like Mary Sue the youngest Starfleet officer in history Mary Sue is usually a very young character that is hyper competent has a extreme skill set like an extreme number of skills that he or she possesses is able to impress established characters in a universe so you go in and impress Captain Kirk and Spock they're immediately impressed with Mary Sue and is usually able to save the day using unbelievable unbelievabl skills and talents and that's really the litmus test of a Mary Sue is that the talents are unbelievable so when I talked about force awakens and I did my review I talked about ray being a Mary Sue and ray really is a classic Mary Sue and it's kind of why I felt like force awakens felt like a bad fan fiction film or like a very expensive fan fiction film is Ray's young she's hyper competent in everything she makes no particular mistakes as she goes she's immediately good at things that she wouldn't have any knowledge of like the force and all of the established canon characters are super impressed with her and liked her immediately so it really to me felt a lot like a Mary Sue a Mary Sue role so how do you avoid writing a Mary Sue well since a Mary Sue is usually morally perfect and has a high skill set and doesn't really encounter obstacles in the plot you have those things so you have a character that's not morally perfect a character that especially the easiest way to have it is a character that makes errors in judgment even a character that's very ethical and very virtuous can still make big errors in judgment that have negative consequences when we watch Star Trek next generation Picard is a very virtuous character he's designed to be like almost like a paragon like the second category I talked about but he still makes errors in judgment and is very broken up about them and has his own a little bit of his own internal flaws that he's carried over that's part of his character so he's really not like a Mary Sue and he's also old he has all this experience and yet he still makes errors in judgment so if you have your character make errors in judgment that's going to go a long way that's measure mistakes your character needs to make mistakes the other thing is that the plot obstacles have to be meaningful if your characters encountering a plot obstacle and that actually sets them back it makes them think differently it makes them change what they're doing that's part of that character growth are a Mary Sue doesn't really have a character growth because it's already a perfect character it's too perfect it's too likable too beautiful that sort of thing and the character has specific skill sets and relaxed skill sets in other areas they're you know they're an engineer but they don't know about astrophysics as much as the astrophysicists does or they're a really great leader but they don't know science as well as the science officer and that creates conflict so there's a really good way it has very specific skill set or has very specific traits that are different from other people so if your character is like intensely beautiful they may lack in some other capacity they may not be personable or a good leader even though they're very beautiful and so there there's a room for growth there so as long as there's some room for growth in whatever sort of attributes they have you're probably not going to be writing a Mary Sue that doesn't mean your character has to be incompetent your character can be highly competent but as long as that character is able to make mistakes or there are genuine obstacles for that for that character to overcome then you're not really going to be writing a Mary Sue some people have said and have tried to make the case and I haven't really accepted the arguments personally that Mary Sue's can be good in certain formats and I think one of the format's that has been talked about is media for children because children really like to watch heroes be really good at being heroes they like to watch Superman in essence and I don't know if that's really true but I look at I look at stuff that's written towards children that's very what I would consider good and those characters are usually have a lot of growing to do even as children we understand that children have lots of growing to do more growing than than a competent adult really so like Harry Potter as an example Harry Potter you'd think he would be like a Mary Sue or a gary stew whatever whatever a male version of that name you want to have because he you start off the book with like this this whole chosen one thing the very first book but Harry Potter is really mostly incompetent at at most things like he's very very mediocre and he has no clue what he's doing he stumbles through things with a little bit of luck and also like some barely clever thinking at the beginning and he's he's pretty good at like a couple of things he has a couple of inborn talents but he needs his friends to overcome obstacles his friends have specific skill sets like it's it's a it's a great example of children's literature not needing a hero that is like all powerful but really creating something that's identify identify above for the kids because kids are not going to feel like they're great at everything they don't really need a character to project themselves into that's great at everything if they have a character that feels more like them then they're more interested in how that character is going to be able to overcome the obstacles so I think there's some really good examples of not of in children's literature not needing a very suit to get kids interested in the hero like you don't need that kind of projection I think let's talk about Paragon characters real quick Paragon characters are not Mary Sue type characters they are characters that don't really have any growing to do they are very powerful they are maybe perhaps even godlike in some stories a really good example of Paragon characters our is like Gandalf from Lord of the Rings is a Paragon character Dumbledore from Harry Potter's a a Paragon character Yoda from Star Wars is a Paragon character at least from the original trilogy he's a Paragon character and a good Paragon character is believable because they have some other thing going for them that makes him a Paragon they're very old or very experienced so Gandalf is basically a demigod and he's like an angel he's a supernatural being and he doesn't really have any growing to do because he's basically divine being Gandalf is also not the main protagonist of Lord of the Rings our main protagonists are more human characters even though you know we have a hobbit and human but the Hobbit is a is a human character gandalf is sort of a peripheral character trying to guide things and gandalf struggle as a paragon is not for him to grow and overcome things his his skills are capped his moral capacities are capped it's his his concern Gandalf is concerned throughout Lord of the Rings is am I actually strong enough to overcome Sauron because I don't believe that I am i believe he is as true he is innately stronger than me so how how can I possibly overcome him well I will have to use I'll have to use subtlety rather than my power to do it so Gandalf is also like a morally morally maxed out character he's already achieved all his virtue he doesn't have moral growing yet to do really and then in the in the movies there's like some situations where Gandalf is like very upset that he sent Frodo to his doom but not not as much in the books so he doesn't really have a ton of conflict over that he's really just you know he has he has affection for someone so Gandalf's Gandalf some moral growth is sort of peaked so same thing with like Yoda from from Star Wars Yoda is like 900 years old and he already knows everything right he's like the master of masters so he doesn't really need to grow we don't need him to grow away we need him to do is to show Luke how to grow and Luke is that third character type which is really to every man so Paragon characters have a very particular place in a story a Paragon character you don't have to have every caracter be have to have a growth curve Paragon characters can exist in sort of their maximum state and they could be trying to exert whatever virtue they have on the world you don't have to have every character be have like a really strong growth curve however Paragon characters don't usually make great main characters and that's because we don't really identify that well with Gandalf we can't really identify with an angelic being who existed before biddle earth there's just not a lot in common we have a lot more in common with Frodo right so because Paragon characters are not that identifiable we usually don't have them as the central characters but they can be very very important story characters as well that's a Paragon now I should mention also that there is a lot of Paragon characters in Japanese media and Japanese literature and I think this has to do with just a little bit different cultural attitude and approach towards story writing where there's a lot of stories about sort of maxed out characters characters who have already had their experience and already had their growth and then the conflict between other characters as they try to achieve their ends that is something that you can see a lot and you can do that in it's just not as popular I think in English literature but it could still totally totally happen is that you build up the characters to their max level I guess a good example will be if you if you're like reading a long fantasy series like Wheel of Time by the time you get to to the last book they're all Paragons right they've whatever they are they're at the maximum level of what they are another kind of Paragon while I'm thinking about it is the Emperor from Star Wars the Emperor is a Paragon even though he's an evil Paragon he's still a Paragon he's he doesn't have any growing left to do he's already owns the galaxy he's at the max level of whatever growth Archy has and only his downfall will be the the showing that he has flaws in judgment right so that's a that's a Paragon character it is an example and again he's not a main character he's he's somewhat of a static character so last thing that I'll talk about is the everyman the everyman is a character type that most people really like to use as a part of what makes a protagonist happen and you don't have to have your protagonist being everyman a protagonist can have really specific character traits but and every man is a character that's more great every man comes from the medieval play everyman where every man is a sinner and he makes the same mistakes we all make in Miss overvaluing riches and friendship and undervaluing his good deeds so when we say a character is every man it's somebody that every man can identify with it on some level represents all of humanity I think Luke Skywalker to a certain extent is in every man some people try to make the case that he's a Mary Sue but I don't see that he has a lot of growing that he does but he makes all the same mistakes that we make he he wants to do things the easy way rather than the hard way he he makes the mistake of worrying about you know of limiting his own potential of doubting of doing all these things he's he has a lot of every man every man in that character and every man is a character that will make a lot of the common mistakes that people make you don't have to have a character have flaws that are like really profound and very specific so you don't have to it's like I need to make a flawed character let's make him a drug addict right a drug addict is not really in every man and every man is going to be a guy who who gets drunk on Thursday and says something stupid to a girl he likes that's a never man a drug addict is going to get drunk every day and everyone hates him for it right that's a that's a profound character flaw there's nothing wrong wrong with writing a profound character flaw but it's not in every man and so the everyman doesn't have these really profound character flaws his character flaws are the character flaws we all have flaws in judgment you know problems with love you know doubt doubting yourself doubting other people being betrayed conflicts with family those are those are also all the sort of things that are contributing to an everyman type character and like I said most people want their protagonists to be highly identifiable so they're going to give them the the KY character flaws that they all have and that's a way that you can make your character very identifiable even if they have specific flaws if you give them general flaws as well you know they may make mistakes about who to trust they may not like their job but not know how to fix it those are sorts of the things that that people are going to really identify with your character and I don't think every character has to be super identifiable to be interesting it's more important to be interesting than identifiable but the everyman will definitely help with the identity part of your character the the reader or the viewer being able to project themselves into that situation and be highly in pathetic of whatever the protagonist is going through if they have the same struggles that that everybody has you know think of those general struggles so those are my things about that that Mary Sue is usually when you want to avoid and you want instead of having a Mary Sue you want to have a character that has some flaws and every man is probably better than a Mary Sue but you want to have their skills be specific their flaws be of a specific nature and also for them to make mistakes and have obstacles in a plot those characters don't exist like in a vacuum you don't like designing character like here's the character that's something that a lot of amateurs do is they like write down all their character traits or something like that now characters only exhibit themselves through a story through a plot through the execution of events that's going that's going on in your story so because they only exhibit themselves through that those events have to have an impact on them and they have to have an impact on the events so it's a mistake to just design a character outside of the plot you have to think about how a character is going to grow through a plot the plot is going to affect the character intimately so keep that in mind those obstacles have to have to have a good impact on the character that's how you're going to make it believable even if they're very very competent character and I'm a believer that a competent characters can be very very interesting as well so thanks so much for watching don't forget to Like comment and subscribe you can read my stuff at DVS press comm and check out David V store comm for more my general stuff in my music stuff I'm always happy to have you along and to have feedback so please give me comments on what you think we can develop these concepts a little more in-depth or come up with some better raisers for determining these I'm always always happy to have this conversations thanks so much for watching and I hope you have a great great day

Channel: David Stewart

Views: 321,874

Rating: 4.9092927 out of 5

Keywords: Story, writing, storycraft, mary sue, paragon, everyman, star wars, star trek, lord of the rings, harry potter, gandalf, amwriting, rey, force awakens, tips, movies, books

Id: aZpRnJVFrmc

Length: 15min 44sec (944 seconds)

Published: Sun May 22 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Mousse_is_Optional]

If Rey is a Mary Sue, then Harry Potter sure as shit is too.