In the first instance, we try to sell our novels to the American market.

Why would we do this when the Australian market for fantasy is so good at the moment?

The Australian market is extremely difficult to break into. I’m not saying it’s impossible—we’re still trying—but it’s a very small market. Once you have pitched to the small number of agents who accept submissions, and to the even smaller number of publishers who do, you have nothing left.

The US and UK markets are bigger. We chose the US market.

As Australian writers though, just how much should we change our work to suit the American market?

I’m not talking tone here, but the little things that are different between countries that may make an American reader go, ‘Huh?’. Or the spelling, or even the size of the paper we submit on.

In Barrain Melissa goes around to the boot of the car to get the backpack Scott takes on the hike with him.

If we pitch this story to US agents and publishers, should we make this a trunk?

What about spelling. Australian spelling favours English spelling rather than American. Colour rather than colour, grey rather than gray, and so on. Or as jeeagle-ga, one poster on the google answers site puts it, “gray is a color, grey is a colour”.

I also tend to favour ‘ise’ endings, rather than ‘ize’.

Even that paper size is a question. If I am trying to sell to a US market, how much do I damage my chances by using A4 paper?

I don’t know.

I don’t know how much difference any of these things make to trying to make a sale.

We don’t bother worrying about these things when we write. Before we submit something to the US market we run it through a US spell checker, but that’s about all we do.

If I found out that the paper size really harmed our chances, I might order in some letter size paper, but haven’t done so to date.

As for words like ‘trunk’. I’d probably leave them for the agent or editor to tell us to change before we touched them.

A fellow writing-workshop member introduced me to the Mary-Sue test.

A true Mary Sue is a surrogate for the author. But not just any surrogate… oh, no, far from it. MS is not merely a stand-in for the author. Instead, she is the embodiment of all that is true, good, and holy. She immediately wins the respect and affection of all the canonical characters, and, if the story is a romance, the undying love of whoever the writer has a crush on. She is brilliant. She is beautiful. Her hair is never out of place, even when she has a flowing mass of (fill in the blank) locks. Her career, interests, and personal beliefs are eerily similar to the author’s own. She always holds the key to the mystery. She knows how to work the computer. The slavering, vicious guard dogs curl up at her feet and gaze up affectionately. If she dies, she does so bravely and for the sake of others. In various science fiction fandoms, she occasionally saves the universe while she’s at it.
Eshva, Whatever Happened to Mary Sue, based on a definition by The Divine Adoratrice [whose link was broken when I tried to look up the original]

There’s a good entry on Mary-Sue’s in Wikipedia, and they even point you to some of the tests you can take to see whether your character is a Mary-Sue or not. My favourite is the Ponyland Express test.

One of the things about a Mary Sue is that no-one likes them.

I find it fascinating that a character the author loves so much is so intensely disliked by everyone else, particularly when these characters are based on the author him/herself.

Mary-Sues originated in fan fiction. Most of the reason no-one likes them is because they’re too perfect, and they take over the story to the detriment of other characters. Not a good thing when a fan goes in to read fiction about their favourite characters and this perfect (in every way) stranger takes over the story.

I took the Mary Sue test. My character was not a Mary-Sue, but I was warned that I had to care a little more for my character.