Writing Tips and Reviews

Ranting about Bad Writing: Mary Sue

I have talked extensively on Mary Sues, but this is something I missed when reviewing "Song of Nature", the garbage heap from the first "Ranting about Bad Writing." I found this out when reading "Proving I made Wonders of Mysteria" journal because Shayana would just love to claim other people's work as her own, and seeing as how bad this work is, I kind of see why. She's horrid at writing. Still doesn't make it okay.

What is a "Mary Sue"? Well, it's a character in which the world bends over backwards for them to look on top. Everything else is symptom of the disease.

-The world bends over backwards for her-

"Though I have found this out, I have no evidential proof. But I have noticed that whenever you use your favorite pencil of yours, you get every answer correct on your worksheets. However, when you use different pencils, your score drops."

This is a decent start, but that is enough proof to show that Raine is cheating. She's done it enough times that the tutor figured it out. The problem is the tutor saying, "I have no evidential proof", because pattern recognition is evidential proof. I did chemistry for three years; I know how science works. The tutor has evidence and enough to do something about it, but because we need to Mary Sue this story, so the tutor isn't going to do anything.

This is what we call a "missed opportunity", the writer has a natural place for Raine to face consequences to her actions, but chooses the Mary Sue route of the opposition doing nothing and saying they don't have enough evidence to act when they clearly do. Imagine if a scientist had enough evidence to prove a new species of animal existed, with the animal in front of them, but chose to say "I don't have enough evidence" so the Mary Sue can come in, claim all that work and make a scientific discovery. This writing is on that level of stupid.

"With that, she turned and strutted out of the room. Raine's mother gave her a disappointing look, but that was all."

You know it's bad when the writing has to flop like a fish so that the "precious main character who can do no wrong" never gets in trouble. The writing has to try so hard to fail so that Raine can never face a consequence. "But that was all" really shows how the writer is trying her hardest to make sure that Raine doesn't get in trouble. We have it hammer it in that Raine is this poor soul who is being punished for doing nothing wrong, that it's because her family puts SO MUCH PRESSURE ON HER, that she's forced to cheat to make them happy.

Oh wait, no, that would actually make sense. No, we're just faced with someone who has the easiest life in the world and hates putting any effort into her work. Her mom and tutor are presented as being these evil forces who want to destroy Raine's life, when they are literally doing the most common thing a mother and a tutor would do. Not to mention, Raine is home schooled, she doesn't have any pressure from peers or real teachers, so what is this "I'm having such a hard life" bullshit I'm seeing?

-Can we fix this? –

The first step is to give Raine consequences, this is the first chapter and first time these things are introduced. Ignoring the fact that the magic system is important but never described, we can work with the pencil, but just the pencil. If we have to, we can keep Raine's attitude of her life being called "suffering" because we'll make her grow out of it during her journey.

First, we can keep the beginning of the story when she looks for her pencil and finds out that it's on the desk. Then we deviate from the characters sort of calling her out and doing nothing. The tutor walks up to Raine, slams her hands on the table and scolds Raine for cheating. Even when Raine claims she doesn't know what's going on, the tutor shows her all the tests she has done. There are marks of those that were taken with the pencil and those without, and there are clear signs that Raine failed the ones without the pencil and got 100% on the ones with the pencil.