Protag No-Nos

(This is Lynn's Monday Ten post for this week -Tom)

Ten Things I Hate About Your Protagonist

1. Abracadabra Erection Dude: Whenever your protag comes within the line of sight of the love interest, he raises a pole in his pants. Every time. So is this guy mainlining Cialis, or what? Also, the tenting-the-pants reference? Boring now. Please think up another boner euphemism.

2. Freckle Sprinkle Girl: For some reason the freckled protag only has a cute little collection of maybe six freckles on her nose. Real women with freckles generally have them all over: on the shoulders, chest, thighs, keister, everywhere. Personally the only place on my body that isn't freckled are the palms of my hands and the bottoms of my feet. Do the freckles right or lose them.

3. Inexplicably Stumped PI: The mystery PI protag who cannot figure out whodunit until the last page of the book when I got it by page 50? Kill him or her and make someone else the protag. Or I will in my next novel.

4. Love Scene Interruptus: If your protag has more than two love scenes interrupted before mutual cookies are had, he or she is pissing off your reader. Have them do what everyone who gets interrupted does: unplug the phones, lock the doors, turn off the cell phones, pagers and whatnot, put Rover in his kennel, leave the shotgun on the nightstand and keep a can of mace within reach.

5. Needle Teeth: If your vampire protag leaves "pinprick" holes in his blood donor's flesh, it means he or she has needle-thin teeth. Which makes him or her a pinhead. If you're writing vamp fiction but have never personally bitten anyone, take a standard #2 pencil and stab a piece of styrofoam. See the hole it leaves? That's about the size of a standard vamp bite wound. Double it and you've got the bite mark. And repeat after me: Puncture wounds are not pinprick-size unless THEY ARE MADE WITH A PIN.

6. Oncoming Betrayal Headlights: When to rethink the simplicity of your plot and your protag's brain: 1) if the protag cannot see the Major Screw-Over coming at them at warp ten until the anti-matter reactor blows, 2) it involves the protag's love interest and the protag's best friend having wild monkey sex on the protag's bed, desk, sofa or car backseat, or 3) your beta reader spends three chapters muttering, "Come ON, dumbass, wake UP."

7. Supermodel Family Girls: It's been my experience that stunningly beautiful women are devoted to their mirrors, their hairdressers, their mirrors, their botox treatments, their fasting regimes, their mirrors, and their mirrors. If your Heidi Klum-Klone protag was a real woman, she'd be too busy getting parts of herself waxed to have time to spend the afternoon with Stroke-Afflicted Mom at the Disneyworld version of a nursing home.

8. Too Sexy for His Shirt: If your protag spends more than half the novel wearing only cut-offs or pants, you are naked chest-obsessed and he's probably freezing. Put some clothes on him for God's sake.

9. Unconvincing Flaws: Forgetting to water the plants, giggling and dropping things are not character flaws. They're what my twelve year old does when she's not watching Animal Planet or playing The Sims. Give me the real deal.

10. Wolverine Wounds: (Majorie can skip this one) When your human protag is significantly wounded, and does not receive professional medical treatment, they should feel some pain, ooze, groan, experience weakness and dizziness, pass out or at least need to go lie down for a while. This is not the time they should take on the Evil Overlord and his minions, have a sex marathon with the love interest, climb a mountain, duel, run laps, work out, or all of the above. If the wound is open and they do all that stuff they will BLEED TO DEATH.

Mary Sue Anonymous

A tall brunette walked to the front of the meeting room and stepped up to the podium. "Hi, everyone. My name's Jane, and I write Mary Sue novels."

"Hi, Jane."

"I've been coming to meetings three times a week for nine months now." Jane toyed with a thread hanging from the end of her sleeve. "I was feeling pretty good, and confident about earning my one-year chip, but this past weekend, I . . . I fell off the wagon."

Most of the audience shifted in their seats.

Jane pushed her shoulders back. "I knew what I was doing. I mean, I knew when I made my protagonist a virgin at twenty-six that I was heading down the wrong road. She's not a Christian fundamentalist, or unmarried and living in Iran. But I just couldn't bring myself to give her a fumbling backseat high school experience or a token bad marriage to an older man with regular erectile dysfunction. It's stupid, but . . . I really thought I could handle it."

Someone snorted loudly. A middle-aged redhead in the second row elbowed the bearded man sitting next to her.

"I kept writing, and made her beautiful and built and brilliant . . ." Jane stopped and covered her face with a trembling hand.

The redhead sighed. "The three killer B's."

Jane dropped her hand and bravely pushed on. "From there, I admit, it snowballed. I gave her a bottle-green Jag, and a job curating an art museum, and a Victorian mansion she bought for a song and renovated single-handedly. The next thing I knew she was gardening, raising hybrid roses and tossing together gourmet dinners for one."

A lanky teenager in a black leather jacket slowly clapped his hands three times. "So what did you name her? Elizabeth? Angelique?"

"Jennifer. Jennifer Jane Fairchild." Jane avoided his eyes. "I knew it was wrong. I knew it spelled the end of my sobriety, but you know . . . God, it felt so good to write it."

A thin, balding man stood up. "Tell us about the dog, Jane."

"I don't know what you mean." Jane's chin lifted. "I didn't write a dog in the story."

Everyone stared at her.

"All right. All right." Jane hung her head. "It was a golden retriever. Never sheds, never pukes or piddles on the carpet. Sleeps on the floor at the foot of Jennifer's antique brass bed. I named him . . .Goldie."

A tattered-looking man with a straggly goatee and a black cigarette planted between his chapped lips entered the meeting room and took a seat in the back row.

"Anyway." Jane paused to sniff a few times. "I did stop. I stopped as soon as Jennifer Jane stumbled across a Neo-Nazi plot to murder the democratic, extremely popular governor of her state. A murder which only she personally could prevent, of course, at great personal risk. I put away the pages in my desk."

"Oh, Jane." The redhead knuckled away a tear.

"I don't see what the big deal is," Jane snapped. "Sure, I know the rules. My protagonist should have been a recovering crack whore hiding from the cops in a flop house room with a sometimes-boyfriend named Wife Beater--"

The man with the goatee interrupted Jane by applauding loudly. One of the women sitting near him leaned over, asked him a question, shook her head and pointed to the door. The man with the goatee rose and walked out.

Jane rubbed some sweat from her face. "It's not like I'm going to publish it. Look, it was just a story. One story."

"That's how it starts, Jane," the balding man in the front row said, not without some sympathy. "One story, and then another, and soon you can justify every aspect of the Mary Sue novel. You join a writer organization, wear pink suits, have your business cards scented and go to luncheons once a month. And you know what the next step is after that."

Jane paled. "That won't happen to me."

"You never think it does," he said, "but then suddenly you're writing the last three words of your novel." He looked around the room. "And they are?"

The audience answered as a group. "Happily. Ever. After."

Jane burst into tears.

"I think we should have a reading now, to remind us all of why we're here." The balding man opened the book in his hands and began to read. "The Twelve Suggested Steps of Mary Sue Anonymous. Step One: We admitted we were powerless over Mary Sues--that our stories had become unrealistic."

As Jane groped in her purse for a tissue, the other people in the meeting echoed the balding man's words. Down the hall, the man with the goatee finally found the correct room for his meeting. He was welcomed by that group, and invited to step up to the podium and introduce himself.

"Howdy." He rubbed his mouth, dishevelling his goatee. "My name is Nick, and I write literary novels."

"Hi, Nick."

Storm Warnings

Ten Signs That Your Personal Problems
Are Taking Over Your Novel

1. Anyone in the novel who lies to, cheats on, divorces, or is prettier/skinnier/more popular than your protagonist dies a horrific and pointless death.

2. Best friends of your protagonist are limited to: a) an affectionate and beautiful dog with a funny name, b) an affectionate and quirky cat with a dignified name, or c) a short fat frumpy unemployed gopher friend of the same gender with a stupid nickname whose dialogue is limited to variations of They should never have messed with you, Wow, you look amazing, or Gosh darn it! Why can't I be as smart as you are?

3. Courageously your protagonist struggles to hide and control a terrifying secret or secret superpower that, if unleashed, will kill every living member of the opposite gender on the planet.

4. Every character in the novel wants to have sex with your protagonist, and/or tries to have sex with your protagonist.

4a. Female protagonist: Same as #4, but no one succeeds.

4b. Female protagonist in an LKH knockoff: Same as #4, but everyone succeeds.

5. No character in the story can begin to fathom the depth of your protagonist's inner pain. Ever ever ever.

6. The only comfort your protagonist finds is by going through enormous, painful effort and nearly dying six or seven times in order to save the world. This enables the rest of humanity to escape the shadow of evil and live happy, productive, completely oblivious lives. The ingrates.

7. There are no couples with successful, long-term relationships in the story. Any secondary relationships in the novel are brief and end badly. Any two characters who stand close to each other for longer than five minutes bicker nonstop.

8. You dedicate the book to your ex, who bears a striking resemblance to the slime-oozing, black-hearted antagonist who suffers enormously before dying a violent but well-deserved death in the end. You never actually give your ex a copy of the book.

9. Your parents don't want to read the book, but you throw a tantrum until they do. When they have, you flatly refuse to discuss the story.

10. Your protagonist is an identical twin version of you, minus the trifling little physical imperfections, but wealthier, stronger, and way more respected. Your protagonist also drives the cool car that Dad wouldn't buy you when you were in high school.