And also, I must remove any scenes that would tempt one to portray a character as a Mary-Sue.
It's such a temptation to write a character who gets everything right. Mistakes hamper story progress. Badly-done, they make a character seem more idiotic than human. Where are the flaws in my main character? She's rude. She thinks pestering and bullying others will get her everything she wants. She hates anyone who tells her how to behave.
But I haven't quite proven that those are bad traits in context, have I? She could have those flaws, but if they do not earn her ridicule, or if no one rightly accuses her of wrongdoing without eventually being put down--then they aren't really flaws, are they?
So some people in-story think she's inappropriate. Some nag at her. Others stick their noses up in her presence. But I portray them as cruel, vain, pretentious--is that my bias, or is that an artifact of writing from her limited point of view? Am I making her look right in her point of view only; have I made it clear enough that we're supposed to disagree with her, or are objective events not enough of a clue for readers to realise so?
Character development is normally the route from these doldrums--have her grow out of it, look back, and realise how stupid she was being. That's my aim, but till the story ends the reader would probably not see much of that. That is my fear.
