The Ultimate Guide to Harry Potter Fanfiction

OCs Part 1: Powerful Mary Sues

Yes, this is part one. I know for a fact I can't cover everything to do with OCs here, so I won't try. Here, I'll focus on Mary Sues and how much power them always seem to get.

If you don't know what an OC is, you probably are fairly new to fanfiction writing. Just kidding, I didn't put two and two together for the longest time. An OC is and original character, and the type of OC I'm talking about is always the main character. Astra, from my own books, is an OC (though she's not a Mary Sue, I hope...). Any charter you Coke up with on your own is an Original Character.

A lot of people see an OC in fanfiction, and simply stop reading. This isn't fair to a lot of amazing authors whose stories focus on OCs, but it's understandable, because of a superbly annoying girl named Mary Sue.

Mary Sue isn't any particular person. She's simply that one girl in school who was perfect at everything, was loved by the teachers, had too grades, was as sweet as sugar, and was beautiful, to boot. And everyone absolutely hated her. Not that they'd say it to her face, of course, so Mary Sue went through life thinking she was loved by everyone. Nothing ever went wrong for her, unless it was completely out of her control, and then she remained perfect throughout the problem and emerged with every hair in place and perfectly fine.

"What does this have to do with fanfiction?" you might be asking. Well, let me tell you a different story for a moment. Let's talk about OCs. A lot of OCs are, whether the author realizes it or not, author inserts. This phenomenon is where the author creates an OC much like themselves, and inserts her into their favorite story, just as they probably imagined it when daydreaming in class or something. Now, I'll cover inserting characters into the story in another chapter, but for now let's just say author inserts would be fine. Would be fine. If not for one tiny, insignificant detail.

We, as humans, are as conceited as all hades.

Yes, it's true, and don't get offended because I'm probably at the top of that list. Try as we might, it's difficult for us to see our own faults! And even when we do see them, we don't want to broadcast those faults to the world! We want to at least appear perfect, even if we aren't (#hypocrites4life).

So, when an author inserts herself into a story, what do you think happens? The author doesn't want to (or simply doesn't) recognize her faults, so she changes the name of the character and makes her an absolutely perfect version of herself!

Of course, rarely does anyone do that consciously. Normally, the author is simply trying to make a likable character, and is afraid that if Mary Sue has any faults people won't like her. Well, I made Astra stubborn, bratty, rash, and a little mean, and some people don't like her. You know what? That's perfectly okay. Not everyone is going to adore your character. However, if you make her fairly realistic and give her reasonable faults, then more people will be inclined to like her. She'll be relatable. However, if you make Mary Sue a perfect little beauty queen, the amount of admirers drops drastically.

Why is this? You'd think a sweet, caring, smart, rule-following, pretty girl would be very likable, right? Well, no. You see, there are two types of characters: dynamic and static. Dynamic characters undergo some sort of internal change during the story, like Harry growing up through the course of the series, or Edmund Pevensie from Narnia with his change of heart from a little brat selling his siblings to the White Witch to actively battling against her. Static characters remain the same throughout the story. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, either – Sherlock Holmes is an amazing example of a static character, as is Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird. Some static characters can be beloved by all, like those two. Some, however, some could do with being a bit more dynamic. Mary Sue is one of those people.

What is it about Mary Sue staying the same that makes her so annoying, when Sherlock and Atticus have admirers of almost all their readers? Well, it's exactly what she's staying as that's the problem. Mary Sue is sweet and caring and smart and pretty and perfect in every way, and makes it impossible for anyone to relate to her. Without that key aspect, everything falls apart. You see, if we can't relate to a character at all, we begin to be annoyed by them, or even resent them a little. We look at the other characters in the story, the ones who make mistakes and act like brats and might have even been written to be disliked, and we see more of ourselves in them than we see in the main character. So, we decide we like them more. We get impatient for something to happen to Mary Sue, so hopefully she'll become a little more human and lose that divine power of perfection. And... It never happens. Mary Sue stays the same, perfect and proper while her world falls down as the plot moves forward. She never gets frustrated, and never faces a problem too big for her to handle. She glides through the story elegantly, aloof from the crisis.

Poor Mary Sue has some enemies of her readers. What could possibly fix this? Well, a few faults wouldn't hurt. And when I say faults, I do not mean physical faults. Those do not count. Every teenager has acne; it's nothing new, and doesn't make your character relatable. I also don't mean phobias, like being afraid of heights or spiders, or not being able to sing (then she actually can, according to everyone else?). No, what Mary Sue needs are some vices. A few things about her that will annoy you to death as you write her, but will pay off when your readers can understand what she's thinking. Make her get angry and snap at her best friend. Make her rebellious against her professors. Make her fail a class. Make her seek out her Slytherin or Gryffindor (whichever she's in) enemy and try to hurt them after they're particularly bratty. It doesn't matter. Just don't make her perfect. Mary Sue has to have some quirks in her personality that will cause trouble for her, or we won't like her.

Now, you may be wondering why the title said "Powerful" Mary Sues. This is specifically geared towards the Harry Potter fandom now, all right? What I just said was fairly general to all writing, everywhere. No one likes a perfect person. What makes it even worse is when you make her the most powerful person ever.

I have read several HP fanfics that focus on an OC who can control the elements, somehow, or who can speak to animals, or who has some sort of power that doesn't even make much sense and is only explained as a "family trait." Then there are the OCs who can do every spell in existence without their wand while hanging upside down from an ice cave on Hoth. Badically, as if it wasn't bad enough that Mary Sue was perfect, let's make her better than everyone at everything. This is really annoying, and I know a lot of authors think it's so cool to have their OC be able to do things like that (trust me, I've been down that road, never going back), it just kind of hammers home that Mary Sue is perfect and the rest of us aren't, and makes it more certain that we won't like her.

As a side note, I made Astra very proficient in spells of all kinds. However, there is a reason for this. I just haven't revealed it yet. Things like that? Perfectly okay. If you're writing about Hermione and Ron's daughter, Rose, you might want to make her incredibly smart. Perfectly okay. If you're writing one of those Voldemort's daughter things, then it makes sense that she'd be a bit more powerful than your average first year. Emphasis on a bit. It's okay to make your character smart or powerful, just don't go overboard.

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Thanks for reading this, seriously. I can't say how fun this is to write, and the fact that you guys are liking it is very uplifting. Ciao!