: Re: What are the signs of accidental self insertion? I am currently writing a novel where the main character will be far more powerful than most of the people in the world and I am worried that

@Sent2472441

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I think it's important to strictly define what exactly it is that you are attempting to avoid.

A self-insert is when you literally insert yourself into a work of fiction: the character acts like you would, talks like you would, has the same tastes as you would, etc. This is an extremely common trope but in and of itself is not inherently bad: see the excellent Worth the Candle for an example of the self-insert done well.

The connotation of "self-insert" often refers to a character having out-of-universe knowledge of the world they find themselves in; think the very common "I read Harry Potter and am now sucked into the world of Harry Potter" type of fan-fiction. This can lend itself to problems if handled poorly but again is not inherently bad in and of itself.

A Mary-Sue (as contentious as the term is) once upon a time exclusively referred to A) self-inserts who B) everyone loved and C) never lost, but over time the term appears to have drifted to not require the self-insertness, and for the most part seems to be a vague "this character is overpowered and never loses" (when it's not simply being used as a "I don't like this character" stand-in).

So of these three, I don't think that you're afraid of making a self-insert, you're attempting to avoid a Mary Sue. There's a very simple antidote for Sue-ness: make the character lose. Not just "darn, the villain got away", or "darn, everyone's jealous of my ability to win all the time", but "I intervened when told not to and accidentally killed a bunch of people and actually made everything worse" or "I tried to be clever and cut the Gordian knot and instead ended up cutting myself", or something of that nature.

So TL;DR is: if you find that the number and quality of the character's victories is far, far more than the number and quality of the character's failures, you might have a Mary Sue. There are exceptions, but this is the biggest flag to look out for, imo.

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