Subject: First order of business: calm down.
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Posted on: 2014-04-10 12:53:00 UTC

The first thing you need to change is that you need to calm down. Going into "?!" isn't going to help anyone, least of all yourselves.

And now, we need to establish something: if you're thinking of us as angry at it, then... well, I imagine that if your character's "redesign" involves trivializing a very serious mental illness, Miah probably was a little miffed.

So ultimately, the answer to all of your questions is: the best way to deal with the Sue Curse is to slow down and think about the characters you're creating for longer than two seconds. Don't just throw characteristics at your characters: think about how these characteristics could affect the characters first and how that might affect other characters. And most importantly, don't think of the "what", but of the "who"; and yes, there's a pretty big difference between the two. As one of Wil Wheaton's guests on TableTop once said: "who are these people, what do they want, and why should I give a shit?" are the three most important rules of writing.

Thirdly, take your time. Improvement doesn't come immediately. Hell, I used to be a terrible author in my own right (and in fact, I'm currently in the process of MSTing one of my old shames elsewhere on the internet), but I eventually got better. I'm almost certain that you'll get better too.

All in all, it takes time to be able to write stuff pretty well. So don't be afraid of not producing anything immediately. You don't have to.

(And on a side note... You got the DID idea from Nord? That... actually explains a lot about the idea itself, and why it's so damn terrible and ill-fitting with things that are not his own fiction.)

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