“Think of a person watching a computer screen and having his or her brain patterns modified to match those of a high-performing athlete or modified to recuperate from an accident or disease. Though preliminary, researchers say such possibilities may exist in the future.”

1. As always, be smart–the competition is pretty fierce.  I have superbly qualified candidates with postgraduate degrees and years of experience applying for a minimum wage writing internship.  If a prospective writer has typos in his cover letter and/or resume, he’s probably not in the running. I’ll assume that you’re pretty smart and already have the basics down (proofread, address it to a human reader if at all possible, stick with a one page resume unless you have 20+ years of experience and/or are applying for a professorship, etc).

2.  Make your cover letter as specific as possible–what have you achieved?  I’d much rather read examples showing traits you have than you just telling me which traits you have.  For example, rather than just telling me you have drive, describe a job where you demonstrated drive.  Instead of telling me you’re creative and/or a problem-solver, tell me about a time you creatively solved a major problem.  (Alternately, if it’s applicable to the position*, look at what they’re producing and offer a concrete suggestion for improvement.  I was pleasantly surprised that one candidate looked at our website and offered an idea that was worth considering–it gives me a better idea that the candidate has something to contribute and will fit in better into our creative process).

*But keep it as tailored to the position as possible.  Entry-level employees generally aren’t hired for their ability to make huge strategic decisions and it might look pretentious for a prospective intern without any experience in the field to propose changes that would be better-suited for the board of directors.

3. Be friendly, not unlikable.  For example, if a company has a silly application requirement (like a “if you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?” essay question), your options are either 1) fulfill the requirement in a professional way or 2) don’t apply to that company if you dislike the requirement that much. Applying with an essay about how much you hated writing the essay and/or found it pointless would be a waste of time.  If the job description was absolutely idiotic, perhaps because it was written by a Human Resources professional that was not at all familiar with the position, be classy and professional.

• PROFESSIONAL: “I believe I’d be a very good fit for this position, having 5 years of experience programming for [company] in HAXIMUS, although I do not yet have the required 10 years of experience with HAXIMUS.  There may have been a typo in the job description, since HAXIMUS was introduced 8 years ago.  [Follow up with a paragraph about a notable project you've successfully completed with HAXIMUS].”
• REJECTED: “Whoever wrote that job description is obviously an idiot.”  This candidate should think more about how he/she is demonstrating his ability to work with and assist coworkers that have bitten off more than they can chew, especially considering that the person that wrote the idiotic job description is probably a Human Resources staffer reading the applications.

4. Please make sure that you tailor your cover letter and resume for each particular position.  One easy way to do so is to take 2 or 3 traits and/or key responsibilities from the job description and spend a paragraph covering specific achievements that show you have each trait or have demonstrated the ability to perform the job responsibility.  If you do so in a remotely coherent way (and are at least remotely qualified), I can pretty much guarantee that the reader will at least glance at your resume.

Please see the comments below.  Thanks!

Kahi: “At the moment, [I'm writing] a novel. Its about a world where superhumans have long been the cause for conspiracy and secrecy, but have recently entered the public eye in the last decade. While the world is adjusting to these superhumans walking among them, a mutant is discovered that has the ability to sense and create oil. The governments of the world all take interest in the mutant, and are prepared to enter into another World War to have such a valuable skill on their side.”

Target audience: “I’m not sure what the target audience would be…I’m suspecting male teenagers would be the primary audience for this sort of thing, but there is a chance that an older audience might find it interesting, as well as a female audience.”

“’Don’t sugar-coat your advice, but please try to be polite.’ While this is my first time posting something like this on an open forum, I really want to know what others think about this premise/idea.”

Here are some possibilities.

1. A lack of money.  Superheroics can result in injuries, but anybody with a secret identity probably wouldn’t want to reveal those injuries to an insurance company.  (Otherwise, they’d need to lie to the insurance company or reveal their secret identity).  Second, a lot of superheroes spend what must be substantial amounts of money on their superheroics.  For example, Peter Parker is practically on the verge of starvation (and has been evicted at least once), but even he’s buying high-grade flame-retardant fabric for costumes. Even a wealthier team like the Fantastic Four could have financial difficulties sometimes.  Their headquarter alone would probably cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year (in financing/interest, property taxes, maintenance, insurance to protect nearby buildings from FF science, building upgrades, etc).

1.1. Troubles at work and/or school.  Superheroes don’t have very much control over when supervillains attack, so they frequently have trouble maintaining a regular work schedule.  Superheroes can take some steps to minimize the damage to their day jobs, but a worker that’s frequently late and/or absent without leave will probably get in trouble with his/her boss and/or school.

2. Physical stresses of a highly dangerous job.  For example, injuries stemming from fights or overexertion, a lack of sleep and/or time to recuperate, exposure to highly dangerous chemicals or alien symbiotes, mild aging (Batman’s at least in his 40s), etc.

3. Pressure from friends/family/loved ones to give up or minimize superheroic activities.  They may be concerned about the superhero’s well-being because it’s such a dangerous job and/or the superhero might not be well-suited for the job.  Alternately, a spouse or lover may feel that the toll on their relationship is getting too high, particularly if he/she has been kidnapped or nearly killed before.

4. Disagreements with other protagonists (superpowered or otherwise).  For example, Lucius parted ways with Batman over philosophical differences.  Superheroes might privately and/or publicly hold each other accountable if a mission goes awry. Alternately, if there’s a crime or disaster where multiple superhero groups respond, the groups might have trouble cooperating–the teams might be very different philosophically, tactically, demographically, etc.  If a super-SWAT team and a team of superpowered high school students both respond to a hostage crisis, there are a variety of reasons the SWAT commandos would not want to trust the students with any responsibility.  Peter Parker is good at many things, but he’s not extremely methodical and probably doesn’t have much experience with hostage situations.  Alternately, the high school students might have trouble cooperating with the SWAT team, if they’re convinced that the SWAT team is so gung-ho they’re going to get a lot of hostages killed and/or the SWAT commandos don’t have the right superpowers for this situation and/or are using a more standard set of strategies against a completely unpredictable adversary.

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If you have a separate Word document for each of your chapters, I would highly recommend instead doing your manuscript as a single Word document with chapter breaks.  Otherwise, changing even the smallest details will be a nightmare.  (For example, if you want to change a character’s eye color, you’d probably have to Ctrl+F every chapter for the old color).  That’s a huge waste of time, particularly since your novel manuscript will probably have hundreds of changes, many of which will affect more than one chapter.  If your chapters are in a single document, you just have to Ctrl+F once and search for the word “green” (or whatever it is you’re searching for).

Fortunately, Word makes it extremely easy to break your novel manuscript into easily navigable chapters.  This should take fewer than 10 seconds a chapter, once you get the hang of it.

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Comic Book Guy: “I have an conceptual idea for a total redesign of the DC comic universe and would like to know what people of work I’ve done on the members of the Justice League.”

Here are some possibilities–feel free to mix and match.

Problem 1: The character doesn’t have a distinct personality.

A) Make sure the character has distinct traits.  Can you name 3-4 adjectives that fit your character really well but not most other protagonists in your genre?  If not, please see this list of character traits for some possibilities and this article about how to use traits to develop characters.

B) Give him at least one flaw, a trait that makes it harder for him to achieve his goals and preferably leads to some conflict with sympathetic characters.   Some authors back into rarely-interesting “flaws” like being overly modest or “caring too much.”  If you can use those flaw(s) to create conflict or obstacles, that’s fine.  For example, maybe he wants to succeed in a job where modesty is a major setback.  If you can’t use the flaw to create conflict, I’d recommend trying a different flaw instead or possibly rewriting the plot to accommodate the character.  For example, if you were really dead-set on a character whose signature flaw was his total inability to play the didgeridoo, maybe he’s growing up in a culture where mastering the didgeridoo is a critical rite of passage and/or the main way to pick up ladies.  For more on flaws and challenging characters, please see this article.

C) If all else fails, play up traits to the extreme.  Anything is better than having your character do and say “whatever the author feels like today,” and unfortunately I see many WTAFLT characters.  It’s generally easier to rewrite a character whose traits are too strong than one whose traits are too bland/unclear.

D) Make sure your plot gives your protagonists chances to make unusual choices. If 99% of protagonists from your genre would act the same way if they were in your plot, you’re not giving your protagonist a chance to distinguish himself.  If there’s a goal, a principle or a possession your character values much more than most other protagonists would, your character might make an unusual decision to protect/advance it.  For example, the fugitive protagonist of Point of Impact breaks into an FBI-guarded morgue to reclaim and properly bury his dead dog. It’s a memorable scene because the character is putting himself on the line for a goal that wouldn’t matter to most action protagonists–almost every protagonist would just skip to getting revenge or clearing his name.

E) Flesh out his perspective–what are some things he would notice or comment on that most other people wouldn’t?  What are some things he would draw connections between that most people wouldn’t?  For example, in a superhero-style world where people like Lois Lane or Mary Jane get kidnapped repeatedly, a veteran superhero (or investigator) might guess that anyone that’s been kidnapped by a supervillain for no readily obvious reason is probably very close to a superhero.

F) Force your main character to do or say at least one thing per page that he would do but you wouldn’t.  Don’t let your character get hemmed in by what you would do–most authors aren’t interesting or honest/circumspect enough to make an autobiography work.  Also, if at all possible, please force your main character to do/say at least one thing per page that your other characters wouldn’t.  That will really help the main character feel distinct.  If that’s not possible, I would recommend reevaluating whether the character has distinct traits and whether the plot is giving him opportunities to show those traits.

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Tell me a story about characters who have them. The superpowers are just a means to an end (a good story).  Rather than worrying too much about the superpowers themselves, which I think is usually a waste of time, please worry more about the characters and the plotting, which ultimately matter a lot more.  Specifically:

• The characters’ personalities and key traits.
• Their goals.
• Their unusual decisions.
• Their voices.
• The scenes the characters use the superpowers in.
• Secondarily, any unique touches on your superpowers and how you portray them.

SN guest writer Jeremy Melloul is trying to raise funds for his upcoming comic book on KickStarter.  Screws Loose is a supernatural military thriller about a team of mercenaries that finds a mysterious crate.  Even a $10 donation gets you a copy of the comic (when it comes out) and a $25 donation gets you a copy and character designs.  I have donated $150 in the off-hand chance that the mysterious crate holds a bathtub full of rabid mongeese.  “That’ll teach you to be a mercenary in a supernatural thriller!”

(I wonder if there’s any chance his thank you card will have a sketch of his characters fighting off a bathtub of rabid mongeese.  That would be the most badass thank you card I’ve ever seen).

My 2011 resolutions for SN:

• Increase site traffic from 150,000 hits to 200,000 (around 25% growth).  I actually had about 219,000 (roughly 38% growth).   
• Write at least 100 writing articles.  Including guest articles, we had about 105.
• Get published.  Not yet!

My 2012 resolutions for SN:

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I’ve already done an article on how to promote fiction with a nonfiction platform (such as a website mainly devoted to writing advice), but here are some tips for novelists that want to build an audience for a fiction website.

1.  Pick a niche small enough that you can compete in, but big enough that there are enough readers to sustain you.  Your genre and/or subgenre are usually good places to start.  For example, if you were doing superhero stories, Google estimates that there are at least 50,000 searches related to superhero fiction every month (for superhero book, superhero story, superhero fiction, superhero writing, etc).

2.  After you’ve picked a niche, figure out key search terms/phrases to target.  I brainstormed about 10 possible searches related to superhero fiction, but superhero book(s) and superhero story/stories accounted for 86% of the traffic.

3.  When you’re picking out a site name and URL, I’d generally recommend including at least one of your critical search terms.  When search engines are evaluating which sites are the best match for a particular query, they love to see the search term(s) in the title.  (Case in point: Superhero Nation beats Marvel and DC Comics on Google searches for superhero stories, and it’s not because I have more superhero stories than they do).

3.1. If you’d like to include critical search terms into your title, one possibility is including a colon phrase or dash phrase if you haven’t already.  For example, in my case, I did Superhero Nation: how to write superhero novels, comic books and graphic novels.  I’d generally recommend keeping the total title to 65-70 characters so that Google doesn’t cut you off.  (I do get a bit cut off).  There are two main advantages to including a colon or dash phrase: first, it gets more critical search terms into your title, which helps your site perform better on related searches.  Second, it helps identify your website’s purpose to prospective readers glancing through Google results.  “Superhero Nation” doesn’t say all that much about what I offer, but “how to write superhero novels…” does.  If prospective readers do not understand what you offer and how they will benefit, they will probably pass over your website. 

3.2. Your title and URL are critical resources, so don’t waste them on your name.  First, unless you’re a well-known author, people aren’t searching you out by name yet.  Second, even if people were searching for you by name, they’ll find you whether or not your name is in your title/URL.  I would highly recommend focusing instead on keywords, or at least on a descriptive phrase that conveys your genre/subgenre or what you offer.  For example, JohnMDoe.com doesn’t really say anything about what you offer, but “Crime Scene: Murder Mysteries and Detective Novels from John Doe” is a much better alternative if you’re dead-set on having your name in your title.  It also does a better job competing on popular search terms like murder mysteries and detective novels. 

4.  When you have quality content on your website, find people that would be interested in your genre and style of writing and email them a 2 sentence synopsis of the story with a link.  For example, a Google search for something like superhero blogs will probably turn up a lot of people that are interested in superhero stories.  If your niche has substantial search traffic, there are probably people blogging about it already.

4.1. As much as possible, I would recommend doing this communication gradually and personally.  Take your time with it.  A form letter obviously written to 50+ people probably won’t go very far.  I think a personal touch (like addressing the recipient by name) goes a long way.  Personally, I almost always read emails addressed to B. McKenzie or B. Mac because it suggests that they’re at least vaguely aware of what I do.  In contrast, “Dear Webmaster” emails are almost always machine-generated spam.  (If there’s a human out there that can’t find a name that’s on 99% of SN articles and the About Page, I am so sorry for him/her).  Another advantage of doing this gradually is that you’ll get better at introducing yourself, introducing your content and writing content with practice, so don’t use up too many opportunities before you’ve given yourself a chance to improve.

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My guest article about when it’s a good time to reboot a franchise just got posted at comicbooks.com.  The editorial assistance was surprisingly good.  The edited article has a slightly more casual voice than most of my content on SN, but I hope you’ll enjoy it anyway.

If you’d be interested in hosting one of my guest articles, please let me know at superheronation-at-gmail-dot-com.  I’d really appreciate if you would suggest an article topic (e.g. How to Write an Interesting Sidekick) or some general genre of articles (e.g. anything about characterization) you find interesting, but it’s not necessary.

Legolas Arrow is working on a story about superheroes fighting a variety of villains trying to take over the world.  Among the villains, there are factions that plan to take out other factions when they take over the world, and then the last faction divides into factions, until it’s the ultimate power struggle between two supreme villains. In other words, if they manage to take control, it’s like The Hunger Games; alliances can only be temporary. The story might also have various side-plots, such as the story of Shadow Assassin or what happens when half the superheroes become convinced the other half is evil.  (That idea is pending).

Prologues should be hunted for sport.  They should be in season all year round, and whenever someone brings one down they should take pictures of themselves grinning like idiots over its fallen and bloodied body.  I’m sure many authors would agree with me.  In fact, there are probably several who jumped up from their computers after reading those first few sentences and started chasing their manuscripts through the house with a rifle.

When I read a piece of fiction, I’m trying to be transported into another world through the power of imagination.  I want characters, situations, and dialogue.  Tell me a joke, make me laugh, or let me see a glimpse of something that piques my curiosity as to what may happen next.  I don’t want a history lesson.  If your story doesn’t start at the beginning, that’s fine.  Let the people who have been brought to life through your words explain the beginning to me.  Wait!  Don’t get ahead of yourself.  I don’t want characters sitting me down and reciting a history lecture either.  If you can copy/paste your prologue into the dialogue, chances are it’s terrible dialogue.

In my collection of super hero stories, I recounted how the main character met two different people within the confines of one conversation at a house-warming party:

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B. Mac likes to pick on Robin in 9 Easy-to-Fix Problems with Superhero Design. I’ll admit that I’m a bit of a Robin fan, so let’s take a closer look at the Boy Wonder himself to see what went wrong and how effective changes to a character’s costume can create an entirely new visual story of a character.

Artists have changed Robin’s visual aesthetics many times over the years and few characters needed the changes as badly as he did. By comparing two different costumes, one of his early ones from the 1940s, to his appearance in the recent Young Justice cartoon, we can see that no character is beyond redemption with some changes to his costume. Both designs are of the same hero, using some of the same costume elements; however each costume tells a very different story about the character.

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PLOTTING

1. The story’s inciting event is most often the murder of a loved one(s).  For example, in Spider-Man, Peter’s uncle gets killed because he wasn’t brave enough to take action.  One possible subversion is that the uncle got killed because Peter (or the uncle) did try to take action.  Another popular inciting event is an out-of-the-blue event that gives the character(s) superpowers–common examples include scientific accidents, alien landings, living in New York City, and miracle operations.

2. The superhero usually gets his superpowers first.  Or, at least, we learn about the superhero getting his superpowers first.  It’s pretty rare for a supervillain to start his reign of terror before the hero has superpowers.

2.1. The superhero and main villain frequently gets their superpowers either from the same source or similar sources.  For example, Green Lantern and Sinestro both use power rings.  Spider-Man and the Green Goblin are both biochemically enhanced.  Batman and Joker are both fueled by insanity.

3. Many villains and heroes share some sort of personal connection outside of work.  In New York City, the easiest way to become one of Spider-Man’s villains is to meet Peter Parker.  (Green Goblin is his best friend’s father, Lizard employed him as a teaching assistant, Venom is a rival at work, Dr. Octopus once taught him at a science camp, Man-Wolf is J. J. Jameson’s son, etc).  This may be explainable if superpowers are mostly hereditary and/or highly visible in your story.  For example, mutants are a pretty small group of mostly outcasts in X-Men, so it makes sense that they have a better chance of knowing each other and/or being related to each other than two random humans would.

4. Nuclear weapons cannot destroy anything, but hand-to-hand combatants are basically unstoppable.  If there’s anything I’ve learned from fiction, it’s that a single ninja is the deadliest force in the galaxy.  In contrast, nuclear weapons are hilariously unable to kill anything. Even in Watchmen, where nuclear weapons are the grim doom hanging over everybody’s heads, it’s a giant psychic squid that actually destroys a city. In Heroes, Peter’s healing power can be stopped by a bullet to the back of the head but not a point-blank nuclear detonation. Also in Heroes, a nuclear detonation happens within 10-20 miles of New York City and nobody even notices it. In these stories, nuclear romance killed more people (one of Dr. Manhattan’s lovers) than nuclear detonations did.

5. Nobody stays dead (comic book deaths never last).  Almost no superheroes die or lose their superpowers for an extended period in comic books.  It will never happen to bestselling characters, unless a reboot is already planned for next year.  Novels don’t fall into this cliche as often. A novelist doesn’t need to do decades worth of stories for the same character, so it’s easier for a novelist to alter the status quo.

5.1. Women are disproportionately likely to get, ahem, stuffed in a fridge or otherwise brutally slain.  Publishers usually treat highly popular characters much more carefully and the characters that drive sales the most are (except for Buffy the Vampire Slayer) almost exclusively male.  That said, being a male superhero isn’t much better if you aren’t very popular–just ask Jason Todd!

6. New York City (or an obvious stand-in like Gotham) is the default setting for most superhero stories. I think it’s because the comic book and novel publishing industries are centered there and that’s what their editors are most comfortable with.  Also, they’d probably reason that it’s got a recognizable skyline, a large built-in audience, the brightest lights/biggest stage for a superhero, etc.

6.1.  95%+ of superpowered activity will usually happen in and around a single city.  Apparently, New York City has a global monopoly on cutting-edge science–either that, or scientists everywhere else have figured out how not to turn themselves into supervillains.  PS: If your superhero activity is overwhelmingly centered in a particular city, I’d recommend having an in-story reason why.  ”That’s where the chemical spill/alien landing/origin story/whatever happened” is usually sufficient.

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A bad sidekick aggravates readers and weakens the story.  Over the past 25 years, the two-live action Batman movies with Robin have averaged 29% on Rotten Tomatoes.  The four without Robin have averaged 82%.  Here are some tips that will help you write a sidekick that will excite readers rather than make them want to stick their brains in a blender.

(Amazingly, the nipples on Robin's suit weren't the worst thing Batman & Robin did to the character).

1. If a character is actually interesting enough to belong as a sidekick, promote him to partner or superhero.  Calling him a “sidekick” cues readers that he’s probably a distraction from the character that actually matters.  If he’s not interesting enough to be a partner, you’d probably be better off without him altogether.  Alternately, you can have a character play an interesting role far from the spotlight.  For example, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) adds an interesting ideological dispute with Batman in The Dark Knight but he gets extremely little screen-time and never participates in any fights.

2. Give yourself a reason for writing in a partner/sidekick besides adding “relatability” for younger readers.  If you’re mainly including a sidekick for relatability, I think you’ll probably aggravate older readers more than you’ll please younger ones.  For example, watch Robin in Batman and Robin, Scrappy Doo in too many Scooby Doo episodes, or Jar-Jar Binks in Phantom Menace.  Did these characters at any point take the story in a direction that you wanted to go?  Or were they exceedingly unlikable and a distraction from more interesting characters?

3. Here are some better reasons for having a partner than relatability.  

• In Kick-Ass, the relationship between Hit Girl and Big Daddy (her father) was probably the most interesting character dynamic.  It was somehow simultaneously abusive and touching, both of which helped flesh him out as a three-dimensional character rather than just another ersatz Punisher.  Also, having Hit Girl be insanely effective in battle was a delightful subversion that raised the stakes for Kick-Ass.  (If you’re a superhero getting schooled in battle by a 11 year old girl, maybe it’s time to think about hanging up the tights).
• The character is a loner, but his thought processes are interesting enough that his interactions would develop him and/or the story.  For example, one of Watson’s main roles is giving Holmes a way to narrate the mental leaps he’s making to solve the case.  As the “straight man,” he’s also the audience stand-in, which helps create a contrast with the eccentric and unorthodox Holmes.
• You absolutely need someone with a particular skill to make a plot arc work, but for whatever reason, it wouldn’t make sense to give that skill to the main character.

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I made this t-shirt on CustomInk. It is a t-shirt for spectacular people.

From Ace of Spades.  By the way, some pictures had been displaying incorrectly, but P. Mac fixed the issue.  Thanks, PM!

I’m about a month away from having a posting ready for Craig’s List and Monster, but if you’re in the Orange County area (near Los Angeles, NOT the real Orange County) and need a paid writing internship, I’ll be hiring one for an awesome company that mainly sells silk neckties and tie-related accessories.   Alternately, if you have any advice about how to conduct an interview, find promising candidates and/or decide between promising candidates, I’d really appreciate that.

Wild Attire is very fast-paced.  There are a lot of projects going on, so I’m definitely looking for proactivity and the ability to succeed on a writing project without intense oversight.

Job Requirements

• The main job duty will be writing product descriptions that make people want to buy the product.  The most important skill for this position is writing–can you consistently write accurate descriptions that make people want to buy our neckties?  Can you do so under deadlines? Secondarily, I’d strongly prefer a proactive candidate that can succeed without much oversight, so it’d be really helpful to write a cover letter and resume without glaring typos.
• Depending on the writer’s skills, we might have him/her working on a blogging project in the works.  If you have any blogging experience and/or have written articles for a blog, please mention that.  If you don’t have any blogging experience but would like some, SN is always looking for guest articles.
• The workload would be ~5 hours a week for about four months (roughly 80 hours total).
• I’ll know more about the exact stipend amount in a few weeks, but it’ll probably come out to something like $8 an hour.
• It’d be a plus if the intern knew anything about ties and/or scarves, but a willingness to learn is fine.  If you know enough about style that you could plausibly offer style advice on ties and/or scarves to a newspaper reporter, definitely mention that in your cover letter.
• I’d like to encourage everybody to apply, regardless of their major(s), but this would be an especially good opportunity for someone in English, Marketing or any other major that emphasizes writing.
• We have several dogs here.  They’re very friendly, small and well-trained.  None of them have a criminal past except for possibly the chihuahua.  (But not The Chihuahua–that’s a different fugitive).

Here are some ideas–feel free to mix and match as you see fit.

1. The superhero’s job gives him a very good reason to take up and leave at crucial moments.  For example, Clark Kent has a great reason to run towards disasters–he’s a journalist looking for the biggest story in town.  Matt Murdoch (Daredevil) or another lawyer might have some good reasons to do so–some supervillains have deep pockets and any disaster scene is liable to have tons of victims that will need a great lawyer.  Successfully suing a billionaire villain (or, umm, the police for failing to take reasonable precautions to keep him in jail) could be a huge payday.

2. The superhero secretly prepares some exciting projects for work that he can unveil whenever he needs to get his boss off his back.  For example, it might be a problem that Clark Kent missed a deadline on mortgages in Metropolis, but his editor would probably look past that if Clark Kent pulled a Pulitzer-grade story out of his brief.  “Sorry, chief, I was busy triple-checking the sourcing on this Luthor confession.  We got him on tape!”  A superhero might be able to sit on a huge breakthrough in his work for a long time–for example, a journalist might spend months checking a story because rushing to print with a libelous claim against an extremely wealthy businessman could be disastrous for the company.

2.1. The superhero is valuable enough at work that his bosses and coworkers look past his tendency to miss work and/or come in late and/or incur mysterious injuries/illnesses.  For example, he might be in a white collar job where uncommon bravery is a major advantage but not many people have it.  (I mean, really, how many journalists are there that would be excited to rush to the scene of a superpowered brawl in progress?  How many lawyers would be excited to interview murder suspects in extremely shady parts of town?)  His skills as a superhero might be really useful–for example, he probably has some degree of investigatory prowess, fast reflexes, familiarity with crime/criminals, toughness, an attention to detail, unusual confident, determination and/or well-placed contacts in various industries and positions. For example, someone like Clark Kent is probably careful enough to make a good forensic accountant (although most taxmen would obviously not make very good superheroes).

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Rolando is working on a story about a superhero whose wife gets assassinated at his retirement ceremony.  That Jamaican cruise will have to wait.

Please see the comments.

I ordered a dish at a Korean restaurant and the server said “ooh, that’s spicy.”  ”How spicy?”  She just handed me a pitcher of water.

…

Conversations don’t have to be purely linear.  You might be able to develop a conversation in an interesting and/or unexpected direction if characters respond to questions and statements in unexpected ways.

B. MAC: This apartment complex looks nice…

LANDLADY: And the pool is beautiful!

B. MAC: …but I’m concerned that several tenants have had toxic black mold.  What sort of remediation efforts–

LANDLADY: –COME, YOU MUST SEE POOL.  

Here are some points I took away from this article on violence.

1. Very few people are actually prepared for a life-or-death, organ-stabbing fight.  ”Herein lies a crucial distinction between traditional martial arts and realistic self-defense: Most martial artists train for a ‘fight.’ Opponents assume ready stances, just out of each other’s range, and then practice various techniques or spar (engage in controlled fighting). This does not simulate real violence. It doesn’t prepare you to respond effectively to a sudden attack, in which you have been hit before you even knew you were threatened, and it doesn’t teach you to strike preemptively, without telegraphing your moves, once you have determined that an attack is imminent.”

2. All other things being equal, I would imagine someone that’s pretty mild-mannered and hasn’t been in many fights would probably have quite a learning curve as a superhero.  Most violent criminals (e.g. supervillains!) are used to violence that most people could not fathom.  In a savage fight, it is very possible that a superhero’s mental/moral hesitations and inhibitions and unfamiliarity with violence could be disastrous.  Superhero organizations might want to have new recruits fight nonpowered criminals in relatively low-stakes cases until it looks like they might be mentally and physically hard enough to survive a psychotic killer like Mr. Freeze or a death camp survivor that mentally ripped a foe’s tooth out of his mouth… back when he was a protagonist.  And, let’s be honest, it’s not likely that every would-be superhero can successfully make that transition.  (If you’re writing a larger organization like the Justice League, what does the group do about heroes that are so ill-suited for combat they will probably get themselves killed?  For example, maybe some get retrained as crime-solvers and partnered with ace combatants and maybe others get let go and maybe still more take on important support roles like medic or scientist or whatever that might involve some exposure to violence but aren’t as intense as actually being a combatant).

3. Although I think the author discounts the potential benefits of bravery, I agree it definitely has potential costs.  I don’t think we see very much of that in most superhero stories.  For example, violence for Spider-Man is sort of Disney-fied–virtually the only permanent costs of violence (Uncle Ben’s death) are caused by not being brave.   For most superheroes, I think the violence is heavily romanticized.  Being a superhero is more or less fun and games except when a (usually secondary) character dies and, let’s face it, he will probably come back anyway.  On the other hand, I personally don’t enjoy deep-R violence and would feel uncomfortable including it in something primarily meant as entertainment.  (For example, in Kickass, a gangster gets crushed in a car-compactor–it’s decidedly unpleasant and I’m sort of annoyed it was a laugh-line for the audience).

4.  It might be dramatic to make a hero choose between his pride and other goals.  For example, if 3+ muggers have guns drawn on Bruce Wayne, it’d be pretty banal for Wayne to flawlessly disarm the criminals and walk away completely unscathed–pretty much every superhero would do the same in that situation.  It might be more interesting if the character allowed himself to be robbed, walked away and got his revenge later.  How much is his pride worth?  Alternately, if the character does decide that his pride is worth risking serious physical injury and/or revealing that he has superpowers, have him pay something for it.  (For example, the first sign to Gary that something is not right about his coworker Dr. Mallow is that Gary witnesses several men rob Dr. Mallow, taking among other things a cherished personal memento.  Over the next several weeks, all of the assailants end up in mysterious accidents and the good doctor has his memento back.  Mallow could have just let it go, but trying to protect his property even after the fact bears a cost for him).

This is old, but classic.  However, because of profanity, it probably isn’t safe for work.  Unless, of course, your workplace is awesome.

7^th grader Priscilla Sumner lives a small town with her annoying siblings, a brainy best friend—and the most overly protective dad in the world. No yearbook photos, no news coverage, nada. Combined with the fact that her mom is always away on business trips, it’s no wonder Priscilla is a bit grumpy.

And then that time of month rolls by and she gains the powers of conjuring flames, super-hearing, and super-strength, among others. She freaks out, her best friend slowly drifts
away, more than one love triangle goes awry…Oh, and she gets kidnapped after her face appears on the local news.

Priscilla discovers her mom is a genetically-modified superhuman, her dad is a guard who liberated her from the nefarious Selliwood Institute, which wants their family, and those “business trips” are actually rescue mission for the rest of the children of the institution.

That’s only the first half of the book.

Priscilla the Great is a Middle Grade/Young Adult book with superhero elements. Everything about it was designed to have a bit of wit. Graphic novel-esque cover? Check. Witty first person narrator? Check. Sci-fi elements running on kid-flick coolness? Check.

Yet, it avoids the cheesiness and cleanliness of works like Spy Kids while retaining the fun.

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1. As always, realism is a stylistic preference.  Feel free to disregard any/all aspects of realism and write, say, a buddy-cop story about a psychotic rabbit and a somewhat less psychotic dog, or a boy and his imagined adventures with his curiously philosophical stuffed tiger, or whatever the hell was going on in any James Joyce novel.  Generally, the fans of superhero stories are more likely to cut you slack on realism than, say, the readers of military fiction, so incorporate realism because you want to and not because you feel you need to.

2.  Superpower selection.  If realism is a major concern, I would recommend shying away from powers that insulate the character from vaguely realistic consequences to actions.  For example, an invulnerable superhero can just wade into gunfire, whereas a character like Batman needs to put more thought into it.  Batman’s restrictions are more human-like in that regard, so his actions will probably feel more realistic.  Alternately, if you have a character like Superman, you can try using a variety of situations where the character has to act very carefully rather than just bumrush an enemy.  (For example, rescuing hostages, dealing with an enemy like The Riddler that isn’t actually present, a “scavenger hunt” situation like finding and defusing several bombs, an enemy like Professor Moriarty that works a lot through proxies that don’t know enough to easily incriminate their boss, etc).

• I’d recommend incorporating as many of the superpowers into the premise rather than having characters develop some superpowers later.  I think it was fairly effective and acceptable that Heroes had a time-traveling character, but just wildly crazy that Superman went back in time in Superman I by flying around the world counterclockwise.  Heroes introduced the time-travel angle fairly quickly, but in the Superman movie, it was a deus ex machina that came out of nowhere.  (Likewise, erasing Lois’ memories with a kiss was not only a deus ex machina, but also an act of raw jackassery).
• If uncertainty, doubt and/or paranoia are major elements of the story, I’d recommend cutting or severely limiting mind-reading and lie-detection.  For example, if mind-reading is a very intrusive act tantamount to frisking somebody, then it’ll be easier to write a situation where the character is vulnerable to uncertainty than if the character is free to read everybody’s mind without anybody else knowing.  Drama comes from vulnerability, so don’t use superpowers that will make it too hard to find vulnerabilities for the character.
• Especially if the story is gritty, I’d recommend reconsidering incredible regeneration powers.  The stakes will probably be higher if the character’s actions have consequences, and one very noticeable consequence is the risk of injury.  For dramatic reasons,  you might want to make the character regenerate faster and/or take less damage than normal*, but I just wouldn’t  recommend overdoing it so much that you couldn’t raise the stakes with an injury at a terribly inconvenient time if you wanted to.

*Pretty much every superhero, even ones whose powers are mainly mental, shrug off some hits that would put the average person in a hospital for weeks.  Having heroes get hospitalized for weeks after every fight probably wouldn’t be very interesting.

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One major obstacle to getting a superhero novel published is marketability–can your novel convince publishing professionals that it is likely to sell many thousands of copies?  This might be a bit counterintuitive.  Even though superhero stories have sold billions of dollars worth of movie tickets and dominate one branch of the publishing industry (comic books), superhero novels are not known for strong sales.  Here are some tips based on the superhero novels that have been most successful.

1. Please make your novel at least reasonably intelligent.  A superhero comic book or movie might conceivably become a bestseller despite being pretty idiotic.  (Batman and Robin sold ~$240 million worth of tickets, for example).  Comic books and movies have other things to fall back on besides the quality of the writing.  Novels, not so much.  For one thing, the target audience for novels is people that actually willingly buy novels, who tend to be more literate than the population as a whole.  Consequently, the most successful superhero novels (notably The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and the Wild Cards series) tend to be more complex than just action. For example, Amazing Adventures and the first few* Wild Cards books  were historical chronicles and AA had more action for an artist escaping Nazi-occupied territory than it did for any superheroes.

• Imagination.  Does your story have elements we haven’t seen before?  If we have seen plot elements before, are you executing them differently and/or more interestingly?  For example, Amazing Adventures deftly handled a stranger-in-a-strange-land with a great ear for the artist’s unusual-sounding voice and some interesting use of his cultural background.  In contrast, the Superman series bends over backwards to make Superman’s transition to Earth as seamless and undramatic as possible.  (Superman looks exactly like a stereotypically attractive human, his English is utterly nondescript, his superpowers don’t create enough problems for him, there are few if any cultural differences in play, etc).
• The ability to make connections and offer themes that are not necessarily obvious.    For example, The Incredibles has a few scenes where superheroics get mistaken for adultery/inappropriate love.

*Thanks to John for the correction there.

2. It might help to consider a setting besides “pretty much any modern First World city.”  I think it’s more acceptable for superhero comic books to use a more or less generic city as the setting.  (Besides the names of the villains, is there anything that could happen in Superman’s Metropolis that couldn’t happen in Spider-Man’s New York or Green Lantern’s Coast City or vice versa?).  If you’re doing a novel, I’d recommend looking harder at more flavorful, distinct examples (inside and outside of the superhero niche) like Batman’s Gotham, Terry Pratchett’s Unseen University (and probably Ankh-Morpork generally), Watchmen’s New York, Transmetropolitan’s The City*, Harry Potter’s Hogwarts, maybe Dresden Files’ Chicago and Making the Corps’ Parris Island.  Also, whereas most superhero comic books and movies are set mostly on modern Earth, quite a few successful superhero novels have experimented with historical settings (e.g. Amazing Adventures and Bitter Seeds are mostly about WWII and the buildup to WWII and the first few Wild Cards books cover the period from WWII to the present).

*Vastly more interesting than it sounds.

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