Marland Mondays: Don’t Create Mary Sues

If it’s Monday, it means it’s Marland Monday!

This summer I am remembering Douglas Marland and his rules on how not to ruin a soap opera, then see how his rules can apply to the writing of all types.
First essay here.
Second essay here.
Third essay here.
Fourth here.

This week another GOAT has a birthday. Happy 99th Mr. Norman Lear, who gave us the sublime soap opera parody, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

Now today’s rule:
Be objective. When I came into (the show), the first thing I said was, what is pleasing the audience? You have to put your own personal likes and dislikes aside and develop the characters that the audience wants to see.

When you create a character, you need them to be three-dimensional. You need them to have faults. If I was written as a character, my faults would be: “book hoarder, stubborn, and procrastinates.” On the other hand, you need other good qualities as well, as Sara Bareilles sang about the lead character in the musical Waitress, “she is messy but she is kind.” In other words, you don’t want to create a Mary Sue.

My friend Tierney told me about Mary Sues: a trope where there is one female character that simply can’t do anything wrong. She was excellent in school, saved baby kittens from a fire, and managed to graduate college in two years. All men fall in love with her and try to protect her from the big bad world. If you don’t like them, well then you’re slug slime. You’re just a rotten no good awful person who deserves to watch Mariah Carey’s Glitter for eternity. Mary Sue is like Mary Poppins, perfect in every way.

Examples of Mary Sues are…. (thanks to the Barnes and Noble blog for this)

Sara Crewe in A Little Princess

Beth March in Little Women

Charles Wallace Murray in A Wrinkle in Time (although in his case he would be a Gary Sue)

Little Orphan Annie

Everyone loves these characters. I mean, who wouldn’t love Beth March? Crabby Mr. Lawrence even softens towards her and gives her a piano for Christmas, for crying out loud! I don’t know about you, but I’ve belted out “Tomorrow” many a time. You need characters to simply love because they’re lovable. But you also need characters that are fully-fledged and yeah, sometimes they fail. If they don’t get up, tell us why. But if they do get up, help us root for them to get back to where they once belonged.

Let’s examine a character debated about in As The World Turns’ history and many call a Mary Sue: Lily Walsh.

(warning, spoilers ahead!)

Lily wasn’t a creation of Marland (She was created by head writing team Millee Taggert and Tom King) However, he put her through the wringer. I don’t want to give too many spoilers, but she was kidnapped several times, found out she was a product of a rape, the woman she thought was her mother wasn’t her mother, and oh yeah, she did have a half-sister, she was in love with a man that was her uncle, no wait, he wasn’t her uncle because her birth mother was adopted, whew! So she dated another not uncle, but before that, she got married, but he was blown up in an explosion, then she finally got married to the first not uncle then found out her newly adopted baby brother is actually not uncle second husband’s baby with another woman-man, I need a drink just writing all of this down!

Many people have said in the past Lily became Marland’s Mary Sue. I beg to differ.
Marland knew how to write for Lilly. The actress who played her on and off for twenty years Martha Byrne said in an interview she used to rush home when she got a new script to read what happened next, Marland’s scripts were that good. He had to have known people obsessing about this one girl wasn’t healthy. Trust me, it seemed as if almost all the adults on ATWT were worried about Lily back in the day. “We can’t tell Lily that!” “What about Lily?” “We must protect Lily at all costs!” There were times I would watch the show and say aloud “Oh for God’s sakes, just tell her! She’s not made of glass, she can handle it!”
But Marland knew in order to build up a story, sometimes you have to not tell a character certain things. This makes the other characters sweat it out. How are they going to keep things like secret parentage, secret siblings, and oh yeah, you have an Uncle Boyfriend a secret? Then we keep watching.

Also Lily was not a perfect Mary Sue. God knows I loved the girl but man, she could be a brat. She was cold to Sierra (Finn Carter) who was nothing but kind to her. Lily had no worries about mentioning to Sierra that the woman Lucinda Walsh she just found out was her mother also slept with Sierra’s fiance. She was so concerned about her own problems sometimes she didn’t notice that hey, other people around her might have problems too, like her stepbrother Andy’s alcoholism. For the life of me, I can’t even remember how Lily did in school, but I know she wasn’t top of her class. In other words, she was a fully fleshed-out character. She worked her nerves sometimes, but she was supposed to work our nerves. Meaning Marland did his job.

Oh yeah, Martha Byrne also has written for Bold and Beautiful. She’s created several web series. Who was her writing mentor?
Douglas Marland.

Tune in this week for a surprise…