((Personality: Beyond the Mary Sue Test))

((Everyone hates a Mary Sue. Nothing new there. And it seems that a lot of creators of original characters are working hard to avoid this common fan character trope. However, there's a lot more to creating an interesting and believeable character than simply passing a Mary Sue test. Such tests are designed to seek out common superficial and unrealistic character traits that creators often use; because of the inherent superficiality of the Mary Sue test, it is only a first step in creating a good character. In fact, an incredibly boring and poorly developed character could easily pass a Mary Sue test. But a character needs a good, consistent personality to really shine. Here are some tips on character creation that go beyond the scope of what a simple Mary Sue test can do.

There's more to creating a "personality" than simply conforming to a stereotype like "goth", "preppy", "nerd", etc. It also goes beyond defining a set of likes, dislikes, and interests.  A well-established personality also largely defines a character's interaction with other characters, making it vital in roleplay scenarios. Because not all personality traits work together, and some that do work together seem not to, it's important to develop a "big picture" personality before getting down to the nitty-gritty. For example, my character Charlie is naïve, good-natured, friendly, insecure, and easy to push around. While some of these traits seem contradictory—the fact that she is both friendly and insecure, for example—the individual traits make sense when taking into account her personality as a whole. She is insecure socially, so she goes out of her way to please others and be friendly, making her easy to push around.

Another important thing is to keep your character's personality consistent. This is where the big-picture-before-individual-traits comes in handy. If you pick out random personality traits without really understanding what your character is "like", your character can come out with a personality that varies wildly from situation to situation. Pick a personality and stick with it. Your character shouldn't be extremely sweet and friendly but also have a tendency to lash out with violence, unless the friendliness is just a facade in the first place.

I spent a lot of time developing Charlie's personality. A lot of the development came about through roleplays and fanfiction writing, not just from pure speculation. If you have a character who needs some spicing up, by all means, roleplay. You can even tell the other players that you're working on developing your character and ask for some feedback.

So yeah, there you go. Comment below with any questions.))