I teach creative writing to 7th and 8th graders. It is a joy and a challenge.
The next few lessons are dealing with character creation and development. Sadly, too many 7th and 8th-graders are okay with blank, generic characters because they actually want to "step into" the character's shoes. I hated to burst their bubbles and explain that such characters are the work of writers who are lazy or unskilled or both. I asked them to name names of specific characters from their reading whom they wanted to bitch-slap (not using those words, of course) at any point in the novel. Many of them named Harry Potter, particularly at his angsty (super-angsty? angstier?) period during Order of the Phoenix. I asked them if they continued to read the books and if they finished the series. All my students who got to the fifth book finished the series because they cared enough about the characters to see their stories through.
As writers, I pointed out to them, they had to be brave enough to give their characters flaws and weaknesses, and I introduced the terms "Mary Sue" and "Gary Stu." I don't really like the second one--I would have used a generic name like "Bob" to designate a generic character, but nobody asked me, so we're stuck with Gary Stu.
I didn't want to spend the entire period on Sues, so I just chose the parts of The Universal Mary-Sue Litmus Test that deal with name and appearance. We hadn't even gotten to Item #14 about the character having an unusual scent when a bright student piped up,"You could be describing Twilight." "Thank you!" was my reply. "Bella Swan is a classic Mary-Sue." I hope I didn't ruffle too many feathers.
I had to reiterate that it's okay to like those books, not because I'm afraid of 12 and 13-year-old girls, but if they have mothers who are fans, I don't want those people coming after me with pitchforks. Their daughters tend to be much more reasonable.
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