City of Bones Chapter 16

This may come as a surprise to those of you who read my books, but I like action.

Starbleached is the way it is (Flash back, flash forward, flash back, flash forward) because otherwise it would have been a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time before we got to the interesting parts. It was either juggle explaining why the plot was what it was with the actual interesting bits, or bore the utter living shit out of you trying to set everything up. I went with the first option, figuring that Memento: The book wouldn't be annoying as long as it stayed short.

My point with name dropping my own stuff in this review? I like character interactions, too, as long as they are interesting character interactions. There is no action in P&P for example, and yet I love every moment about it. Mostly because every moment is telling us something about these characters. And you know the Kiera Knightly movie? There's one scene that is the most telling moment in it. It's short and it's subtle. Darcy helps Elizabeth into her family's carrage after Bingley's party. She appears shocked, as he's actually touching her. He walks away. Camera cuts to his hand, which he is flexing rather quickly. Short, quick, over in a second, but you know that her presence has affected him, somehow. It allows the next big moment in their relationship (his proposal of marriage in the gondola) to happen with only a couple more interactions between Darcy and Elizabeth (...I think the next time they talk is at Lady De Bough's house, when Lizzie is attempting to play the piano.)

Cassandra Clare? Is not nearly that subtle. She wants to build romance between characters, and I think poor Applebloom will be puking quite a bit in the paragraphs to come.

They go back to the Institute (...infidels being protected by consecrated ground by a God they don't believe in. And Jace says God doesn't care.) and Hodge reads all three of them, Simon included, the riot act. Let's cover all the things Jace has done in the last few hours:

-Involve no less than three percieved mundanes in Clave business (He thought Random Hispanic Dude AKA Raphael the Vampire was a mundie at the time, so it counts for stupid)
-Put Simon's life in danger by taking him to Magnus's party
-Invade the home of vampires who were minding their own business (they thought Simon was their rat)
-Hurt the vampires who were formerly minding their own business, in ways that were possibly fatal
-Possibly break the Accords between Clave and Downworlders by doing the two above items.
-Possibly incite a war between vampires and werewolves, because the two aren't supposed to be ANYWHERE  NEAR each other.
-Steal a vampire's motor cycle and fly it over downtown New York

I'd ground the little bastard two. Preferably into bone meal, because I think he'd be better off as fertilizer.

Then they all troop off to the infirmary, though Clary takes time out for a shower. Jace and Clary exchange sexually laden innuendo and romantic tension. Simon gives her a kiss. And hey, I haven't pointed out descriptive fail in a while:

“Sure.” To her surprise he leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. It was a butterfly kiss, a quick brush of lips on skin, but as she pulled away, she knew she was blushing.

First of all...

Secondly...and I really hate myself for knowing this...that is not what a butterfly kiss is. I grew up in a borderline Christian fundamentalist household, meaning that Harry Potter was banned, but Terry Brooks and David Eddings were not (Figure that out, sports fans) and the only thing our radio played was Christian Music. Newsboys. Audio Adrenaline. Stephen Curtis Chapman. Mercy Me (who are still awesome). Kendall Payne (who is, no bullshit, the best lyracist I have heard in my entire LIFE. Seriously. Go find "Wonderland" on youtube and listen to it. If by some God granted miracle the Exile books ever turn into an actual tv/ movie thing, that song is the theme song)

Anyway, one of the less awesome acts in CCM was a dude named Bob Carislile. There is mellow, and then there is that shit. And the song that he was best known for was a song called "Butterfly Kisses". Todd in the Shadows, one of my favorite human beings of all time, ever, uses a term "overplay" to describe when a radio station pounds a song into the ground so hard the individual music notes wind up in China. Those of you who do not listen to CCM have no idea what this thing is. If you combined the overplay of "Hey Soul Sister", Kesha and Katy Perry, you'd be about halfway to the level of bone-chilling nausia I felt whenever "Butterfly Kisses" hit the airwaves back in 98-04, when I stopped listening to CCM exclusively. I promise you, it is still on the airwaves. I am embedding the music video for the song down below, but promise me. You don't want to hear it.



So what is a Butterfly kiss? It's where you hold your eyes really close to someone's cheek...and blink. Fast. Like Bella in the "WTF is Human?" scene in BDpt2. So that the other person feels like a butterfly is tickling their cheeks with their eyelashes.

Hold on...

Okay, better now.

So yeah. It is not a "there and gone again" kiss, Clare. Look this shit up.

Clary, of course, misses the ENTIRE POINT and decides Simon's showing off for Isabelle.She wanders off. Alec follows her and then...*sigh*

The biggest problem I have with this book is one I can no longer ignore. Not that I've ignored it all that much, but here goes. Jace is Draco Malfoy from Harry Potter. Fandom Draco, where he's suave and dashing and not the constipated little shit from the real books and movies, but for all intents and purposes, The HP fandom took Draco, brushed his hair and taught him how to sit up straight, and then Cassandra Clare repackaged him for this book. Which would not be a huge problem IF Cass's hero worship of Draco wasn't oozing out of every page. This is her perfect human being and oh holy fuck does it ever show. Clary is a perfectly beautiful person NOT because the main character has to be perfect for her own self, but because only a perfectly beautiful person is worthy of Draco Malfoy. It's that pretty girl door prize that all boy are promised.

The problem? He's still a constipated little shit. He's just got better lines this time around.

Seriously. Jace is a terrible human being. He's a bigot. And by bigot I don't mean the "the black people are worth fifty points" game my racist relatives used to play. I mean he actively hates the visibly different so much he becomes homicidal around them. He says hideously insulting things to EVERYBODY around him. I have glossed over the number of terrible, terrible things Jace has said. He's a bully, he's so self-absorbed unrequited love directed at him only amuses him. He makes Ted Bundy look like a well adjusted human being with a few small anger issues. And this book worships him.

However, the last couple of chapters? Have been less than flattering for Mr. Weyland. First, he brought a mundane to a magical party and lost him to vampires. Then he broke his system's own rules going after the mundane he lost. Then he came very close to restarting a civil war. Then he got his ass rightfully chewed by his boss for doing the above stupid things. He also reveled that he's a religious bigot as well as a racist one. And as any author worth their salt will intuit, he needs some salvaging. Normally, this would be where the character is required to make some great sacrifice, preform some good deed, or otherwise do something to make up for being an utter asshole during his screen time. He would do something that would require significant character growth, promising that eventually, his asshole bigoted nature will go away.

Clare does not allow him to do this, because if he stopped being a racist, bigoted little shit he would stop being a direct clone of Draco Malfoy. So instead, she sends Alec after Clary to tell her, and by extension, the rest of us, what a fragile, precious little snowflake Jace really is.

“You don’t understand,” Alec said. “You don’t know him. I know him. He thinks he has to save the world; he’d be glad to kill himself trying. Sometimes I think he even wants to die, but that doesn’t mean you should encourage him to do it.”

You know who else thought they were saving the world? Hitler and the SS. No bullshit. Find a documentary on them, ANY documentary, and see for yourself. The power of thinking you're on the side of the angels is the kind that blinds you to your own terrible actions. The road to hell isn't paved with good intentions, kids. It's paved with self righteousness and bigotry. Combine the two, and everyone around you is fucked.

And I haven't gotten that vibe from Jace at all. I've gotten suave ladies' man. I've gotten murderer. I've gotten abused plaything. I haven't gotten superman.

Second, Alec's whole rant is way, way, way WAY off the mark. He says nobody asked her to get involved and she should just go home, and that's the biggest load of horse pucky this book has thrown at us so far. Clary is not here by her own choice. She's stayed here by her own choice, but she didn't even walk into the Institute for the first time under her own power. Clary got involved in Clave business because Jace hunted her down after the murder episode in the night club. If he hadn't gone to find her, if he had just ignored her being there, worst case senario is she would have faced the ravener demon and the demon cops outside her apartment on her own. Given that Dorothea was there with a magical doorway, there's a good chance that Clary could have survived with a little extra Downworlder help. Which, as this book will soon reveal, she definately would have gotten. Alternatively, she could have grown a spine and gone home in time for her and her mom to escape Valentine together. But Jace showed up, after everyone, Hodge included, had told Jace to drop it and leave Clary alone. So her being involved in the Clave? It's Jace's fault. Jace brought Clary to the institute the first time, Jace decided that Clary needed to go see the Silent Brothers, Jace decided that they then needed to go see Magnus Bane, Jace allowed Simon to tag along, and then left him alone with Isabelle and Alec, whose anti-mundane retoric should definately have disqualified them as babysitters. Jace decided to go after the vampires without backup. Clary hasn't even had a clue what the fuck is going on half the time. Jace has been in control the whole way. But what does Alec say?

“You mundanes are completely selfish, aren’t you? Have you no idea what he’s done for you, what kind of personal risks he’s taken? I’m not just talking about his safety. He could lose everything. He already lost his father and mother; do you want to make sure he loses the family he’s got left as well?”

Right. Because it's selfish to want to understand where your mother went. Because it's selfish to ask for protection from the people who probably inadvertantly exposed Joycelyn to her enemies (again. Clary's mom has been on the run for sixteen years, and she is kidnapped within twenty four hours of Clary meeting Jace. In fact, given what I know about the other characters involved? Mom getting abducted is Jace's fault too, because he mentioned this Shadowhunter-seeing mundane girl to the wrong person.) It's selfish to expect the boneheaded moron who got your best friend turned into a rat and then kidnaped by vampires due to his not giving a shit to go out of his way to fix things.

And then? The book loses me. Because this is not characterization, kids. this is Clare slamming our heads into the wall, screaming "JACE IS A SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE! JACE IS A SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE!" Clary decides that Alec is "partly right".

This is victim blaming.

That Fundie household I grew up in? Sometimes, and not all the time, but sometimes, it could be emotionally abusive. I did wind up blaming myself for things that were not my fault. I remember once clearly believing that my asking for toys had caused my parents' bank account to become overdrawn. The victim's most natural self-protective reaction when faced with emotional abuse is to blame themselves for the abuse. It allows them to modify their behavior into something that will get them out of the situation alive.

This is not what Clare is going for. Instead, Clare gets angry because Alec is right, and her life is so unfair and everyone else is so mean to her, and she says ugly things back at Alec. And not just ugly things. Weaknesses and secrets that Jace shared with her in confidence, trusting that she would not use them against one of his own oldest friends. And then her own observation that he's in love with Jace. I have had this done to me, and sadly, I have done this. It is the ugliest, most underhanded thing a person can do short of doing physical harm.

So Alec ups the ante by hitting her and telling her never to bring it up to Jace, or he'll kill her. Well, boys and girls, if Clary were a decent human being? She wouldn't have brought it up with Alec.

So she goes to bed, scribbles a little, has a big cry about how her whole life has been a lie (Newsflash: Your mother had to keep secrets from you. You were a kid and she was in hiding, and if she hadn't kept things hidden you would have blown it. Her mistake was in keeping those secrets too long, not in having them in the first place.) and then Simon shows up to comfort her. They say sweet things and it is all friend-romantic.

Unfortunately Simon falls asleep in her bed, so she has to go off and find somewhere else to sleep, and who should show up but Jace!

Yeah. Literally. She pingpongs from one boy to another. Because we haven't hinted at this enough, it's time to develop it into a full-fledged nightmarish thing.

Of course, where Simon is an adorable teddy bear, Jace is perfect. Except for one tooth, which is "endearingly chipped".

...I can't use the Applebloom picture again, can I?

She asks him why he's here, and he spouts off some metaphysical bullshit to show us how uncomfortable he is with his feeeeeeeelings. Then he produces a basket, tells Clary he just found out from Hodge that it's her birthday--how would he know this?--and takes her up to the roof for a romantic rooftop picnic under the stars, to celebrate her birthday.

.........yeah.

Next chapter: I need more cutesy romance-induced puking macros, because it's entirely possible Applebloom might die before chapter 17 is over.

Ideas--dime a bushel basket

So this one day I was on the bus, because, you know, no car, and I was trying to write. This was a couple years ago, so I had my nightshift damn-I-want-to-sleep hangover on, and there wasn't much I could do about it. This woman notices me, and starts talking.

First off, guys and girls? I don't want to meet you on a bus. and if you see me in public with headphones in? It means i don't want to talk. I want to listen to music.

So anyway, I was dumber back then, and I mentioned that I was working on a book.

The floodgates. fucking. open.

See she had this idea involving bigfoot. An idea that I think I read in a Frank Peretti book (there are two kinds of people who read Frank Peretti. Christians, and Fundamentalist crazies) with a couple of extra twists. And it was BORING and I just wanted to go HOME, and the thing that struck me the most? Was how when we started she was like, "Well, I guess you can steal this idea because God knows, I'll never do anything with it."

My former--THANK GOD!--stepfather was the same way. He was all like, "you need to stop working on that silly fairy shit and start WRITING STORIES FOR JESUS" and then he would lay out his Da Vinci Code rip off that also involved the antichrist and human cloning. So specifically, he wanted me to stop working on MY story and start working on HIS. Because his is something he actually wants to read.

Kids, a story is not an idea. An idea is not a story. An idea is the sperm it takes to get a story started. When it does its job, it goes away, and there are a lot of other little wriggly ideas that don't ever go anywhere. And an idea is easy to get. How easy?

"Angel Tractor". Go write a story involving those two words. Now. If you stare at a screen long enough, eventually you'll get an idea. Are you stuck? Here's two more words. "Glorious Pumpkin". Go back to writing.

If I were to go through the list of idea kernals in Silver Bullet, it would be: watching a true crime show about a sniper, a word prompt I got off Janet Reid's blog, a HORRIBLE horror movie that may or may not have had Kevin "I drink my own piss" Cosner in it, a boat named "No Compromise" sitting behind the restaurant that owns my life, and a chunk of my dead-yet-soon-to-be-ressurected novel, so "Winterlord" doesn't really count yet. Of those five stories, one, Silver Bullet, was written specifically to go into the collection, and it was the only one where I spent time desperate for ideas. And by "time" I mean half an hour. And I'm not saying there is anything special about my brain. Because there isn't. I just didn't waste time over thinking things.

The best thing you can do for yourself as a writer is to write. Not gather ideas, but rather force yourself into a position where you have to write, a lot, every day, for hours. If you do this long enough, eventually you'll learn how to make the ends of your brain rub together to create sparks. The next best thing, of course, is to edit what you've written into some form of coherance, of course, but to do that you need to have stuff to work with.

Do you have an idea? A little kernal of an idea that may or may not become a story?

Stop talking about it.

Stop outlining.

Stop researching.

Stop designing your alien race's anatomy.

And Go.

Fucking.

Write.

That is all.

Lonnegan's Limp

Probably the greatest, most perfect movie of all time is The Sting. It's one of those awesomely good character studies and, if there is any flaw in it, it is that the secondary FBI plot isn't as good the second time around (or third, or fourth, or fifth) and that maybe a couple of scenes lose all tension because you know the actors are misleading you (a great writer would have been able to inject something there IMHO. Kind of how Dumbledore's death in HBP is more dramatic when you knew that Dumbledore had it planned, ya know? "Severus. Please" He is asking to die OMG I was bawling)  The score is iconic and the combo of Paul Newman and Robert  Redford is just ... yummy.

However, this time around I was distracted from all the awesomeness by Lonnegan's limp.

For those of you who have never seen this movie (and why haven't you) the plot is that Hooker (Redford) and his mentor/buddy Luther con a gentleman out of ten thousand dollars. Unfortunately the gentleman belongs to Doyle Lonnegan, an irish gangster in charge of Chicago, who has Luther killed in retaliation. Hooker hooks (heh heh) up with Henry Gondorff to con Lonnegan out of half a million dollars.

Lonnegan is a very bad man, and throughout the whole first quarter of the movie this is built up wonderfully (and I need to watch it again to analyse how they did it). By the time the con is enacted, you realize this man is pretty much unbreakable. He's physically impressive, he's got guns, he's the kill-at-a-distance-type, he's got no conscience whatsoever, and if he wasn't fond of playing cards on this one specific train, Gondorff and his buddies wouldn't be able to get to him at all (speaking of which, your confidence in Henry as a con artist is a little shaky at this point, but that's a thing for another day).

And then Lonnegan starts walking, and you realize he's got a limp. And even though consciously it doesn't register as anything except a limp, subconsciously it changes just about everything.

Our brains are a lot smarter than we are, and they are constantly reading different social cues that we don't ever pick up on. Good writing plays on this, and slides 90% of a story right in under our noses. An incredible example that I blew off as total nonsense the first time I heard it was a specific shot of Darth Vader in Empire Strikes Back. A commander gives Vader a report when he's in this giant white space bubble ... thing. You see Vader without his helmet on, and you see a mass of scars and hoses and other things implying that this person is not in the greatest shape. Commander leaves. End scene. But up until this point Darth has only been seen in positions of overwhelming superiority and almost robotic single-minded evil. This moment tells your brain that under all the wires and circuits, he's human. And not just human, but badly fucked up and broken, and (by implication) that there is probably more to him than just evil. That he might want something. About an hour later, "Luke. I am your father." What makes this moment so impactful, so mind-shatteringly huge is not that Evil told Luke he's got a dad. It was that instant when you realize this thing is human, an hour before Vader pitched a paternal relationship to Luke Skywalker. What's shattering is not ONLY Luke's perspective on the world, but our view of Vader as a wholly evil, mindless, inhuman force to be reckoned with, and it all started with him taking his helmet off an hour before we got here. The shock is our own minds processing the ten thousand hints Empire walked right past us and realizing He's telling the truth.

It wouldn't have worked half as well if those scenes weren't in there.

Same thing with Lonnegan's limp. Up until the train scene, Lonnegan is never seen walking. Oh, he might be moving, lurching around an office, but we never get a good, long view of Lonnegan walking until we get to the train. Also, up until now, Lonnegan himself has not been beaten. We've seen his minions, who will kill without worry, nearly shit themselves because he comes into the room. We've seen him casually discuss murdering a friend of his during a friendly game of golf, and we ourselves are just a little bit scared of this tall, imposing man. We know that the only vulnerable spot Gondorff and Co. could find was his frequent games of Poker on this train, and that the whole rest of the con relies on them getting to him during this game. We know that everyone involved in this is scared out of their wits. We know that if they get caught, they'll be found in the baggage car with ventilated skulls.

And then we see Lonnigan get on the train, and he's limping.

Again, short scene. Not something our brains register consciously for more than a couple seconds. But subconsciously? We have just realized that this man has a weakness. The limp. His facade of imposing mob boss has this chink in his armor, a physical imperfection he can't get rid of. This implies that there might be other, deeper flaws that Henry Gondorff can take advantage of. Three minutes before the Con begins, we are told that taking Lonnegan might be possible--not by words, not by character confidence, but by a limp.

I don't know if the actor who played Lonnigan has a limp naturally or not. The only other movie I've seen him in (Jaws) is probably not a good reference. But Lonnegan's limp, real or an affectation is incorporated and becomes a critical part of the movie. It's a tiny detail that makes the scene that follows (Gondorff out-cheating Lonnegan in a game of cards) very tense. Because we know it's possible to take him. 

Oh, Gondorff doesn't get off easily either. There's a scene right before he goes into the poker game. After he dresses, after he has a girl flawlessly pick Lonnegan's pocket (building on the weakness of the limp; he doesn't catch her do it) and after he explains the best liquor to drink with a mark, he sits down and does card tricks for Hooker, flawlessly, with a smooth flick of the wrist and a wink of those charming blue eyes. And then he flubbs the last one. Cards go flying everywhere. And the same part of your brain that read the limp as hey, we can take this guy thinks Oh, shit. Gondorff will blow it at the very last second. Lonnagan can lose...but so can Gondorff, and so far Gondorff has done more loosing than Lonnegan.

None of this ever registers consiously. You're too wound up in the David and Goliath story unfolding before your eyes. But what makes it interesting is not the charming blue eyed David or the imposing and irish Goliath and their completely bullshit game of poker (the only question is who cheats better?) Rather, it's those little details. The limp, followed by getting his pocket picked. The smooth operating Gondorff and his swift education of Hooker...followed by blowing that last card trick.

The rest of the movie is, thematically speaking, just a repeat of the train scene. We build upon the weakness implied by the limp, and also the blown card trick. The FBI subplot also implies that Gondorff has blind spots, and one of these might blow the con (and get him arrested). Lonnegan is never given a weakness other than the card game, which was completely and totally built on his limp. You could say that the entire conflict of the Sting was constructed on a bad knee that may or may not have originated with the actor himself. A thing that you never really notice, because the movie is just that good.

Good writing is not about picking a decent plot, good, likable characters or using pretty, flowery phrases. Oh, yes, don't get me wrong. You need these things. But you can have these things and still have a flat story. Good writing is about manipulating your reader into seeing things the way you want them to. In the hands of a decent writer, sparkling vampires or a demon possessed car (not to mention a can opener) can be terrifying. Not because we are scared of glitter or can openers, but because there were little hints thrown into the plot before we got there. Things that our brains registered that we never really saw.  It's about setting up an unlikable protagonist by making him your best friend for thirty seconds at the opening. It's about setting up a trustworthy mentor by making him a drunk. It's about telling your reader one thing, because it lets you slip fifteen other things in under the carpet. A good writer will hold the reader in the palm of their hands and make them think what they want them to. A good writer will react to a reader saying "This was my favorite scene because you did this in it" by saying "Damn. You shouldn't have noticed that." and rewriting the whole book.

In short, Good writing is about Lonnegan's limp.

Mary Sue Pt 3: Skyline and District 9

Point Two on the Mary Sue list is as follows: 2. She is a character so poorly constructed that her inadvertent negative character traits overshadow her intentional positive ones.  Her intentional negative traits, which in a good character would balance out the intentional positives are not credible and thus do not register with the reader.

This is where things stop being easy, and also, IMHO, stop being something I can back up with my own actions, as I am unpublished and thus cannot prove that I know what I’m doing. However, I firmly believe what I am about to explain is true. This is another of CW’s Magical Writing Theories (Consume with Grain of Salt), so get comfy.

Character building: Mary Sue pt 2. Also, Honor Harrington and Bella Swan

The problem with Mary Sue is if you read or watch TV for any period of time, you start meeting versions of her that you like. People who are brilliant, beautiful, always successful and always beloved, who more often than not have that magical pet cat or dog or (insert animal here). And you begin to wonder why this character works, when your own dear Sue collapsed under her own weight.

For myself, there are three characters that I absolutely love, that technically are "Sues": Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Who and Honor Harrington (grumblegrumblenextbookinfreakingJulygrumble) All three are badly overpowered in their chosen expertiese, all three have no true equal, and all three are highly idealized. Honor, in addition to being the BEST ADMIRAL EVAR!!one1! has a list of titles longer than most libraries, and Nimitz, her telepathic/empathic treecat that also gifts her with psychic powers in a universe where humans are not psychic (and that kind of universe-breaking is a big hallmark of Sueism) And then there is the Doctor. Ignoring the Tardis, ignoring the large stable of women desperate to play tonsel hockey with him, even ignoring the fact that he is effectively immortal, he carries a deus ex machina around in his pocket. Sonic Screwdriver, anyone?

And yet...they work. And they are hugely loved by the people who read them. People almost rioted when Sherlock died. I only found out that Honor was to die after Weber decided not to kill her (and I will never trust him again. Because you do that once, you can do that again, and it was bad enough loosing LaFollet last book. *sniff*) and the Doctor has survived longer than most socialist governments. What the hell?

Character building ... stuff: Mary Sue

What is a Mary Sue?

I answered this question for the nine-millionth time the other day, and I realized two things simultaneously: One, it's a really hard thing to pin down, and two, I really need to just post this to the blog already and move on with my life, because copy-pasta would really save time and energy.

So without further ado: Mary Sue.

I met her for the first time with my very first novel. Which was never finished. I had an idea for a story about a girl who turns into a dragon. Which was actually a pretty good idea, and in a couple more years I may revisit that story. The descent into Mary Sue territory began with the name. I searched baby name sites anxiously, seeking that perfect name that would fit the character and perfectly express everything I needed to know about the character (because at this point, I didn't know bupkiss about writing for an audience). I settled on D'Lorah. And a good time was had by all.

Then I read the Malloren series by David Eddings, and suddenly my dragon princess was a foundling of another set of princesses. D'Lorah was her real name (BTW it was just "harold" spelled backwards. My female MC had a boy's name, spelled backwards) but her foundling name was "Gracelyn" because she was so graceful, (and psudo-welsh) And she was an elf. And then she was a shape-shifting elf. And the elves became golden beings of light who fought the evil queen of darkness from their magical never-to-be-invaded island kingdom of Riva Iswyn (or something like that.) And she went to war with the evil queen of darkness and recruited the evil queen's faceless minions as her own, and yeah, it was a pretty horrible story. But what I remember most clearly is the progression from "dragon princess" to "conglomerate elvish WTF" (and none of the main cast was proof against this. Talk to her love interest for a few days worth of traumatic nightmares). I would come across something I thought was cool, think "gee, I wish my character was like that", then think "Well, why don't I make her like that?", and then a good time was had by ... me.

However, I had this nagging voice go off in the back of my head: "Hey, this might not be a good idea. Hey, I don't think this is working out. Hey, I don't think you ought to do that, I don't think war works like that, hey, listen, hey, CW, HEY STUPID! WRITING DOES NOT WORK THIS WAY!" Unfortunately my reaction was to pile more cool shit into the story, and not to worry about realism or characterization or anything else that might salvage what was originally a pretty cool idea. Eventually it collapsed under its own weight with just that little idea seed sticking out.

I tried my hand at sci-fi writing, and again, had a pretty good seed idea. That I proceeded to ruin through a combo of conglomerate SF WTF and incest!rape (I was also thirteen). And again, I remember that same progression from "space captain fights monster on space station with a twist" to "what the hell did I just eat read?" (Reading Stephen R. Donaldson's "Gap" series at thirteen DID NOT HELP AT ALL. DAMN, the man has issues with women) Any and all cool ideas that I thought might work got slamned into the book everywhere I thought they might fit until the whole story collapsed under the weight of its (horrible) cast.

And then I encountered the words "Mary Sue" for the first time, and the symptom (because it's a symptom, not the disease itself) got a name. I learned what this symptom looked like (cool royal bloodline, awesome friends, great boyfriend, eventually gets preggers, rainbow hair, mood-ring eyes) and learned to avoid these things in my own writing. And in avoiding them, I learned why these were bad. "Because I think its cool" is not a good enough reason to include it in the story.

However, I hit another problem with Ms. Sue when I started trying to explain why the Sue family is bad. Because the Sue definition is pretty vague, and while we know that something is bad, we're not 100% sure why it is bad. So now, without further ado, we give you yet another of CW's Spectacular Writing Theories (Consume with Grain of Salt):

1.A Mary Sue is an extraordinary character without an extraordinary plot to match.

2. She is a character so poorly constructed that her inadvertent negative character traits overshadow her intentional positive ones.  Her intentional negative traits, which in a good character would balance out the intentional positives are not credible and thus do not register with the reader.

3. She rarely encounters credible danger, or if she does, she will be kidnapped, bound, gagged, raped, physically abused to the point of death, and then rescued by another (*coughmalecough*) member of the cast. At no point will she defeat the credible danger herself.

4. When asked to describe Mary, her author will respond with a list of character traits and attributes so far removed from the reader's perception of Mary, the readers will stare in disbelief. They will either laugh, cry, or start posting slightly vindictive, yet wholly justified reviews of Mary and her story on the internet.

5. Mary will not be the biggest problem in the story. She will, however ,be the most obvious.

I'm going to do a more in-depth post on each of the five points over the next several days, so ... yeah, get comfy.