Okay, here comes a new topic that I don't see explored very often- or at least not in a certain way.

Most writers are aware by now of the dreaded "Mary Sue" character, a character, male or female, that has abilities that come out of thin air and solve problems without any real effort. We endeavor as writers to make sure our characters have reasons for the abilities they have in story- but then, sometimes your character really is special, just not a Mary Sue. Sometimes they're extremely wise, powerful, magical or unbelievably attractive- but we swear, this specialness has limits and the character really is challenged by what's happening in story despite having supernatural abilities. These abilities do not come from thin air, they're planned, we swear!

How does one explain unique character abilities?

Truth is, all abilities you give a character or item have to have limits and origins. This is the case not only to avoid creating Mary Sue type characters, but also to avoid audience confusion, establish stakes and even just to give the reader one more thing to love about your story- who doesn't love lore?

Again I'm going to navigate this by using popular media.

Up first, what not to do featuring

D-Grayman

Bleach

Naruto

Star Wars: the Force Awakens

The D-Grayman Problem- Bad Explanations

You really do need to think through how your characters abilities would work in the real world. In many scenes in D-Grayman, Allen shields himself and a bystander from a barrage of bullets using his super powered metal claw that- is not fast, not shaped like a shield and is not large enough to block all of the bullets. Don't assume your readers are morons, if you say something works and it really shouldn't, they'll know. Of course there is an upper limit to how realistic you have to be in fiction, it is fiction after all, but if you're pretty sure a second grader could pick apart your explanation, maybe try again.

The Bleach Problem- Relevance

Does your character have a chocolate covered really amazing super awesome ability with sprinkles on top? Really think about how much impact this ability will have on the story. If its an ability you're only going to use once and it's not even going to particularly work for what it's meant to do, maybe don't explain it for two pages.

The anime series of Bleach is SUPER guilty of this. Each character has a unique sword with incredible abilities, but some of these abilities only come up once or twice in the whole series, and even then, many of them never really work all that well. However, every, single, special sword, has it's abilities explained and re-explained in detail over the course of several minutes or even more than one episode. Hell, sometimes an ability is explained that is NOT going to be used in that scene. We get it, your lore is awesome, go write a lore bible that explains everything in exhaustive detail for the super nerds-seriously, that is a thing-. However, in your story proper the amount of explanation something gets should often reflect it's importance.

The Naruto Problem- Telling more than you Show

In the first several seasons of Naruto, character abilities are explained to death. However, unlike in Bleach, abilities like Neji's palm strikes, really are used time and time again. The problem isn't that the character abilities aren't as important as the long explanations would suggest. The issue is that each ability is explained far more that it's actually used. A given battle with Neji probably takes five or six minutes- not five or six twenty minute intervals. Instead of just explaining a few details and then showing the fight, each strike and counter strike is explained in why it does or doesn't work in painful detail.

Explanations should always be balanced. If you spend a paragraph explaining how someone's powers works, you should probably spend a whole page showing that character actually using his power, or maybe have the power used more than once in several different circumstances without accompanying explanations. Let scenes breath and don't bog them down with constant exposition.

The Rey Problem- Stacking Things We Need to Explain Later

Even if you make it abundantly clear you intend to explain a character's abilities at a later date, there's only so many times you can make this excuse before your audience gets tired of it. By the end of the movie Star Wars: the Force Awakens, the audience is left still waiting for explanations on why Rey has skill with a bow staff and light saber, incredible piloting abilities, the ability to perform Jedi mind tricks, the ability to resist mind reading and tampering, the ability to see visions from the force- yadda yadda yadda, you get the picture. The film constantly gives the impression that Rey may be descended from someone important and may even have valid reasons to have every ability she has, she just forgot those reasons... but by the end of the film, we know zero of those reasons. We spent over an hour with a character, and all of her abilities felt like ass pulls, not only because of their convenience, but because we still know NOTHING!

Sometimes you really can put off explaining something a character can do until a later date, but be careful not to do this too much. Eventually it becomes too much and a reader will become confused or just assume you're pulling abilities out of a hat and you have no explanations.

Now, what to do, featuring

Vandread

Full Metal Alchemist

Ninja Scroll

Slayers

The Vandread Solution- Explain Nothing, Ever, It's all Just Spectacle.

To anyone who's seen this series, explain ANYTHING that happens in one of its actions scenes. But why isn't that a problem? One word, consistency. From beginning to end the series it's clear none of the cool weapons or robots are going to be explained, thus how anything works is anyone's guess. Really the action scenes are just spectacle, a backdrop for the characters and social commentary of a series about men and women fighting as separate factions in outer space.

In other words, the entire series is balls to the wall insane. This is about the only way I can see never explaining character abilities being a good idea- make the whole thing so insane no one is expecting better. The plot can be followed, but there is simply no attempt to explain any specifics, things work or don't work because the writers say so.

If you're going to do this, know what you're making. Don't explain some things and not others, or the audience will get frustrated trying to figure out why you explained how an M-16 works, but not a freaking gundum mech. Also, understand pure spectacle is an acquired taste, a good number of people will call a production like this trash.

The Full Metal Alchemist Solution- Method and Balance

Full Metal is known as one of the best animes of all time for several reasons-. One is just how easy it is to get into if watched from key points.

When the story wants to explain the abilities of a character, they follow a formula. First the character and ability is introduced with no explanation. This wets the audience's appetite for an explanation. Then the explanation comes, which is brief, but detailed. Then the ability is used again so the audience gets a good association. Finally, now that the ability has been firmly established in the story cannon, it's used over and over, small reminders of it's specifics being shown, just in case you forget a few things during the series' long run time. Also the series understands – once things get going, don't stop a thrilling action scene to explain things- explain before or after. It also repeats explanations, but generally after a long time has gone by.

This seems like a good point to say what exactly needs to be explained about an ability in a competent production.

Origin- We need to know how a character got his abilities. This doesn't need to be detailed, just something that tells us the ability doesn't come out of thin air. And yes "I was born this way" works. "I don't know I have amnesia" does work but only on a limited number of things, don't that as a fall back.

Experience/how was it earned- This I've seen a few writers mess up. You say your character is "well trained"... how? The training process of a character can be established a number of ways that I've seen-

1- The character has lived their whole life with said ability, thus they have adapted over time. It's like using your arms, life is how you train.

2- Name dropping an organization that is somehow known for good training, like some special forces organization or mercenary group

3- The character has no experience and fumbles around using his power like an idiot.

4- The character has no experience but an alternate personality in their head that came with the ability does.

5- We actually see parts of the training process.

6- This new ability is attached to abilities and training the character already had, thus its use came as second nature

7- The character figures things out by trial and error, which we generally have to see.

If a character gets a power suddenly and then instantly knows how to use it- that's an ass pull. Even if in story it's a well balanced ability, it's still an ass pull.

Limits- If any ability of a character never establishes limits, we never know when the characters are or aren't in danger. General limits are, range, needed resources, time limits or balancing weaknesses. We don't need to know all of these things right away, just what applies in a given situation.

If your character can throw fire but only a maximum of ten feet, it would be good to know that so the audience knows why he doesn't just blast someone standing across the hall. However, if his limit is ten freaking miles, that really only needs to be mentioned if he hits someone with his power over a great distance- that way we know the power is consistent.

(2 notes. Some characters have abilities that apparently aren't limited by certain things. In the 2000 Spiderman movies, for instance, Peter seems to manifest webbing from nothing and can do so continuously. This doesn't make it OP as apparently is has a limited range and strength. Second, just quick for anyone who doesn't know what a "balancing weakness" is: a "balancing weakness" means a character has a lot of power in one category, but is weak in another. This is like a wizard that can't take a hit himself.)

The Ninja Scroll Solution- Explain by Showing

If you're really good at laying out a scene, you don't need to explain how your character's abilities work. How Jubei's sword in Ninja scroll works, per say, is never explained. He slices and a wave of cutting energy shoots out from his sword cutting through basically everything in front of him. We figure out it limits by seeing it used in various situations. We know it has to be taken in and out of it's scabbard to launch its special attack, not just swung because that's how Jubei uses it. We know it can't be used over great distances as some  enemies manage to get out of it's range. We know the attack can be blocked by sufficiently sturdy steel, as some characters pull this off. We learn as we watch. Sometimes just showing how something works will suffice.

(In this instance you will still need to explain or show how someone acquired the skill to use his ability. And sometimes a title that suggests an explanation like "ninja" or "samurai" will suffice.)

The Slayers Solution- Show Now, Explain Later

"Didn't you get after the Force Awakens for that?" Not really. My complaint with that movie was two fold. One, the answers never came at all. Two, the things we needed to wait for the next movie to hopefully explain just kept coming and coming until we had a list longer than Al Capone's rap sheet.

In the series Slayers, characters with new abilities are frequently introduced without immediate explanation- but only one or two at a time (usually just one) and only with one or two sufficiently strange abilities. Yes, we have to wait for answers as to how Lina's "dragon slave" spell works, but only for about an episode or two, and it's only one of a few different powers she's shown using as of yet. You can delay explanations, but only for a time and only a few things at a time. Otherwise you'll start to overwhelm your audience or cause them to get jaded by so many mysteries.

Yes, explaining how abilities work is hard, but just remember a few points-

There are various ways to do it, what's important is to actually do it -or accept that large portions of your story will be seen as nonsense-. Don't give overly long explanation or explain things we don't need to know. Think about your explanations and if they actually sound reasonable. The audience needs to know limits, origin and how skill with the ability was earned. Finally, you can use suspense as to how something works, but not indefinitely and not for too many things at once.