Perfect ratio to avoid writing a Mary-Sue (or Marty-Stu)?

[capriuni]

Still can't wrap my mind around how awful Horatio Caine is, as a fictional character (This is the journal of things stuck in my head).

And then I realized why:

He's always giving advice, and it's always perfect advice-- And he never asks for advice (or needs it, but refuses to ask). He treats his colleagues like children, and they seem to love him for it. And he is completely unflappable. He's never flapped once, much less flailed, no matter how horrible the crime scene. He talks about everything as if he were terminally bored.

In other words, he's a Marty-Stu.

Obviously, there's got to be a spectrum, here. A character that is always flailing and in need of advice would be just as annoying, and completely unconvincing as a leader.

And then I got the silly notion of coming up with a formula that new (and old) writers could use to avoid M-S charaters, as a diagram with arrows and squiggles and all...

Want to help me figure it out? ;-)

Comments

[scarfman.livejournal.com]

Shortly after I started AKOTAS I ran across The Mary Sue Litmus Test - that might be a place to start. (My results here.)

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

21-30 points: The Non-Sue. Your character is a well-developed, balanced person, and is almost certainly not a Mary Sue. Congratulations!

I think the test must have added questions since you took it, or that they changed some of the calculations, because I got The Non-Sue, too, but my score was between 11-20. Of course, I coudn't decide whether my character was a vampire, or not. Yes, he needs to drink blood, and without it, he gets very sick. But he's not immortal and he has no special powers or strength. So instead, I counted his need for blood as a physical handicap. But that's a judgement call, too, as it's not a handicap you can see from the outside...