How to not write a Mary Sue

Physical Appearance

• So Beautiful, It's a Curse is largely a Discredited Trope in normal fiction, and that goes double for fanfiction. Don't do it. That doesn't mean your character can't be attractive. Just don't try to make your character stand out by being excessively MORE beautiful (or more ugly). Try to make your character's appearance distinct in the details.

• If you want your character to be notably beautiful, make sure it makes sense for her station in life, access to cosmetics and the amount of time she has to apply it. Even supermodels spend a lot of time with makeup.

• If you think shimmering, violet hair would be cool for your character, but hair like that doesn't show up in the setting, leave it out. If you write the character well, then exotic hair and eye colors (for the setting) are not needed.

• Body figures that are atypical to the setting are best left out as well. You want a slim, but attractive character, go ahead. Just make it reasonably slim and attractive.

• One of the most important facts of life (and in fiction in most cases) to take into consideration is that what one person may view as "beautiful" may be different from what another person thinks. Love is blind. An average looking character may well look, to their love interest, like the most beautiful person in the world, while nobody else is particularly stunned either way.

• It could be used as part of the plot, for example: The character believes in said viewpoint about personal preference when it comes to beauty, but may also have low self-esteem about her own appearance. The villain can be a Manipulative Bastard and convince her otherwise by praising her beauty, in an attempt to gain her trust, make a Face–Heel Turn, and use her as a pawn.

• Fancy, ultra-detailed costumes had best fit in the setting. A lot of RPGs would allow costumes like that, but Harry Potter would not. Keep the clothing reasonable to the setting. If you want a minor costume quirk, that can often work far better than a bunch of extra frills.

• If you are going to spout Costume Porn about the character, make sure this character is not the only one. Although many would like this trope kept to a minimum, reserving it for one character or two is another way to almost instantly make the character look like a Sue.

• Odd costumes might make sense if your character's a Cloudcuckoolander in which case, people might find it more strange or discomforting instead of exceptionally attractive. You'd also have to be prepared to mention why your character continues to dress in a stand-outish way. Does she have a lot of cultural pride, or has she not had sufficient time to adopt more local manners of dress, or is she compelled or required to dress in the exotic fashion for some reason - perhaps due to being part of some kind of cultural exchange or diplomatic mission, in which case dressing in a foreign style could be seen as "waving the flag," so to speak.

• Colors should be kept tasteful and plausible with the setting and its culture. If a culture really only has access to dark red cloth, a character wearing a bright green outfit breaks suspension of disbelief pretty quickly unless there's an in-world reason (i.e., they spend time abroad, or were raised in the manner of another country, or belong to a mercantile family that has access to foreign cloth/dye and styles). A peasant girl in Ancient Grome or the Middle Ages wearing a blue or purple gown would be highly implausible. If the motif is unspecified, odd, intense colors like bright pink, magenta, purple, and such tend to be noticeably unusual. The exception would be if the character's lack of taste is an actual character trait instead of an unintended side effect.

• Do the research. That's what the Internet is FOR. Making an Ass Pull about things you don't know is going to get you called out by fans.

• Realize that there is a drawback to having a Pimped-Out Dress, wearing a corset, and putting on anything overly flashy in general. The upper classes were able to get away with this sort of stuff because they had the money and the time for it, and didn't have to do manual labor. The flashiness was used to signify class and to intimidate others - not for being useful. If you are aiming for realism, don't expect your heroine to be able to fight with a sword when wearing a ball gownnote , run away from pursuers through a thick forest with her Rapunzel Hair flowing free behind her, or pass as a peasant without taking her huge bling and showy makeup off first, because stunts like that are just plain unrealistic, and should get her killed. If your character's running around in an outfit that draws attention, it's very likely to draw the wrong kind of attention... unless that's what you're going for (like a sheltered princess who doesn't realize that going alone in the marketplace, while wearing a lacy silk dress and a cape lined with fur, will make her a target).

• If you're unsure about what might be plausible in a story and it's not too extremely dangerous, try it out. Want to know what type of heels are best to run in without breaking? Try a brisk walk or jog in your favorite pair. Think your girl can run a marathon in a properly-tied corset? Find someone who sells them and ask if you can try one on, with them helping you tie it. Or, if you can't do it yourself, ask someone who has. The internet isn't the only place you can do research, though the answers could easily be there. Also make sure to reference canon, too; if you are, for example, writing a Friendship is Magic FC that isn't a very powerful unicorn/alicorn, but knows and can perform age spells (some of the hardest-to-do magic in that canon), this breaks plausibility.

• Let your characters get hot, sweaty, dirty, messy and pasty if the situation calls for it. A person should not have a 'light sheen' of sweat after running a marathon, unless they were really light on the jogging. Watch some sports (triathlon coverage is good) and see what people really look like after exertion.

• Also let the characters bleed; a bloody character in a very close fight helps make the reader more engaged in the story, and also has them root for the protagonist if they are written well enough.

• It's important to note that writing isn't a visual media, and that anything the reader pictures she has to make up on her own, no matter how much detail you have in the writing. Because of this, it's remarkably easy to get away with only a single short sentence of what the character looks like and still have the reader accept her presence without any raised eyebrows. Just don't get carried away with hiding things excessively, or using this as a way to Ass Pull something you didn't see fit to mention the first time around.

• Always remember, when describing a character: do we really need to know that her eyes are emerald green? Would the character be so fundamentally changed if she had brown eyes, or a slightly harder chin, or heavier eyebrows than you envision? Admittedly, sometimes the answer is yes. But remember that a story isn't about what the character already is so much as the deeds she does and emotions she feels, and what she looks like is a very small part of what she is.

• That said, one or two distinctive details can help make a character real in the reader's mind, as well as give some foundation to attach a name and actions. Names alone can get jumbled up - especially if you start adding Loads and Loads of Characters - but it's a lot easier to keep track of them when you picture them as "Julia, the green-eyed girl with the freckles," "Timothy, the shaggy-haired guy with the perpetually deadpan expression," or "Robert, the lanky guy with the crooked teeth." But what you SHOULD avoid at all costs is something like: "She had thick rimmed emerald eyes that seemed to have a ring of deeper, verdant green in the center, brown hair that gleamed a thousand different colors of autumn and a tiny, porcelain nose dotted with wide-spaced light brown freckles." You should also describe the character only about once - people aren't going to forget what she looks like halfway through.

• Note that often times, characteristic actions can be just as evocative, more interesting, and possibly even more relevant to the story than distinctive appearances. If a girl has a peculiar habit of quietly appearing in a scene without anybody noticing her arrival, or a guy tends to scratch his beard when he's thinking, that alone can give a solid foundation for the reader's imagination to build upon, without ever having to mention hairstyle, clothing, the occasional scar, etc.

• Being specific about character descriptions can also help with building romance; just don't go overboard on it. For example, this description;

"He stared into her lavender eyes, which seemed to shimmer and dance with the moonlight reflecting off of them."

will read a lot better than this one;

"He stared into her bright lavender eyes, of which shimmered and danced in the pale white lighting illuminating from the moon. Her dark hair flowed from her head and shimmered in the night, and the man couldn't help but feel enthralled by her beauty. His own maroon eyes danced and glimmered in the pale lights of the moon, as well; his black hair danced and shimmered in the moonlight, and the woman felt entrapped by his stunning looks."