we need to have a talk

It has taken me two weeks to calm down enough to discuss this topic after I discovered that several of my writing peers were unaware of a certain term that I had considered to be commonly known among writers.

Do you know what a Mary Sue is? No? Well, I hope to provide an informative explanation in order to educate and clear up any misconceptions my own previously poor definitions may have caused.

Mary Sues, essentially, are OCs that are created by the author as a means of placing themselves into a story. These OCs are typically characterized by unsual features and abilities. They are often the sort that are irresistibly beautiful to other characters but the OC is unaware of this supernatural attractiveness [*cough*Bella Swan*cough*]. Mary Sues, which can be male, as well as female, typically lack in any realistic characteristics or personality. They have all the luck that ever was in the universe, unheard of intellectual abilities that allow them to deduce the evil-doers plans on next to no information, and often have powers no one has ever seen before. This description places Mary Sues solidly in the category of unrealistic and unbelievable, functioning primarily as a means through which the author can live out their own fantasies.

It may not be surprising, then, to know that the term Mary Sue stems from fanfiction and an actual character that had this name, as fanfiction is known for being rife with such vicariously-living authors [I don't mean to imply that all fanfiction is poorly written]. However, I don't think that Mary Sues are limited to bad fanfiction. They can be found in poor fiction in general and should be something to keep an eye on in your own work, especially the more you write in fantasy and science-fiction genres. We always write a portion of ourselves into a story, it is unavoidable, but we should make sure that we are not inserting ourselves where a well developed character should be.

Happily, checking your work for creeping Mary Sues is relatively easy, generally accomplished by having others read your work and asking for, and taking, good critiques. There are also a plethora of Mary Sue tests out there on the internet that can help you identify the more glaring failings of a Mary Sue on your own.

Now, I don't think that Mary Sues are rampant in fiction but I generally find that the more you know about the mistakes that can be made, the better prepared you are to avoid them and to not claim that Harry Potter qualifies as a Mary Sue.

a narrative exercise

I don't have much to say today so I shall share my first writing assignment for the term. It was an exercise in setting description. For the first section, we were to pick a place we knew well and describe it in the style of textbook writing. The second section was to be a short first person narrative that took place in the selected setting and the third section was a third person limited narrative of the same sort. Enjoy!

A.

     A large transportation vehicle, the school bus was made for function rather than fashion. The signature yellow color, sometimes with black stripes on the sides, diesel engine, and boxy design made them easily identifiable.

     A school bus had large side mirrors as seen on tractor trailers to enable the driver as much visibility as possible. A bi-fold door at the front of the bus on the passenger side opened to the set of three of four steps that passengers had to take to enter the vehicle. The driver's seat was at the top of these stairs, typically a large black, cushioned chair behind a large steering wheel and within easy reach of all necessary controls. Those included the lever, positioned to the right, used to open and close the door. To the left of the driver's seat was a panel of switches and buttons that control lights and signs on both the interior and exterior of the bus.

     Various cautionary signs and instructions could be found over the windshield and above windows directing passengers to buckle their seat belts and alerting them to the position of emergency exits. In many school buses, a security camera was positioned inside the bus, above the windshield – a box with a flashing red light that debatably indicated its working order and a two-way mirror on the front that reflected the double rows of vinyl-covered seats that were bolted to the metal floor. Each seat was black, blue, brown, green, or a mixture of these colors and was equipped with multiple nylon seat belts that were usually crammed into the seat or left to swing, unused, above the floor.

     Both sides of the bus were almost completely bisected by double-hung windows with metal frames, two of which were designated as emergency exits and were capable of separating entirely from the rest of the bus frame with the pull of a small lever. Two of the remaining emergency exits were plastic hatches in the roof of the bus and spaced evenly down its length. The aisle between seats was a long strip of ribbed rubber secured to the metal floor for traction and extends all the way back to the rear emergency exit door that was also operated by a metal lever. Small lights spaced periodically down the length of the bus interior over the windows provided a degree of visibility inside the bus at night.

B.

     I wedged the door open and paused for a moment, tucking some wayward hairs back up into my sweat-soaked bandana and off of my sweaty neck. I was trying to prolong the illusion that I was letting the bus cool off a little before climbing in but the previous six buses and steadily rising sun had shown me that nothing was going to cool these tin cans down today even if I opened all the windows, doors, and emergency hatches. I had been soaked through in multiple places by the time I got half way through the first bus. I squinted up at the sun, trying to remember and internalize the feeling of air conditioning before stooping down and collecting the stained red buckets of cleaning supplies – warm plastic bottles jostling each other as I stepped up into the yellow solar-heated oven.

     It took exactly eight seconds for my eyes to adjust but the stench was immediate and inescapable. You'd think that if you'd smelled one bus you'd have smelled them all but you'd be wrong. The years of sweaty, sticky children and forgotten PB&Js flooded my nose in different mixtures each time but always with the full-bodied undertone of well-worn vinyl. This particular bus had another scent in the mix. Someone had thrown up. I gagged a little at the putrid aroma, reheated from hours left in the hot sun. I made sure to keep my lips tightly closed though; inhaling through my mouth would only result in a second mess for me to clean up.

    I took deliberate breaths as I clomped up the stairs, willing my lungs to harvest oxygen from the oppressive air. The metal shell reverberated under my boots and echoed down the bus's interior; loose windows rattled like industrial wind chimes. The driver's seat, molded to some overweight, aging woman's behind with cracks in the black upholstery where tufts of padding poked out, making their bid for freedom, served as my center of operations where buckets and rags were deposited until called into service. The bottles of cleaner clattered against each other as I dug for the 409 with the dependable nozzle and the least amount of drip. I hooked the trigger through a belt loop and tucked a roll of paper towels under my arm before shoving a spare trash bag into my back pocket. First things first, that vomit had to go.

     I crept down the aisle like a hunter of safari, approaching my prey with caution, not for fear of scaring it, but to take care that it didn’t take me by surprise. I found it about two-thirds down the bus on the right side. The kid had hit the siding under the window before emptying his lunch onto the floor. Lines showed where the sick had run down the metal sheeting to pool with the rest by the sloppily welded leg of the seat in front of it. It must have been a big kid, or a big lunch. I was just grateful that it wasn't the chunky kind. Thankfully, the plastic tabs on the window above the seat weren't broken and it slid down without argument, a halfhearted breath of air meandered through it and stirred up the rank smell, making my stomach roll. How was I going to survive nursing school if a bit of vomit made me nauseous? I pulled my bandana down around my nose and mouth, ignoring the gritty damp and the limp strings of hair that fell again on my neck in favor of the relatively refreshing smell of my own sweat.

     It took almost the whole roll of paper towels to move the sticky pool from the hot metal to my trash bag but those scuffed rivets almost looked shiny when I had finished. I tossed the vomit bag onto the dusty ground at the foot of the stairs – a small puff of dirt and grass carcasses lifting itself around the bag. I moved on to wiping down seats, the classic western shoot-off trill ringing in my ears when I drew my trusty 409 from its denim holster and took aim at the cracked and graffiti-ed seats.

     Lemon-scented cleaner splashed across seat backs as I rolled back and forth across the aisle from seat to seat wiping away the drips and grime, dodging bandit fire until I had cornered the phantom scoundrels behind the very last seat. Nowhere for them to go.

     “Ha!” I yelled, ambushing the back window with a fantastic wash of chemical. I watched the yellow fluid race itself to the rubber casing in little rivulets before I took a rag to the window, scrubbing off some of the film that had built up from dusty air, dirty kids, and the secret cigarettes of high schoolers. I'd seen Megan Klein passing out those thin paper cylinders on the way home from school on Friday, a weekend celebration that I didn't get an invitation to and now here I was cleaning up some other kid's unwinding session.

     I shook myself and jogged to the front of the bus, feeling the bounce of the suspension under even my meager weight. I gathered the buckets and rags, moving them outside by the vomit bag before grabbing the broom and dust-pan that I’d left on the ground. I swept my way down the bus, attempting modified pirouettes in the narrow aisle and dipping the broom with grand flourishes. It was the best partner I’d ever had.

     The honk of a car horn pulled me up short in the middle of a perfect jazz square and I squinted out the window to see a car full of teenagers staring at me, necks craned around as their car drove past, their faces warped by laughter I didn’t hear but knew on site. I stuck my tongue out at the back of the car, wiped some sweat out of my eyes with the back of my hand, and finished collecting wrappers and string from the floor in silence.

C.

     Keltsie felt like someone had left a puddle of quick-dry glue at the top of the stairs. She couldn't move her feet. The bus driver, an elderly, weathered man had nodded in reply to her tentative smile when the door had creaked open at her stop and now he swung the door shut behind her and put the bus in gear without waiting for her to find a seat. The roar of the diesel engine startled Keltsie and she tripped down the aisle when the bus jerked forward down the road.

      Keltsie’s fingers gripped the blue seat backs, sweat forming instantly between her hands and the vinyl upholstery as she scanned the rows for a place to sit. There were no familiar faces and no one looked her way long enough to tell if there were any friendly ones.

Why had she thought this was a good idea?

     She took a few weaving steps further down the aisle, holding on to each new seat like a life-line as she tried to swallow her nerves. Something crunched under her sandal at her next step and she looked down to see the floor was littered with wrappers of all kinds, not to mention several pieces of gum. She looked up again with a jerk, trying to ignore the thoughts of germs and disease that were crowding into her mind.

     The bus was packed. Each seat was packed to, and in some cases, beyond capacity with sweaty kids vying for the breezes that swept through the open windows. One boy sat alone. His long hair, several shades darker than Keltsie's own, hung in his half-closed eyes. Keltsie wondered if he was hot, wearing all black and sitting next to the window like that.

     “Excuse me.” Her voice was barely a whisper and was easily drowned out by the bus's engine.

     The boy made no move to indicate that he had heard her.

     “Excuse me!” Keltsie tried again, her voice raised to a volume that alarmed her.

     The boy's eyes turned in her direction and slowly widened and then narrowed as he registered Keltsie's presence. In one swift motion, much faster than Keltsie would have thought he could move, the boy had grabbed a torn, black bag from the floor and deposited it beside him on the seat, taking up the rest of the bench. He held one pale hand firmly on the bag and turned his head to stare out the window with the same half-awake look as before. Taken aback at the sudden and unexplained rejection, Keltsie blinked. She tugged at her backpack straps to keep her arms from locking over her chest in a wasted defensive gesture. The boy had been sitting by himself already. Maybe he acted that way toward everyone. It wasn't personal.

     The next bump of the school bus threw her off balance, her hands no longer anchored to the seats, and she toppled forward, crashing into a seat on the right and its sole occupant. The girl looked up from the book she had been reading and glared at Keltsie before she yanked her backpack out from under Keltsie's own and dropping it into her lap. The girl propped her book against it to continue reading.

     “I'm so sorry!” Keltsie said, as she tried to right herself in the narrow space. The seat's split seams carve ragged edges into the bare skin below her shorts and she winced. The girl only tucked her curly black hair behind one ear and rolled her eyes at her book.

     “I'm sorry.” Keltsie whispered. She leanedg forward until her head hit the seat back in front of her. The warm, damp upholstery clung to her forehead. She didn't move to take her backpack off, in case the girl decided to kick her out and her books sat heavily on her back. She could hear her pencil case shift with the turns of the bus. Someone had drawn an elaborate dragon on the seat back, black pen on a blue background. Keltsie studied it as she thought over the morning's encounters thus far and the horrors she was now sure awaited her at school.

     The girl by the window snapped her book shut which made Keltsie jump and turn to see if she had done something inexplicable to offend this person as well. The seat did not part easily from her forehead and Keltsie felt a stinging mark where the two had adhered. The girl was stared at her with what Keltsie thought were conflicting emotions on her face trading back and forth between irritation, pity, and apathy. Finally, the first two won out and she spoke.

     “You're new.” It wasn't a question but it wasn't quite an accusation either, though the girl's knit brows did not seem to approve of this fact.

     Keltsie swallowed and tried to sit up, hampered by her backpack which wedged between her and the seat. “Yeah, I mean, yes. I am. New.”

     The girl eyed her and smirked slightly first at Keltsie's forehead and then her backpack but her eyes were kind. “You know, it's easier to sit if you take your backpack off first. Also,” she continued as Keltsie scrambled to remove her arms from the backpack's straps, “people are less prone to push you out again if you don't fall on top of them.”

     Keltsie looked up from her backpack, alarmed, but the girl was smiling now. “I'm so sorry about that! I didn't mean to, honest. I just lost my balance and-”

     The girl shrugged and waved away Keltsie's apology. “It's whatever. Don't get bent out of shape about it. My name's Brenna. What’s yours?”

     Keltsie heard the dutiful tone in Brenna's polite questions but it didn't bother her. She smiled. “I'm Keltsie. This is my first day at a public school.”

cookies are good for brainstorming and calming nerves, right?

As I type I have the first batch of chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven. Cross your fingers for the finished product!

So classes started yesterday and it's beginning to hit me just how insane this term is going to be. To give you an idea, the term is 8 weeks long. In my Writing Fiction class we have 3 narrative exercises [including such regimens as a scene described from multiple POVs and a scene that consists entirely of dialogue, not even tags are allowed] and 3 short stories [each over 10 pages in length] due by the end of that 8 weeks. That's not even considering the 3 projects and numerous samples I'll be doing in my sewing class. The cookies in the oven confirm that I am border-line panicking.

I am afraid of an embarrassingly long list of things and being in a writing class comes up in the top two, mainly due to the level of vulnerability I've only ever found in groups like this. As we went over the syllabus yesterday I had to keep my eyes from bugging out of my head at the sheer amount of writing I've voluntarily undertaken. It's a daunting load, considering I haven't had much time to write recently in general, let alone for a class.

On the bright side, I already have a friend, a girl who also happens to be in my morning sewing class. We have decided to hang out between our two classes to I'm seeing potential for a cool writing buddy which is reassuring. I'm sure the next two months are going to be crazy, full of late-night scrambles and re-writes but I'm also banking on it being two of the best months of my college experience :)

[Also, the first batch just came out and they taste just like home :) ]