Lately, it seems like just about everyone has stated his or her own ideas of who exactly Mary Sue is and who she isn’t ... and with this new Sue movement, the Salem witch trials began anew in the 21st century.  

Well, I’m afraid these witch hunters still haven’t addressed the complete opposite of the Mary Sue that is just as bad as little Miss Perfect Sue herself.  This is what I have termed the “Anti-Sue” (no, not your Auntie Sue). Now, you should know that I am definitely not a qualified Sue Killing professional in any way, shape or state of matter—I’m just writing this to expose some simple, plain out, ugly truths that everyone deserves to know.  You think you know who Sue is and how to avoid her?  Then you may well be squirming in your seat by the end of this article.

We all know what a Mary Sue is by now, don’t we?  At least I hope you do.  In fact, some of us know Sue so well that we can’t stand one more line of her perfect speech.  Most of us are getting pretty fed up with the topic … I mean, you see and hear about her everywhere, from popular teen fiction books to our favorite TV shows (and let’s all face it, our favorite mangas are chock full of ‘em).  She's a stereotype of the perfect person.  So how can we put an end to her?  Why, it’s easy—whack off her head with a chainsaw!  Nah, just get rid of all the super-perfect traits and replace with bad traits, take away that awesome scar, extreme beauty, and those feathery wings (gosh, why are those always the first to go?).  All we gotta do is take her traits, flip ‘em around and howdy doody, we’ve got a great non-Sue character, right?  One word, my friend:  WRONG.

Do not assume that the word “Anti-Sue” is in any way a good thing.  It’s the complete opposite of the typical Sue in that it is just as human.  Which isn’t human at all, actually (and rough on the intestines too).  Let’s face it—Anti-Sues are just as unrealistic and bad as normal Sues.  They aren’t as common as the regular Sue (which is far more tempting to turn your characters into than the Anti-Sue is since an Anti can’t do anything special) but they’re still out there, and lately everyone is starting to think that the Anti-Sue is the magical solution to the Mary Sue—and trust me, it ain’t.

To give you an example of an Anti-Sue, I’ll make one up now.  It’s just as easy as creating a Mary Sue!  

My Anti-Sue’s name is Olga Smith (a slightly odd name paired with a very unoriginal one).  Everything she does is hypocritical.  She constantly lies to her friends, steals their belongings, and then tells secrets about them behind their backs.  She is the ultimate backstabber.  She is also incredibly vain, even though she’s ugly by most standards.  She’s also a flake in that she’ll make plans with a friend and then make excuses not to be there, or she’ll show up late.  She’s a total brat and she doesn’t even talk to her parents, though they’re always trying to show affection towards her.  Her hair is more beige than blonde, her eyes are muddy brown, and she’s really nothing special to look at.  She doesn’t trust anyone (we still don’t know why), and because of that she has a lot of trouble keeping friends … not that has that many.  Overall, she’s preppy, conceited and somebody that nobody wants to touch with a ten-foot pole, even if offered an ice cream sandwich in exchange for taking the dare (we’d actually rather beat her over the head with a wrench and call it a day).

Just because a character has a million flaws does not mean that they’re any more complex than a normal Sue.  Accordingly, everything the Anti-Sue does is a mistake, they have few (if any) good qualities, are typically plain or ugly, and are nothing special.  It’s no fun when everyone in your story is absolutely terrible (nobody wants to read about a bunch of snotty brats that they couldn’t stand to be around for five seconds in real life, period!), and it doesn’t make the character you’re writing about any less shallow or typical than a Mary Sue.  In fact, the idea of an Anti-Sue is cliché in its own right!

So how about when it comes to writing with the Anti-Sue?  Even if you wrote about them from first person (where they’re the speaker), there seems to be nothing more complex to their character than a normal Mary Sue’s.  However, usually they’re not main characters … most of the time they play the part of the villain or antagonist, and sometimes they’re even called “typical villains” … now that you think about it, you’ve read or watched one before, haven’t you?  Typical villains can turn your story, no matter how thoughtful or well-intended, into a commonplace tale that will even inspire your protagonist to be—dun-dun-dun!—a regular Sue!  Are we seeing the connection here, or is that just me?

Normally, most writers can’t get away with Anti-Sues without a bit of superficiality to their writing; however, Anti-Sues can be used if the author really knows what he or she is doing.  Most of the time, though, the best way to develop a character is to give them traits that are both good and bad (heck, you can even throw in a cliché trait or two if you’re careful!).  Never overdo anything when it comes to clichés.

The thing is that you just can’t make up a whole list of typical negative traits and call a character “human”.  No human I know has so many bad traits without having a single good one!  I’m sure that even the evilest villains throughout history had good traits (many even had good intentions!).  Think to yourself first:  why would the character have this bad trait?  What may have happened to the character to make them this way?  What good traits could come out of this bad one?  What bad traits may come from a good one?  How are the bad traits all connected?  Does one bad trait inspire other similar ones?  What are the character’s motivations?  What are his weaknesses and strengths, and what is the big difference between both for that character?

Now I’m going to give you the traits of a humanlike character … look at the mix of good and bad and see how easy it is to imagine someone like this!  A person that you can actually relate to!

Cheryl Rushing is tall, blue-eyed, and has very soft features along with a medium build.  She isn’t social unless she has to be, and so at first glance most people don’t want to approach her.  However, those who do know her appreciate her because she doesn’t judge them, likes to listen, and is honest but not rude with her opinions.  She is sometimes bossy and likes to procrastinate, and she’s also a little out of touch with reality because she’s quite the dreamer (she likes to believe in the perfect example of something rather than what it truly is).  Despite that, she likes to help others and share her possessions and talents, which is probably the result of having to share everything with her sisters when she was younger and when her parents didn’t have much money.  Because of that she is also compassionate towards those less fortunate than herself.  She likes to avoid conflict, especially since her self-esteem has the tendency to be lower than it should be.

It’s simple:  both good and bad traits are needed to create a complex character that is interesting to read about and easy to relate to.  We want to go for HUMAN characters.  Say what you want … in writing made by humans, the characters are seen through a human perspective, and that gives them the need to be human as well.  Sues nor Anti-Sues can represent a real human, and that is why everyone dislikes them (duh).  Otherwise it’s just a thing we call a character with a bunch of unrelated qualities, whether good OR bad.

What I’m trying to get at is that whenever you create a character, you need to think more deeply about them and yourself in turn.  What drives you?  What are YOUR strengths and weaknesses and what are the strengths and weaknesses of those around you?  These thoughts and similar ones fuel complex characters.  They’ll help you to make human characters that ain’t too bad, but ain’t perfect and don’t always get their way.

Interactions between characters should also be believable.  It’s easy to tell if you’ve created a Sue or an Anti-Sue if you notice that all other characters will act more unnaturally (stick up the butt or lovey or something like that) than they should around the Sue in question.  A good example of this is during Breaking Dawn (I hate to call names, but I feel this needs to be pointed out for its utter incomprehensibility and, dare I say, insanity), whenever Bella’s parents, who have always seemed to want to protect her and keep her from making the same mistakes they did, allow her to be married the second she graduates from high school—just like they were.  They even encourage the marriage heartily, especially her mother, who seemed to dislike the idea the most in earlier books.  How much more crazy could it get?  Would your parents just change their minds suddenly about serious stuff like that?  Because mine don’t.

A good example of an Anti-Sue changing the characters around them would be Bruce Banner’s dad in the 2003 version of the Hulk (a movie).  He was power-hungry, mean, ugly, bitter, greedy, always taking advantage of people, and even went so far as to do experiments on his own young son and hurt him later out of jealousy.  His son kept trying to make things right with his dad, but it just didn’t work—no matter how hard he tried—and eventually, the son had to fight against his own father!  Whenever characters interact with one another, it should be balanced according to the traits and beliefs of the characters involved.  

But what exactly do I mean by that?  Try to imagine a big pinball machine (ooh pwetty colors) as your character’s story … the main character is the pinball and the flippers that YOU control are the plot.  The bumpers are the other characters in the story.  Would the game of pinball be any fun if the ball could pass right through the bumpers, as if they were only there for decoration?  No way!  That isn’t even possible!  You’ll only have fun if the pinball can collide with them, and to watch and anticipate what the pinball will do when it hits a certain spot on a bumper, to keep it going by using the flippers to drive the pinball on.  You can never fully predict what’s going to happen, and that’s because you can never change the laws of nature that make pinball possible, the same way that you can’t control what your characters do—if they’re truly human and real to you, they’ll do what they really want to do, not what you want them to do.  Of course, the pinball machine is not a perfect metaphor, but I’m sure you get it.

So basically, I’m saying this:  stop inverting Mary Sues!  They aren’t good templates to begin with if you want to make a genuine character with real feelings and motives.  The only way you’re going to ever create a good OC is to quit trying to go upstream.  Get out of the river, people.  Real characters are like real people.  People have problems, but not so many that it creates an impossible human being.  You want to be unique.  Anti-Sue ain’t unique.  She’s just the excuse for lack of creativity on the parts of her creators, just like the Mary Sue.  If you want to create a character, create a person, a person that you can relate to even if only on a distant level.  If you want to create a Sue, make a list.