(Interest Check) Straight From the Novel (Title is a WIP)

I have an idea for a game, and I’m looking for advice/wanting to know if it would be liked.

In the world of the game, all of the characters are imaginary. And they know it.
They understand that they were thought up of just for entertainment purposes. That whatever they did, someone was making them do it. And that whatever they do, they have the same fate, depending on the author’s choices.

I was thinking about having a land full of “scrapped characters”, characters that were made, but didn’t make it into the final book. Because of this, some of them would be “underdeveloped” or “Mary Sue-like”, to those that come across them. One of the main points of the story, if I go this way, would show that even someone who “is overpowered” or “needs more development” is just the same as any character. If I do this, the main character would be one of them, probably a Sue/Stu.

I might have the characters come out into the real world as a plot twist, how does that sound? That’s really all that I know about the plot so far, though.

Of course, you’d get to choose your character’s gender (if they identify as one), orientation, name, personality, appearance, and other things.

Thoughts?

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An interesting idea, but my biggest concern is how you would plan on portraying our MC if you decide to make them a Sue/Stu. After all, they’re scrapped and despised as a character archetype for a reason.

I’m also interested in learning how this world the imaginary character’s reside in would be like. Something akin to the real world? Something like Steam Boat Willy? Something decrepit and desolate?

It’s important to have some answers to these questions.

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The problem with that is that by being a sue, they could immedeatly fix whatever problem. A normal sue’s entire exsistence is the fact that the world is shown just to show how impossibly strong/powerful/pretty etc they are, to the point of nigh bending reality/the plot itself. So if there were multiple sues then it might just devolve into a reality bender fight which could immedeatly be more useful then anything the charecters could come up with to fix any of the problems and as a result the other charecters would be like ants in a fight against human, basically useless

Here is a video to help anyone who doesn’t entirely get what Mary Sues are

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The concept sounds interesting. It kind of reminds me of “Five Character in Search of an Exit” or a Twilight Zone episode about characters or Cinderella’s Spark on itch.

How do you plan on showing the value of the scrapped characters? Is it going to be through books that use that character type in a good way-like a lot of mysteries or plot-heavy works don’t have defined main characters? Or, Are the characters going to grow and change over the course of the story?

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Good points, which actually gave me an idea for the plot.

Maybe some evil force takes away the reason they became scrapped? Everything would seem perfect at first, but it would throw off the balance of the Fictional World, causing a lot of problems. And then the main characters would have to fight it; maybe you could choose to fight it or join it?

Anyway, it would fix the problem, and give me a plot idea, which I didn’t really have.

I was going to have the main character and maybe about half of the supporting characters be scrapped. And I suppose that they will grow and change, yes.

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Interesting, specially love the idea of this abandoned character wasteland, trying to break free or whatever and join the real life, that part kinda reminds me of Enchanted for some reason.

But like alot of people have said, working with Sue/Stu’s is a bit hard since they are the perfect characters really . . . ironically. So character building would be hard unless we kinda stacked negative upon negative on them. Maybe more of a blank slate?

Have the MC be a character that started off as something yet was scrapped in it’s early development so really there’s nothing there? Or maybe even add a twist and have the character developed but not needed cos the story went a different direction.

When you say take away the reason, do you mean us as the character simply forgets why or something else?

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So say that a character was scrapped for, say, how their personality worked out. After the “thing” that took away why they were scrapped, their personality became ideal for the story. So if the main character was scrapped for being overpowered, they would get flaws added to them. And the Sue/Stu-ness would be a reason for the evil group to want their “scrapping-reason”.

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I think it would be tricky to write given you’re talking about an island full of under developed characters, but possible. Why not write a chapter and see how it starts panning out.

By the way have you read ensign sue must die? Might give you some ideas on what you could do with a sue character (or you could go in a completely different track). Just the way you were talking about having a creator/writer that came up with the sue/stu characters and is dictating what their fate is.

http://interrobangstudios.com/comics-display.php?strip_id=989

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