A few days ago I
wrote about Mary-Sues, and a litmus test to identify them. Today, reverting to procrastination mode I was looking through old documents and found a story I wrote at the age of 9. The first paragraph should totally be some kind of Mary Sue benchmark, no?
Jennifeare, the evil, female and human shaped daemon sneered as the beautiful baby Princess Amandae of Sparkle Land was passed into Queen Zola’s hands. Little did the happy Queen know that her child was cursed a dreadful curse. A curse that only Princess Amandae could overcome. Of course, Jennifeare knew that the baby would never want to overcome the curse. That was simply because the curse was a stolen heart. And without her heart, well, Amandae would never have a reason to want one. Unless she met the person, of course. But he was dead, wasn’t he? Yes. And soon, When King Marcus and Queen Zola were dead; their heir would be Amandae, easily defeated without a husband. Then, oh, the wonders of it all! The daemons would return to the land they had been banished from long before. But the best part had to be being honoured by Daemon King Ravlan! Jennifeare just couldn’t wait.
I've never heard of Mary-Sues before! that's so interesting, I read your other post too. I think that is how children learn to write, because so many of the books they read have these rather flat characters. Series with multiple characters have something like a Mary-Sue gathering effect, where if the whole group works together they overcome the problem (see Babysitters Club, Saddle Club...). Maybe that's why some adult fiction is so bad:)
ReplyDeleteThat's probably true, there is an alarming lack of *good* children's literature.
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