This site provides writing advice and superhero comedy. If you're writing a superhero story, you will probably find our superhero-themed articles especially instructive.

Would you like to subscribe to our RSS feed?

Hello.

I got the grant! This means that I’m contracted to finish most of the novel this summer, but I hope to finish all of it. Well, “finish” is a strong word, given that the editing and rewriting will take an intense amount of time. But the first draft will be (mostly) complete.

I finished version 1.0 of Only Human, which I have called DARC Continent and Grim Prognosis before. You’re supposed to read it after Best Investigator, but it chronologically comes first; it’s essentially the prequel. All things considered, that’s probably sloppy and needlessly confusing writing, but actually STARTING the story with Mallow seems too unnatural at this point. So hopefully you can deal with reading a prequel.

Grim Prognosis will take a lot of work before it will be publishable. I expect that I’ll end up putting another 30-50 hours of reading/editing/rewriting before I even get it to the point where I feel confident sending it (as part of a larger work) to a publisher… who will give me an editor.

You can see what I have planned for the 9-10 short stories at the Storyboard. As for the chapters that I have already completed (labelled 1, 12, 15 and 20 under Chapters in the sidebar), I will work those into the short-stories focused on Oliver Ryan, Hunter, and/or Dr. Fox/Catastrophe. Probably mostly Ryan.

I’m still working on the Best Investigator revision. I’m dealing with a problem I don’t quite understand; a significant amount of my audience was hopelessly confused, so much so that I think the work approached anger-inducing levels. That kind of problem is a bit more complicated than grammatical or diction choices, so it’ll take me time to resolve.

I just updated the storyboard.  Now you can read a short description of the nine short stories I plan to make the book consist of.

This article will help female authors avoid some common pitfalls of writing male characters, perspectives and narrators.

Common Problems

The most obvious problem is relying on unrealistic stereotypes. Readers of both sexes loathe muscle-bound cavemen and sobby, helpless women. Don’t insult your readers’ intelligence.

Less obviously, many female authors shun stereotypes that are realistic. I’ll say much more about some realistic stereotypes later, but men do talk less about their feelings than women, particularly with other men.

Third, the author might not appreciate the differences between male and female perceptions. This is really crucial. Women writing male characters tend to linger on descriptions of scenery and what the character sees or feels. Generally speaking, male readers feel that it’s creepy when men describe something at length. Let me demonstrate.

One female classmate wrote a scene with a male narrator and his male roommate. The first characteristic the narrator mentioned about his roommate was his eye-color. That feels creepy because it suggests a level of closeness uncomfortable to most US guys. Later, the narrator focused on other weird details, like how buff the roommate was. It sounded like he ogling his roommate. The roommate says “stop staring at me” and the narrator asks “can I help it if I have such a sexy rommate?” The author meant that to sound sarcastic. But male readers assumed that the narrator really was gay. Try to keep your readers on your page.

Men are also more likely to offer details that are directly plot-relevant. For example, a male author wrote a story where a male narrator describes the passengers on the bus at some length. The narrator mentions some unusual details, like their ethnicities and the quality of their clothing. Virtually every male reader at the workshop readily concluded that the guy sounded creepy and sinister. The narrator turned out to be a terrorist. The guys weren’t surprised, but many female readers thought that it came out of nowhere because they thought that details like “I was sitting next to a suited white and a Hispanic in a coat” were just scenery.

Real males and females generally have different styles of tone, language, nonverbal communication and preferred subjects of conversation. Especially at younger ages, males and female sound very different. I’m reluctant to use myself as a baseline male, but I know that I talk a lot of smack– that is, when I’m playing something like bowling or fantasy football, I let my friends know how guilty I feel about their certain destruction.

In terms of subjects of conversation, I think that men are generally less likely to talk about people outside the conversation than most women. Men are also less likely to talk about their social status (how others view them). Men react to social status, of course, but I feel it’s something that they generally talk about less. They may be quietly resentful that someone less qualified got the corner office, for example.

This next one is a cheap stereotype, but I think it has enough validity to mention: sports! Many, many men are diehard fans of at least one team, usually from their college or hometown. I think that watching sports serves three main purposes for men: 1) it’s a nice way to socialize with other guys and 2) I love competing with my friends through March Madness pools and fantasy sports, even though I’m thoroughly unathletic, and 3) many men live vicariously through their teams, particularly college teams. Men really care that their school wins– a national championship says something! (What, exactly, is less clear). In fact, it’s hard for me to get through a job interview without a male consoling me about the plights of Notre Dame’s football program. (Don’t worry, Irish faithful! We’ll have a winning season next year).

I think that women generally appreciate that sports are important to men, but I think that women authors sometimes have problems with sports scenes because some women are unable to hide their contempt of the ritual. I think most men (and at least one woman!) are similarly contemptuous of Grey’s Anatomy and other luridly sexed-up dramas. If you treat either football or Grey’s Anatomy as an inherently frivolous activity that has no bearing on anything that matters, you may be missing the point. Of course they’re frivolous. But they are serious as far as men/women take them seriously and use them as socialization tools.

I’d also like to mention a quick psychological difference between men and women. Men more often think of things in absolute, rigid terms like weight and other measurements. Directions from men tend to sound like “turn left on Oak Street after driving a mile down Winchester.” Women are more likely to use landmarks, like “turn left at the orange house”.

Now I’d like to talk about stereotypes in general. Stereotypes are a major part of believability. For example, any Marine could be a pacifist, but everyone knows that Marines generally aren’t. Likewise, you can break any gender stereotype, but it gets harder with each character. If all of your guys act like women, that will probably bother readers.

Because everyone knows at least some males, we all have expectations (stereotypes) about what a male character should be like. So I would encourage any woman writing a novel or story about a male character to be bold. Don’t be afraid to show men acting or thinking differently than females… we’re not just women with short hair! The worst case scenario is that your guys are too stereotypically male, which is easy to fix. Beta reviewers can point that out for you. It’s much harder for a beta reviewer to circle a passage and say “this is too timid– I think this guy should be more masculine here.” So I urge you to paint in bold strokes , rather than worrying about offending men or looking unknowledgable.

ADDENDUM: Male Dialogue: Functional Conversation

I mentioned above that it would be unusual for a guy to describe another man in terms of his eye-color because that suggests intimacy. Generally, guys avoid physical descriptions unless they are directly relevant to the conversation. “Dunking on John is hard because he’s so damn tall.” Usually, men describe other guys in terms of what they do, even if what they do isn’t directly relevant to the conversation. I overheard this on campus.

Female: Is John a nice guy?

Male: I think so. He’s in my physics class.

Is John being in the guy’s physics class really relevant to whether John is nice? Probably not (although the guy might have seen John doing something polite in class, like holding the door for someone). I think that it’s better to interpret the physics detail as a functional definition of John: “I know John as my physics classmate.” The subtext is that he doesn’t feel very confident about his ability to assess whether John is nice. (NOTE: Perhaps even more so than women, men are dreadfully hesitant to use the phrase “I don’t know”).

My impression is that women are somewhat more likely than men to define people in terms of relationships, even if the relationship isn’t entirely relevant to the thrust of the conversation. For example, both of my parents hate Tom Brady. This is how they explained themselves.

Dad: Tom Brady learned real bad sportsmanship from Michigan. No real athlete would run up the score so much.

Mom: He’s treated his loved ones awfully. The mother of his children doesn’t want anything to do with him!

The functional-relational distinction gets blurry here. It would be far too simple to say that “women only think about relationships and men only care about impersonal considerations.” For example, Dad implicitly draws on his own relationship with Michigan and Mom’s objection relates to what Brady has done, been an ass to his family. But I think the distinction is somewhat useful because Mom focuses on actions in the context of Brady’s relationships and Dad focuses on his Michigan relationship in the context of an impersonal goal, like sportsmanship and chivalry.

Good luck! If you found this article helpful, you’d probably enjoy our other articles on writing. our other articles on writing here. If you would like beta-reviewing assistance, please drop us a line at SuperheroNation-at-gmail.com . Our waiting list is generally around a week.

Most novels consist of a series of chapters. Chaptered works vary in a few ways.

• Average length of chapter. Short chapters, used sparingly, can be dangerously effective. NOTE: This does not contravene Rule #318: An author can only use a chapter with fewer than twenty sentences once a story and fewer than twenty words once in his career. Sorry, no exceptions.

• Changes in perspective (whether the narration is first-person or third-person). For example, the third-person narrator in the Harry Potter books only rarely shifts from Harry’s perspective. The non-Harry scenes, generally a Voldemort kill scene, always precede the rest of the book.

• Experimental writing, most of which is pretty weird and essentially impossible to publish or sell.

• Chapters that aren’t in chronological order. In nearly every novel, the first chapter describes what happens first and the last chapter covers what happens last. By contrast, in Superhero Nation, the first set of chapters (Lash’s origin story) actually happens after the second set (Mallow’s origin story). Deviating from chronological order is really dangerous. Readers, particularly Westerners, expect chronological progression and will likely be annoyed and/or confused by anything else. If you plan to use a non-chronological work, consider these obstacles.

1. It’s often hard to follow the flow of the story. What causes what? If we’re on page 50, which of the previous pages should guide our understanding of what is happening now? The more you flip around, the more these extremely basic questions will torment your readers.

2. Readers have trouble constructing a mental timeline. Readers expect to be able to put the chapters in chronological order easily. There can’t be any ambiguity. Is it clear whether chapter 4 happens before, after or concurrently with chapter 3? If not, you have committed authorial malpractice. One source of ambiguity is that the author hasn’t entirely fleshed out which chapters happen in which order. Make up your damn mind and make a timeline for your easy reference. If you don’t know the order of your story, your readers never had a chance.

3. Non-chronological structure seems gimmicky. It should be clear why you chose this unusual and jarring structure. Hopefully you didn’t wake up one day thinking “wouldn’t it be neat to write a book in reverse order?” Unfortunately, many writers that make unusual structural choices are essentially looking to do something “neat” rather than something effective. In Superhero Nation, I used a bit of reverse chronology to play on audience expectations that the story starts with the hero’s arrival. By the time Lash has superpowers, Jacob Mallow has already spent six years preparing his scheme. I feel that starting with year six, going to year one and then proceeding in order shows that Superhero Nation is about more a larger group of heroes and villains rather than a single hero. There is a cost in comprehensibility, but I mitigated that by moving the reader’s perspective backwards at only one point, where Lash’s arc ends and Mallow’s begins. So, instead of going from 1-2-3-4-5, we go from 4-1-2-3-5.

• Chapters that aren’t in the same tense or frame of narration. For example, I once wrote a short story that consisted of two parts, the first a scene narrated by the main character and the second a newspaper article describing what happened to him (he went crazy and killed someone). This is jarring, but your audience will probably understand what is going on. The main problem with changing the frame is that it feels gimmicky and often isn’t necessary. For example, in the above example, I probably could have shown the newspaper by having the narrator read it in prison. That would have kept the frame constant.

• Chapters that have no chronological order. This is distinct from and much weirder than rearranging the chapter order. For example, the more normal version might have a chapter order that goes 4-1-2-3-5. In this tamer version, there is a chronological order, but the writer has to lay it out for us because it isn’t what we expect. Some experimental fiction has no chronological order, which means that readers are meant to go through the chapters in whatever order they like. The story is different for each person and there isn’t an objective timeline to understand the story with. This is (perhaps) theoretically a neat idea, but no one but English majors will actually start, let alone enjoy, the resulting work. You also have to consider that writing your chapters so that any one could flow into any other would make all of your chapters terrible. This structure is hugely gimmicky and I heartily discourage it.

The Evolving Chapteration of Superhero Nation

Originally, I wrote Superhero Nation as a set of around ten over-sized chapters that would each give the perspective of a different character. For example, chapter 1 focused on Lash, chapter 2 focused on Mallow, chapter 3 might have been Paingod, etc. That approach was deeply flawed for many reasons, some of which have probably occurred to you.

You can’t have ten main characters. Sustaining even five major characters is quite difficult. Every additional character strains your reader’s ability to keep them all apart. Captain Carnage… which one is he, the gungho Marine superhero or the ordinary drill instructor? You can paper over this problem with distinct names/mannerisms to some extent. But even if your readers can keep the characters apart, that doesn’t mean they can understand the more complex roles characters play in your story. For example, what do their relationships look like? How do their agendas and objectives relate to the plot?

Each additional character makes relationships exponentially more superficial. The typical fantasy story has one main hero, two major characters that help the hero, a villain (or group of villains) and then maybe an object character that is only developed to the extent that she’s the hero’s girlfriend and she’s been kidnapped. Side characters come and go, but it’s usually pretty easy to understand how they tie into the relationship web.

For example, in Harry Potter you have Harry, Hermione and Ron. Then you have the villainous group, Voldemort/Snape/Malfoys. Harry doesn’t really have an object character, but you could make the case for his parents (whose only defining characteristic is that they’re what Harry lacks). This is all pretty simple. When Dumbledore and Neville are introduced, it’s pretty obvious that they will like Harry’s gang more than the bad guys. This model also handles slightly more complex situations well. The two major friends will often perform as foils, characters that contrast each other in a few key ways, usually to help illustrate tension or conflict. For example, Ron was impulsive and rebellious but Hermione was methodical, reserved and cared more about playing by the rules. What often happened was that Ron and Harry would do something rash and then Hermione would act in a way that illustrated the consequences of their actions.

Hopefully all that is pretty simple. Now let’s imagine a much more complex situation.

· There’s no central hero. Every hero’s perspective seems at least somewhat flawed and no one seems unquestionably heroic.

• Instead of a Cold War-esque breakdown between two roughly monolithic good and evil blocs, the good guys and bad guys both consist of several infighting groups. To be especially confusing, let’s say that the fault lines between some of these groups are unclear and situation-based and that some of the “groups” are really just a single person who isn’t aligned with anyone else.
• Confused yet? Let’s throw in the variable of setting. Before we worked with a relatively simple setting that draws on reader experiences but adapt them so that real doesn’t confuse their interpretation of the story. We know what British boarding schools are like, but we don’t know anything about magic. To the extent that we have any political preconceptions going into Harry Potter, we all agree with the author that the Nazi-esque Death Eaters are bad guys. What if we wanted to make a setting that was more complex? For example, instead of a Manichean fight between absolute good (anti-Nazism) and evil (Nazism), let’s divide the good guys between liberals and conservatives. Each group is still pretty heroic but sparring with the other. Then let’s throw in a few independents and libertarians, just for kicks. Each reader will likely reach different conclusions about which characters are acting most justly in a given situation.

Have you deduced yet that this utterly baffling world of relationships is Superhero Nation? My premise is inherently more confusing than Harry Potter. Having many characters, particularly ones that aren’t really central to the plot, is a recipe for catastrophe. I’d have conflicts that are both confusing and under-developed.

The third and final main problem is chapter length: chapters that are 8000 words long don’t work. The chapters are too hard to finish and it squanders a prime authorial asset (chapter breaks).

The Evolutionary Imperative

For the above reasons and even more, having ten different points of view obviously wasn’t going to work. I’ve made some changes but am still evaluating whether I’ve gone far enough.

• I drastically cut down the cast to five main characters: three anti-heroes, one villain and an anti-villain (Agent Orange). Incidentally, you can see all of these characters in my header art (from left to right: Lash, Agent Orange, Jacob, Catastrophe and Oliver Ryan).
• I’m still cutting down chapter length from an average of 8000 words to somewhere between 1500 and 2000. That’s 5-7 double-spaced Word pages, a length I think is pretty reasonable.
• Changing perspective at chapter breaks can easily confuse readers. If the author does it once, readers will have to wonder at every chapter break whether the perspective has changed again. Soon I Will Be Invincible suffered from unclear narration, I think. It had two narrators that sometimes switched at each chapter-break. Sometimes I read through the first page or two of a chapter and suddenly realized that I had actually been wrong about who was narrating. To help readers follow my narration, I will separate the book into arcs and chapters. For example, the first ~10000 words (Lash’s perspective) will be the first arc. The second arc is Mallow’s story, etc. It should be easier to determine whether the perspectives have changed, only at the beginning of each arc.
• I anticipate writing five arcs, or maybe four if #3 and #4 are really long.