4. Mary sue. Is my protagonist a Mary sue?
While Alex is visibly shown to be experiencing societal discrimination for her looks, and there are subtle details about her internal struggles with it, the first several chapters of the story show she is likely on the path of becoming a Mary Sue. This is because there are no significant or memorable moments where she showed her vulnerability in response to the discrimination she is facing from her parents, no less. So I strongly suggest writing moments of how she negatively responds to her problems mostly in the starting chapters throughout the story to open the path for her growth. This may be expressing her sadness, anger, denial, or other reactions that shouldn’t immediately start off with her dealing with it healthily or her being able to ignore it because then, that would make her detached from the readers and being a prodigy does not justify the fact that a child has an equal level of maturity with adults. She must have moments of negatively responding to her conflicts and SLOWLY reflect on it. Emphasis on slowly because readers won’t find it believable if a character immediately becomes better after a reflection. Like in real-life, growth is slow, and it’s a continuous process that ends only in death. People constantly change usually in slow rates.. Not showing a momen of weakness, or showing it but executing it weakly like showing how immediately a character changed their ways, makes it hard for readers to connect with the characters because they don’t have an internal journey of growing.
