The TTWND du jour

(TTWND = Topic That Will Not Die)

Bear with me folks. Once I work through this I'll talk about something else again soon. I promise.

I went back over the second test and this time removed stuff that I could cut from Elspeth and not affect her character but that was contributing to the "Mary Sue" score. I also pulled stuff that was skewing the results.

I.e. the question "Are one or more other characters attracted to her/him?" should be a moot point, since I'm writing a romance novel. Kind of hard to have a romance if the love interest isn't attracted to the character. "Has the character ever been nursed back to health from serious injuries by a warm, kind, and loving person? Was this person the character's love interest?" She is nursed back to health by Alec after she falls in the loch, and yes - that's her love interest. "Does the character sacrifice her/himself for love?" Yeah, that's kind of central to the plot, after all. But I don't think having these things is all that outside for a romance novel.

Ultimately, a lot of these tests were designed to cull author-insertion Mary Sue characters out of fanfic involving canon characters, and are designed accordingly. However, they can be used for original fiction. Maybe I'm just making excuses for myself, in saying "yeah, but that shouldn't count because..." but I am at least being honest that I'm adding a lot of my life into hers. Shouldn't be that hard to change, since it's not integral to her personality. I'll let her pick from now on.

I'm still torn over the job thing, though. Which do you guys think is worse?

Character has unique profession, but it also happens to be the author's,

OR

Character has different profession than author, but it is a profession that other characters in the same subgenre often have.

This is the last post on this, pinky swear. Those of you who end up beta reading for me, let me know how I did after rewrites. *g*