10 Things Newbie Writers do that Flag them as Newbies

[MWagner]

I guess the issue I have is that none of these articles ever mention the rule that supersedes all the others: know your audience.

If my audience is people who read Canadian literary fiction of the kind featured on Canada Reads, I will need to consider certain elements of writing - flawless prose, characters who highly literate and educated middle-aged readers can identify with, moral uncertainty, questions of identity and history.

If my audience is people who read high-brow historical fiction, I can take a stately pace, include thorough descriptions of dress, geography, and behaviour, use an elevated vocabulary, and present characters who may seem alien to modern sensibilities.

If my audience is people who read James Patterson thrillers, you can be pace and a very stripped-down vocabulary will be essential.

If my audience is people who read epic fantasy, it's almost expected whole pages will be devoted to descriptions of travel, and the plot won't really pick momentum until about page 230 of the first book in the series.

If my audience is fantasy aimed at younger readers, it's hard to go wrong making the protagonist a Mary Sue. The Name of the Wind features one of the biggest Mary Sues ever put to paper in the English language. For all the talk of complex character, two of A Song of Ice and Fire's main characters are huge Mary Sues (Jon Snow and Daenerys). The protagonists of J. K. Rowlings', Anthony Ryan's, Jim Butcher's, and Mark Laurence's hugely popular books are all incredibly competent and accomplished heroes who act as vehicles for the wish-fulfilment of readers.

The assumption implicit in all these articles seems to be that the aspiring authors reading them want to break into commercial genre publishing. Which is probably a pretty fair assumption, but one which I'd prefer was stated openly. Even then, the first step ought to be to know the audience for that genre. And if it is mass commercial success we're assumed to be aiming for, I honestly don't know how much a lot of these points matter. Because many (not just a few, but many) very successful commercial fiction routinely break those rules. And not because the authors are masters of the craft who are intentionally breaking the rules, but because most readers simply don't care. They only care about story. We don't really know what catches the popular imagination when it comes to story, except for an engaging premise, and authorial voice and characters that readers find compelling. But you can't make lists about those things.

 

[Ihe]

That is an excellent point @MWagner. We, as writers who consider this an art, can often get bogged down in details and rules that many readers simply won't care about, nor will they recognize our meritorious correctness for chasing perfection. An unassuming story, just interesting enough and aimed at the correct audience, can bypass most if not all of the rules mentioned, and no one but the most involved will notice (and maybe a few literary snobs).

 

[MemoryTale]

If my audience is fantasy aimed at younger readers, it's hard to go wrong making the protagonist a Mary Sue. The Name of the Wind features one of the biggest Mary Sues ever put to paper in the English language. For all the talk of complex character, two of A Song of Ice and Fire's main characters are huge Mary Sues (Jon Snow and Daenerys). The protagonists of J. K. Rowlings', Anthony Ryan's, Jim Butcher's, and Mark Laurence's hugely popular books are all incredibly competent and accomplished heroes who act as vehicles for the wish-fulfilment of readers."

I don't know all of the characters you've mentioned, but Jon Snow, Daenerys and the cast of Harry Potter are not Sues. They have some Sue-like traits, but they screw up, have genuine character flaws and they have enemies who aren't just jealous of how gosh-darned awesome they are.

 

[Ihe]

Mary Sues are basically straight-laced superheroes, are they not? If they were to be a supervillain, would they still be considered Mary Sues? Maybe not, because evil implicates moral and very personal complexities, and that will always be an extra layer of substance and conflict. Ergo, villains will always be more complex and deep than superheroes. Is that why bad boys are so attractive to impressionable girlies?
Sorry for the tangent.
Carry on.

 

[Ajid]

1, 4, 9 and 10. Everytime without fail, i have to re write for these reasons. Now they have a name and identity I shall write them on post-its and stick them to my computer screen.

 

[pambaddeley]

I guess the issue I have is that none of these articles ever mention the rule that supersedes all the others: know your audience.

If my audience is people who read Canadian literary fiction of the kind featured on Canada Reads, I will need to consider certain elements of writing - flawless prose, characters who highly literate and educated middle-aged readers can identify with, moral uncertainty, questions of identity and history.

If my audience is people who read high-brow historical fiction, I can take a stately pace, include thorough descriptions of dress, geography, and behaviour, use an elevated vocabulary, and present characters who may seem alien to modern sensibilities.

If my audience is people who read James Patterson thrillers, you can be pace and a very stripped-down vocabulary will be essential.

If my audience is people who read epic fantasy, it's almost expected whole pages will be devoted to descriptions of travel, and the plot won't really pick momentum until about page 230 of the first book in the series.

If my audience is fantasy aimed at younger readers, it's hard to go wrong making the protagonist a Mary Sue. The Name of the Wind features one of the biggest Mary Sues ever put to paper in the English language. For all the talk of complex character, two of A Song of Ice and Fire's main characters are huge Mary Sues (Jon Snow and Daenerys). The protagonists of J. K. Rowlings', Anthony Ryan's, Jim Butcher's, and Mark Laurence's hugely popular books are all incredibly competent and accomplished heroes who act as vehicles for the wish-fulfilment of readers.

The assumption implicit in all these articles seems to be that the aspiring authors reading them want to break into commercial genre publishing. Which is probably a pretty fair assumption, but one which I'd prefer was stated openly. Even then, the first step ought to be to know the audience for that genre. And if it is mass commercial success we're assumed to be aiming for, I honestly don't know how much a lot of these points matter. Because many (not just a few, but many) very successful commercial fiction routinely break those rules. And not because the authors are masters of the craft who are intentionally breaking the rules, but because most readers simply don't care. They only care about story. We don't really know what catches the popular imagination when it comes to story, except for an engaging premise, and authorial voice and characters that readers find compelling. But you can't make lists about those things.

I've been reading Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May series about quirky elderly detectives and he constantly 'info dumps' and 'tells' about characters, and also switches POV between characters - and gets away with it because the characters are engaging and there are peculiar mysteries going on. Some of the books are better than others, but this is a commercially published writer with quite a lot of books to his credit from traditional publishers. So it is possible to break 'rules'.

 

[pambaddeley]

Mary Sues are basically straight-laced superheroes, are they not? If they were to be a supervillain, would they still be considered Mary Sues? Maybe not, because evil implicates moral and very personal complexities, and that will always be an extra layer of substance and conflict. Ergo, villains will always be more complex and deep than superheroes. Is that why bad boys are so attractive to impressionable girlies?
Sorry for the tangent.
Carry on.

In (classic) Star Trek fandom, where the phrase originated, Mary Sue was a character perfect in every way and loved by everyone, including Kirk, Spock and McCoy. So definitely never a villain.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I'm actually starting to get irked - get me - when Kvothe is referred to as a Mary Sue, because Kote is also Kvothe and he absolutely isn't. I think to make the assertion of Kvothe = Mary Sue is to miss the whole nuance of the conflict. How is Kvothe, so confident and able and perfect, Kote, so not? That to me is the mystery and it needs the contrast to give true pathos (but I also created a Mary Sue to allow the older character contrast against the younger. It does mean I'm aware it's not until book 3 if I find out if it worked...)

 

[Ihe]

In (classic) Star Trek fandom, where the phrase originated, Mary Sue was a character perfect in every way and loved by everyone, including Kirk, Spock and McCoy. So definitely never a villain.

Appreciate the Trek trivia.
My view is that if "Despicable Me" has taught us anything, is that villains can also be loved--as long as you have minions, ofc . Villains can be loved for their efficiency and admired for their power, and not all villains are 100% dark. The ones with tragic backstories or that are very charismatic can become fan favourites over the heroes, and as long as they're perfect and OP in what they do, they could and should be considered Mary Sues, IMO.

I'm actually starting to get irked - get me - when Kvothe is referred to as a Mary Sue, because Kote is also Kvothe and he absolutely isn't. I think to make the assertion of Kvothe = Mary Sue is to miss the whole nuance of the conflict. How is Kvothe, so confident and able and perfect, Kote, so not? That to me is the mystery and it needs the contrast to give true pathos (but I also created a Mary Sue to allow the older character contrast against the younger. It does mean I'm aware it's not until book 3 if I find out if it worked...)

Soooo true. The fall from grace is the biggest mystery in the books so far, even bigger than the reason for the name of the Chronicles. And it's a good, engaging mystery exactly because the before and after are are so incredibly disparate. Good ol' Patrick exaggerates the before and makes the contrast painfully visible.

 

[MemoryTale]

Appreciate the Trek trivia.
My view is that if "Despicable Me" has taught us anything, is that villains can also be loved--as long as you have minions, ofc . Villains can be loved for their efficiency and admired for their power, and not all villains are 100% dark. The ones with tragic backstories or that are very charismatic can become fan favourites over the heroes, and as long as they're perfect and OP in what they do, they could and should be considered Mary Sues, IMO.

Except one of the symptoms of Sueism is that the character is universally loved by the good guys, even if they're really terrible people, so a villain can't be a Sue.

An example I'd give is Rose Tyler from the first couple of series of Dr. Who. While she does have redeeming qualities, she also treats her boyfriend like dirt, displays hostility to any other female around the Doctor, and characters still constantly sing her praises despite this.

I wouldn't call her a straight up Mary Sue either, but maybe if she'd been able to pilot the TARDIS perfectly, develop super powers just 'cause and turned out to be the last Star Princess of Wherever we'd be talking definite Suesville

 

[Zebra Wizard]

You could argue that the kingkiller chronicles is just episodic story telling, kvothe goes to a different location to acquire a new skill or fame. What cool thing shall he do next? Then go down a list of things he can not do yet.

I don't think competence = mary sue. Mark Lawrence's prince of thorns is definately not, unless rapist and a severe lack of morals constitutes as mary sue traits.

Competence is one of the more desirable traits for a character, almost all of GRRM character are (with the exception of Sansa and Reek, and there is quite alot of distain for the former)

 

[Toby Frost]

I've heard the term "villain sue" used to describe a rough villain equivalent. However, this seems to be not so much where the audience is meant to like the villain, but where the plot is artificially rigged so that the villain wins and/or get opportunities to be eeevil. I can think of one very successful book where someone could have killed the villain several times, but didn't so the story could have him be triumphant. Now I think about it, the rigging of the setting to make it miserable seems to be to be the main difference between "grimdark" and "a bit bleak".

 

[MWagner]

Setting aside the term 'Mary Sue,' let's instead acknowledge that wish fulfillment plays a big part in commercial genre fiction (though not literary fiction - has anyone ever wished they were a character in an Ian McEwan novel?), and the degree to which an author should employ it depends on the genre. For fantasy and YA, a protagonist who satisfies the audience's appetite for wish fulfillment is crucial. Run through a checklist of everything a nerdy 15-year-old lacks in her life, and the protagonist of a popular fantasy or YA will have those qualities in spades. Physically skilled and proficient - check. Intelligent beyond their years, check. Beloved by their friends, check. Exceptionally attractive, check. Marked with a destiny that recognizes how special they are, check. For mystery, horror, and historical fiction, wish fulfillment is not nearly as important - those genres often feature protagonists who's only noteworthy qualities are intelligence and an unusual courage or doggedness.

Again, so much advice is dependent on genre and audience. But genre is rarely acknowledged in writing advice, or if it is, only superficially. Nor are the truths about commercial fiction - that story is everything, and prose barely matters at all. Even by the standards of the genre, the prose in the Harry Potter books is awful. I've read a lot books aloud to my kids in the last few years, and Rowling's were the most painful by far. The text on the page is awkward, kludgy, cliched, and lacks any ear for language. It doesn't surprise me at all that the Philosopher's Stone was turned down by a dozen publishers. But that's entirely irrelevant, as my kids, and millions of others, adore the characters, the setting, and the story.

And maybe that's what's at work in all these lists and books of advice for writers. Agents and publishers, at a loss to recognize the signs of a story that will capture the public imagination, have plastered over that gap with all sorts of reasons to turn down a manuscript. They have to get that slush pile down to a reasonable size somehow, right? I don't blame them. It's almost impossible to predict which stories will strike gold. Jim Butcher's submissions were rejected again and again because they have all the hallmarks of bad, amateur, clumsy fiction. But it turns out readers don't care, and he found a huge audience. Just as Dan Brown and Stephanie Meyer did.

How do agents and publishers cope with the disconnect between craftsmanship and popular appeal? It seems by more or less ignoring it - at least when it comes to offering advice to aspiring writers.

 

[Cathbad]

I'd also like to add a big mistake that people make is to create a character too flawed that it becomes unlikable. I recently read a book called Control Point, and the main character was so unlikable and flawed I had to put the book down.

Also characters who always fail or screw up. An example is Tony Denozo (sp) on NCIS. He can't get a girl (despite good looks and money), he's always wrong, loses every bet and contest... it's tiring. Sometimes I feel the same about Spiderman (he's still my hero, tho ).

 

[Toby Frost]

I don't read YA, largely because I'm not interested in the problems of teenagers, but I think fantasy has changed a lot from what you're suggesting. Yes, fantasy protagonists are still very skilled. They're almost always experts in what they do or start off with great power. But would anyone want to be an expert berserker like Logan Ninefingers, or a powerful feudal lord like Ned Stark? The fact that they're good at what they do gives them more opportunities for (successful) adventure, but doesn't make them particularly people I'd envy or want to be. Besides, looking at SF, if ever there was a wish-fulfillment figure, it was Campbell or Heinlein's "competent man", especially since back then the audience was expected to be almost solely made up of similar men who were a bit less competent.

I don't doubt for a moment that fantasy has been massively held back by Tolkien and, to a lesser extent, the cliches of Dungeons and Dragons. For a long time, fantasy was quite like what you've described. However, I think things have changed, and I hope that they will change even more. Personally, I welcome the idea of older and more "normal" protagonists, especially those who aren't just "adventurers" with no ties to the world. I think it will bring an extra level of sophistication that a lot of other genres have had for a long time.

As for Butcher (who I haven't read) or Rowling (who I read a bit of and didn't take to), these are in the tiny percentage who make millions and who can be marketed to an extent where the quality of their work is irrelevant (Butcher less so, but still). The vast majority of writers simply can't get away with this, at least not for long. The market is skewed and unfair, and as a result I don't see the point in looking for inspiration at people who are marketing phenomenons, however good or bad they might really be.

 

[MWagner]

As for Butcher (who I haven't read) or Rowling (who I read a bit of and didn't take to), these are in the tiny percentage who make millions and who can be marketed to an extent where the quality of their work is irrelevant (Butcher less so, but still). The vast majority of writers simply can't get away with this, at least not for long. The market is skewed and unfair, and as a result I don't see the point in looking for inspiration at people who are marketing phenomenons, however good or bad they might really be.

But I don't see either of those writers as marketing phenomenons. They were rejected many times by publishers. They found an audience in spite of the lack of faith publishers had in their work.

 

[pambaddeley]

Not sure where all these perfect protagonists hang out having read loads of fantasy and currently reading through a backlog of old books. There are flaws are plenty and people who hate each other.

 

[Brian G Turner]

But I don't see either of those writers as marketing phenomenons. They were rejected many times by publishers. They found an audience in spite of the lack of faith publishers had in their work.

IIRC, JK Rowling's agent rejected the publishers who wouldn't offer her a 7 book deal. Not many authors ever get something like that.

I'm sensing a certain cynicism from you about YA.

 

[Ihe]

I recall Dragonlance, which is not the newest thing, had flawed characters, and I would place it in Fantasy for younger audiences.

 

[Ed Ryder]

Whilst these lists can be useful, I also find them a bit depressing in that new authors seemingly aren't allowed to discover things for themselves any more.