A Mary-Sue is an idealised character without nuance. They don’t have flaws or limitations that impact them in meaningful ways, and the story’s plot and characters revolve around them. They don’t need to struggle, so their existence cheapens the tension.
Free direct speech is a type of speech presentation that indicates you are repeating the actual words of another person. You do this by surrounding the speech in punctuation (usually speech marks or inverted commas), but you do not use a reporting clause.
When a narrator quotes someone else’s words, they have some influence over how we interpret and react to the quoted words. We call this “narrator interference”.
Direct speech is a type of speech presentation that indicates that you are repeating the actual words of another person. You do this by surrounding the speech in punctuation (usually quotation marks or inverted commas) and using a reporting clause (such as “she said”).