The very concept of a Mary Sue is controversial, both in the original fiction and fanfic space. People decry the idea as misogynistic, arguing that male characters can get away with all manner of bullshit without being labeled a Marty Stu.

And that is true. Fan spaces are much harsher on female characters than they are on male ones, and they will call a perfectly well-rounded character a Mary Sue just because she’s good at something.

But it is also true that Mary Sues do indeed exist, just like Marty Stus do. I know because I made a hell of a lot of them when I was younger.

What is a Mary Sue, anyway?

TV Tropes goes into exhaustive detail about exactly what makes a Mary Sue, including different variations of the Mary Sue trope depending on very specific attributes.

But, essentially, a Mary Sue (or Marty Stu) is a perfect character who can do no wrong. They are typically a power fantasy for the author, who projects themselves onto the beauty, status, adoration, and resources of said character. Some attributes include:

The character succeeds at everything they do, no matter what. They can fly a plane, perform surgery, argue in a court of law, and bend reality to their whims.

Mary Sue is overpowered (OP). Whatever skills they have, they are the best at it, and even world-renowned experts will defer to them.

Every other character loves them, and they overshadow other characters by dint of their perfection. Even canonically mean shitty characters will fall for their charms.

They solve every problem, no matter how challenging, just by being who they are. Nothing is a match for them, and they never make mistakes.

Any character defects they have are very minimal, like being clumsy or too shy. They are kind, sweet, fun, charitable, gentle, and athletic.

They do not have any physical flaws, or the “flaws” they have are just physical attributes that are not universally loved, like hip dips or freckles. In many cases, this flaw will be not being special enough. A Mary Sue is often brunette and always bemoaning not being a blonde.

They often have a tragic backstory that never makes them bitter or sad. Despite watching their parents get blown up or whatever, they remain sweet and lovely and kind.

There are dozens of other things that may fall under the Mary Sue umbrella; to see more, refer to the TV tropes references up there. If I go any further, this post will be book length.

And again, all these things can, and do, apply to male characters (Marty Stus). Keep that in mind as we go along.

Now, I need to state something very clearly.

There is nothing wrong with making a Mary Sue.

To get ahead of the “self-hating woman” accusations, let me just say that making a Mary Sue or Marty Stu does not mean that you’re a terrible person – nor that you can never be a good writer. I am living proof.

My own Mary Sue, named Tabby Wilkes, basically owned a whole town in North Carolina; all the townspeople fawned over her and longed to visit her mountaintop mansion. She owned a lime-green Bughatti Veyron with pink racing stripes, and her home’s entire basement was an enormous swimming pool.

Whatever she wanted, Tabby could get it with a snap of her fingers. All problems were solved by money and beauty, no matter how challenging. In other words, she was a power fantasy, just like boys make up superhero OCs so they can be the strongest person ever.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. I roleplayed with her for years and across multiple fandoms because it was super fun.

Of course, said roleplays were melodramatic as hell, but I was a literal child, and it didn’t matter anyway. Why? Because I wasn’t trying to captivate an audience, just play around with my friends.

This brings me to the very reason why you need to fix a Mary Sue in the first place.

Mary Sues are fun as hell for the author but not so fun for the reader.

Mary Sues are a problem because audiences do not like them. Here’s why:

All conflict is solved by the Mary Sue, so there’s never any suspense. We already know they cannot fail at anything they do.

Having a perfect life makes readers resentful because they, too, want to have a perfect life.

Perfect characters are hard to relate to. Flaws make characters relatable because humans also have flaws. We want to see at least part of ourselves – or someone we know – in a character.

A perfect character is unrealistic. Characters are not real people, but they must feel like real people; making them flawless will pull readers out of the story.

A Mary Sue is essentially a Barbie doll: ostensibly perfect, yet physically impossible.

And boring. Let’s not forget the boring.

The Barbie Movie showed this incredibly well by seeing the titular Barbie get more and more disenchanted with the idealized Barbieland, where nothing ever goes wrong and everyone is happy. Barbie’s crash-landing in the real world was essentially a Mary Sue powerwashing.

So, again, playing with Mary Sues isn’t a bad thing, just like other forms of escapism can be a healthy, creative hobby. Many people enjoy building dollhouses, making model trains, beautifying their Animal Crossing island, or generating the ideal city in Minecraft.

But we all recognize that these forms of fantasy are mostly for the creator themselves. No one cares about my Minecraft world or Animal Crossing island or dollhouses, and I’m fine with that. However, I’d be pretty sad if no one on the planet cared about the Eirenic Verses because I created it for others to enjoy, too.

If you want to write something that other people want to read, then you need to yank your Mary Sue out of Barbieland and bring them into a realer world. Let’s see how.

Throughout this, I will be referencing my own character, Cerie Korviridi. Despite gaining significant power in the later stages of the series, Cerie never becomes a Mary Sue – and I’ll explain why.

Remove the perfect circumstances.

This is the easiest facet of de-Barbifying a character: make something in their life absolutely suck. You will then need to figure out how this bad circumstance influences the rest of their life, which will inevitably start to shift all their other perfections into something not quite so nice.

For example, if they are rich, make them poor. But you need to ensure that they don’t become a Charles Dickens “please sir can I have some more” kind of poor person.

Let them be angry about being poor. Show them struggling to decide which bill to pay. Show them being so exhausted from work that they don’t have the energy to be affectionate with their partner, and this starts to destroy their relationship. Maybe even make them jealous of friends with more financial stability, screwing up those relationships too.

Whatever you choose, think deeply about how this would impact their whole life. For example, nice but very socially awkward people often struggle with self-esteem issues and start isolating themselves because it hurts to get rejected all the time. Mentally ill people have outbursts that burn their lives down. Someone with terrible parents might have an Orrinir Relickim situation as in Funeral of Hopes.

Show their ugliness.

By this, I do not necessarily mean physical beauty, though ugly characters are great too.

If you do decide to make them ugly, then commit to it: make sure that you do not have people telling them that they’re beautiful all the time while they decry their looks. That’s either humblebragging or low self-esteem, both of which are annoying to readers.

Rather, I mean that they should have an ugly side to their personality or overall attitude to life.

Everyone, no matter how great they appear, has an ugly side; it’s human nature. I have an ugly side, as do all the people I love. That does not make me or my loved ones irredeemable, though we would be if we refused to acknowledge those flaws and improve.

Cerie’s main ugliness is that she thinks she’s always right about everything. It’s her way or the highway, so you better do as she says or you’ll never hear the end of it until you die.

Sometimes she’s right, and sometimes she’s absurdly wrong. As she continues to go through the Horrors, Cerie gets more and more wrong about things to the point where her loved ones have to drag her back from the abyss. And then she has to live with those consequences, including the pain of betraying her ideals.

Sucks to be you, Cerie. I still love you though.

Demonstrate that they received their skills through hard work.

The “Chosen One” trope often goes hand-in-hand with Mary Sues because the character does not have to work to achieve anything; they’re just naturally that good.

They may acquire skills with no valid reason for it, such as shooting fireballs when it was never once suggested that they have any magical ability at all. That kind of thing is infuriating to readers because it is lazy, nonsensical writing.

So you can counteract this – and de-Barbify your character – by making them work hard for whatever advantage they have. This is also a good opportunity to show them failing at things because the learning process inevitably requires some failure.

Cerie Korviridi spent over a decade of her life learning how to wield magic poetry. From the moment that she had earrings hammered into her ears by her mentor at age seven, she was on the Struggle Bus. In 9 Years Yearning, we see her practicing her poetry, including some really cringey ones as a preteen.

In Pride Before a Fall, we see other High Poets showing off their skills, which gives us an idea of what she may be able to do in the future. We also see her hard at work studying to pass her yearly exams, so we know she must be getting some intensive training off-screen.

The fifth book, Absent All Light (coming June 23, 2026), is when we finally get to see Cerie herself showing off. We also see, up close and personal, the sacrifices she has made to gain her skills.

By showing these things, it’s made clear that Cerie was not immediately perfect at her vocation. This makes her more sympathetic, and we are not surprised when she continually raises the stakes through stronger and stronger poems.

Allow them to fail.

Some authors are terrified of making their characters fail at anything, as they’re worried that people will think that their character is weak. This is a Mary Sue mindset.

Readers do not have to be in awe of your character; they just have to be invested in their journey. In most genres save romance, it really doesn’t matter if readers are swooning over your character. Instead, they just must want to see your character achieve whatever they set out to do.

Personally, I love to see characters fail – as long as the failure is realistic and not an idiot plot. The harder they fall, the more I want them to get the hell up and try again.

Cerie fails repeatedly throughout the series, and I adore that for her. Sometimes her failures put her in personal peril, while at other times, they lead to tragic circumstances for other people.

Sometimes this is due to the fact that she is a mortal, no matter how much others may deify her. When she depletes her energy reserves before Another Bad Thing, those around her just need to sort it the hell out.

And sometimes, Cerie’s failures are due to her personality. Her strong sense of justice is admirable, but it also makes her kind of a bitch. This can mean she doesn’t get key information she needs, alienates an ally, or makes a bad decision because the right one goes against her moral code.

Let your character not know things.

Part of what makes a character a Mary Sue is that they are just too good at everything, even things that they shouldn’t know how to do.

The most egregious Mary Sues will have multiple advanced degrees in wildly different fields by the time they’re 20, and they’ll have every license or accreditation known to man. At other times, they walk into a situation, magically know how to do something they’ve never seen before, and solve a problem that had brought world-class experts to their knees.

But this is just not realistic. Even the smartest people I know are not omniscient, and they will not effortlessly acquire skills outside of their realm of experience.

Cerie is the same. She has limited life experience and, when placed outside of her literary bubble, has no idea what to do. Once she starts to interact with the larger world, we see that she is completely clueless about political systems, negotiation, and interrogation. A warrior Cerie is not; put a sword in her hand and she’s more likely to hurt herself than someone else.

Another reason this is good is that it means your other characters can show off their strengths, leading to a more balanced cast. Whatever your character’s blind spot is, ensure that someone else is better at it.

Being surrounded by soldiers most of her life, Cerie never had to physically defend herself; someone else would always do it for her. This allows other characters, like Uileac, to enjoy a badass moment at Cerie’s expense.

Include a small yet significant weakness.

If you decide to make a character be bad at something, it must show up and be an important plot point. Find something that, in their everyday life, is not a problem, then mercilessly throw them right into that situation.

Being raised on the steppes, Cerie had never been on a boat before being swept up in No Good Very Bad Terrible International Politics. Her first experience with such a transit option involves repeatedly puking and clinging to the railings for dear life. Which is unfortunate for her, because she finds herself on three seperate boats in the eighth book, Perseity. Including one that gets shipwrecked.

This fear could be of a specific animal that comes across their path over and over again, screwing up their life. (Uileac is afraid of chickens, which I find hilarious.)

It could be locations, like cliffs or the ocean. At other times, it could be things like thunderstorms, electricity, whatever. Show them facing this fear down, or just running away from it like a coward.

De-Barbifying your character is essential if you want to captivate your audience.

If you have no interest in publishing, then Mary Sue away. Write the cringiest self-insert in existence; it’s delightful. Play with your fictional toy and feel absolutely no guilt about it.

As I’ve said before, you must decide when audience matters and when it does not. Some things are just for you, and that’s perfectly okay. I would never shame anyone for having fun.

And frankly, you can publish a Mary Sue if you want to. I can’t tell you what to do.

I can tell you that you will better engage the reader – and avoid being labeled cringe – if you create a more complex and relatable character with real, appreciable flaws.

Who knows? Maybe you’ll find your new and improved Non-Mary-Sue even more enjoyable to toy with. I certainly have had a blast making Cerie and all her companions, far more than I ever did scribbling down melodrama in a tattered notebook.