Dec 30 2007
List of Superpowers
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Generic Physical Abilities
- Superstrength
- Speed
- Durability
- Agility/reflexes
- Healing/regeneration
- Supersenses
- Sight/hearing/smell/taste/touch
- Sensing danger (spider-sense)
- Sensing other types of events (dishonesty, murder, etc.)
- The ability to remove senses (like inflicting blindness, etc.)
- Longevity/immortality
Forms of Transportation
- Climbing/wall-crawling
- Swimming/water-breathing
- Flight
- Teleportation
Time-Based Abilities
- Temporal manipulation (like The Matrix)
- Time travel
- Prophecy
Elemental Control/Manipulation
- Basic elements (fire, electricity, water, earth, wind)
- Light and/or darkness
- Gravity
- Magnetic forces
- Radiation
- Energy
- Sound
- Nature
Generic Mental Abilities
- Skills and/or knowledge
- Popular categories: science, mechanical, computer/electronics, weapons-handling/military, driving, occult/magical.
- Super-intelligence
- Resourcefulness (“I’m never more than a carton of baking soda away from a doomsday device”)
Psychic Abilities
- Telekinesis (moving objects mentally)
- Telepathy (reading minds)
- Mind-to-mind communication
- Mind-control
- Possession (total mental control)
- Memory manipulation (may include creation/alteration/deletion)
- Mentally generated weaponry
- Mindblast
- Ability to locate someone mentally
- Forcefields
Biological Control
- Acid/poison
- Controlling plants and/or animals
- Animal morphing
- Ability to take on someone else’s appearance
Miscellaneous
- Elasticity
- Self-destruction
- Self-liquification
- Gaseous form
- Growth/shrinking
- Self-duplication
- Invisibility
- Absorbing someone else’s powers
- Negating someone else’s powers
- Luck manipulation (good luck for hero and/or bad luck for enemies)
- “Psychometry”– the ability to learn things about the past or future of an object by touching it
- Illusions
WAYS TO DISTINGUISH YOUR SUPERHERO’S SUPERPOWERS
- Your story’s superpowers have some cost to the user.
- Fatigue. Your hero’s powers exhaust him.
- Equal and opposite reaction. Perhaps your supergenius’s brain will overheat unless he lets his mind cool down after a mental stunt.
- Energy. Your hero has a drainable and finite source of power.
- Risk to self (or others). Your hero’s powers, once activated, are hard to control and dangerous.
- Personality shift. Activating your hero’s powers transforms his personality or mindset, like the Hulk or Catastrophe.
- Loss of sanity. Your hero’s transformation makes him considerably less stable, like The Hulk or Niki.
- Your story’s superpowers have a limited duration or accessibility.
- His superpowers only last a certain duration and have to be recharged.
- His superpowers can only be accessed after a certain condition is met or at a certain time of day. For example, Captain Marvel has to say Shazaam first.
- His superpowers are only accessible after he transforms (like the Hulk or American Dragon).
- Superpowers are accessible only through a particular item, usually a magical or technological item (Sailor Moon, power armor).
- Your superpowers have an unusual origin or source.
- Because the hero’s alien or otherwise unhuman (Superman, TMNT)
- Because he’s a modified human (Spiderman, cyborgs)
- Because he has some artifact (power armor)
- Your superpowers have unusual limits
- Physical. Maybe his electricity shorts out in water or he gets really weak when exposed to Kryptonite.
- Time. Hourman’s powers only last (you guessed it) an hour.
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If you liked this article, I would also really appreciate if you could share it on Stumble. Thanks!
This site is cool. It is helping me with a short story for school and all that stuff, so keep up the good work, fellas. Time to go save the world!
Let’s not forget “Bop you with this here lollipop.”
Whatever else you can say about Herbie Popnecker, the series definitely had a voice. I can virtually guarantee that the concept of hitting someone with a lollipop is 100% original.
Thanks! Can you add more unique superhero abilities that are not common to other heroes? I’m making my own superhero story, but I have no idea what abilities to give my superhero. I need a unique power for my main character. Your website has helped helped me a lot with some of my other characters. Thanks a lot!
One way which you could try altering these powers is changing their scope in some crazy way. For example, in Read or Die!, the main character has telekinesis that applies only to paper. I mean, if you take a generic power and only allow the superhero to use it on some random category of material, that could probably create a fresh-feeling character.
Also, a few of the characters in Superhero Nation have a few government-themed powers, like being able to telepathically operate government vehicles. (The in-story explanation is filled with jargon and not particularly important). Out of story, I like that parameter because it feels fresh and makes the character about as powerful as everyone else (impressive but stoppable). It’s a problem when characters aren’t on the same power level because the villains that can challenge a strong hero would roll over a weak hero. If one hero is much more powerful than another (Superman vs. Batman), you can usually only have them work together by being inconsistent. For example, in the final episode of Justice League, Batman goes hand-to-hand with Darkseid and somehow survives, even though Darkseid is about as tough as Superman.
I’m writing a novel about a superhero. Is he overpowered like Superman? His main power is elasticity, making him extraordinary even though he’s human. He gained his powers by swallowing a piece of radioactive gum at a college party. He has been taking martial arts since he was 5 years old and has increased strength because his muscles stretch out. He can lift parts of ships, a truck, but NOT planets or skyscrapers. How can elasticity increase speed? Should his powers have limits? What can I use for his weakness? Also, he needs transformations. What could I use with his powers?
Thanks! That is really helpful for a paper I’m writing for English class.
Hello, Chulance.
That’s probably not over-powered. I imagine you’d be able to write some dramatic stories for him that aren’t as silly as pushing a planet out of orbit. Most importantly, I think that you’d probably be able to make an interesting and dramatic fight between him and regular (non-super) criminals.
“He gained his powers by swallowing a piece of radioactive gum at a college party.” I like that origin story.
“How can elasticity increase speed?” He could roll himself into a wheel or pogo-jump himself. I think that either of those would make him pretty fast, particularly if he’s in a hilly city like San Francisco or Washington, DC. Alternatively, if you want to be a little bit more ridiculous, you could try something like making him into a hang-glider or paper airplane (it worked in Paper Mario). There are enough high places (like buildings) in pretty much any city to make that work. Also, most cities will get enough warm air rising off the sun-heated pavement to create thermals that a hang-glider would be able to take advantage of. (Warm air rises, which would enable him to glide longer than he could otherwise).
“Also, he needs transformations. What could I use with his said powers?”
Quick question. When I use the word “transformation,” I’m usually referring to a species-change. So, if your guy is human, he’s probably not transformed. He may be an altered human, like Spiderman. If that’s the case, you have a lot of potential origin stories at your disposal. Mutations, genetic engineering, nanotech, radiation/cosmic rays and cybernetics will be easily understood by most audiences. I have a bit more of an explanation on one of my other comments… see my comment here.
If you’re up for a more scientifically ambitious story, you could try something with quantum mechanics, singularities, or some other distinctly futuristic technology.
The origin stories I’ve listed above are all science-fiction. Alternatively, you might want your story (for whatever reason) to be more of a fantasy. Then you could try magic, artifacts, divine intervention, etc.
wait, so what you’re saying is that MacGyver was a superhero with super-resourcefulness powers?
“You there! Give me that stick of gum. And you – your shoelace, quick! Quick, I said! Aha, I have made a rudimentary flying machine which will save us from this ominously ticking explosive device which is set to blow up the minute that I fly us out of here!”
I really love this website!
I really liked City of Heroes as well. Although the combat was underwhelming compared to World of Warcraft, I liked the CoH character creation process a lot more. Professionally speaking, CoH can be really helpful if you need to visualize what a superhero might look like, particularly if you’re a fan of Golden Age style (Superman, the Flash, etc.)
What do you think about a villain that has the power from the movie Jumper but can only jump through shadows?
Ok. I’m writing a character that has been genetically engineered by a government research program. I’m just having trouble coming up with some powers.
Cool.
But I could have thought of more.
Lilg, if you have any you’d like to offer, we’d be glad to credit you if we use them.
As for our list… when we were brainstorming, our list came out to 70 and included some wacky ones that probably wouldn’t benefit the average reader very much. (Color manipulation! Sonic attack!) We tried to take the ones that we thought would help.
Does anyone have any idea ideas on unique weaknesses? I’ve been thinking about making it more of an allergy like she could grow weaker if she eats say…….. peanut butter or my unfortunate allergy watermelon.
Oof, unique weaknesses. They’re hard to pull off. Let’s say your hero is weak to peanut butter. How would your supervillain find that out? How would your supervillain make use of that? The only solution I can think of is contrivance: your hero just happens to eat peanut butter once and get really sick and then the supervillain finds out somehow.
I’d recommend trying a unique weakness that is caused by one of his strengths. For example, if he has supervision, he might be vulnerable to intense light. If he has superhearing, intense sound might overwhelm him. Two aspects that I like about these are that 1) a supervillain might successfully guess that someone with extraordinary hearing would be vulnerable to loud sounds and 2) these could easily come up as your hero is trying to protect his secret identity. This would give him some obstacles to overcome. Also, a third advantage (over something rare like kryptonite) is that a low-grade villain could more easily use light or sound than kryptonite.
I thought of a really cool superpower for one of my villains. Towards the end, he gets the ability to take full control over a person and their abilities. The most powerful and painful part is that the puppeteer can “grant” his unwilling puppet new abilities that do not exceed his own– for example, he could grant an ice user the ability to shoot fire from his hands but at the cost of severely scorching the ice user’s palms. But doing so would cause the puppet to die after a few times.
I thought this would make an awesome super-evil ability. What do you think?
It would help to devise an excuse to explain how someone could mentally grant someone a new ability. Throwing around some mumbo-jumbo about “mental reconfiguration” might work. If you’re looking for something that feels scientific, It might help to draw in real-life science about external forces stimulating short-term improvements. For example, muscles develop in response to stress (like exercise). And genetic engineering has already created species that have new, unusual capabilities (for example, Iowa State University developed corn that can glow in the dark like jellyfish).
Aside from suspension-of-disbelief issues related to that, I think the power is a reasonably strong way to establish that the villain is truly twisted.
Ok, I have another. My main character has a sketchbook where he draws pictures of weapons, shields, armor, small alien creatures, etc. When he enters his superhero state, he can mentally summon his drawings to aid him, but he is limited by how tiring the process is. For the most part, he is resourceful, hyper and naive like all young heroes but when tested, he pulls through and pulls off powerful summonings such as the Mask of Comedy, which allows him to defend against powerful attacks, and the Mask of Tragedy, which allows him to unleash devastating waves of creative energy. Do you think he’s a cool hero? What should his name be? Also, what should his costume look like?
That sounds a lot like Green Lantern, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, I think that GL’s powers are a bit easier for readers to understand.
@ Ragged Boy: Hmm. Although Cadet Davis is right that your character’s powers share a characteristic with GL’s (both’s powers are largely shaped by their imagination), I don’t think that’s a big problem. I doubt most readers would feel that your powers are derivative or copied from GL. (Copying a popular hero’s powers isn’t usually hackish or illegal, but readers do appreciate heroes that have fresh powers).
So I don’t think that the “what” is a problem here. But I think you might be getting bogged down in the “how.” For example, giving the drawings names (like the Mask of Comedy and Mask of Tragedy) is slightly distracting. I’m not sure that the names really convey what you want the items to accomplish. For example, I don’t think that most readers would think of a “Mask of Comedy” as defensive gear or a “Mask of Tragedy” as a devastating weapon. In contrast, I think that your ideas about using weapons, shields and small alien creatures are dead-on. If your hero sheaths himself in psychically generated armor (which you don’t have to name), readers won’t have any trouble concluding that he’s well-protected. If he summons a screaming monstrosity from another dimension (name optional), they’ll know he has a devastating attacker at his disposal. Incidentally, letting him create living things is an excellent addition to the GL formula.
As for color schemes and visuals… let’s see. The character is largely powered by his imagination and, judging by the fact that he can create alien species, this story is probably more science fiction than fantasy or real-world fiction. If you’re aiming for a younger target audience, I’d recommend a sci-fi costume with bold and bright colors. Maybe blue with white accents or yellow and blue. If you’re aiming at teens and older, I’d recommend black with bright accents (yellow or green, maybe). As for the costume itself, I’d recommend either a sci-fi robe (like a Jedi getup) or power-armor, depending on what you feel more comfortable with. The robe is probably more effective and less distracting. If I’ve misjudged the story and this is actually set on a modern Earth, I’d recommend something like a Ironman powersuit or an exoskeleton. If this kid is at all insecure about being young and/or wants to be older than he is, I’d recommend that he leave little skin showing.
Ok, now that you’ve helped me with my main villain and hero, I need help with the hero’s two partners. The first is a pale and beautiful suicidal/depressed schizophrenic without an evil bone in her body. She has long, blood-red hair that she can fully control (including growing it, shrinking it, using it to lift heavy things and firing hair-made projectiles). Her defining feature is her abnormal resistance to pain and her ability to regenerate from fatal wounds, so her name is Mz. Corpse. Although she can heal, it is extremely tiresome to do so repeatedly. What do you think of her? Also, could you give any help with the costume?
My second is a prince that has rebelled against his uptight family to live a common life. He is handsome, muscular and short. He wields a large regal sword but his main ability is the power to fire spores or beams that create modified emerald crystal. He also has a parameter that allows him to detect someone or something moving. What would you suggest for a name and costume for him?
Finally, I need help with the trio’s name and base. Thanks.
http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=93096544&albumID=2013827&imageID=26846965
Erm, you seem to be very dedicated to this project, which is good. To take it to the next level, as you start crafting the story, it would probably really help to get a dedicated proofreader to help handle things like punctuation and grammar. Mechanical issues might make it hard for readers to immerse themselves in the story.
oh i dont know about that
i got a 5.5 on the writing FCAT
im a skilled writer i always proofread
[EDITOR: I'm declining to correct this, not to be a snotty bitch but because I think that the mechanical issues are kind of glaring. It's sort of traditional to use punctuation marks between sentences, place apostrophes in contractions, and capitalize the noun "I." Doing so will increase your odds of getting professionally published.]
Although I’m not familiar with any schizophrenic or suicidal heroes, I like the hair-based powers of Mz. Corpse. I have some issues with her back-from-the-dead ability. It might help if, in addition to it being tiring, it were a long process, long enough to really inconvenience her. Even then, it would take away the drama of wondering whether she will make it out alive, though.
For her costume, I think crimson and/or black are clearly the typical choices for moody heroes, but those colors are damn depressing. What would you think about brown clothes? I’m not too fond of most superheroine costumes. It’s hard to cut a middle ground between distractingly racy and boringly puritanical, but Teen Titan’s Terra had a tank-top/shorts combination that was very effective. Alternatively, if you took Trinity’s clothes from the Matrix and made them a bit looser and less form-fitting, I think that would work nicely.
The prince’s powers seem a bit more grab-baggy. Firing spores and sensing movement don’t seem very intuitive to me for a swordfighter. For his costume, I’d recommend something really plain and comfortable. If he’s rebelling against an uptight family, it stands to reason that he’d be a laid-back guy. If this story were set on Earth, you might consider something like ripped jeans, surfer shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, a t-shirt, baggy pants, etc. I suspect that blue would be a good primary color because it will offset the more somber Mz. Corpse nicely. I’m having trouble coming up with a name… what are some of his defining characteristics besides being a swordsman? (You could do something like Cavalier, Swordsman, Cutter, Epee, Paladin, etc. but I suspect that those don’t convey right the right tone).
Ouch, you just dissed my powers. Well, excuse me for trying to be creative. I may alter Mz. Corpse because of what you said about her survival doubt-factor.
As for my swordsman, I don’t want his swordsmanship to be his defining ability. I’m trying to come up with a creative power that will help him in battle, but not something boring like super strength or speed.
Other than that, I pretty much understand what you’re saying.
Oh, and in case you didn’t know, Crazy Jane of Doom Patrol was deeply depressed and borderline-suicidal.
My character has a mental blast type ability, and I have chosen a few weaknesses to go with it. If he uses his ability once or twice, he suffers no effects. However, if he uses it many times/builds up a big blast/uses it for a prolonged period, he gets these in this order: dehydration, dizziness, migraines, exhaustion, aching joints and if he really overdoes it, he could pass out. If he gets to the stage where his joints ache, he will wake up the following morning feeling sick to his stomach and so be unable (or at least reluctant) to go out and kick bad-guy butt.
Could you offer an opinion on his weaknesses? Are there any alternatives to them that would be better, or might be more mental than physical? I can’t really have him going insane because of his pyscho-blasts, but I need something which would hurt or make him grumpy.
Also, I asked about a title on “Your Title is Bad, But You Can Fix It (Part 7)”. Is there some word which would be a good alternative to “origins”? I have a question about costume, too, but I’ll ask that on “9 Easy-to-Fix Problems with Superhero Design”.
Thanks!
So it sounds like you have a fatigue parameter– the limit on his powers is how much energy he has. I think that’s interesting, especially if you have a fight where he’s mostly out of juice and has to improvise.
As for mental weaknesses, you’re right that it’s typically not viable to have the main hero go crazy (like the Hulk or Nikki). You could try something like amnesia– when he overuses his powers, his brain tries to make room by deleting memories. Depending on what mood you’d like to build, you could make the memory-deletion either temporary or permanent. Just don’t let the story lean too much towards emo angst (”life’s so hard for me, boohoohoo”).
If you go with the amnesia angle, I’d recommend trying to focus on him trying to live his life despite sometimes forgetting important details (”what time was my date with Mary?” or “Who is Mary?”). For added drama, you might consider how amnesia would affect his ability to keep his alternate-identity secret. I think friends and family would ask a lot of questions if someone who had been young and healthy started to exhibit serious memory-lapses.
Another approach you could try is how much concentration is required for him to use his powers. I imagine that one of his weaknesses would be that he’d have to concentrate greatly to use his powers. That would be a weakness because he might start “missing” with his powers, or having accidents if he was too distracted by, say, the stress of combat, lack of sleep, stressful incidents that had happened recently, loud noises, etc. I’d recommend seeing this article on unique weaknesses for superheroes.
Yours.
J.M.
I had an idea for a villain that I thought would be awesome.
He is a serial killer that had only ever loved one woman, and discovered on the night of their honeymoon that she was having sex with another man. As soon as he died, he was met by the Exchanger of Souls who made him a deal that in exchange for continuing to kill people that he would receive the ability to possess people along with other abilities. The villain agreed.
He became The Possessor and possessed his cheating wife, forcing her to kill her secret lover and now he is a villain, possessing his wife and using her to kill. He can alter her appearance, have her fire black bolts, have her seduce men into traps, and gives her increased speed and inability to feel pain but her body does later die and he continues to possess her dead body
I think he’s a cool villain. What do you think?
I made up a trio of heros that periodically help my main heroes in my comic. They are called Trioz. They consist of Dazan, Lori and Huggo.
Dazan can manipulate gravity and can teleport short distances.
Lori fires spores that explode either instantly or latently. She’s also a skilled fighter.
Huggo can manipulate many kinds of waves and change wave attributes to attack and disable his opponents. He mostly uses disruptor waves to create a vorpal sword.
What do you think?
A wife cheating on her husband on the night of their honeymoon? I think it sounds a little bit contrived. It may help to flesh out their relationship a bit more and show how her dissatisfaction with him leads to her seeking other lovers.
I didn’t know how deep to go into a villain’s origin story. I thought the surface of his story would do.
Okay, thanks! I really love this website!
Oh, another thing to do with my hero’s powers. His blast ability wouldn’t have the desired effect if he was in a small room with reinforced walls and ceiling which had no windows. He could improvise to bust down the door, but if the room is quite little, the blast would bounce back and hurt him. He also has to learn to fine tune his power to minimize or maximize the radius of the blast. How could I use this in an interesting way, and how could I show his powers developing over time? Thanks.
So the issue seems to be that his attack isn’t really precise and tends to bounce around a bit, right? If that’s the case, then it probably wouldn’t lend itself well to situations where you really need to be right on. For example, if a criminal has a gun to a hostage’s head, using his power directly against the criminal would probably endanger the hostage.
If using his powers directly won’t work, he can try a different approach. For example, psi-blasting the floor would probably cause the criminal and hostage to fall down without getting injured. The hostage would probably use the distraction to get away, and then it would just be the hero against the criminal.
Alternately, you might want to just say that there’s no way for him to use his power against the hostage-taker without jeopardizing the hostage. Then he’d have to improvise without using his powers. That’d be interesting, too… maybe more interesting, because he’d have to think through the problem in a more protracted way and deal with it in a more human way.
You could show his powers developing over time because his powers gradually get slightly more precise. For example, a completely inexperienced psychic might spread so much psychic damage around that he ends up breaking windows and furniture wherever he fights. As he gets more experienced, I imagine that his powers would become more precise and the amount of collateral damage to scenery will go down. (Also, you might consider what the city thinks of him. If he causes a lot of damage, they’ll be afraid to be near him, but as he gets more precise, they’ll probably get more comfortable with him).
He might also try to aim his powers more directly as his powers get better. For example, as a beginner he might try unsuccessfully to aim his psi-blast at a doorframe. As he gets better, he might try aiming specifically at the door’s hinges, which are a small target but much easier to blow off. It’s kind of similar to shooting a door down with a pistol. You might be able to shoot the door off by shooting the hinges, but you definitely won’t succeed by just shooting the frame.
One way in which I would recommend not having his power grow too much is the blast radius or force. Those would probably lead the character to get overpowered.
Okay, thanks! What should be his maximum range and radius then, so that he’s not too strong? I was thinking that it should fade out as it goes farther, and so be a bit ineffective for long distances or wide ranges. But he does use the same power to fly, by firing behind and below himself fast enough to stay off the ground. If used for too long, he will suffer the ill effects of exhaustion as I mentioned above. Also, another weakness of his is that if he can’t breathe properly (like if he was underwater for some reason) he wouldn’t be able to use his power either. So he’d get less oxygen to his brain and be unable to concentrate.
Could you help me? My question is above Anonymous’ but you never answered it.
Hello, Ragged Boy. Here are some random comments…
–It may help to change the group’s name from Trioz. Is there a more evocative detail you could use about the group than that they are a trio?
–The names strike me as a little bit odd.
–It might be hard working in a group of heroes as off-and-on sidekicks. If they saved the heroes at a clutch moment, they’d probably feel like a deus ex machina.
I’m sorry, I don’t think I understand what you mean when you say “I just agree with them (imaginary friends)”.
I appreciate that you want to create a fuller universe. That’s certainly a worthwhile goal. However, there’s a fine line between a name that sounds alien and a name that doesn’t quite work. This is what Jacob wrote down for Common Mistake #15.
“Please do not give aliens “exotic” names like Qwe’rty-Uiop. Strange strings of letters are more likely to feel goofy than exotic. A better way to create exotic-sounding alien names is by taking familiar sounds and then stringing them together. For example, Brad and Darian are familiar to your readers, and together they make Bradarian. If that’s not alien enough, you could cut off a few letters to make Bradar.”
Particularly with Huggo and Trioz, I feel that the names are distracting.
I’ve kinda done my own thing for as long as I can remember. It’s kind of hard for me to change my way of thinking, seeing as that’s what got me through, but I respect your advice.
Yeah, advice is all it is. We’ve brought up most of the issues that will stick out to an editor. If you offer a compelling reason you’d like not to make the changes, you can probably convince him to let you go on a few of them.
Changes to what, exactly? Be brutal.
We just sent you an e-mail outlining some of the issues. Please let me know if it doesn’t arrive.
Oh, I understand now, I’ve been planning this story out for some time now and I needed a professional opinion. I agree with your comments about the names I’ve come up with. They are a little extravagant, but I need to keep Aadrello and Jornai. I love those names too much to give them up. I will work on my punctuational as well as grammatical skills. I’m currently coming up with character design and costumes right now.
First, I thought the name “Sketch” would be a good name for my main character’s alter ego, it shows his artistic prowess while sounding somewhat youthful like the character. I was thinking of a costume that I thought would be cool, try to visualize this, a skin-tight black full-body suit, with orange and white trim and beige cargo shorts, sinched just below the knees to make his look his own.
Next, “Mz.Corpse” I was thinking Crimson and Black as the colors but as for the design I’m stumped, I want it to be sexy but not outrageous, something that Irabella would wear so it would probably be a little emo.
Finally, “Emerald’s” costume would have to have green, obviously. Since he is a prince and he still honors his family’s name, despite separating himself from them, something along the lines of a suit of light armor with green pieces of cloth hanging from it, such as a scarf or sash and his sword with an emerald-embedded hilt.
What do you think?
(I took the time to check my grammar. [EDITOR: I noticed. It's gotten considerably better!]
This may be a double-post. I think I commented on the original here.
Being an interplanetary surgeon would be the hardest job ever. Having to remember parts and organs of every species as well as the diseases they suffer…
Sort of like being a vet, except that your patients could sue you.
Or eat you.
Now, does it take the same process to get a comic published as it does to get a novel published? I’m planning on publishing my story as a comic.
Also, I posted a comment to “How to Write Origin Stories.” Could you check that out? Thanks.
I’ve never published a comic. My guess is that it’s very different than writing novels. But the first step– writing a pitch (or a query) to the publisher– seems fairly similar. For example, let’s say that you were interested in publishing your comic book with an independent outlet like Image Comics. According to its Submissions Page, Image says that you should write a proposal that contains the following information. (With some paraphrasing).
1) A typewritten cover letter with your contact information. Introduce yourself and any publishing experience you have.
2) A single page synopsis of the overall story. “We do not want a single-issue synopsis– we want a synopsis of the ENTIRE series or story arc.” Avoid posing plot-points as questions. Since you’re writing this to the publisher, rather than the audience, you shouldn’t try to leave them hanging. Tell them what happens. “You can tell us whether you see it as a full color or a black and white book, a mini or on-going series, a Prestige book or an Original Graphic Novel. There are times, however, when we may have a better idea what might fly so don’t get married to any one format but we’d like to know what you have in mind. Tell us what sets it apart from other comics and who the target audience is (’Everyone’ is NOT realistic — there’s no single book on the market today that everybody buys).
3) “Send photocopies of fully INKED and LETTERED pages (any size). DO NOT SEND ORIGINAL ART! We’d like to see AT LEAST five pages that are fully inked and lettered. If you have MORE than five finished pages, swell! Bring ‘em on! Five is the MINIMUM we want to see, not a maximum. We want to READ it. If the lettering sucks we may suggest a different letterer for the final comic book. The important thing here is that we can SEE that you know what you’re doing, that you understand where to place copy and how to tell a story.”
4) “Color is OPTIONAL. If you have a colorist and can provide color pages, great! This means you CAN send in colored pages, but you do not have to. (Although, if you want a color book, it would be advisable). We DO reserve the right to approve colorists as a poor one can ruin a decent book.”
5) “Include a cover mock-up — this lets us know whether or not you understand the market and gives us a good barometer on your design sense. A good logo can be EASILY read from across the room. We DO make people change their logos OFTEN. Don’t be fancy or artistic — be CLEAR. You can send character sketches and or bios, but not in lieu of storytelling pages — we still need to see five finished pages of sequential storytelling, lettered and inked. DO NOT send script pages — DO NOT send unlettered pages accompanied by a script and expect us to follow along.”
For an Image proposal, you would need an artist and letterer to do 5+ pages before submitting. I suspect the final price would run about $200-$400 for the inks and perhaps another $150 if you wanted it in color. If those amounts are in your ballpark, I could provide contacts for a few reputable freelancers that we have worked with before. Alternately, I could provide advice on how to seek freelancers on open DeviantArt forums, but getting defrauded is possible.
As for lettering the five pages, I’d be willing to donate that service as a general gift from the Superhero Nation community, but I can only letter the first five pages and do not have the time to provide any more script input than “this won’t fit in the bubbles– please make the bubbles larger or cut some words.”
You guys rock. I know I’m a good drawer, but I’m not ready to draw for a comic book yet. That probably won’t be for a long time, based on the complexity and level of skill I’ve seen in most comics, although an issue of Teen Titans was drawn in a style sort of similar to mine. Anyhow, I’ll need to get my story together now because I do want to make comics and be a cartoonist, if i don’t become famous in modeling and acting.
Thanks. I’ll be back if I need any help (it’ll be soon– aha).
What’s a good weakness for someone with super speed?
Superfast heroes rely on good footing and would probably need a lot of space to do things like turns. (For a real-life analogy, drivers take turns slowly). The villain could take advantage of that by building his lair so that there’s relatively little room for someone to dodge bullets and lasers. He could also make the floor slippery, so that the hero will lose his footing.
If you’d like to get more technical, speedy heroes would create a tremendous amount of friction when they ran. Friction creates heat with the ground. The villain might slick the floor with flammable oil so that the hero would set himself or bystanders on fire if he moved too quickly. If your villain is very technically savvy, he could play around with gravity. It’s extremely difficult to move around in a no-gravity environment and a high-gravity environment would also be very tricky.
Finally, you could look at what the hero is actually able to do when he’s superfast. For example, what he could he do against someone in a suit of armor? Probably not that much. If he tries punching the armor, he’s more likely to injure himself than his enemy. Generally, a superfast hero is only powerful when the enemy has exposed vulnerabilities. The villain should try to remove any vulnerabilities he has, probably with armor or something similar. Then the hero has to improvise, which could be interesting and dramatic.
I feel that the power of liquifaction and water-control are vastly underrated. Not only is it extremely powerful, but it’s very easy to innovate like how I make up the ability of mixing liquifaction and self-vaporization to create a way of short-distance teleportation. If I weren’t writing a story with Sketch, I would definitely have a protaganist with water abilities.
I think Avatar did an excellent job of showing water powers’ adaptability. They made something of a mini-theme of it. Excellent point. I will actually have Alex fight a girl with water/liquid based powers. It will prove a challenge because his powers are, yep, fire-based. He must either get creative, or call for help. Maybe both.
Water is the reason I gave Aadrello gills on his face.
I’m writing a story about a superhero that can fly. He is superstrong, superfast and can shoot lightning from his body. He and his brother got his powers from a crashed meteor. What are some weaknesses I could use for him?
If he can shoot lightning from his body, it seems kind of plausible that water would cause his body to short.
A weakness for your superhero could be if some guys holding a piece of the meteor that gave your superhero the powers, the powers that your superhero got from the meteor would leave him and go to the guy that was holding the meteor.
What are the Hulk’s superpowers?
Strength and endurance. Depending on how generously you define superpowers, you could possibly also say that Bruce Banner is a ridiculously skilled scientist.
I need heaps of facts about Hulk.
I’m not much of a Hulk expert. I’d recommend these pages instead: one and two.
Does Hulk have an archenemy?
The Hulk possesses an incredible level of superhuman physical ability. His capacity for physical strength is potentially limitless due to the fact that the Hulk’s strength increases proportionally with his level of great emotional stress, anger in particular. The Hulk uses his superhumanly strong leg muscles to leap great distances. The Hulk has been known to cover hundreds of miles in a single bound and once leaped almost into orbit around the Earth. The Hulk has shown a high resistance to physical damage nearly regardless of the cause, and has also shown resistance to extreme temperatures, poisons, and diseases in addition to regeneration of damaged or destroyed areas of tissue at an amazing rate.
The Hulk’s body also has a gland that makes an “oxygenated per fluorocarbon emulsion”, which creates pressure in the Hulk’s lungs and effectively lets him breathe underwater and move quickly between varying depths without concerns about decompression or nitrogen narcosis.
Abilities
Dr. Bruce Banner is a genius nuclear physicist. When Banner is the Hulk, Banner’s consciousness is buried within the Hulk’s, and can influence the Hulk’s behavior only to a very limited extent.
That’s what I found.
What happened to Spiderman’s parents?
And what is this website?
Spiderman’s parents were supposedly superspies that died in the line of duty, but I’d prefer to believe that never happened.
This website is a writing advice site with an emphasis on superhero-related stories, but we also offer advice and resources for the authors of fantasy and sci-fi novels as well.
Who’s your favourite superhero?
I’ll go with Spiderman. If I had to be pressed to come up with something more creative, I’d say The Hood or maybe Martian Manhunter.
Hey I need heaps of questions and stuff about the hulk a.s.a.p because I have an assignment on it.
Heart, I’d recommend Wikipedia. You may have already tried it, but there is a lot of helpful information if you look hard enough.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulk_(comics)
Yeah. Wikipedia will work fine for what you need. I don’t really know what kind of assignment you’re doing and, frankly, I can’t provide raw data nearly as well as Wikipedia. However, if you have any questions about information you found on Wikipedia or elsewhere, please ask away. But I suspect that won’t be necessary. I’m visualizing your assignment as one that’s pretty basic (for junior high or high school, maybe?), so I’d recommend not overthinking this too much.
I wonder who the world’s youngest author is.
Rub it in my face why don’t you, you tyranno thesaurus-rexes. You’re the youngest duhhh!
When I look at my comments from when I first found this site, I was an obnoxious bitch with bad grammar.
I don’t know about that. Heart, who keeps asking about the Hulk, might be younger. She says it’s for a school project, so there’s a good chance it’s for primary school, year eight or nine (that’s seven and eight by your standards) (I think).
You should see the crap I used to write! Haha. My grammar was supercallafragilisticexpealATROCIOUS!
Oh, I thought you meant out of the veterans when you said age. We need more steady repliers, it’s more fun that way.
I think our levels of audience participation are fairly consistent with the “powers of ten” model of website participation. On a typical day, we have 300-350 readers, which includes 30 regular readers and 3-4 regular commenters writing around 25 comments.
If we surmise that our ratio of daily visitors to regular commenters will always be around 100:1, we can project how many regular commenters we will have with monthly growth rates. For the last four months, our site-traffic has grown about 30% from one month to the next. If we could sustain that rate of growth, in a year our website would receive (each day) 7000 visitors, 70 commenters and 450-475 comments.
It’s not a problem yet, but as site-traffic grows I suspect that it will prove increasingly difficult for me to read (let alone edit or respond to) every comment and question. I respond to most of our 25 comments within a day. On the other hand, if we got 100 or 200 comments a day, something will have to give: either the time I put into each response or the number of comments I respond to. I’d also have to cut back on the time I spend editing and formatting comments. I can take on a volunteer/intern when the editing and formatting tasks get out of hand, but I would feel uncomfortable taking on anyone to help respond to comments. (IE: what if it turns out that they’re actually clueless? It’s a lot harder to gauge someone’s writing instincts than their ability to proofread a brief comment).
That was mean, then again Power of Ten is pretty boring.
What? Do you mean the game show with Drew Carey? I was referring to a participation model that goes something like this.
lol u guys r like imature for ur age. ur like nerds doing this website
[EDITOR: I'm not touching this one. For God's sake, if you'd like to call someone immature, don't use the word "like" as an adverb.]
Superhero stories aren’t inherently less mature than most other fantasy or sci-fi or (worst) romance stories. So, if helping fantasy or sci-fi authors is a worthy professional endeavor, then I think that providing resources for the authors of superhero stories is also worthwhile.
Heart, youthfulness makes the world go round. I’m no nerd, I’m a cannibal.
I think it’s pretty funny that she called us immature immediately after a post where B.M. was discussing business school models.
Well, if the work load ever gets too hectic… TRW, Brett, and I can take some responsibility off your hands, but I doubt we’re as seasoned as you, especially me.
I appreciate the offer. I’ll let you know if I ever start looking for someone.
Haha, I’m putting responsibility in other people’s hands that always makes for good TV.
Newflash:
I just recently mailed in my modeling/acting contract on priority shipping, so within 3-5 days I can start booking jobs. Yays *jumps up and down*
Good luck, R.B!
I hate Superman. He’s so boring.
What would you change about Superman to make him more interesting?
Superman is too God-like, that’s why he’s boring.
I’d probably give him a time limit on his powers so he can only use it about an hour each day. That’ll make things more interesting.
I like your hour-long restriction, Moriras.
Another solution I’d consider is weakening his endurance and his speed. If a bullet to the eye could actually hurt him, a fight with thugs might be remotely dramatic. As it is, Superman can only have an interesting fight with a bona fide supervillain. Unfortunately, Superman rarely runs into any actual supervillains. (Lex Luthor, really? Again?)
Most importantly, I’d cut his speed. That would add to the dramatic potential. For example, if a superfast Superman had to free a few hostages, there’s no drama because he can zoom in and take down the criminals before they could kill the hostages. That’s unsatisfying. In contrast, someone without superspeed must rely on his stealth or wits, which is far more interesting. Superspeed also tends to make the character hard to challenge. For example, if the hero is chasing the villain early in your story, you probably want the crook to get away (otherwise, the story would end too quickly). But how does Superman fail to catch anybody? He’s way too fast to let someone get away.
Finally, I’d consider giving him a weakness that’s more likely to come up often than Kryptonite.
Maybe if he had a weakness that didn’t have a physical impact on his body, but more like a mental or psychological weakness, like every time he heard a church bell ring he would be paralyzed with fear. Well, maybe that’s not so dramatic, but you know what I mean.
One thing I like about Superman is that he’s one of the few superheroes that is undeniably sane and decent. Many other heroes are so gratuitously violent and so utterly indifferent to inflicting pain that they seem psychopathic (Wolverine, Batman, Rorschach, etc).
Unfortunately, his personality is very bland. It’s as though the writers picked his personality so that he would be the most perfect hero conceivable. Ick. He’s the prototypical Mary Sue.
To make his personality more interesting without compromising his refreshing normality, I’d give him a minor mental flaw or two. Here are a few candidates I’d consider: sheltered, smug, overconfident, hypocritical, old-fashioned*, and dishonest. I don’t think those would seriously compromise his likability, but they should give him more dramatic potential.
*Just don’t make him sound like Thor. Ick.
Superman is stupid. If I had to change something it would be very hard for I would have to change everything!
OK, if you were starting from scratch, what sort of hero would you write?
There’s something about Spiderman that annoys me. He’s all “with great power comes great responsibility”, but whenever someone directly threatens his family, he doesn’t care! In Spidey 3 when he’s battling the Sandman and thinks he’s killed him, since when does that become acceptable? I mean, it’s a human life, isn’t it? And he just kills him! Also, straight after he sees his Uncle Ben die, he goes after the man who he thinks has shot him and scares him so much that he falls out a window. He doesn’t even seem bothered by it later!
OK, please take this with a huge grain of salt because I’m a hardcore Spiderman apologist… I have been known to concoct elaborate excuses for One More Day as well as (when sufficiently inebriated) The Clone Saga and Eight-Armed Spiderman.
When Spiderman tries to kill Sandman, he’s under the influence of a sinister alien, so he’s not fully responsible for that. But even if Spiderman were fully himself, it would have been OK to kill Sandman. Killing a superpowered criminal (even a soft-edged one like Sandman) seems more acceptable to me than Wolverine’s cold-blooded copkillings in X2. Even if Sandman has benevolent goals now (like providing for his daughter), he will probably turn into a megalomaniac supervillain if he lives. In the Spiderman movies, pretty much everyone that gets superpowers turns into an insanely dangerous menace eventually.
One thing about Spiderman (and Superman) that annoys me is that his villains tend to kill themselves off. For example, the Green Goblin managed to kill himself at the end of Spidey 1, thereby absolving Spiderman of any guilt in the matter. Likewise, the criminal that kills Uncle Ben falls to his own death without much help from Spiderman. Ditto Dr. Octopus, I think. It’s a great way for writers to wrap up loose ends and resolve the plot without introducing moral complexities about who killed whom, but after a while it gets a bit ridiculous. In the Superman universe, virtually everyone that learns Superman’s secret identity dies or loses his memory suddenly thereafter.
I’d like to ask you two moral questions about Spiderman and Superman.
1: Is Peter Parker morally obliged to tell M.J. he’s Spiderman, or is his secrecy justified by “loose lips sink ships?”
2: Is it ethical for Clark Kent to work as a journalist? Or is he doing Metropolis a huge disservice by embroiling two of its most prominent journalists (him and Lois) in a huge conflict of interest by giving them a personal stake in Metropolis’ biggest story (Superman)?
I suggest you watch Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. Their characterization was excellent, Superman included. They foiled him with Batman by portraying him as overconfident, overtrusting, and slightly naive. Later though, he became disillusioned and slightly paranoid with Lex Luthor’s presidential campaign, and started struggling with his “take the high road” mentality. At one point, BATMAN had to tell him to calm down. Superman can be a great character. You just need to get Bruce Timm to do it.
As for Peter Parker, he is morally obliged to tell Mary Jane that he’s Spiderman. If he doesn’t tell MJ, it will lead to drama “Why are you always leaving? Where do you go? There’s another woman, isn’t there?!?” His only choices are to break it off or be open, even though his secrecy is justifiable and makes sense.
As for Superman, personally, that’s just a one down for him. If he is a talented journalist who loves his work, he would have to follow “his dream”. If anything I think being Superman would hurt his journalism career, his personal stake is a not beneficial (the only thing he can do is look more heroic). It is detrimental to his career because his presence on the scene and his perspective on the event would be obscure, he could only tell the story from Superman’s perspective (giveaway to secret identity).
Justice League used Batman and a few other characters to develop Superman. That worked out pretty well. Superman was also solid in The New Adventures of Lois and Clark, which was the first time (at least that I’m aware of) that Lois was really a co-star to Clark/Superman rather than just a prop. There are a few characters that are interesting enough to survive without major relationships (James Bond, Indiana Jones, most variations of Batman) but I’ve concluded that strong characters generally need interesting relationships. But Superman has so rarely had them.
What do you think?
If I had to rank Superman, Batman and Spiderman for awesomeness, it would go:
1. Batman (Good movies, but I find some of the seriousness taken out by putting “bat” at the beginning of everything. “Batarang”, “Batpod” etc)
2. Spiderman (I liked the movies but there were a few issues. Is everyone at his high school really stupid enough not to notice that he accidentally drags a tray out of the lunchroom with his webbing? Or defeats a guy twice his size with acrobatic movements that he was previously incapable of?)
3. Superman (What is achieved by him being invincible? Nothing. It’s boring because he can’t be injured or lose any fights except to supervillains, who get their heads kicked in later on. Plus he has superflight and strength, when it would work better for him to have one or the other.)
Superman may be the first proper superhero, but that doesn’t mean that he has to be such a Gary Stu. He needs another weakness. Fatigue or the inability to go near people with a certain personality. Like:
“Kent! You have to interview Polly Hitton today!”
“Will do!”
(Gets knocked back because he can’t go near her personality type)
I know you guys are getting tired of me (frankly, I’m quite tired of myself). This is the last time, I’m going to change my story, I SWEAR. Actually, it’s not as much a changing of the story as it is changing some major aspects. I don’t want to deal with the confusing aspect of overly-diverse magic, I’m going to change it like this instead each mage has only one type of power (i.e. one mage with ice powers, one mage with superstrength) and that mage takes a group of children and trains them as part of the contest (like my earlier idea). Their powers are still considered magic though. Thusly, Jiminy will be a water mage and Adrian will be one of his pupils, upon reaching a far enough status (as in not getting eliminated) they gain the ability to morph, although this may bring about the aspect of a “part-time dragon etc” changing when convenient. So I’m making it so that they have to transform at least a little to utilize their powers.
I’m also taking away the weapons again, unless that’s someone’s powers. Hmm, I’m more of a sci-fi fan, so maybe instead of magic the “mage” (or genetic engineer) would infuse higher status competitors with alien DNA so they could transform, up until them they had to use some sort of alien technology for their powers. I like the sci-fi alien based powers as opposed to magic. So instead of different fields of magic, I would have different breeds of aliens that do different things. I would set it on modern Earth, and have alien existence an unknown to human until the story kicks off. I would need to do a little more alteration to the core story, but I like the sci-fi revamp. Good thing I haven’t got to the powers yet.
–Don’t worry about having to change your story. It happens to everyone… a lot.
–If each student has a different kind of power (like superstrength vs. ice powers), that might make the idea of a mentor slightly more complicated. I don’t anticipate it’ll be a real problem, but it may take more time to explain what/how a mentor would teach to a student with different powers.
–I think this story could work as sci-fi or fantasy, but just make sure you pick one. If it’s sci-fi, please don’t mix in fantasy words like magic/mage/wizard, etc.
–The morphing may cause part-time dragon problems, but as long as you’re aware of those it should be OK.
As soon as Adrian made it far enough, he would be infused with an aquatic alien’s DNA, giving him an aquatic form, control over water, and in his aquatic form he can create ample amounts of water from his lungs and pores. He can also breath underwater and swim excellently in his aquatic form. In additon, he can sense clean water and humidity in the air. His body can also filter salt water into clean water. I’m still wish-washy over giving him advanced powers like liquifaction and aquaportation. Up until getting genetically altered, he uses technology to have control over water, upon getting him new DNA he is forced to give up the tech.
Weaknesses:
When in human form, he can only control water when properly hydrated and even then he can’t control vast amounts or perform very skillful acts with it. At first, he has poor control over transformation, often partially changing when inconvenient or not being able to change when needed. He often sweats profusely (like me) and/or his body leaks. He can only control particularly clean freshwater and salt water. It is difficult for his body to produce water, so he often looks for external sources. His powers are also greatly affected by the Moon, strongest during Full Moon time including daytime, no powers during New Moon, his powers are pretty constant on the in-between phases.
Of course, I’ll have to rework his origin story, but that will be relatively simple to do.
Suggestions? Opinions?
Liquifaction (the ability to turn into a liquid) sounds workable, although it kind of depends on what sort of villains you have in mind. If his villains could hit him when he was watery, that’d probably be fine. If it’s essentially a get out of danger free card, I think it would be undramatic. Likewise, I recommend against “aquaportation.”
Being affected by the moon is a nifty idea (kind of like tides how are affected by the moon?) but it may be hard for readers to remember which phase of the moon corresponds to which effect. Also, it might be hard for remembers to determine/remember which phase of the moon the story is in. I suspect that Adrian will frequently narrate details like “Oh no! Not the New Moon again!” However, I love that his powers don’t work during the New Moon. Time to improvise!
I suggest you watch Avatar. If you have watched Avatar, watch it again. Pay close attention to the waterbenders. Also, I’m glad you settled on a definitive story. Once you have everything set up, I look forward to an Alex vs. Adrian type-as-you-go rpg battle. (haha, they both have “a” names.) You powers setup looks pretty solid. However, I would reccommend a side-affect to them being genetically altered (Scientifically speaking, there should be consequences. Stylistically speaking, it’s a good idea. Practically speaking, your hero needs a weakness). Also, ringtails aren’t associated with water, so I’d reccommend another animal. A good idea would be an Osprey. It’s powerful, water-associated, and yet not totally useless outside of water like, say, a dolphin or killer whale. Good luck!
I love Avatars rendition of waterbenders, but that it’s spiritually based, which is more on the fantasy side and I wanted to avoid that. I did use the aspect of the Moon like Avatar did and I am considering using some other things altering water viscocity and letting him control vapor. He has some early one weaknesses and one recurring weakness (Moon, but that is also a benefactor). He isn’t totally helpless out of water, if he was my story would suffer greatly. I’ll try to come up with a definitive weakness.
I’m probably going to take out the animal nicknames.
I, too, look forward to that RPG battle.
Thanks (B.Mac, what about you, what’s your opinion?)
I agree that ringtails aren’t really associated with water. But if the character literally turns into another animal, an aquatic animal like dolphins or orcas would probably be unworkable. If you didn’t like ospreys, you could try an amphibian like a frog, boa, alligator or crocodile. If you’re really stretching, you could try something like a hippopotamus, which is actually quite ferocious despite being thought of as completely weak and helpless.
Making him prone to dehydration would be a good weakness. maybe heat sensitivity or sensitivity to electricity. I’ll think on it.
Yeah, I’m going to use all three, maybe in his aquatic form he is more susceptible to physical damage because his skin/scales are soft.
Scales are harder than skin actually. But he could be susceptible to sound waves.
(e.g. tapping on the fishbowl disorients the fish inside. Thus the “do not tap” rule at aquariums)
you could call it the “fishbowl effect”
I still tapped on my fish tank, but I’m pretty sadistic. I know scales are harder than skin, I’m just trying to come up with something. I like the fishbowl effect.
So, I think I have some good weaknesses, maybe too many though:
Sound
Electricity
Heat
Dehydration
Moon (but can also benefit)
Lack of control (until he gets used to his new self)
B.Mac should be here soon. It’s almost 9 p.m.
Yeah, I think that’s a lot of weaknesses.
A temporary lack of control/learning curve is pretty self-explanatory, so readers won’t have to worry about remembering that at all.
The moon is something they will have to remember. If they remember that dehydration is a problem (which sounds pretty simple), then heat is a self-explanatory problem. Electricity being the scourge of water elements is a staple of many superhero and anime stories (”Pikachu rips Squirtle a new one with Thunder! It’s gruesomely effective!”), so I don’t think that will be hard to remember.
The sound one is a bit more problematic, I think. It’s more a function of the fishbowl and the water than the fish actually being vulnerable to sound and vibrations.
So I’d recommend making his main weaknesses dehydration (and anything that can cause dehydration, like heat/electricity), the New Moon and his temporary lack of control. I think that will give you enough to work with but not so much that readers will struggle to remember what’s going on.
For my story, I want my characters who have powers to get drained by them. IE, the stronger powers is like the equivalent of running a mile, the lessers are like a short sprint. That keeps even the stronger characters in a check as not being ultimate.
Now, I read in other articles that “immortality” is looked down upon. Well, in my story there are is a parallel world next to ours. In that world, there are 2 races of superbeings (well, super to humans anyways). They can only be killed in one way, but I’m still thinking on ideas of what way that should be, so any ideas would be nice. They do age at a slower pace than humans, but age nonetheless in their world. One of the races was banished from the world and live in the human world in hiding. They then stopped aging on our plane.
I want their main weakness to be the one way they can get killed. But, I do want them to be able to be weakened in battle by using their powers so they can’t always rely on them. Thanks for the input!
Ok, a fatigue parameter is usually an effective weakness, so that’s good. My main concern, is that the two races of superbeings seem like Homo-Superiors, which could be problematic later on. To balance this you should probably change an aspect of the two races to be more humanly relatable.
As for a main weakness for your races, I would recommend something that doesn’t completely cripple your character i.e. Kryptonite is to Superman as water is to fire. Maybe, their powers work on a time and/or fatigue basis, if they overuse their powers or use them for too long they become powerless mortals temporarily, making them vunerable. I’m guessing this is more of a sci-fi story, but I’m not sure, maybe some form of technology is their weakness. Conversely, if this is a fantasy story maybe a certain type of magic is their weakness.
I may be able to help you more if you elaborate on the discrepancies between the races.
Oh, if you don’t know what a homo-superior is, there is an article on this site about them under “Improve your Writing” just go to “50 more writing articles” and scroll down it’s near the top.
(B.Mac or Brett, how do you post links without them being a URL?)
Just post the URL and I can change it into a real link later. I think Wordpress prevents guest commenters from using most kinds of HTML coding.
Okay, well. One race is called the Pyrians, tentatively for now. They are a spartan-like race. Predominately war bound people. As a whole, they’re an unlikeable race and that’s the way I want it. There are a few characters who play major roles but aren’t like the other Pyrians. The king is the main “villain” in my story. He is set on dominating Earth so that he can stop aging. He’s very vain, not to mention he’s power hungry and wants to be the ultimate power. (If he stops aging, he can be king forever).
The “wanderers” again, tentatively named, are the other race. They’re a more peaceful, close to human race since they’ve lived among humans for a hundred years or so. My main characters are from this race. They were banished from the other world by the Pyrians in a war a long time ago. Since the Pyrians are more battle-oriented, they had the upper hand in battle, but the wanderers have the ability to teleport between the two worlds. Pyrians can’t.
My MC is a Pyrian/wanderer hybrid. She was raised by her wanderer mother on Earth so she feels more inclined to the humans and Earth. I still have to work out her story line as far as that goes, but I plan on her knowing fairly early about who her dad is.
it’s totally fantasy, no sci-fi elements to it. I think I have the main points of the races down.
Thanks for the comments! Definitely something to think about.
At the end of The Incredibles, what happens to Syndrome?
The villain? Doesn’t he get sucked into a jet-engine? (I’m still astonished that The Incredibles was only rated PG. At certain points, the movie got distinctly creepy).
I love the Incredibles. I was a little surprised that it wasn’t rated higher, because I wouldn’t think that the guy at the start who tries to kill himself and Helen’s suspicion that Bob is cheating would be quite appropriate for younger audiences. Not to mention all the violence, while animated and un-gory, being pretty brutal. Plus, something rarely seen in animated movies, people actually die. Like the henchman who crashed into the cliff.
Also, the idea of systematically killing off the superheroes is a little bit creepy even BEFORE they found the skeletons. I was also unnerved by how they handled the death of the villain: death by jet-engine? Eww. That sounds like something out of a gulag.
However, there was a lot about the Incredibles that I really liked. Samuel L. Jackson’s character was remarkably funny and I thought that the movie (although too stilted) was still reasonably intelligent.
I loved baby Jack’s powers, but I wasn’t a big fan of everyone else’s abilities. Incredibles was awesome.
Are you guys like up until 2 a.m. typing, that’s when I need to be on then.
I find that it’s best for me to be on from about four PM to nine PM. That’s about when commenting shuts down for the night. I won’t expect any of my comments to be answered until tomorrow, because it’s 9:20.
Today, I was on from about 11 PM to 5 AM. I don’t think that will be typical.
TRW, I think you’re in a different time zone than me and B.Mac, what time zone do you live in?
Australia, perhaps? That would explain the massive time-zone difference and Dr. Who references.
Australians all let us rejoice, for we are young and free!
I’m not at all like the stereotyped Australians, though. I don’t really watch sports, I don’t like barbecues and I don’t live in the desert. Haha.
That is so frickin awesome, austrailians used to be my favorite type of people, but now is brazilians, I’m part portuguese. Do you have an accent?
Ok, I saw your posts, I agree there are many weaknesses, but the ones you said ought to work perfectly. What I didn’t explain was that each mentor is the alien that their student will, possibly, become. For example, Jimelly (formerly Jiminy, get it “Timilly”) is an aquatic alien, thusly he will infuse his student that make it far enough with his own DNA. So Adrian will become the same race as Jimelly so he can be taught about that alien’s abilities. Each mentor is a different type of alien, so that’s how there is power diversity. It will definitely be a sci-fi story, I just used mage as an example name.
As for the part-time dragon problems, This is worked out because he really can’t do much or go along with the story as a human, so his need for morphing into aquatic form is justified. There will be time where it may be convenient, though, like if was surrounded by a gang or need to swim across a pond to get somewhere.
No, I don’t really have an accent. Maybe a little.
I hate The Incredibles, but I liked Jack Jack Attack. And I love Frozone.
I had an idea for a character, sort of based on a “balance” idea. Her right hand heals but her left hand withers/injures (I’m not really sure how to describe it). The idea is that she can’t use her healing on herself (so, no regeneration) because it’s always counterbalanced by her other powers. And these powers are always “switched on”, so if she grabs hold of somebody with her left hand she could seriously hurt them or even kill them if she held on for long enough – except the person was also in contact with her right hand, which goes back to the whole balance thingy.
To mix things up slightly, I was thinking of making it so she’s left-handed, and therefore whenever she automatically goes to touch somebody or do something with her left hand she has to check herself and make sure she’s not going to cause injury.
I can’t really think of any other limits/problems to this apart from exhaustion, but that’s a pretty abvious one. Is this enough, or do I need to come up with some? Any suggestions?
When you say her right hand hurts people, how do you mean? Does it drain them, poision them, weaken them or just cause them pain until they die?
I essentially like the power, the balance idea is very fresh. She has no control over her powers, so that would hurt you or. Do her powers come with a side-effect and can they be controlled/halted by wearing gloves. Can her destructive or healing powers be manifested into anything, like a ball oh healing energy?
I think a good factor that she has is that she is essentially human with a superboost, this could lots of improvised scenes where she has to think on her feet, but this can also be bad, what if the villian is cross town and she doesn’t have any mode of super transportation to get to him?
I meant “When you say her LEFT hurts people”.
As for her left-handedness, this could be problematic because people aren’t usually checking themselves for what hand they are using when they, say, pat their friend on the back or are playing a game with friends. So even though she is cautious, I doubt she would realize every time she is about to use her left hand.
You raise some very good points. I was thinking that her powers could be controlled by wearing gloves, because otherwise I could see her developing into this angsty character who says “woe!” a lot. Organic material only.
I’m still not sure about the left hand, but the idea is in general that it hurts (uh, yeah >>;).
Also, the idea I have in my head places her as part of a team.
Draining has potential, because that could give her a boost by stealing their energy and ultimately make her feel stronger. I detect potential angst, though. The idea i had in mind was sort of like aging – I suppose weakening with an unhealthy dose of pain for good measure would be the best thing. And easy to describe.
I didn’t want her powers to be used without touch – so no healing-ball-of-energy, no destructive-blast. On the other hand, she was supposed to fill a semi-support role so I don’t think this is a massive problem.
Your point about the villain on the other side of town is a good one, but that’s part of the fun/challenge.
Good point about the left-handedness. I may leave that out – or even make her ambidextrous, lol.
Oh, okay if she’s part of a team I’m sure someone can give her a ride. Maybe you could make her “bad” hand controllable to an extent. For example, instead of just hurting them, she can weaken, poison, drain, and with prolonged touch cause death. That way she can switch between a small resevoir of abilities.
That’s an idea – that could be good to as in as the story evolves and the characters get more powerful (this isn’t just random, by the way, it has to do with my origin story).
But I want to stick with the balance idea, so ideally the weakening etc. should have some sort of counter-balance. Healing is an obvious one and giving strength/energy too. Can you think of anything else?
This is a big help. Thanks!
Maybe invigoration, giving whomever she touches a temporary boost in their powers as well as energy and strength, that could add to her support factor as a team member.
I’m kind of going blank though, hope this helps.
As for a counter of poisoning, maybe she can cure people to a degree.
Well, I’m sure I’ll think of something. Thanks a lot!
Probably Frozone, he could just freeze her while she’s stretching.
I would actually argue Elastigirl. The Incredibles showed that whilst Frozone was limited to the water in the air (not much use in a burning building), or could have his ice broken through (the robot; a fire-orientated power would probably have the same sort of effect), Elastigirl’s powers were difficult to contain or counter.
Frozone might be able to beat her, on the whole that isn’t the same thing.
So far tonight, one of our repeat spammers has attempted to post 4 comments of varying degrees of stupidity, including “y isnt tis workn?” thirty seconds ago.
She’s tried twice more… “wat u talkin bout degress of stupidity…” That made my day.
A change of tack! After changing her name and e-mail address, she tried asking a superhero-related question. Since she obviously doesn’t care about the answer, I’m going to keep it in spam-block. That brings us to 25.
Why go to all that trouble just to spam a website? She must be REALLY bored.
She’s probably an eight year old somewhere. Although I’m very pleased that the new filter works, please don’t rub it in… too much. Heh heh.
I wonder if I was that stupid when I was eight?
The fallacies of the idiosycrasies of humanity, it’s enough to make me laugh.
Not likely, Jacob.
So, now that that’s done, what about the Homo Superior quiz? If you get that, I’ll scrub the website of Heart-related drama over the next few days.
Thank you. I’d appreciate that.
I was trying to decide what my main character’s minor power should be, and this is what I came up with. I’d just like general thoughts or opinions on it, please. Maybe suggestions of how it should be different etc.
Okay, so she can see through other people’s eyes. She can’t hear their thoughts, or hear what is going on around the person she’s seeing. She has to have had some sort of physical contact with the person in order to establish her relationship of being able to see them. The power is very draining for her at first. (She has to build up endurance to use it for greater lengths of times) Since it’s basically her minor power, it’s the first one she learns she has.
I think this is a good minor power because it obviously has its limitations. For example, if she’s trying to find someone, she can see what they see, but she would have to know what she was looking at to determine where they were. Also, when her she sees into other people, her eyes change. I’m thinking either she takes on their eye color for a more subtle effect or her irises completely disappear for a more dramatic effect.
What do you think? I’d appreciate any help.
Very interesting. It sounds similar to the Eragon scrying concept, where you can only see what you are familiar with, but with a slight reversal. I find your take on this refreshing. But I would reccomend adding something to make it a bit more visceral, and make it somewhat easier for your heroine to identify what she’s seeing. I’ve been advised that smell and touch are very visceral senses, so maybe your heroine can also feel what the other person feels, or smell what they smell. Feeling would probably be better, because it offers more clues, is more dramatic, and seems more useful. For example, if your character was looking for a missing friend, and felt pain, that would increase the urgency of finding the person. Also, another potential weakness is that if the person she’s seeing through blacks out, she’ll either go temporarily blind (until she returns to her own perspective), or she’ll also go unconscious temporarily. Alsom she could be threatened with death if the other person dies while she’s in vision.
All thoughts welcome.
I had already planned on her being blind while seeing someone. I introduce her power by her using it in her english class. She’s in class, watches a girl in her class write a poem and laughs at it. She then sees herself through the girls prospective when she looks up at her and she has to blink back quickly to her own sight so the classmate doesn’t notice how her eyes changed.
And I really like the idea that she can feel what they feel. It would be hard to incorporate how she would die if she was in a vision though, because you can only die once obviously so how would she know that staying in a vision at someone’s death would kill her. Hm, I think I could work it in…oo if someone she was looking at was drowning or something? and they drowned but were revived. Then she would die for a minute and come back…that could be an interesting scene. thanks a lot!
Glad I could help.
She thought about who she should look through as she stared out the window. Though sometimes she wondered what Lena did during the day, Clara never allowed herself to spy on her mother—it didn’t seem right not to give Lena her privacy. The sound of a bag dropping on the floor next to her snapped Clara’s attention to the girl who’d just taken the seat next to her.
Aubrey. Clara hadn’t ever had contact with her, but she had been sitting next to her since the beginning of the semester. Clara often spied her with a notebook, but instead of drawing, like her, Aubrey wrote. Curiosity overtook her, so she leaned over the aisle.
“Aubrey, right? Do you have a pencil I can borrow for class?” Aubrey hesitated for a moment, shocked that Clara had actually talked to her—she didn’t talk to anyone—but then reached into her bag and pulled out a sharpened number 2. Intentionally, Clara reached to far and grazed Aubrey’s hand with her own.
A tiny spark jumped between their hands, causing Aubrey to jerk her hand back the instant their skin met. She tilted her head every so slightly at Clara and narrowed her eyes, but Clara had a wide grin on her face. Aubrey shook her head and turned her attention to the front of the class.
Blinking her eyes several times, as if some piece of debris had caught in it, her eyes changed from their normal brown to a deep jade. Blind to what her own eyes would be seeing, she was instead looking at the classroom from Aubrey’s perspective.
Does this sound like a good introduction of her powers? Is it clearly stated what she can do? Anything a reader would be confused about? (Clara is the MC, Lena is her mother, and Aubrey is basically just in here for this scene). Thanks!
–The first sentence uses a pronoun, she, without naming who “she” is. Since first-sentence pronouns usually seem coy, I recommend naming Clara in the first sentence.
–Lena and Clara have similar names… they’re short and look/sound similar. I’d recommend making Lena’s name longer and changing the first letter to something other than L or C. I’d also recommend having it end with something other than A.
–The first sentence will probably sound confusing to someone who isn’t aware of Clara’s special powers. When readers see “who she should look through,” I think that they will feel lost.
–The opening few sentences give the impression that this story is set at her home. She’s thinking about her mom, there’s a window and we don’t see any indication that there are people or sounds filling the space around her. The sentence “The sound of a bag…” is a bit disorientating because it fills in a setting that feels very different from that loose impression.
–I still feel kind of disorientated here. I don’t think that readers will know what the narrator means by “hadn’t ever had contact with her.” Also, I fear that the phrase “spied her with a notebook” might throw readers off. Please remember that, in the first paragraph, you used the word “spy” to talk about Clara’s special power, so the word “spied” here may suggest to readers that you’re talking about the same thing. Readers may wonder if she is somehow using a notebook to spy on Aubrey. (I’d recommend changing that to “noticed her holding a notebook”).
–I think that this story would benefit if the character had a more pressing, dramatic goal. For example, it would be dramatic if she had a goal like using her special power to avoid failing a test. (She’d probably come off as unlikable, though, so I’m just using that as an example of a goal). Right now, it doesn’t seem like she has a pressing goal and that gives the story a kind of slow, lulling pace.
–This shows us an interesting detail about Clara, that she never speaks to anyone. However, the action of grazing Aubrey’s hand strikes me as a bit strange. If her powers are activated by touch, why does the narrator say in the first paragraph that she never spies on her mother (to let her have her privacy)?
–I like some of the details here, like the wide grin, but I don’t get what the point is. What goal is Clara trying to accomplish? What are we rooting for? What are the stakes?
–I think I understand what you’re trying to show, but I don’t know if an uninitiated reader would get it. I’m also a bit disorientated because the narrator shows us something that Clara shouldn’t be aware of: Aubrey’s eyes change color. But Clara’s own eyes have stopped working and she’s now seeing through Aubrey’s perspective (and Aubrey can’t see her own eyes).
–This is an OK introduction of the power, but I don’t feel like it’s that good an introduction to a story. I’d like to know more about the character and why we should care about her. Adding a goal would really help, I think.
Since Clara’s mother is not relevant to this scene, I’d recommend introducing her only when she does matter.
Also, it feels to me that the protagonist here has no particular goal. Why’s she trying to look through the other girl’s eyes? I don’t feel that very much is at stake, so it’s not a very satisfying goal. Consequently, I fear that readers will not care very much about what happens when she tries looking through someone else’s eyes. You might find this article on giving your characters dramatic goals useful.
Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t post the whole scene because it’s longer. This isn’t the very beginning of the story, and you already know she’s in the classroom. This particular scene was only supposed to be an introduction to what she can do; I didn’t want to make it a big scene because I didn’t want my readers to go from not knowing what she can do, to all of a sudden “wow she has this power, hm”. But I definately appreciate the input and will edit accordingly
Ah, yeah. I think that using this scene in the middle of the book will help clear up the “who is this girl and why should I want to read about her?” problems. I’d still recommend giving her a goal, though.
I love this site. I’m writing a book for English and this helped me a lot. I think there should be the power to project images with your mind or travel into photos.
Do you think there are any ways to make using water different, I was thinking of making his alien transformation not a full transformation. Like instead of being naked with no “privates”, he wears an exosuit. Should I make his abilities more tech based like he uses chemical from his suit and his alien form to control water.
I don’t know, I can’t really “word” what I’m trying to say.
Actually forget that last question. I leave it at this, do you have any ideas of how to make using water different. Like a different style of using water (for example, fake example, dancing to control it) or anything.
I don’t know. To be honest, I don’t think it’s extremely important precisely how your character is able to manipulate water. If you really wanted to develop that, though, you could try giving his exosuit a sensory setup so that when he pointed or something the water would go in that direction.
I like that idea, I want my aliens but I want exosuits too. Maybe exosuits until they get alienized. I was going to make a suit that made water controlling chemicals and your idea plays well into that.
In my opinion fantasy based abilities tend to go further than sci-fi based ones, what I like about sci-fi based abilities is that they require some ingenuity because they are limited the user will be force to improvise occasionally. Star Wars is a perfect example of not always relying on your power, which is what I want a little bit in my story.
In my fake fight with Brett, Adrian did some things he usually couldn’t like control water outside of his alien form and without his exosuit.
I didn’t want to overdo his water abilities,even though they will be strong, I wanted him to use technology alot too. I mean his tranformations are faulty, so he’s have to solve his problems somehow, although there will be occasions with no exosuit or powers. Time for the actor to improv.
Ha. I’m glad we’re on the same page RB. Some of the things I depict Alex as doing in our fake fight are so over-the-top that if I tried to use them in a book I might as well hang myself. (Exception: Alex and Maesirturaon actually can merge, but this combination will probably not be named The Flame of Zhudai.)
One way to make his powers different would probably be to have him do one of the following random things that popped into my head:
1.He MUST maintain constant physical contact with the water in order to maintain control. Advanced powers require him to actually mold/shape it, like a potter with clay.
2. I know this will sound weird, but have him control it by singing. It works…sometimes. Aslan created Narnia through song, and in Tolkein’s legendarium, Arda (the world of which Middle Earth is apart) was also created by song. Also, water is inherently melodic and fluid.
3. He could temporarily transfer his mind into the water itself. While his body is protected by the exosuit or a thick coating of ice, the water he is controlling acts as a temporary body. You can see obvious strengths and weaknesses here.
I kind of like #3. It’s like the water version of Negative Man. And I think it workable I’ll consider it.
Oh, yeah Adrian doesn’t really have the power to turn water into ice, but he does have thermokinesis over water. He can make it scolding hot or freezing cold. I think I’ll use that number 3.
Thanks
A slightly more sober alternative to singing would be humming. If you want to go sci-fi, you could have the suit generate the sound until he’s ready to hum on his own.
Under psychic abilities, you could put “The ability to create illusions”. That’s what my character Klemente does, and Zexion in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories can do it too, with the aid of a magic book. I want one! Haha.
I think I’ll just keep it to chemical control over water, his exosuit will halp him generate the chemical until he can do it on his own.
Talk about a cool project, I’m working on a project for a prospective superhero gang. there will be 4-5 characters that form a gang. None of them really have powers but instead use objects that either grant them an ability or that can just do something super.
These are the items I wanted to use.
Yo-yo
Mask
Scarf
Rollerblades
Umbrella
This is where you guys come in I know you shouldn’t based a character off their powers, but I need to establish the powers first then distribute them. I need each of you to pick one object, and make it technologically super. I’ve already done yo-yo’s. I’m doing this because I like for our minds to come together for the greater good of me, haha. This is for a side project I’m working on.
Yo-yo- see Captain Crandall of Teamo Supremo. Heh heh.
The scarf could grant the power of flight, and it could be used as superstrength arms a la Doc Ock.
The Mask could allow its wearer sight-based powers, as well as better perception of their environment and the feelings of others. Not mind-reading, but general emotion-reading.
I’ll think on it some more.
The Umbrella could be an shield, or create forcefields. It could be the umbrella version of the TARDIS and you can trap things several times larger than it inside it (so it would be a bad idea to just open it up randomly). If it was a super-strong umbrella you could also use it as quite a handy weapon.
Rollerblades could give the pretty obvious boost to speed. Maybe going up walls and over water, too. Or, something a little more unique, maybe they can also change the substance of whatever the wearer skates over.
A single character with a yo-yo or whatever would probably work smoothly. However, I predict that five characters with a goofy item each will probably cause an overload of campiness. I’d recommend cutting it down to three characters and giving them one goofy item and one straight-up one. If you’d like to keep it to five characters, I’d try to make some of the items more serious. I like the yo-yo and the mask has some potential, but I’d recommend reevaluating the other three.
I’ll cut the other three. I love yo-yo’s as weapons I’ve dreamt(?) up alot of fight scenes where the hero kicks butt with a yo-yo. I was going to give that hero molecular manipulation over the yo-yo. For example, changing it’s size, shape, density, string length, etc.
I think color manipulation could be a very strong ability:
1) Matching colors to their background makes invisibility.
2)Hypnosis, disorientation, and/or seizure inducing.
3)Allows you to cheat on test.
4) Create realistic optical illusions.
5) You’d always have a fresh costume.
6) If you were chasing someone you caould make them stand out.
7)It would generally be a fun power.
I think color manipulation depends on the degree of control you have. If you could also controls patterns and the appearance of texture, you’d be pretty powerful. Although, color manipulation seems like a secondary power it is beneficial, nonetheless.
I think one of the Avengers (the British spy show, not the Marvel group) used an umbrella as a weapon.
That is sweet!
What about a powerless superhero?
Not even at Batman standards, just below Punisher. The character in my book only survives because he has enough willpower to fuel a car. He uses blunt objects he finds around, or chemicals he mixes. He’s not extremely strong, or big for his age.
He feels like he’s ‘the only good guy in a sea of drugs and gangs and murder and he’s the only one that can save his city,’ that kind of thing. I have the origin story down: his GF gets drugged, raped, and kills herself, and he could have saved her if he hadn’t been afraid. But what about for mere vigilantes? Any advice?
I’m trying to work around him not using a gun, but it’s hard when all the gangsters in the story have them and he doesn’t. The book’s target audience is mature readers, because I’m trying to make it as realistic as possible. So when people get mad, they swear, and drugs, partying and sex are involved.
I’d appreciate any advice.
I, personally, am not a big fan of powerless heroes, but they are very workable and they can be very interesting. They have to improvise at all times, so that would make for alot of interesting scenes.
My recommendation would be not to kill off the girlfriend, but have her severely changed. Experiences like rape can drastically alter personality. Maybe making her more closed off and she doesn’t want to be intimate (not just sexually) with the main character. If you wanted to go to EXTREMES, you could have her go into severe repression so much so she gives herself amnesia, and forgets the MC.
It would seem this character has some strong connections and is very intelligent (burning drugs, putting gangs against each other). I think giving him a degree of gadgets would be more plausible, but you don’t have to go all out (retractable zip-lines, cloaking devices). If he doesn’t want to kill maybe a small tranquillizer gun or firing taser. Or you could move into gun territory, but know your facts about guns before you use them.
“But what a bout for mere vililantees?” I’m not sure what you meant by this. If you meant “more” vigilantes, I would recommend a small team seeing as he is trying to accomplish alot for one person. If you meant “mere” vigilantes, as in weaker heroes, that is also very workable, it allows you to improvise alot of scenes, which is very dramatically appealing.
I had a relatively difficult time reading your comment. I’d also recommend you work on the mechanical issues in your typing (spelling and grammar). Mechanical issues can make it very hard for readers to immerse themselves in your story.
The GF had already killed herself. I found it more life changing to see what Vir would say when he woke up a day and a half later and he discovered the truth about his friends and that the only person he ever loved deeply was dead.
He does use gadgets, but more tricks than gadgets. For example, he knows he can’t fight the pusher that raped his girlfriend, so he slips a mixture of a few sleeping pills and Nyquil into his vodka. The guy’s about 300 pounds so by the time the drugs finally take effect, Vir had chased him into an alley, which made it look like the drug dealer died in an alleyway from an overdose.
In the chapter I’m currently working on, he gets beaten up pretty badly by one of the villains and he uses an eppi pen to get the energy to escape a building before it burns down. But he has to leave a few people in there in order to survive.
He succeeds in beating a trained military assassin in physical combat, but fails to save some of the people he tries to protect.
By the way, I’m partially dyslexic, so I tend to get words mixed up and mix up some letters in words. Forgive me if my spelling is wrong.
He uses a crowbar as a sling, a sock to spin moonshine out of a bottle of hard liquor (for a Molotov Cocktail). He uses plastic cases to make small smoke bombs, etc.
I wanted to base a lot of his vigilante work on chemical warfare. He’s not that physically big, and can’t fight well. (However, he has a friend who is the process of training him, but not like a mentor would. I’m still kind of sketchy on how I was to use him, though. Any suggestions would be great.).
I’m a huge fan of superheroes without powers because they’re exactly like you but with the courage (or stupidity) to do what they think is right. I want a character that can have trials and mistakes.
So that’s why I went with no superpowers. His nemesis is a mob boss and his bodyguard, but i try to emphasize that the real bad guy isn’t the people but the drugs themselves. That’s what he’s trying to fight, but since he can’t actually fight drugs, he settles for the dealers.
Wow, i didnt realize i typed that much, my apoligies, ill try to keep them shorter from now on.
Hmm. From my understanding of dyslexia, it seems to me that becoming an author would be very strenuous for someone who suffered from dyslexia. I wish you the very best of luck with that. It may make your life easier to run your manuscript past a trusted friend for grammar and spelling before submitting it to publishers. That’s something that pretty much every manuscript would benefit from, but your manuscript would probably benefit more than most.
As for the story itself… I like that your protagonist has no military experience, which separates him from The Punisher, The Specialist, Rambo, etc. However, I’m a little bit concerned that he uses chemical weapons. If his chemicals are just homemade poisons like alcohol-and-Nyquil combinations, I think that’s pretty crafty. On the other hand, more savage weapons like sprayed acids are pretty barbaric and would make the hero hard to like.
You might want to come up with a good explanation for why he’s not willing to use a gun even though he’s clearly willing to kill in other ways. For example, he might want to use chemicals instead of guns because he thinks they’re scarier or harder to track. There might be some symbolism in using chemicals to kill drug-dealers… after all, drugs kill people through the release of adverse chemicals.
I’m concerned that the story is too-dark-to-sell, particularly the part where his girlfriend gets raped and commits suicide. An editor might pressure you to soften that a bit, but I suppose you’ll cross that bridge when you get to it.
It’s ok to type long pieces, so please don’t feel that’s a bad thing. Plenty of us here post lengthy story introductions, it’s all good.
This story is pretty dark but I think this story’s darkness can be warped enough to make it workable. I love dark stories, plays, shows, and video games. (Twisted Metal: Black is one of the best games ever)
I really like the idea of this character. He’s very human, despite being okay with killing. If his story is worked well, he will be like Batman (in a good way), in that he is a symbol against the darkness whilst working in the darkness.
I’m not making a suggestion, just an observation. Your story sounds like it would make an excellent comic book.
Thumbs Up! (Hooray for writers with slight mental problems, were making strides.)
I do get my friend to cheak my story out and see if i mix words up.
uit doesnt happen often but somtimes i can mke ‘Jerry sneezed and everyone laughed’ into ‘laughed sneezed and everyone jerry’ or put ‘ohme’ instead of ‘home’ or ‘xif’ as opposed to ‘fix’
happens subtle and i try to go over what i read ymself but i somtimes miss it.
And he isnt willing to kill, he thinks killing would be stooping down to theri level and thats somthing hes dead ageanst. remember these people ruined his life. and he does do the homeade poins and druggs not the acid or anyhting, i was actually thinking of him smashing an old car battery and using the sulfuric acid in that to -mayme- burn a home into a building for an entry point.
i know its far-fetched and the consontration you would need to burn a hole big enough for somoen to fit through isnt consistant with that of a car battery, but its fiction, i can push the limmit a bit right?
you picked up on the symbolism eh? the whole drug dealers being taken down by drugs.
i actually have this quote form the book, the mob boss hears news of the dealer ‘overdosing’ in an allyway and he thinks
“Overdosing in an allyway, Ironic end, for a Pusher”
I make my protaginist seem like a bad guy, somhow we feel for him and relate, but i make it out that the antagonists are much worse. for example, Shiites before he died, loved being the worst possible person, i hinted toward trauma that made him unstable but i focused on him being obsessed with hurting people and having sex with underage girls. He said hed rather be worshiped in hell than be another angel in heaven.
and the mob boss, Eliot Eldon, hes pretty much apethedic of the world around him, hes arrogant, abuses his money, gets people to do the dirty work for him, you know.
Theres The elader of another gang, Ethan, whose brother used to be the leader before Elliot ordered the hit on him. So Ethan is the leader of the DR (Death roads)
and their more of a gangster gang, not a mafia like Elliot runs.
their more violant and less buisnesslike.
Ethan wants to take the fight to them, and he blames Vir for what happened to his brother.
the othermain bad guy is the hired gun Brad Hammond, hes aurtrailian and was a soldier, hes Vir’s physical enamy. Vir gets beaten by him over and over, hes faster, tactically smarter, stronger and fights better than Vir. Actually, im thinkingof having Vir not actually kill him at all. plus, Hammond is very laid back and happy, exept when it comes down to work. He loves his job but was very serouis (not to mention good) at it too.
instead ahve Ethan kill him, Ethan doesnt have morals to not use guns.
and i found it more of a twist of Ethan and Vir had to team up, vir wanted to take down the mob boss and Ethan wanted to get revenge and save a girl or somthing.
The problem, is because i ahve many main characters, i need 2 switch POV alot.
stuff thats not worth chapters, so for chapter five its really lgn and kind of jumpy, tell me if u think i could seperate any into their own chapters
i have Hammonds POV where he gets ready
Then i ahve Vir getting ready
Then i ahve Mark (a bouncer at the club, also shiites brother) telling Elliot that Arvil and his men were there
i have Elliots POV when he updates Hammond to kill Arvil (Arvil = Ethans Brother)
Then i have Arvil making a Public Club announcement that he will lock the doors and get free booze for everyone still inside, and not unlick them till morning.
then i ahve to switch to Vir to get the point that he gets inside before the doors lock,
then hammond who gets the text, goes down to the nightclub, meets his teamates,
then Vir again with trying to find a wepon and hiding as hunexpected teens sneak down into the basement,
then back to Hammond for killing Arvil.
thats a lot of POV for one chapter. dont you think? nine?
BTW, in case you didnt know, VIR is the name of the book, (bad title i know but i cant think of anything else) and ITs latin for Hero
That is alot of P.O.V’s for one chapter, let alone, one book. Readers may get confused on the whose-who if they sit the book down and pick it back up later. I generally think if you’re going to switch between P.O.V’s in your book, it would be bet to limit the number of P.O.V’s. I think two is very workable and possibly three, but anymore than that and it gets confusing. Make sure that if you do use more than one, you establish each a distinct character voice, that way it is easier to understand whoses who.
Since you say it switches “P.O.V’s”, is this book written in the first person?
Exactly who is the character whose girlfriend gets killed, is it Vir?
I don’t think a point of view for each character is necessary.
Having two major scenes occuring at the same time could be problematic, I recommend having one before the other unless both scenarios are distinctly and directly linked.
Regarding Vir’s(?) chemical warfare, I think that’s a very fresh idea. However, I think you would need to alter the making of brick burning acid from a car battery, by having him add some potent chemical that concentrates it enough to do that.
I think it would be a good idea to give Vir’s a lair, probably a chemistry lab. I’d also recommend, if he isn’t already, making him skilled in chemistry.
I don’t know much about your story so I can’t really help you with a scene so far into the story. some more background leading up this event would help me better to help you.
I don’t think Vir is an effective title, it doesn’t evoke an emotional response other than “what’s a Vir?” What’s at stake in the story? Why would someone walking by want to pick up your book?.
If you’re trying to sell in America and other place, it would probably help use English as most people won’t know what Vir is. Names also tend to be ineffective titles unless couple with something else important in the story. For example, Harry Potter AND The Sorcerer’s Stone.
One word titles are usually ineffective, they don’t give us any insight as to what is going on in the story. Personally, I think it’s better to come up with a name at the end of your story, but that’s just me.
I’m not good with titles, but I’m sure B.Mac or another contributer can give you suggestions.
For a title, you could play on the main themes of the novel (revenge, fighting crime, coping with grief(?)) and a major feature of the main character (in this case, his use of chemicals as a weapon).
Or, as RB says, you could decide it later. I often find that when I’m writing something the right title will jump out at me.
thats wat i was hoping but spo far nothing.
He doesnt FOCUS on chemical warfare, he jsut uses it when he needs it, hes good at all things school, so physics, like he might use a coog calculation to bounce a smoke bomb into a room, or math for counting the bullets fired.
No the POV isnt first person, i tend to write a story as if it was a movie and i tell everythign the camra sees. So when i say the POV switches, i mean it jsut switches to a differnt character.
The unfortunate aprt is that the characters are needed.
I also need a detecive who will be looking for Vir, as he gets caught by the cops at the end of the book.
and i dont want to have the cops jsut randomly surround him, i want them to have a pinbord, and have pictures and shit.
Casue teh book takes corse over the year, at the begining of the book hes in a corthouse on his eighteenth birthday. getting tried for two counts of murder and a
good dozen counts of assult and a few of destruction of public property and arson.
Vir isnt a good title, but the character name is good. like inu-yasha is japanese for dog demon, simple and in another language, sounds sweet.
kah-may-kah-may-ha blast on dragon ball Z is japanese for ‘Dragon fight’
so i went with latin cause Vir sounded sweet for a name for a hero to have.
I dont think Vir will ahve a lair, but because he graded early hes going to collage and moving out. Right now he is using a hoodie, gas mask and cargo pants, but sicne he was an ex biker he’ll eventually use his biking outfit and a mask he made in a metalshop.
the mask will be a simple one, it essencialy shaped like an upside down house with two triangular eyeholes. One side of the mask is white, the other is blask, and the mouthpeice has extra metal/padding so he wont get hurt when slugged i the face.
He goes through trial and error, like he tries adding a cape, but it ends up choking him so he ditches it.
He adds a laser pointer to his mask, adds elements of a gasmask, adds elements of a sound booster, um… waht else, thats pretty much it for anything he uses in terms of gadgets.
He improvises when he can, liek in this chapter he will sue an eppi pen, the next he uses a nearby trashcan lid. Uses a homeless man as a distraction.
Also, he gets a new love intrest, not entirely sure how it will aply out, hes probly not going to ike ehr at first. (i ahd the idea that he had to choose to save her from being assulted or get the badguy he had been stalking for a week or so. so he gets amd at her for putting him in that position and making him have to start over. but she has a pathedic story ill amke up and she ends up having to stay with him for protection.)
but yeah i know vir isnt a good title.
Just make sure that when you add aspects to your story, don’t just pick thing for coolness. Additions to a story should help to develop the character and advance the plot. For example, Vir getting a new love interest, is this”just because”? Or will it help to develop his personality and purpose.
I wanted to see where it went. Her name would be Bree, and by rescuing her he’d feel like Rose was still alive. It would give him a moral boost.
For a series title, what would you think about something like All’s Fair? I think suggests that the story is about love, war and an anything-goes kind of world.
I like it, thank you. Should it be just All’s Fair or Vir: All’s Fair ?
I like just All’s Fair better. Generally, I recommend against including character names in titles, but part of that is that I don’t think that Vir is quite as evocative as Static Shock, Spiderman, Captain America, etc. That’s probably appropriate for a more down-to-earth series, though.
Alright, sounds good.
Umm, I need Vir to be really… I don’t know, I like the whole Punisher bit about how he destroys the corrupt and I like Batman’s darkness in the new series.
I’m trying to combine them into a seventeen year old kid and it’s a bit harder than one would think, especially since I’m a happy person.
I don’t think it’s a matter of how happy a person you are. I’m one of the darkest people you could meet, yet as a project for my class I have to write and draw an upbeat children’s picture story, with (ewww) good morals.
I think a degree of psychosis may help this character. Batman and Punisher are slightly psychotic but it works. I think his unstoppable willpower could be a form of reaction formation and rationalization(if I don’t stop them who will), that are common psychotic defense mechanisms, that can work. Although he’s young making him suicidally determined may also help, if he’s really willing to risk his life for something he believes in it, would make him feel more relatable.
However, I think your character may seem overly burdened. Taking down two big gangs and a large drug ring is alot for one person, especially a slighty above average 17 year old. I recommend giving him a small team to work with, maybe two other people who has also been in gang-related accidents or lost loved ones to drugs and violence. That feels more plausibe than one teenager taking on an entire city. It works for Batman because he is older and he’s a multi-millionaire genius with advanced technology.
I can’t help but push the idea for a base of operations again. This character has alot to accomplish, he’ll have to plan things out with elaborate detail, make chemicals and tech, and will have to keep an eye out on the city. A base seems almost a necessity, in my opinion. If he just picks random spots to work, it would feel a little weird.
I kind of agree that making him 17 raises plausibility issues. Wouldn’t he be living with his parents? Wouldn’t someone notice his injuries and/or mixing God knows what chemicals together? What about school?
I think that you’d either have to have him deal with issues related to his youth (like the problematic presence of his parents and a serious lack of money to buy equipment), or just make him older.
Well, he graded early and has moved out.
So he had his apartment, and I was thinking that maybe he’d need to team up with Ethan in order to stop the Dreds. Either that or maybe the guy he’s training with.
Hmm… at the very least I’d tweak his age to 18. I’m not sure what the age of emancipation is in Canada, but I think that the adjustment will help US readers without changing the story very much.
He’s not emancipated. He moved out, like you do when you go to college.
Just finished part one. I ended it with the club burning down, him delivering all the lines he needed to, and him running for as long as he could and finally collapsing a few blocks from his apartment.
I’d like to read it. if that’s ok with you.
All 30 pages of it?
thats alot.
I just checked how much I’ve written, and it’s 37603 words! Normally I’d have given up at my first block, but this one is too much fun!
Good job, RW.
Thanks!
Hehehe. I wrote 71k this November for NaNoWriMo. :3
Even thought it was horrible stuff. >_>; I keep meaning to finish that story, but I can’t bring myself to do it. New Year’s Resolution #1?
Wow, that’s a lot. My new year’s resolution is to finish Student/Waiter/Superhero and start writing the second one.
Wow, I’ve gotten to, err, 500+ words on my comic book script, I’ve been so unproductive this month. Once Winter Break starts I’ll have lots of energy and time to devote to writing, as for now school is dragging me down.
Lol. Sorry, I’m not gonna copy-paste it all. That would be… long.
Of course, 30 pages would be long. I thought you were talking about a small section of a chapter, not like 3 chapters worth of stuff haha.
six….. six chapters.
ill give u some highlights
(“Wait!” Vir called out to him, he stopped and turned his head.
“If you havnt noticed, this place is falling apart, we don’t have time to wait.”
“Okay, but, if we aren’t enamys, then we’re allies. And I need an anny to help me get some of these wounded out of the building. Im not about to let anyone die for my mistake.”
“You’re the Hero, mate, not me,” wioth that he took the momentary distraction of yet another falling price of aflamed debris to take his leave. Exiting calmly as the gunfire whizzed by him out the front door, which by now was vacant.)
^this one was Hammond and Vir’s first fight^
(He was going to life the kid out of there when a foot came form the side, kicking him in the face. Vir fell to the ground, and before he had a chance to defend himself someone began booting him in the head. Over and voer they kicked, they moved down from his head, which ws bruised and bleeding to his stomache, kicking it repeatedly. Until the gruesome point where Vir caughed up a bit of blood and added to the blood that was already in his mouth, he peeled the mask off and spat it out.
“Bad choice killin’ my cousin, nigga,” said the man, who, as it turned out, was Ethan.
Ethan kicked him again, this time in the back of the arm, popping the elbow out of its socket. The gangster stood atop of him, and spat on his face, which was hidden well by blood and his hood.
“you’re pathedic, do you know that? The guy was getting’ laid. The least you could of done was give him a fighting chance!” Ethans voice grew louder and louder as he got angry.
“there are too many men, to many people making too many problems for you to just… Just…” Ethan couldn’t think of the words, instead he kicked Vir once more in the face.
Ken Tried to say Fuck you but his mouth was too full of blood and all he ended up saying was a murmed groan and spraying a mist of crimson spittle at Ethan’s Direction. Ethan just looked at him. )
^Ethan kicking the shit out of Vir^
His solution:
(He slumped to the floor, facing the guy he was going to help out. He wasn’t getting out of there either, shame, it was Vir’s fault the kid ws in this position in the first place. He reached out and touched the kids shirt, from inside a pocket fell an eppi-pen. Vir looked at it.
Why the Hell not?)
and the ending,
(He found a nice little shady spot under a tree almost three blocks away from his apartment. The sky began to srizzle in a warm rain, the stars were fading, not that he could see any. You didn’t see Stars in Vancouver, especially when the air was filled with smog. Vir lay ageasnt the tree, his breathing was at a pant, which turned into a laughter, which almost immedatly made him caugh. The City didn’t look so bleak anymore.
Not only did Vir show the Gangs that their actions had conciquences.
But he proved that somebody wanted to make the world a place worth living in
and place worth living is a place worth fighting for.)
My comment didn’t show up.
I think that what happened was that you posted, got stuck in our inept spam-block, then tried to repost. When we eventually released your initial post, it appeared that you double-posted when in fact you were just trying to get one through. Sorry about the spam-block; it seems to catch a lot of posts (particularly those with profanities).
I like he scene where Vir is getting a beatdown. I’d recommend giving him at least a little fighting chance, even if he gets beat in the end.Also, adding more variety to his punishment than kicks might be more interesting.
Well, he was distracted by trying to pick up an unconscious guy.
Ethan kicked him in the stomach while he was on his hands and knees trying to flip the guy over.
Ethan doesn’t fight that fair, which is why I’m going to use him to kill Hammond. Vir won’t kill, and I’ll somehow let Vir tell Ethan that it was Hammond that killed his bro. Hammond was also the guy that kidnapped Ethan’s GF. (The plot to that seems cheesy, but it’s really simple. She’s blackmail for The Dreds [mafia] to take over The Deathroads [Ethan's gang]. If Ethan doesn’t say ‘yes,’ she dies.)
So Vir never really got a chance to defend himself.
Also, do you think the
‘Not only did Vir show the Gangs that their actions had consequences. But he proved that somebody wanted to make the world a place worth living in. A place worth living is a place worth fighting for.”
Is too much? Someone said I cranked up the epic to maximum.
Sorry for the profanity if it offended you, lol. Then it was probably the spam block then.
That sounds like something best put at the very end of the story to show the moral undertone. I don’t think it’s too much.
Personally, I’d like to hear Vir say this, instead of the narrator.
Talking to himself?
It could work as an internal monologue, or he could say it to his new love interest, or his partner.
I’m not offended by profanity, but a lot of our traffic is generated by teachers, students, teachers referring their classes, etc. I’d like to keep our language at about the level of a PG-13 movie.
Well, I make it as realistic as possible. And if you’ve ever gone to the LES then you’d know they aren’t too polite down there. But I tone it down.
I don’t know what the LES is, but if the Marines next door are indicative of Marines as a whole, I’d say that most military authors would have to tone down the profanity because military speech in real-life is so profane that it would probably jar the audience. (The guys next store average about an f-bomb every 2-3 sentences).
Aren’t you Chicagoers?
LES = Lower-East Side, possibly? London’s East Side?
I’m currently a Midwesterner (maybe Indianan more than Chicagoan, but OK). But I’d like to move down South after graduating. The weather is generally more pleasant (except in the summer), but mainly I’m concerned about cheap housing and lower costs of living.
I have two assumptions: 1) I’m not going to be making very much money out of college, and 2) most of my work is online and can be done virtually anywhere. I’m also an intensely messy person, which means that I probably could not find a roommate. So anything urban is out of my price range.
I’d like to move up North, sure I’ll probably go broke and struggle, but who doesn’t. That’s the main reason I find it important to get my acting/modeling career underway while here, so it won’t be starting from the ground up in NY.
I don’t mind the cold, I think my body is trying to get me prepared for the cold up there. I’m also incredibly messy, although I love it, I doubt others would appreciate my motives. It’s ok if it doesn’t work out, I’ll move back here and continue college, putting my dreams on hold.
I believe in you, sure I don’t know much about you, but I’m quessing you’re like Agent Black, looks and all.
What are your other interests, beside pol-sci and writing?
I’m a big fan of pro football (particularly the Bears and Cardinals) and am a pretty dedicated fantasy football player. I’m not all that good at FF, but I usually get lucky with quarterbacks. This year, I made it to the finals in all three of my leagues this year thanks to Kurt Warner and Aaron Rodgers.
As for Agent Black, yeah… I asked our artists to put a positive spin on an accountant. The resulting character ended up looking a lot like me, but that wasn’t intentional.
I love Banu’s work, but I didn’t like this one enough to use in the header. I think the character looked too young, a bit flavorless, and his teeth were kind of weird. That said, Banu has a phenomenal eye for detail and he puts more effort into the shading than any freelancer I’ve ever seen.
I liked his Lash, though. That shading is pretty hard-core, and I feel like his expression gives him more style than Rebecca’s version.
Lash, Superhero by ~superheronation on deviantART
On a totally unrelated tangent, I think I paid $25 for each of the three works here. I’m not sure how many hours Banu took, but I’d be surprised if he cracked $10 an hour. And he’s damn good! It’s a hard, hard market for freelance artists. In any case, he told me he’d be interested in illustrating a SN comic on a more protracted basis if we get that far. I haven’t gotten a publishing offer, of course, but I’m kind of expecting that we’ll each get somewhere between $100-$150 per page.
At 24 pages, that’d probably be around $3000. That’s decent for a month of work, but more importantly I think that it would bring me closer to finishing the novel. The ideas and characters developed in one can be marketed and sold in the other. (If a company offers me a contract, I’m going to decline to give away any rights to the novelization. I suspect that whatever money I make from the novel will be small enough that it will matter much more to me than them).
thought about giving Vir a Beleclava, but its used too much
What is a Beleclava?
You know.
Um… i dont know what else to call it.
That thing lash is wearing. is a belaclava
Oh, I just call it a ski-mask. I was thinking about something gaudier, like a SWAT mask, but I thought the ski-mask was a bit more low-key and relatable.
Is there anything you’d recommend instead?
I think he means a balaclava. Maybe it’s a British thing.
The only problem with the ski mask is that it makes him look a little criminal . . . but they again, if that’s the intent, then there’s no problem.
Hmm, that’s a good point about criminality. I was intending him to look more anti-heroish than the babe-in-the-woods Agent Black, but I could have Banu soften it in the comic book.
Yeah, he looks like he’s about to go rob a convenience store.
The Deadly austrailian grabbed his bag and turned to leave out the front door, slipping the piece of paper into his front pocket.
“Is this vigilantee,” he said it with a whisper of anger, “going to be a problem?” asked Elliot, before Hammond had the chance to walk out the door.
Hammond shrugged, not breaking stride, “Maybe.” He told Eldon.
Then scilently to himself he added “I hope so.”
Theres a good thing from my story.
Hammond welcomes Vir becasue he lives for the fight.
Elliot doesnt because it costs him money.
I also compared how Eldon and Ken woke up, Eldon in his mansion, with a sore back from sleeping in a chair, he poors himself coffee and relaxes infront of his huge plasma screen TV.
Vir wakes up with every muscle burning, any scorce of light blinding, Dry mouthed, Broken, Tired and Disoriented.
Elliot leanrs about last nights events because Hammond turned on the TV.
Vir tries to REMEMBER them.
You like the idea?
There are an awful lot of Unnecessarily Capitalized Words, readers may get annoyed.
The Grammar check will pick that up.
and actual readers arnt as picky as u.
Notice that?
I’m going to respectfully disagree with you on the importance of grammar, punctuation and other grammar issues, Dallas. Publishers are probably more picky than readers when it comes to grammar and spelling, but readers care, too. For example, pretty much all of the top 100 blogs are well-polished and carefully edited. If people wouldn’t read poorly-edited writing for free, I doubt they’d pay for it in a novel. How many people want to read your work? If you’re not sure, I’d recommend getting a blog and a hit counter. Can you get 100 people a day to read your writing for free? If not, trying to sell it will prove very difficult. If you aren’t sure whether you could get people to read your writing, then I think grammar and mechanics would be the most important improvement you could make.
But yeah, the main problem is the publishers. Professional publishers are about the most impatient, nitpicky people on Earth. They have a job to do, bajillions of manuscripts and not much time. So if a manuscript’s grammar or spelling look amateurish, they’re just going to throw it out and move on to another submission. Consequently, if you’d like to be published professionally, the mechanics of writing are not optional. If an author is not able or willing to prepare a manuscript to a fairly high standard, trying to write professionally will be very difficult. It will take a lot of time and postage money, and I don’t think that the author’s odds are very good. It’s a very demanding industry.
I wish you the best, but if you just don’t care about the mechanics, I’d recommend considering another career path. Trying to write without a strong grasp of the mechanics of writing is like trying to play professional basketball without learning how to dribble. Alternately, if you’re willing to learn the mechanics but aren’t quite there yet, I think that using a trusted friend as an editor would probably provide an effective short-term solution. However, long-term I think you will gain a lot out of learning the mechanics.
I should probably add an addendum here. Manuscripts don’t have to adhere 100% to rules like “every sentence should have a noun and a verb.” Of course not. I’d recommend breaking with the usual rules of grammar when you have a good reason to do so. Style, pacing, character voice and realism are often good reasons. “I don’t know what the usual rules of grammar are” and “no one cares whether or not it’s punctuated correctly” are not good reasons.
It depends what your goals are, but 100 people per day is far too small to do much of anything. If I had to estimate a rule of thumb, I’d say that most authors will convert between one and two percent of their free readers to paid readers. So, if you have 100 unique visitors per day, I’d project 1-2 sales a day. That’s about 500 copies in a year, which is not nearly enough to live on. Depending on where you live, I think you’d need to sell at least 15,000 copies per year to think about full-time. If you only sold 1-2 books per 100 visitors, you would need between 750K-1500K hits per year.
I don’t know how we got to to this tangent, but another consideration is how long it takes you to write a book. Presumably, if you were able to write two or three books a year instead of just one, it would be less important for you to sell many copies of each book. Prolificness pays!
Also, I wouldn’t recommend putting too much faith in hit-counts as a measure of quality. There are a lot of factors that don’t have anything to do with the quality of the writing. For example, the site’s visual design, the quality of the sidebar and organizational scheme, and your search engine optimization will influence how many visitors you get but not how good your writing is. I also wouldn’t recommend worrying too much about whether you have “enough” hits to justify going full-time. It probably wouldn’t surprise you to know that many authors have gone full-time without any hits!
The best indicator of your ability to go full-time, I think, is how much money you have previously made with your writing. If the amount of money you’ve made with your writing has only been negligible, then I think it would probably be rash to assume that you have the ability to feed yourself and make rent. From what I understand, writing is a risky career choice and not everyone will make it. Economically speaking, it’s a tough market because so many people are qualified to write and the Internet has made free writing widely available. (Damn bloggers! If it weren’t for superhero writing-advice blogs, people would have to buy superhero writing guidebooks).
Dis iznt ah publisherz offiss.
If Eye wanzta speh-hell thingz Wrng Den Eye Dam Well Will.
Grammer is important, seeing as how
‘I helped my uncle jack off a cow.’
and
‘I helped my uncle Jack, off a cow.’
Mean two compleatly differnt things.
Also this one
‘Women with out her man is nothing.’
and
‘Women: Without her, Man is nothing.’
But im writing this in word
so there will be a spelling and grammer check every once in a damned while.
but im not gunna waste my time doin it for the internets lol.
Deh Beeyootee of Inglish Iz Dat Yoo Can Sownd Thingz Owt.
And Eevin If Yoo Dontuh, Yoo Can StIlL FiGuRe OuT wHaT eye Am Zaying.
Calm down, although this is English and you can sound it out, I still found it very hard to read(Deh Beeyootee of Inglish? what?), the purposely or unpurposely made, comment you posted.
Wait, I’m confused if you post your pieces from Word how come they aren’t already corrected. Why don’t you just write out your comments in word and then paste them here. That would save you and us some trouble.
Slow day, today. Tomorrow is the last day of school before winter break. Yay!!!
Now I can focus on my comic script.
I’m confident you will, but not here. Why should we subject our readers to your crap? Please come back as soon as you care about your writing.
I’m very excited for break as well. On the business side of things, we’re working on a comic script, a nonfiction manuscript, a grant proposal, storyboards for 5 comic book pages and designing wedding invitations. If I can get any 3 of those done, I’ll be pleased.
At least you guys have a team to work with.
Kind of. Jacob and Davis are more involved in the website than the novel and comic book. Just as well, I suppose. At $80-160 a page for a comic book script, there isn’t enough to split three ways. I suppose that’s why so few comic book series have 3 writers.
I think it would be far simpler to write in correct English than to think of clever ways of misspelling. It took me about two seconds to realize that “beeyootee” meant “beauty”. Also, people often misspell to save time, but “beeyootee” is three letters longer than “beauty”, so there isn’t much of a benefit in writing that way.
Yeah, crazy spelling is very intrusive. I wouldn’t recommend throwing out basic mechanics without a good reason. Otherwise, flagrant mechanical problems will send readers a strong message that the author doesn’t know how to write.
Even online, a basic grasp of mechanics will help an author (or commenter) come across as credible. Smooth grammar will make writing feel smarter.
Sigh, some people and their alck of humor
I’d say we’re pretty funny. The problem is that you don’t give a shit. No one can help you write unless you care.
Me and my friends go crazy everyday, ask anyone that knows me well, I’ll crack up on almost everything. A boy fell of his bike earlier today, sure he got hurt, but boy was it funny.
Then again, my sense of humor is pretty dark.
Hmm …
I find it interesting that you guys included the ability to locate someone no matter where they are. That’s so cool because I thought I made that up.
Luna Jamnia can do that, it’s not like she has a roadmap in her head, she just knows where people are or her mind ‘tells’ her to go someplace and she does, and there they are.
Well never mind it was ‘ability to locate someone mentally’ but I think that’s pretty close to what she can do.
Isn’t that something Goku from Dragonball can do? You know, instant translocation?
I have no idea … I’ve never watched Dragonball Z before (That’s the show you meant, right?)
There’s a difference because Goku basically teleports, while Luna is just in cruise control.
Hey, here’s a question. One of my characters, D, has an evil twin, Dark D. They look the same apart from hair color and style.
Anyway, my question is whether they should have the same powers or have different powers. They were both created by the same guy.
Dark D is basically an early model of D. His real title is D1, dark D. He’s stronger than D.
I think their powers should at least be a little different like Starfire and Blackfire.
I’ll read the other story in a sec..
I have come up with a story and need professional help…..
My first character is named Joshua and has the ability to manipulate air. I was thinking that his power was powerd by energy he absorbed so that he would run out if he wasnt stingy with his abilty. I was also thinking that maybe he has to stop a recharge in fights so that hes forced to use his skills more often.
my second character is Wayne. He has the ability of plant mimicry. so that he can copy plants abilitys. such as thorns or growing vines and roots. he could make plants grow extreamly fast. He can make himself turn into a plant like substance.
Third,This character is named bre’anna and her ability is chlorine gas breath.The effects of this are dizzyness,unconssiousness,or acoma. but the thing is isthat she cant control how intense the chlorine gas is and she cant stop it when it starts coming out(but she can mke it come out).
my last character is named wilma. she has sound absorbtion. she can absorb sound causing people to become deaf and mute. she can also copie sounds she absorbs makeing it a weopon by generating sound powerful enough to bust eardrums,shatter glass,and cause intense pain. but her weakness is that she cant control who it effects because she generates it from all sides.
so those are my characters and i need help with villains. I have a good plot already so i dont need help with that but someone could offer ideas. Also i could use some ideas for their powers. so i would appreciate it if someone would help plzzzz….
Hmm. Mysticgust, are you thinking of a novel, a comic book or something else?
If this is a novel, I think the powers will be hard to choreograph in a fight. Sound absorption might be a problem in a comic book, but generally I don’t think choreography (how the powers are depicted on the page) will be a problem for a comic book.
I notice that none of the heroes sound like they’ll be doing a lot of melee. In a comic book, a meleeist can be a useful source of interesting visuals and generic feats of strength (like bashing through a door, etc).
As for the villain, I’d recommend keeping things as simple as possible. The heroes are already kind of exotic.
I think your heroes lean towards more natural and elemental based powers, so you may want a counter-intuitive villian, maybe a villian with technological abilities. Alternatively, you could go with an opposite force of nature like fire and heat.
I like your heroes they sound like a fresh bunch, although I do agree they may not be melee suited. But, I suspect you can use Wilma and Wayne as meleeists, particulary Wayne. And possibly Joshua.
I’m a little concerned about Bre’anna, what can she contribute by having uncontrolllable noxious gas? Does she ever gain control? What else can she do with her gas?
Could you give me a general idea of your plot? Maybe that would give me some ideas for an appropriate villain.
I’d reccommend changing Bre’anna into Brianna. Depending on her backstory, I think this a bit more of a natural sounding name.
Joshua has the power to manipulate air. How exactly would this be helpful? What could he do? The only thing I can think of is that he can stop air from getting into peoples’ lungs, but that wouldn’t make for very good fight scenes. Also, how would you describe this in a novel/show this in a comic book visual? You may want to tweak this power slightly so it’s a little easier to use.
Wayne’s powers seem very plant-based, which is a good start. However, I’m not really feeling ‘turn himself into a plant-like substance’. I think this overlaps a lot with his ability to copy plant abilities and I’d suggest simply getting rid of it.
I don’t think Bre’anna’s abilties will be very useful. Heck, they seem more likely to be a liability than anything. Unless my memory fails me, chlorine gas is what they used in the trenches in World War 1, and it’s VERY dangerous and often fatal. I don’t think that I’d want anybody like that near me. I would reccommend changing her powers (maybe something more simple, like creating poisons in her body) or give her some sort of control over the gas.
I feel that Wilma’s powers will be hard to describe or show in a visual. Also, something about your description of her powers feels a little off to me. Sound is basically particle vibrations, right? You could tweak your description a little to fit this (for example, she has slight control over particle movement and can prevent them from entering the ear, which causes deafness). Ha, my physics isn’t great.
This is just a minor nitpick, but I think Wayne and Wilma’s names sound pretty similar. I’d recommend changing Wilma to make it easier to distinguish the characters.
As for the villain, I wouldn’t recommend a fire-based villain, simply because it seems to have been done in a lot of other things. Depending on your origin story, how do you feel about a more psychic- or technological-based villain?
Holliequ, I agree on your other points, but one stuck out to me.
I’m pretty sure there are quite a few intersting things that can be done with wind abilities. Pushing, pullling, flying, forming weapons, and maybe constructs, tornadoes, etc. I think with a little creativity Joshua’s air ablities can be interesting. Although, I’m not sure exactly how you would depict this in a novel.
Maybe:
“Joshua gestured with hand, sending a ball of air hurdling at this opponent. Gesturing upward, he created a current that lifted him off the ground.”
Or something like that, but I suspect all that gesturing my get annoying. Alternatively, he could control his air through speech, this may be ok, if it doesn’t come off like an anime with all the ability yelling
I like your idea of creating poisons from her body, but as a slight tweak, maybe she can create a variety of gases. Sleeping gas, knockout gas, dizzy gas, tear gas, seering gas, and maybe truth gas.
Thinking back a fire villian may not be all that fresh (I find fire a very uninteresting ability. Conversly, I had once dreamt up a hero who uses purely heat instead of fire), but I’d definitely advocate the technological villian.
Hmm. You raise some good points, RB, I hadn’t thought about those. Air is more useful than I thought!
About the gesturing, I find that spot-on as well, although I don’t think that would be as bad in a comic. In a book, he’d probably have some form of mental direction, and maybe use his hands to guide it more accurately.
Oops, sorry for the crazy italics. I still haven’t mastered HTML codes.
Thanks for the help. I’m thinking about making a novel and maybe a comic here or there. I like to draw.
This is very helpful. I’m thinking about what ragged boy said about the different gases and I think that’s a good idea. I think maybe Wilma and Bre’anna could gain more control later on and I think I came up with a good villain.
I thought about having a guy who absorbs a lot of people’s abilities but can only retain one, which is okay… but when when he absorbs ability augmentation he can supercharge his ability so he can recall abilities he already absorbed and use them on a higher scale than anyone who originally had the ability.
What makes him bad is that an alien race came to Earth looking for specimens to plant their eggs in (when the eggs mature they become they permanently take over the bodies they inhabit), so when he got injected and they found out he had abilities they started looking for superhumans for the queen to lay her eggs in. But when they are immune, they force them to mine ores to build ships and weapons to capture the rest of the human race. So please tell me if you think this is a good idea and be brutal… I will keep updating.
So basically the villian is an Ability Theif, he can absorb a multitude of powers, but only use one at a time. When he uses the power, it’s stronger than the person who originally controlled it. Ok, that sounds like it can work as long as there are more people with powers instead of the main characters.
I’m confused on the origin of his evilness, the way you worded it confuses me. So when he got injected with the egg, they found out that humans had powers, thus they looked for a sperhuman to implant their queen in.
So basically, he was immune and they forced him to work in a mine. That doesn’t explain why he’s evil. Is he working for the aliens? or is he on his own? did he ever even get out of the mine?
Could you re-explain it to me?
The main villain has the ability to copy powers but can only retain one at a time. Until that is he copies the ability of superpower augmentation(ability supercharging) so he used it on himself allowing him to recall his abilities he’s absorbed. When he got injected with the embryo it took control of his body. After seeing that his host had an ability, they decided to find other superhumans to inject.
Ok, that makes sense. So why is he the main villian as opposed to the aliens that injected him? Or any other superhuman that was injected with an egg?
He’s the main villain because he was injected with the egg that was meant to be the leader of the race. By the way, I need an idea of how to get them out of their hosts.
Also he is the most powerful superhuman because he absorbs a lot of different abilities.
Crawling out of the mouth, engulfing the body from the inside out, bursting out of the body, etc.
I ment without killing them……….
Surgery? Swallowing some seemingly innocuous chemical which will actually kill them? A virus or infection, a la War of the Worlds?
I’m guessing surgery is your best bet. Depending on your alien’s advanceness, they could just have a machine that phases the alien out of the person’s body.
um question.
From my book
“Their supercondensed balls of Potassium, they react with humidity and moisture and create a thick smoke.” He flicked the metal ball into a bowl of dirty water in the sink, the metal instantly sparked and exploded, it burnt the top of the bowl and the smoke created was thick and grey. So think, in fact, that it created a smokescreen across the entire counter. Ken walked over and bent over to get a closer look, accidently inhaling some of the smoke as he did. It smelt terrible, and made Ken’s throat dry up and burn.
“The smoke created can be used as a smokescreen, the Potassium works off of the humidity and moisture in the air. And in this case, in your lungs and throat, a few of these could knock a person out die to asphexiation. But make sure you don’t swallow any either, it’s a two-was streak, your throat will dry out and close, too. May I reccoment not standing in this smoke until we can get that gas-mask hooked up to your paintball mask”
Does that sound plausable?
That’s somewhat plausible, although I’d suspect that super-condensed potassium would make a large explosion as opposed to a large smokescreen. But I don’t think readers will read it and be like “That’s scientifically implausible! Worst book ever!” So I guess it’s ok to use it.
Whys doesn’t he just use smokebombs?
If I’m being picky, the potassium would react with the moisture in the air WELL before hitting the water in the sink. Also, it’s more likely to give off a flame than create a smokescreen.
On the other hand, I don’t think the average reader would pause long enough to think that. Actually, I don’t think you need all this explanation at all. If one character wants to know what it is, the other could simply respond “super-condensed potassium. I wouldn’t get too close.”
Also, what RB said. Smokebombs would probably be a lot easier and wouldn’t require as much explanation, I think.
i have a new superpower
reading a mind with a touch and for a short time you become that person the longer you touch the longer you become the person 5 seconds of being the person for evry second you touch the person
if your preperd for contact you can fouces on what you want the further back you wanna go the longer you need to have contact if your not preperd for instince if you bump in to somone you get a whole heap of ther memmorys for 5 seconds,
you can even do this with somone whos resently diead athough it would hve to be very resently after you become your self agien you remeber some memmorys and wat youv done
the downside if when getting the memmorys it hurts like hell like getting a drill in to the skull the longer the contact the more intense the pain
can even cause a nose bleed
so hows that for a power?
Thats cool. I have a new ability to….. the ability to generate glass. they could condense the dust in the air or in a room then send electricirty into it turning it into glass. the can create lots of different things like spikes or shruikins.
@ David – That sounds like a pretty good limitation to mind reading. And the mind-control part may help too. In think these powers are more suited for a side character though, unless there was only one main character.
Overall, it’s ok, although you probably don’t have to describe it in specific time like five seconds, or whatever. Just saying the longer you have contact, the longer you can maintain control is enough.
@ Mysticgust – That sounds like a workable and interesting power. I’ve only seen a few characters with powers similar to it, so it’s relatively fresh.
well you dont really have control you get what you get and its random and after contact u pritty much become that person for a short time
and ye its more a side chrater thing i dunno how to use it my self but feel free to if u can
Smoke bombs aren’t as convenient. The potassium will make smoke when it creates flame, more a sparkish flame than an actual blaze. Remember, I’m making it more realistic, so he’s not going to fine smoke bombs at the college, he’s going to find chemicals. And Austin stole these chemicals to make the tiny smoke bombs.
Strange, I would think smokebombs are more convenient seeing as you can buy them from the store. Also, the main character wouldn’t have to worry if it was going to rain and if he would blow up. But, if you say so.
Maybe you can buy smoke bombs in the USA, but not here.
I’ve decided to change Atalya’s powers. Her current ones suck compared to the others.
Instead of her powers being the result of a botched surgery, they will now be because of her promise ring. Tristram got it from a jeweller whose supplier mistook a space rock for a piece of amethyst. Its structure is the same, but as Atalya wore it every second of every day, the radiation it had gathered during its intergalactic journey transferred to her bloodstream, enabling her to alter her structure. Not a shapeshifter as such, think of Danny Phantom. He can switch from being a boy to being a ghost. Atalya’s appearance changes to that of another possible genetic code she has (her skin goes darker, her hair changes colour slightly, etc) and a pair of wings sprout from her back.
What do you think? Thanks!
What were her other powers? Also, how do the wings help? I think the wings might make her seem a bit cheesy, especially if she’s a bit goody (um, she’s a superhero, so I would guess so . . .) – maybe you can give her a power that’s a little less unexpected?
On the other hand, I really like linking the promise ring to her powers. That suggests that Tristram started dating her before she got her powers and it might make their relationship more human. I feel that could add layers or more interest (for example, maybe Tristram preffered it when she didn’t have powers because she wasn’t in danger. Maybe she feels more on his level now). What do you think?
This might just be a guy vs. girl thing, but I felt the element of the promise ring giving her superpowers was a bit girly. Sort of like Dumbledore telling Harry that he survived because of “The greatest magic… love, Mr. Potter!” (I’m paraphrasing that, but not very much).
Also, I’m not familiar with promise rings. Do they actually mean something or are they just another way to show off a puppy romance? For example, an engagement ring is clearly meaningful, but I have no idea how committed two lovers are before they exchange promise rings. (Like most twenty-somethings, I think I have a very cynical view of high school romance, so that bias is probably going to skew my attempt to fill in the gaps of my knowledge).
Holliequ:
Her powers before were night-vision and the ability to plant ideas into people’s minds, which they may or may not follow through on. Compared to the powers of the other heroes (flight and psi-blasts, shapeshifting/sound mimicry, communication with the dead, animal empathy, hacking) they seemed pretty lame.
Since Isaac, Tristram and Kamari can fly, I felt it would be easier to add another flier for the fight scenes. If Requiem, Klemente or Olivia were to leap off a building, they would be doomed. Most of my fight scenes are ambush attacks from above, which would be easier to do if there were more fliers.
I haven’t decided on the type of wings. Bat would be cool, but they’re way too common. Angel style are also pretty, but I think I’d make it more like a yellow and blue macaw bird wing.
http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/NPLPOD/1134926~Blue-and-Yellow-Macaw-Landing-on-a-Perch-Posters.jpg
I thought it would be a bit too convenient if Tristram and Atalya happened to be at the same foster child support meeting, and both just happened to have powers. This way it works out much better.
B. Mac:
The giving of promise rings in Oz is extremely rare (I first heard about them by watching That 70’s Show) and it is decreasing in other places. What I have read is that they can be a promise to get engaged or a way to show affection. It’s also a sort of mark: “My boyfriend gave me this promise ring, so I’m taken”.
I was thinking about creating a character with the ability to become like sand or as hard as diamond. Does that make sense? I thought that would be really cool.
Chi.Rho!
That sounds interesting.
Have you not heard of the Sandman? (Spiderman villain; you probably have). Or Gaara? (manga villain-turned-hero). They are basically what you’re looking for, and some characters you may want to research.
I haven’t seen any other sand-people like them (not that I’ve looked), so maybe you could expand on what already is. I think it’s doable.
To answer the question, it does make sense. And in case you needed reassurance, go for it. Nothing ventured nothing gained.
I think there’s a bit of a gap between becoming like sand and becoming like diamond. It seems like a pretty good idea, though.
Is it possible for me to write some material and post it so you guys can critique it for me? It would be really cool to get some feedback.
Oh and Holliequ…can you elaborate on that a little bit for me?
Hey, Chi.Rho, I’ve given you a review forum here.
Oh thanks bro…Im going to write a story and post some stuff soon.
I mean that I don’t see the connection between sand and diamonds. If one character can do both, I think that might feel a little strange.
Of course, you could quite easily get around this by calling it ‘diamond dust’.
@ Wings:
I like Sparks as well, finally another alternative element user. My character, Adrian, uses water.
Don’t worry we’re mostly friendly here, we’re even nice to the occasional naysayer that shows up. I’m usually around more often, but I’ve been busy lately. But now I’m here to help.
@Chi.Rho:
I think what your thinking of is the fact that sand can be turned to glass through some process. I think it may be risky, but you could create a character that can turn his sand into thick glass. Everyone likes a little modability.
Also @ Chi.Rho – Heat turns sand into glass, I think I read that somewhere. Still, glass is kind of breakable….Maybe I’ll research it.
@ Ragged Boy – I’ve read about your water element. He’s weak to dehydration and such, right?
Thanks for helping, but I have many more characters…..
However, for today I’m sticking with Sparks/Sprx.
-Wings the Trying-To-Be-Helpful
I think there can be some leeway on the durability of the glass. I suspect the glass would be used for constructs anyway.
Yup, Adrian is weak against heat, electricity, and dehydration, he loses his powers in the new moon. Luckily he has a supply of alien technology to use in such a situation, he’s also a skilled actor making him persuasive and convincing.
[moved by B. Mac to Wing's writing forum.]
[moved by B. Mac to Wing's writing forum.]
One minor concern:
You have three characters whose name start with A. Worst case scenario, a reader could get confused one who’s who if all three are in a scene together.
I can afford to ditch the names Alan and Adriana. (I love the name Alexis)
Any suggestions?
-Wings
Hello, Wings. I’ve put up a review forum for you here.
[moved by B. Mac to Wing's writing forum.]
[moved by B. Mac to Wing's writing forum.]
im thinkin of a story based in a futuristic world of tommorrows modern technical advancees. generation “I” ( in the years after the internet and solor power break threw: rougly 2100s. )
the worlds as we know it today, has since changed dramatickly, threw out the 21sth century. the internet gave birth to total world wide, virtual, visiual, and instant communication. ( example back to the future with out the flying cars just yet..). Due to global warming.. new york city was completly floaded and abandoned, alongside the sinking of the state of floride in the year 2012, dec. 21. In the world’s history books Know as ” DOOMSDAY”, belive to be foretold by early myan civilization. (explaing the re- alliginment of the solor system, un-know untill 2010 astrologist noticed earth itself orbiting into anothor galaxy which satalites our thought to be home galaxy at the time the milky-way.) our two galaxies merge togather for a brief moment, which only happened onced in earths existing , when this event occured a object the size of mars crashed into earth at an angel spliting earth into peaces. which in a matter of days formed our moon.. and over time turned the moltant planet of earth into a water world, life supporting..
on ” DOOMS DAY” tihs event repeated itself . creating a galatic perfect storm of bad luck . at the same time this was happening saturn 7 and jupitur positioed thereselves on oppposing side of our sun throwing off the natural gravitational pull around the suning causes it to heat up and spike .. The warming of the earth created a DAY AFTER TOMMRROW chain of natural disatasterson a bibilical poportion , half the worlds poppulation droped 50 percent. luckily a spike from the sun never directly targeted earth so we as a species survived the merger .. in the result man-kind had a new out look on the world in ever consivable way. nuclear broke out for natural resources, lasting 5 tramatic years .. but the world soon came to the realization that in the aftermath of events global extention weather biblical or not had nearly came full circule… life was more important..
My hero has the power to talk to computers and crotroll any computerized machinary threwout the world, and super human genaric abilities due to future gene in-hancment and nano technology fused threwout the cells of his body, and a super computer chip segictly implanted to his curribral cortex( a part of the brain controliing feeling and thought).
originaly created to be the greatest super weapon . becomes one of the worlds gretesst protecters of the future.
im trying to write a plossible origin that makes this character turn good and have a important role in the future world bein created, as a hero ?
does anyone have any pointers or ideas …
Futureworld- I think the idea is hot for real… maybe you could have your hero in an induced sleep and one of the scientists who helped create him decided that it was time to wake him. And then maybe you could add flashbacks of a family he had before he was subject to the experiments that made him what he is…idk…does that make sense…it sounds cool, though. I’d like to read some of it.
And the ability called temporal manipulation…is that like reality manipulation?
When I said “temporal manipulation,” I was thinking more of the ability to manipulate time than reality.
If I use gene splicing to explain the origins of a chracters abilities…would the character have to resemble the animal used to grant the hero abilities?
Not if you didn’t want them to, although it’s up to your discretion.
CR, the single best-known example of genetic splicing in comic books is that Spiderman has some genes from a spider even though he doesn’t look like a spider. So I think that audiences won’t get confused if the character doesn’t look like the animal he shares genes with.
List of powers from Showtime: The Goddies
Showtime- Control over all water and its properties, versed in alien technology, enchanced durability.
Jimelly- Full water control (including advanced techniques i.e. flight, self-vaporization), vast knowledge of chemistry and technology.
Lae’Trell- Magnetic control, generates an electrical aura capable of stunning and bodily manpulation, mechanical genius, expert pilot. Don’t forget her massive horns!
Meleon (A recurring neutral)- Color manipulation, extendable metal tongue, wall-crawling, enhanced agility.
Thumper (Neutral, contest loser, powers through stolen tech, Adrian’s semi love interest )- Sound control, sound based armor, enhanced strength.
Black Lace(Michelle-Adrian’s other semi love interest)- Biological manipulation (rapid healing, morphing, changing other’s anatomy, biological linking)
Suggestions? Opinions?
Above Comment
Suggestions? Opinions?
Is this a team, or are Showtime and Jimelly enemies (or heavy competitors)? I only ask because they seem similar. Also, where are they? Would Showtime have a hard time driving a car since he only knows about alien ships, or is that ontop of what he already knows?
Ehh… I’d probably give more useful info If I knew more.
Hmm… the diversity of powers seems balanced (-water, +water, electricity, color, sound, and biology), and the color manipulation sounds very intriguing.
I’m no expert, but I see potential… though, I would stick to the norm and change the second water to fire, but you may not want to do that (since it would be expected).
I think Adrian’s power relies on Jimelly (I may be mistaken). Uh, it’s a little complicated. RB can explain.
Those all sound pretty solid, RB, except Meleon (not feeling that name, by the way. It seems a little weird to pronounce, Mel-e-on doesn’t roll off the tongue the same way, Iunno, Mollen or Mallen would). A metal tongue? For a start, why would her tongue be metal, and two, how would she taste anything? . . . That’s gotta be a serious evolutionary disadvantage. I like the idea, though. What about making it just a normal tongue? If you don’t think that has enough spice to it, then maybe it leaks acid or poison or something.
I don’t really care for the name ‘Black Lace’, either. I’m not really fond of names with more than one word. I think you could give her something stylish like Showtime, nevermind if it has nothing to do with her powers. Showtime doesn’t either, after all, unless you say “they’re showy!”
Maybe Psychedelic for the colour-manipulation guy? Awesome power, by the way. Also, if human and possibly alien bodies are comprised partially of water, would that make the Michelle’s power redundant? Oh, and I don’t get the purpose of the apostrophe in the magnetic guy. Does it refer to a way of pronouncing the name? It’s a little distracting. Perhaps a demonic-sounding name for that character? It would help readers remember her horns, too.
Well, Adrian/Showtime and Jimelly have the same powers because they are the same alien race. Jimelly will not use his powers very often though, he specializes in his chemistry, and isn’t really a fighter. Jimelly is Adrian’s mentor and the one who gave him his powers via injecting him with his own DNA.
I like Black Lace, but I can come up with something else. I’m not feeling Psychedelic, maybe Camo, I’ll come up with something. His concept is a human cha-meleon.
He has metal tongue only when he goes alien. I wanted to do something new.
Adrian and Jim won’t control the water in people’s bodies, that’s kind of cheating, so Michelle is good in her field.
This group is somewhat a team, some of these people probably won’t meet each other like Jim and Michelle.
Lae’Trell is an alien, not a demon, and plus she’s a good guy. So, I don’t want to give her a demonic name, despite her large horns and moody personality. She doesn’t explicitly control bodies, but she can boost her own chemistry by electrical impulse.
You kind of have to understand my story to get it, Adrain/Showtime is a human who can turn into a half alien at will becuase he was injected with Jimelly’s (who is a full alien) DNA. So he’s more human than alien.
It may help if you read my comic script in my forum. It’s scattered out everywhere.
Hey guys….I was wondering are some tips on creating characters and making sure that their primary and secondary powers work together….For example would it be pointless to create a character who can turn invisible and have superspeed? Thanx
Well, usually when you have a character with a primary and secondary power, the primary is usually generic. This gives you the opportunity to give them an exotic secondary power. Wallcrawling and web spinning is cool, but spider sense takes it over the egde (in a good way).
Alternately, you could choose a primary power and edit it to make it more interesting or exotic. For example, telekinesis but only over paper or marbles. Or summoning, but only things that you have drawn before.
I hope this helps. I think B. Mac can give you more insight.
Hmm… as a rule, I think exotic powers require more attention from the audience, particularly if they have unusual parameters (like the ability to use telekinesis but only on paper or metal).
If a power requires a lot of audience attention and/or explanation, I think it’s important to make it front-and-center. For example, Spiderman’s webs are his most distinctive and most-used power, but Superman’s eye-beams and icy breath are just minor tricks that rarely see action.
Invisibility is a good power, and superspeed is ok (although superspeed will make it especially difficult to write in fights with unpowered criminals). However, I’m not sure about the combination. First, they don’t seem to go together very well. Second, I don’t think they’re very complementary. For example, Wolverine’s agility and claws are complementary because he can work in crazy acrobatics as he tries to claw someone. Likewise, Spiderman can do acrobatics or wall-crawl as he tries to shoot webs.
I think invisibility would work better for something like a stealth theme, or maybe an intangible ghost theme. Superspeed is more limited. Usually, the character is just a speedster (like the Flash or Quicksilver).
Now for my villains. As a general statement they all feel constant, extreme pain at all times giving them an oddly high tolerance for pain. By being in pain for so long they have become accustomed to it.
Master Unitus (his chosen name)- He’s a delusional megalomaniac whose goal is to unite the entire universe in pain. Being that pain is one of the only things that all races, alien and human, share he chose it as his mean. Thusly, he first used his theory on his “loyal” subjects.
He is a gifter, although his gifts come at the cost of extreme pain to the body parts associated. He is also a hypnotic orator, but his hypnosis only works if whom he is speaking to is not aware of it. He has no battle abilities, although he can give negative abilities. For example, he could give you the ability to have a body that weigh tons, while your body is in extreme pain, you also cannot move yourself.
Unitus, being in a fixed position, refers to his four main followers as his Body.
Vorp, The Mind- Has the ability of mental matter reconstruction and a super-genius level intellect. He suffers from intense splitting migraines, but works through the pain.
Mange, The Heart- Breathes and spits decay pheromones, can control the density and thickness of her skin, healing factor. She suffers from symptoms similar to a rapid flesh eating virus. This coupled with her healing gives her the general appearance of a rotting corpse, although she isn’t actually rotting.
Lock, The Hand- Can control and multiply the joints in his body, using them to rapidly extend and expand his limbs. He is also armed with an arsenal of blades. Due to his race he has naturally stretchy skin to accomodate his bones. He feels the constant pain of broken bones.
(No name yet, ideas?), The Foot- She has detachable, regenerative body parts that she can manipulate and self-destruct. She carries a large energy shield that she uses offensively as well as to defend herself from her own explosions. She is disdainful towards her title and is the only Body member who still reacts negatively to her pain. She feels a fluctuating pain of burning throughout her body, particularly her lungs, causing her to often cough when she speaks.
@ B. Mac: Well, going on what you were saying about exotic powers, how about this?
The character can read a mind with a touch and, for a short time, become that person. The longer the character holds his touch, the longer he can stay in the other person’s mind.
If he’s prepared for contact, he can focus on what he wants. The further back he wants to go, the longer he needs to have contact. If he’s not prepared (if he bumps into someone, for instance), he gets a whole heap of their memories for a few seconds. He can even do this with the recently-deceased, but it has to be very recent. After you become yourself again, you remember some memories and what you’ve done.
The downside is that getting the memories hurts like hell, like getting a drill in the skull. The longer the contact, the more intense the pain.
So how’s that for a power?
@ Ragged Boy: For a name, what would you think about Reyn, Bloodjewel, Jem or K’Boom?
RB, for a name, how about something like Zela or Zena? I would suggest Zeeka because it sounds a bit harsher, but that might not be so easy to read. What do you think? (Don’t mind the Z names, btw, I’m in a Z sort of mood.)
I think I like Boom, I was going for one syllable names.
What do you think of the powers?
On Vorp: I think it would be really difficult to use that genius intellect through a splitting migraine, but it seems to work. I think that his mental matter reconstruction could be hard to choreograph.
The others seem fine to me, if a bit quirky. You might want to get B. Mac or somebody’s advice though. I’m not the superhero expert.
Vorp has learned to work through his pain, like the other members (except Boom).
I agree, the matter reconstruction may be difficult. I’ll probably have this portayed by instant transformation instead of something like liquid morphing.
The powers were meant to be a little odd, but essentially simplistic, I think I’ve achieved that.
Hey, B. Mac, here’s a question. Do questions need to be exotic like energy beams or webshooters and such or can they be simple like great agility and acrobatic and claws and teeth?
One of my characters has all. When I say sharp claws, though, I mean more like longer nails (like Sabertooth, not Wolverine). And good nightvision.
Also, do heroes need to be highly intelligent? You know, like Peter Parker and Bruce Wayne. Heck, even Wally West is a forensic guy in JLUL. Or can they be average joes?
I think the need for intelligence is mostly determined by whether the hero is on a team or not. For example, The Thing is not smart enough to solve crimes on his own, but it’s not a problem because he’s on a team with smart people (notably Reed Richards).
In contrast, a loner hero will need some basic intelligence/savvy to solve crimes, but he doesn’t have to be super-intelligent. Nor does he have to be an incredible scientist. If the hero needs forensic analysis or scientific help, you can easily introduce a trusted scientific ally. For example, Superman has friends at STAR Labs.
Most superhero teams will have at least one notably intelligent person (usually a scientist), like Beast or Mr. Fantastic or Tony Stark or Batman. On your team, I think Solar would fit into that role very nicely even though she’s more of a doctor than a scientist.
When you said one of your characters “has all,” do you mean one of your characters has energy beams and webshooters? I think webshooters are so closely associated with Spiderman that I would not recommend using them. (However, I think it’s ok to adapt something less distinct like the ability to sense danger).
Is this character a hero or a villain?
Sorry, I meant one of my characters has sharp teeth and claws.
Her name’s Kimberly. I haven’t used her in an official story yet. Anyway, she’s a young child with a catlike mannerism and claws, teeth, good vision in the day and night, good hearing, perfect balance…
The thing is, she’s like a child that wants to play all the time but is easily amused with string and such. She’s very good at puzzles. When she’s scared or angry, she turns feral, which brings out her claws and teeth and enhances her agility.
She would be good in a duo. If my first comic flops, I might do a separate one of her and D.
I’ve met Kim. She’s a pretty good character. Although, you might have to be careful with her slight retardation. I think a duo is the best thing for her. I don’t think she’s interesting enough to carry a story on her on. At least not from what I know of her so far.
I think simple powers are ok. I hope you didn’t ask this because of my statement over on the TT site. Haha. I’m not big on them, but I’m sure that most people are. They’re easy to portray and understand, so more power to you.
Lol no. I’m just thinking of what I can do after this comic.
By the way, have a gander at your review forum and over at the TT site. I’ve posted the next rpg we can do if you’re still interested.
Hi, David. I was looking at your comment here about the power to read someone’s mind (or possess them) by touching them. I think it would work for a side-character, but I’m not sure that it would be versatile enough to work for a main character. For example, I can’t think of any way you’d be able to use it in combat besides sneaking up on one of the enemies and touching them. That would work once or twice, but after that I think it’d get stale pretty quickly.
Wow, wicked site. I was wondering… I started a superhero novel based on five teenage characters. I’ve created their backstories and personalities but I don’t know what superpowers to give them. Could you help me out?
Hi, great site! Well, I’m starting to write a super hero novel. Here’s the backstory:
After the Cold War, much of the nuclear waste had to be dumped. They picked five remote areas across the country and dumped tons of this radioactive waste in lakes, swamps, forests, etc. For a while it was left undisturbed until population grew in these areas. People started going missing. Myths and legends were created around strange stories of people with extreme powers, or deformities.
How does that sound so far?
@ Wade: Sure, just start posting and we can help you out.
@ Brittany: It sounds good so far, although the Cold War was a long time ago. If the story is set in the present, that may raise science issues.
It’s set in the present time. The main character is a 16 year old guy named Jayden Smithson. After both his father and older brother go missing, the father during a delivery (he was a trucker) and his brother during a camping trip, his mother remarries and has another son, Tyler. Well, Jayden’s stepfather gets leukemia and they are forced to move from Boston, MA to the small town of Greenwood Lake, NY because of Jayden’s mother’s economic turmoil. Greenwood Lake is one of the the dumping zones for the nuclear waste.
How does that sound? I’m having more trouble coming up with names and powers. I’m not sure if the names of the heroes should somehow relate to their power. I’m not sure if that makes them more corny.
Thanks OK like i said my super human story is about five teenagers who discover they have abilities this is set in a world where superheroes only existed in comics or thats what people think i have got the the characters made now save for they powers and i just can’t decided what to do can any one give me some suggestions
@ Brittany: Characters with names related to their powers is very Golden Age of Comics. I would strongly suggest against it, it’s horribly cheesy.
@ Wade: Do you have any ideas of powers? What are your favorite types of superpowers? If you had a superpower what would it be?
I’ve done that with Solar.
Wade, what are their personalities and backstories like?
Brittany, five separate areas is a lot of ground to cover in a novel. You might find it easier to work with something like three: two to explain where the heroes come from and one to explain where the villain(s) come from.
@Brittany and Ragged Boy: I think it can be cheesy to name a hero after his powers, but it can be done well. For example, Fire Boy or Mr. Fire would be awful, but I think that Pyro or Firestarter would be ok.
I would also like to help you, Wade, if you will permit it. Please share the backstorys, I would like to know more.
-Wings the Curious
Thanks a lot. Well, so far I thought of this. It’s about five teens from fifteen to sixteen that go to the same school. They are all very different. There’s Dan, who is popular, smart and handsome but is very arrogant and a bit of a sociopath. Jake is a rebellious and criminal teen. Emma is sweet and naive, while Stacy is enigmatic, elusive and desirable. Lastly, Will is Dan’s friend, an unconfident and weird day-dreamer. There are other elements like the genetic research company Honex. I’m having some problems with the powers and origins, partly because there are so many powers to choose from. It’s really hard.
Here’s Wills and Jakes character file.
Name Will Edward Thompson
Age 16
Ethnic White British
Height 5.5
Weight Seven stones
Looks Short brown hair, Green grey eyes
Habits Reading, Quoting from mythological and historical people
Motto ‘Acuna matata’
Will is a nice carefree guy with so much unstable and chaotic things in his live Will has learnt to simply not to worry. Will is very curious of things and has a hunger for knowledge and understanding of the world and his place in it. Will often acts randomly and comes across as weird to many. Will struggles with school and home and often hero worships his friend Dan
Name Jake Marcus Cook
Age 15
Ethnic White British
Height 5.6
Weight Five stone
Looks Short spiky blond hair, grim face, brown eyes Small scar over eyebrow
Habits Cracking knuckles, burn things
Motto ‘Life is for living’
Jake is a rebellious boy with so much mixed up emotions that he rebels against everything he hates school and just wishes he could leave. Jake comes from a destructive home his father is in jail his mother a drunkard and his aggressive step father often fight with Jake an his sisters. He doesn’t think of things has rights and wrongs since he feels that the has things has right or wrong since he has faced a lot of injustice in his life. Jake is very athletic since he spends his time playing football with his friends and free running.
Ok, the first (and most cliche) thing that comes to mind for Jake is something fueled by anger (like the Hulk) or something fiery. Since those would be cliche, what would you think about agility or maybe superior speed instead? (After all, he is kind of athletic and likes free-running). If you wanted to add something exotic, I’d give him something a little bit creepy, since he’s kind of on the rougher side of life. Maybe something fear-related or mental [UPDATE: Ragged Boy mentioned shadow-control below. I think that would work, too].
For Will, the most cliche things that come to mind are something mental or something based on water or air. Luck-based powers are always tricky, but I think luck might work for him because he seems like a guy that is ok leaving things to chance. Also, I notice that you describe he acts a bit random, and that suggests that even his behavior depends on probability. Alternately, you could go for a techy-kind of theme, since he loves information, but he doesn’t seem like a science nerd.
Ola Wade!
So far I’m not sure who is the main character, or if there is one at all. I think their personalities are workable, if not a little generic. Generally, most groups have the moody/rebellious kid, the charmer, and the weirdo. This is okay and has worked before, but isn’t all that fresh. I suggest slightly unexpected tweaks on the personalities. We’ve seen the troubled teen, but what about a troubled teen that escapes into books. I’d find it pretty interesting to read about a rebellious character who is always reading books about peaceful times.
As for Jake’s powers I’m think soemthing along the lines of:
Heat control
Shapeshifting
Shadow form and shadow control
As for Will:
Construct conjuring (creating objects)
Biokinetic control (can boost his bodies physical ability o someone elses)
Earth control
I’m not good at coming up with powers that aren’t exotic, sorry. Maybe some of these can give you ideas. I think B. Mac may be able to help you better with coming up with powers.
One of my characters was fused together with his dog. I named him Dire after the Dire wolf of the Ice Age. They got as big as horses, which is how big Dire gets. See how his name relates to his power of transforming into a huge dog.
Thanks for the ideas. I like the shadow form for Jake, and I had an idea that maybe he has time controlling it. [EDITOR: ?]
I had an idea for Will based on what RB said about biokinetic power. I thought of giving Will telekinesis but using in a different way, like being able to give him superstrength and durability and flight. What do you think? Here are character profiles for Dan and Emma.
Name: Danny Aaron Simons
Age: 16
Ethnicity: White British/French
Height: 5.6
Weight: six stone
Looks: black hair/icy blue eyes/handsome
Habits: sarcasm and manipulating
Motto ‘the only thing we need to know is survival’
Dan seems to be every parent’s dream: he is very handsome, one of the most popular boys in his town, does very well in school, and many of the girls in his town would give anything to date him. There is a dark side to his personality, however. The flip side of Dan charm and self-confidence is an arrogant belief in his own superiority, but no one seems to notice. Teachers, friends’ parents, schoolmates and girls all idolise him despite his sociopathic tendencies. He often plays cruel games with his family and friends, in particular those closest to him like his girlfriend and his best friend Will.
Name: Emma Louis Queen
Age: 15
Ethnicity: white American immigrated to England
Height: 5.4
Weight: 4 stone
Looks: honey blond hair, big blue eyes
Habits: twirling hair, singing out loud
Motto ‘LOL’
Emma is naïve and sweet and sometimes a bit dim. She comes from a wealthy and powerful family that migrated from America. Emma’s father is a utterly ruthless domineering cold man who often tries to make his children complete for his attention. Emma doesn’t understand this so she simply does not do. [EDITOR: ?] She is the youngest of her siblings and does not get along with her sister, who is more like her father. She’s close to her homosexual brother. Even though she is the ‘good girl’ she has a sweet tooth for naughtiness which is often brought in her by her best friend Stacy.
@Wade, on characters:
I had a long-ish post yesterday about Will and Jake’s personalities but it wouldn’t post. >.< So this is the shortened version:
Will: He came across as optimistic and carefree, and a bit socially inept (hero-worshipping your best friend isn’t typical for boys that age, in my experience). I think this is a good start, but I’d recommend adding a few flaws to the mix. What do you think about making giving Will really low self-esteem, dependant nature, over-cautious?
Jake: I think Jake has less going for him than Will at the moment. He’s rebellious and angry, and that’s all I can gather right now. He doesn’t seem like the sort of character who would have many friends or trust people easily. For tweaking his personality and making him a bit more likable, what do you think of his family situation making him a person who tries to uphold justice? Instead of only acting for himself, he might be a fair to everybody, because that’s something that he didn’t get. I think this is unusual but could work. What do you think?
I like Dan’s dark side. However, I worry that it might make him a bit unlikable. If he’s one of the main characters of your story, it’s important that the audience can sympathise with him. What do you think of tweaking his personality a little? Maybe he feels people only like him because of his superficial qualities, the looks, grades and so on – how do you feel about him being ‘cruel’ to people he believes don’t look past the surface. To those that do (like Will and the girlfriend), he is much nicer to and he cares for them a lot. What do you think?
Emma I don’t like as much, although she has good qualities. I think her sweet and innocent nature would come across similarly to Will’s optimism and carefree attitude. What do you think of making her more aloof, jaded and/or sarcastic? I think this could help make her character more unique. Also, it would make her ’sweet tooth for naughtiness’ (?!) less of a surprise. I think currently, it could seem like she’s being manipulated by her best friend. What do you think?
Thanks. The characters do a bit of tweaking. Will is supposed to be the nice carefree guy who has got self confidence problems, which is why he often ignores what Dan does even though he doesn’t agree with it. I am thinking though of making Will’s flaw the inability to express himself since he’s too worried about what might happen.
Jake needs some changes. I didn’t mean him to across as the bad guy… he’s just a really troubled teen with a lot in his life. I could change him into a more friendly character. Thank you for your comments.
Dan will have some better qualities but my plan for him was that he starts to grow more of an understanding of what the conquences of his darker ways are and how much he undervalues his bestfriend and girl friend as story progresses.
emma needs most work i couldn’t really explain what she is like i wanted her to have the image of nice character but also have dark qualities but making sure she does’nt seem like the other characters could you help me
Nice character with dark qualities, okay. Well, I would recommend avoiding innocent in that case, except as a pretence. You might make her friendly, but maybe a bit pessimistic as a contrast to Will’s optimism. Also, maybe she’s the sort of character who expects people to return favours. It might also help to make her a bit distant from everyone but her close friends, but still nice to them. (If someone says hello she might smile and say hello back, but neglect further conversation, for example.)
What do you think?
This is the last of the five characters.
Name: Stacy Elizabeth Stone
Age: 16
Ethnicity: white English
Height: 5.5
Weight: five stone
Appearance: long raven coloured hair, sapphire coloured eyes, stunningly attractive
Habits: reading poetry, smoking
Motto ‘who needs a motto’
Stacy is enigmatic and elusive. She’s like the queen bee– intelligent, beautiful, in control of herself and totally independent. She can be very impulsive at times from bunking school to kissing random boys. She often sneaks out at night to go to parties. She’s her own person and doesn’t follow trends. Her best friend is Emma who in some ways gives the cool and detached Stacy a heart. Her parents and teacher often worry for her as she is very strange and mysterious. Often she wears skimpy sexy outfits to got out with and often flirts and seduces people. There is no one who fully understands this strange girl, which often leads many people to avoid her.
Now that you know the characters, can you help me with their powers? Maybe mixing the classical and exotic types.
Aye, that is an idea, but then Stacy is more of the strange distant character but thank you.
Wade- maybe you could have Emma struggle with trying to be a good girl. When she does things that are considered bad she uses her family as an excuse. Because they aren’t perfect why should she have to be perfect. That way she would appear innocent but when the opportunity arises to “act up” she does.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, that does fit quite well. Thank you.
Name Will Edward Thompson
Age 16
Ethnic White British
Height 5.5
Weight Seven stones
Looks Short brown hair, Green grey eyes
Habits Reading, Quoting from mythological and historical people
Motto ‘Akuna matata’
Will is a pleasant, carefree guy. With so many unstable and chaotic things in his life, Will has learned to simply not worry. Will is very curious and hungers for knowledge and and to understand the world and his place in it. Will often acts randomly and comes across as weird to many. Will has self-esteem and confidence issues. He often feels that things are out of his control. Will doubts himself often. Even though he has friends, he often feels alone. He’s uncomfortable with sentimental things. Unlike his friends, Will believes in destiny and often feels he’s meant to do something great or terrible to change the world. Will struggles with school and home. He often ignores his best friend Dan’s darker ways.
sorry typed wrong thing
Stacey should have an out-of-the-way power, something unusual…
Possession might be good…
Shadows are probably best for Jake, good work RB…
Nature might work for Emma, not so sure on her…
As to Dan, I’m not a fan. I’ve met too many real people like him, he seems too villainous at the moment. Give him something physical.
I’m actually a blank on Will.
This help any?
- Wings
Idea for Will!
When I first think of his character I get the same idea: mental. But that is too cliche for me.
Illusions might be the right fit for the guy. You mention that he is “a carefree guy with many unstable and chaotic things in his life”. If he is the sort to try and not worry about it, than he’d probably want a sort of escape. Therefore, illusions if he is used to trying to pretend something isn’t there or, if you’re daring, pretending that something else IS there).
Does this make sense?
And I didn’t mean to be so harsh on Dan. He really needs to have a little kindness though.
- Wings the Apologetic
Illusions may be hard to choreograph in a novel. I’d recommend something more combat friendly. Telekinesis, psionic bolts, or mental lightning could work well.
I also think possession is a combat lacking ability. Oddly, for Stacy I’m feeling like something smooth and weird is in order. Maybe her body can produce spores that can be used for things like seduction/control, knocking things out, concentrated spore blasts, etc.
I liked B. Mac’s suggestion for luck based powers for Will, they could be tricky though. I suspect you would need to make his control intentional. For example, Jinx from Teen Titans fired rays that manipulated luck. You could give him an extendable aura of good luck, to make his scenes more high stakes you could have his control fluctuate. It would be bland if he lucked his way out in every situation. I would also recommend another combat friendly ability, maybe super-agility.
For Dan, being that he’s a showoff, he needs something to show off. I recommend something similar to Colossus of The X-Men. He can generate a metal skin, and has super strength. As a tweak, his skin transformation is limited to his hands and lower legs and feet until he gets stronger. Also, instead of his skin turning to metal they turn into large metal gauntlets and boots. They would be heavy, but this wouldn’t be a problem a he would have super-strength. This could also work later in your book as a weakness for him.
As for Emma, I’m thinking hair control, definitely hair control. She can rapidly grow her hair and use it for a number of tasks. I think it would go well with her tendency to twist her hair.
Are sound-based abilities too cliche for Emma? I saw that she liked singing out loud and the first thing that came to my mind was a scene in which she accidentally destroyed part of a building by involuntarily using her powers while singing.
For Jake, the first power I thought of was pyrokinesis, or maybe he turns into fire, like the Human Torch from Fantastic Four.
Will is carefree and doesn’t worry much so maybe his power should be something that helps him with that, like he could be imprevious to harm or have unbreakable skin.
I’m thinking shapeshifter for Stacey, since she’s very independent and doesn’t seem to follow trends. Maybe that’s too obvious.
I’ve got nothing for Dan that would top RB’s suggestion. That was the best idea for Dan so far.
Yeah, fire was one of the first things that came to mind for Jake. I think hot-headed fire elementalists are a bit too obvious, though.
I like the idea of making Will very durable. (Or maybe elastic).
I agree that shadow-control is a very thematically sound power for Dan. However, it might be hard to choreograph in a novel. (But not impossible. For example, see the supervillainess Pity in Spiderman and the Sinister Six).
or one of the Chraters in Naruto can manipulaite shadows
and for jake for a bit of contrast a hotheaded ice type?
for ideas for sound powers have a look at the sound ninja four from naruto
one of my chraters a Banshee has sound powers being able to scream at mega high pitches the older the banshee the louder they can go the babys starting at 420 deibels also makeing them imune to any other sound attacks of lower frequincy
anyways as i said check the sound four from natruo for ideas on sound ideas
tHANKS for the ideas
using what RB said and give Stacy some sort of pheromones manipluation
Emma with sound manipluation i think fits but i thought ot wound cool boost power so she can do more than scream maybe some sort of superhhearing
Will with inpentrable skin would really cool but i think shoud a secondary but strength since strength an durable i think as been over done any ideas
Jake with ice sounds cool
Dan still not sure
Emma with sound manipulation/screaming and superhearing is pretty sound, I think. (Maybe she wanders around with her headphones in all the time to block out distant sounds, haha).
Durability for Will seems to fit. Hmm. For a secondary power, what do you think about super-reflexes/agility?
Ice for Jake is also pretty good. I think earth could also fit, if you prefer that.
For Dan, what about flight? As a side-power, something like poisons or acid? (I’m not sure those gel too well, though – maybe if his pseudonym was something serpent-ish.)
What about innate ability as Dan’s secondary power?
Innate ability? I’m not sure I understand.
Ok, thanks everybody. I know who has which power now.
Jake-ice, resistance to cold,heat drain- meaning he can take in all the surrounding heat
Dan-flying, innate ability to master physical arts (like martial arts, sports, etc.)
Stacy-pheromone manipulation
Emma-sound manipulation
Will-Telekinesis, durability
What kind of weaknesses would a character have if he is impervious to harm or invulnerable? I know a lot of characters with that ability are highly susceptible to telepathy. I was trying to think of something somewhat different though.
I’d recommend have him not be totally invulnerable. Even Superman gets physically overwhelmed occasionally.
He could have a point of vulnerability. For example, Achilles had his heel and Sylar can be harmed in the back of the neck.
He might have an exotic weakness. Hopefully something less exotic than kryptonite, though. For example, Agent Orange deals with cold very poorly (he’s a reptile, after all).
I like a selective point of weakness. Although, you’d need a villain with good perception to notice the weak spot.
Alternatively, you could give him a time parameter. He can only have his invulnerability for a set amount of time before having to recharge the power.
I really like time restrictions, but could you smoothly apply a time restriction to something like invulnerability? Unless the invulnerability comes along with some sort of transformation (like Colossus turning himself into steel, or Bruce Banner becoming the Hulk), my guess is that it might feel flimsy. For a time restriction to work, readers usually need to see that the power requires a substantial amount of effort to sustain. Visually speaking, that pretty much requires some sort of transformation. Otherwise, it’d be hard to tell whether he was actually invulnerable or not in a given panel.
Um. I’m doing a character with animal abilities. Like she can mimic animal abilities and sounds for example: an ants strength, dog’s bark etc, but i cannt think of a code name for her without it sound lame. Can you guys help me?
Maybe instead of basing it on her powers, you could base it on her origin story or motivations?
How would i do that? and thank you for the advice
Well, for example, if her origin story was something to do with some sort of experiment into human genetics you might give her a genetic-themed name. If she works for the government, she might have an official-sounding name. If she’s more of a vigilante, she might have a name based on ‘justice’ or ‘hero’ or something like that.
I’m not very good at thinking up names, sorry. Some of the other contributors might be able to help you more.
Haha it’s alright. Thanks a bunch for your help.
What’s the character’s personality like? For example, my character has water powers but he’s called Showtime because he loves to act. His name focuses on his personality rather than his actual abilities.
I’m not really sure of alot of animal-esque names for your character. You could name her after her favorite animal.
ok this might sound lame what about ‘copycat’ or somrthing like Huntress
I think both Copycat and Huntress are taken. For this particular name, I’d recommend going with something based off the origin or something generic rather than power-based.
She’s made fun of a lot and often she is very quiet, and never utters a word. However when someone places danger on her, like let’s say challenges her to a fight, a new side of her is seen. When she fights its almost as if something else has taken over her, she becomes well savage. But that’s only in battle.
How about Dua? (As in duality).
Oh I get it, cause her shift in personality when fighting? That sounds cool.
That’s what I was aiming for.
I’m not feeling Dua, it feels weird to say. And it doesn’t feel very superhero-esque.
Touché, good sir. But won’t differentiating her from other superheroe names give her an edge and an identity? How about Captain Dua? (lol; I know, that’s terrible)…
I got one more if that one doesn’t fit: Latin alius, meaning “other,” (in this case, as in someone else). Alius. Lius. Alius Girl.
(I personally still like Dua, though… but that’s just me).
Alius sounds neat too! But Alius is harder to pronounce than Dua. lol.
lol names! He he. You should have a look at the article on the site about naming your characters, superhero or otherwise. It might help you choose better than having random names thrown at you. (Unless of course you already looked at it).
Alius sounds a little better. I think Alius Girl sounds weird with the addition of “Girl.”
Names that suggest gender are pretty dated and are usually cheesy.
I suspect it’s pronounce like the word “alias.”
I think I’ve settled on a name. Thank you guys.
Now, i have another one lol. This one, is a girl as well and she can control all aspects of a living creature’s biological make-up like healing, remove imperfections etc. And she’s somewhat evil. She believes in justice but she takes it to her own hands. She puts on a tough exterior to cover up her insecurities and lonliness (sp). She fights ruthlessly, and sometimes puts innocent bystanders’ lives at stake.
Is that enough info or no?
I really like her powers, I have a character with a similar ability. I think this describe her mode of operation. But, it doesn’t necessarily describe her personality. Why is she lonely and insecure? Why does she take justice into her own hands?
As for names, I’m kind of blanking. I’m thinking Lady Perfection or just Perfection.
I’d like to know one more thing: Does she give herself the alias, or do others give her her name?
Ok uh I’m gonna say she gives herself the alias.
Oh right right I forgot to put that. Ok, her name is Sara. Now, Sara wasn’t brought up in the nicest home. Her mother was a drunk and her father was dead. After being taken by child services, at the age of 7 she was put into an adoption center. Due to her “old” age not that many people wanted her so she began to feel insecure. At 15 when she was adopted the family already had other children. Their children treated her mean except for the oldest. A 17 year old girl. They became friends and for the first time she was happy. However, one night her adopted parents found both girls in a position two girls shouldn’t be in (I don’t have to get into detail do I?). The daughter blamed Sara and that she was “forced”. The parents kicked Sara out to the street and since that event Sara doesn’t trust others and has started to act negatively toward others.
Is that good?
I like that idea Alyssa…Sara sounds really interesting to me. Maybe if you wanted to name her based on the fact that she is angry towards people. Animus (bad blood), scorn, malice, etc.
Dang, I would have suggested Mimic for that other character…
I like Scorn or Malice though…
If she thinks she’s giving out a form of justice, I might suggest something Law-ish. I think something like Judge Malice would be a bit cheesy though.
I’m not sure names like Scorn or Malice would work. I don’t think this character sees herself in that way.
what about Hollow it could link in with her anit social trait
I found a pretty good power list, which even tells which (well-known only) heroes already have that power. That way, you can stay away from overused powers.
http://www.superherodb.com/powers.php
It also gives a short description and the proper name (for instance- weather control = atmokinesis).
hope this helps
- Wings Wings Wings
Thanks for the link. I found the list of superhero and supervillain teams particularly useful. I’m more of a fan of solo superheroes, so I’m not very well-versed on teams.
Atmokinesis? Cryokinesis? Readers would probably benefit from names that are easier to understand, like “weather control” or “ice control” or whatever. If there’s no easy way to describe what you have in mind, then I’d recommend making up a simple phrase. For example, “spider-sense” requires some explanation, but after that it’s fairly intuitive.
Wow, that was a pretty definitive list of superpowers. I loved how they had a character from Heroes who was only there for 2 episodes under ‘underwater breathing’!
I have a story about a girl with superpowers who has to fight her dad (the bad guy). I need powers and weaknesses and names(Whew!). Help!!
(P.S. Thinking about Energy Manipulation for girl)
Never Mind the Energy Mani. Uses to much for my taste. Have a plot and characters. Hopeless with details
Thank you guys for the suggestions. I really appreciate it.
=]
I made up a new character recently. Here’s his bio sheet:
Name: Jackson Gray
Alter ego: The Facade (What do you think the availability on that name is?)
Age: 20 (my first adult protagonist)
Ethnicity: African American
Profession: (You guys are going to hate me, haha) Model
Abilities: None of his own. Uses an illegal drug known as Neon, allowing him:
-A parameter of perfect perception via peak senses.
-enhanced physical ability i.e flexibility, dexterity, speed, and reflexes.
-slight persuasion, enough so to make a person drop their guard for a second or spill a secret.
Personality: Coming Soon…
Backstory : Unlike most superhero stories, Jackson’s world has been drastically effected by the existence of “superheroes”, like the Watchmen (I’m not sure to what extent yet). Although, no one actually has powers, technology, genetics, and chemistry have yielded people with above human potential. I’m thinking of using a modified New York as the setting.
Introduction to Neon, The Super-Drug : The story starts with Jackson, a party-boy, at a less-than-upscale fashion party in a secluded V.I.P lounge with head fashion designers. The fashion heads are discussing a new line of superhero attire and want Jackson (the model, not the superhero) to be their spokesmodel. In order to avoid legal complications (pretending to be a superhero is illegal) they want him to really be “super,” thus, they offer him his first dose of Neon, a new drug. The impressionable Jackson being new in the industry feels this could be his big break and, despite reluctance, accepts.
Everything Goes Wrong : While injecting, a bomb goes off in the building, forcing Jackson to drop the needle and hurry to get out, he only takes about a quarter dose. Leaving the building he confronts one of the attackers. Having such a small dose, he only has a slightly increased perception. He battles it out in the crumbling building…
As you can see it still needs fleshing out. As you can also probably see this is a more mature story.
Suggestions?Opinions? See any flaws?
Input on above, please?
It would be very unusual for a hero’s origin story to stem from taking drugs. It might make him unlikable.
Also, drugs are fairly easy to duplicate, so they tend to lend themselves more to making faceless mobs of mooks than an exceptional hero… the hero’s origin isn’t always individualized, but usually it has at least an individual component. For example, Wolverine isn’t just a part of the mutant mass-origin, he also had some bionic modifications as part of a military experiment.
It seems like a kind of convoluted origin story. Let’s see. The fashion designers are worried about getting busted for charges of impersonating a superhero. So they give him drugs to make him a superhero. First, isn’t giving him the drugs also a crime? If impersonating a superhero is a crime, is making a superhero a crime? Second, how widely available are these drugs? Are they something that a fashion designer would have easy access to in your world? I mean, I think it’d be more plausible for someone like Norman Osborne or Jacob Mallow to have body-altering drugs than a team of fashionistas.
What’s his personality like? What’s his goal?
You’re welcome!
Hmmm….
On the bright side, powers from a drug is definitely not overused….
But it might be hard to make some stupid kids remember that this is fantasy (I hope you know what I mean here).
- Wings
Hmm, you raise a bunch of good points, I’m glad you did. Let’s see if we can’t rework some issues or at least tie up some loose ends:
I suspect using his drug to help people may make him a little more likeable, but this is still an issue. I’m guessing parents would say that I’m implying that drugs are okay if you’re helping people.
I was pretty set on the drug-related powers, I suspect I could soften it up a bit by making the drug a pill instead of an injection. So, I’ll just have to rework this to make it more feasible. I’m struggling on a way to introduce him to the drug and then continually supply him the drug. I think I’m going to somewhat scrap “the fashion team giving the drug” idea.
No, The drug will not be widely available, I did consider that. I still have alot to flesh out. Off my head I’d say, he has access to a lab at his college, in the lab he knows people that can produce the drug. Hmm, I’m not feeling that. I’ll work on it.
Yes, drugs are still illegal, this is important to the story. I hadn’t thought about the legalities of “making” a superhero. I suspect it would be elusively legal, no one ever questions a superhero’s origin after they become the superhero, except a few investigative journalists.
He’s somewhat individualized because only a few people have access to the drug, Jackson is the only actual user and through conditioning Jackson’s reaction to the drug is mostly positive, whereas other may just get high. Most people with superpowers got them another way.
What do you think?
“I suspect using his drug to help people may make him a little more likable, but this is still an issue. I’m guessing parents would say that I’m implying that drugs are okay if you’re helping people.”
Hmm. If this is aimed at 18+ readers, I’d be less concerned about parents (because they aren’t really involved) than publishers and the readers themselves. Speaking only for myself, I’d be a bit annoyed by a comic that seems to present the message “good things come of drugs.” In contrast, Daredevil got his powers by throwing himself in the way of a truck to save someone… Hal was chosen as the Green Lantern because of his moral character… Static Shock only escaped the worst of the chemical explosion because he runs away from the gang-fight early, etc.
Using a pill that has to be resupplied might raise chosen one issues. Why does his supplier choose him instead of someone else off the street? My guess is that the most interesting reason would be something sinister, particularly if drugs are involved. For example, he’s being set up as a fall guy so that the supplier can eventually use Facade’s identity to commit crimes. Or one mob boss bets against another that the desire for power is so deeply rooted in the human psyche that someone with powers will always abuse that power. So the more optimistic mob boss picks Jackson because he has a few traits that suggest that he is the most likely candidate not to abuse the power. (Some candidate traits: he’s kind of ditzy and not particularly cunning… he’s friendly… he’s not ambitious… compared to any other model, he’s a paragon of self-restraint and sobriety, etc.)
Hmm, I’ll work it out.
Wow. Intense stuff from everybody here…
Lemme be devil’s advocate and try to defend the drug issue. Aren’t medicines a form of drug? And don’t they help people too? As for the origin of manipulation of the drugs by their manufacturers, I can’t give you a better option than what is here, but you should consider medicine as a drug, too. Maybe a sketchy doctor was approached by the modeling agency to test the drug? I dunno…
You could take it the other way entirely . . . and make Facade a bad guy. The company gives him the drug, he starts off helping people, but then he starts into a slow cycle of villainy.
I don’t think that would give any ‘drugs are good’ messages. It just might be hard to market/write. :S
… Or he could be the good guy, who descends to villainy, as Holliequ put it, and then decides to fight the drug and be a hero! (I couldn’t resist suggesting that…)
Dforce’s suggestion could also work. I think that if you went with that angle, it would be important to get Facade OFF the drugs before he fights people.
Eh, I don’t want him to be a villain. I’ll worry about it later, as of now I’m stowing it away in my Literary Scrapyard, to focus on Adrian. I don’t have the mental capacity to focus on both at once, especially since one need major development and I’m not in the most creative mood.
Thanks for the input though.
What kind of limitations would you put on a memory manipulator so that they wouldn’t seem too powerful? I mean for a person that can create/alter/delete memories. Thanks.
I don’t think that the character would likely be overpowered, given that his powers seem kind of useless in combat. The problem is that memory manipulation is confusing and usually unsatisfying. (See #4 here). For example, a regular superhero has to use cunning and guile to protect his secret identity. That’s interesting! A psychic that can delete memories doesn’t really have much on the line when it comes to protecting his secret identity. Having the ability to erase memories makes the stakes much lower.
Here are some limitations you could use to shake things up.
–The psychic can only delete memories with the consent of the target. (This will force him to use persuasion or maybe coercion rather than just rely on his power. When a hero just relies on a power without any adding any sort of creativity or cunning, it tends to be unsatisfying).
–The psychic can only delete memories he knows about. This will force him to do some investigation on his own.
–Be really careful with the ability to add memories. That power tends to be confusing as hell. Who remembers which fake memories? It’ll probably be hard for readers to keep it all together.
–A distance restriction. If the hero has to touch the target to use his power, it might make things more interesting. Also, if the power looks really unpleasant and makes the target start convulsing or act similarly agitated, it would probably be more interesting. What does the hero do if the target is in broad daylight? That’s an obstacle that will give you an opportunity to let the hero try a creative solution.
What are some cool ways to put a twist on teleportation? I was thinking about a character who can teleport through shadows. But do you guys have any other ideas that maybe cool? Like mirrors or water. I might make a character who can teleport through water. That would be tight, now that I think about it.
Maybe he can only teleport through certain ‘nodes’. For example (but don’t use this example) he can only teleport through computers. I say don’t use that because almost every home has a computer nowadays so it’s not much of a restriction. But something along those lines. Maybe something totally random or crazy like he can only teleport between public swimming pools, or something ‘plausible’ like he can only teleport between TVs tuned to a certain channel. Either way, teleportation is a pretty powerful superpower so it needs some kind of restriction to keep it in check (Nightcrawler’s range is very limited, for example).
Yeah, I understand. But there are also very powerful teleporters like the Vanisher (Marvel) and Misfit (DC). So I think there is some sort of balance. What kind of limitations would you put on a shadow teleporter besides distance?
Hmm. The obvious restriction would be that he can only teleport into places with shadows. (That’s not much of a problem at night, but eventually his enemies will figure out that leaving lights on all the time will screw him). He might need to have line-of-sight with the place he’s teleporting to. He might need to have visited or seen the place in question (such as in Jumper). The power may have a cooldown time, so that he can’t just instantly teleport away as soon as the going gets rough. There might be a limit on how often he could teleport.
He might have problems with relativity. For example, if you jump onto a train that’s standing still, you’re fine. If you jump onto a train that’s doing 90 mph, you are going to get yourself seriously hurt. Likewise, if he teleports from an area of low-speed to an area of high-speed (or vice versa), he’s going to get slammed into something that’s moving a lot more quickly than he is. So he’d have a lot of trouble teleporting onto a plane.
Yeah, I see. But in Jumper, he didn’t have to have visited the places, right? He just had to be able to visualize it, I thought.
And even when the lights are on, he still could get in because the peoples’ bodies cast shadows.
If he can teleport into a place with lights on, what’s the point of the shadow restriction?
If he can essentially teleport anywhere, I’d just recommend making it teleportation a la Nightcrawler… it will require less explanation.
True. I guess I was thinking that he could jump out of shadows. So you know how you stand and the light shines on you then your shadow falls behind you…an assassin with this power could kill you extremely easily if you didn’t know about the ability. And it would be untraceable. I guess i should just make him a teleporter.
I think i was just looking for a different form of teleportation and coupling that with a them of stealth. Thats why I used Shadow teleportation. Unless I’m mistaken (which happens very often), Psylocke from X-Men has this shadow teleportation ability as well. Anyways, I just wanted to make teleportation a little different.
What about teleportation through mirrored surfaces? I could see that having more restrictions than shadow teleportation.
For an exotic twist, you could have him only teleport through doorways and other openings big enough to fit a person. I suspect there are doorways pretty much everywhere, but it’s still a restriction. You could have him teleport through a doorway and then use his other stealth skills to get to the place he needs to go. At least, this would give you the ability to show his other stealth skills.
hey what damage can a super scream do? also im wonder how loud can i make it ts for my banshee i was going for over a thousend deisbels woundt it also make her imune to other sound base attacks?
and iv got the eyes of a Banshee and an Angle
Banshee eyes can see magic arouras and if curses jinks and magic spels have been placed on anyone
and Angle eyes can see the truth in peoples souls is that any good as a power?
First off, spelling. Sorry to sound snobbish but I really care about good spelling.
Second, one thousand decibels? Do you know how much that is? A quick Google search tells me the loudest sound possible is only 194 Decibels. But as for damage, at 180 ear tissue is killed, pain begins at 125 Decibels and a gun blast is about 140 decibels. But in terms of damage to objects, technically speaking I see no reason why sound could physically damage something, but they’ve got away with it so much in other comics etc. that I see no reason why you shouldn’t be able to.
As for immunity to other sound based attacks, I don’t think it’s a given, but would be a great complimentary power.
As for Angle (do you mean Angel?), his/her power is quite clever actually. Just remember Wonder Woman when considering him/her.
well on your first point sorry i cant spell very well
and on ur second point
194 decibles is the loudest? wow never knew it was so low anyways i was think thats what makes Banshees great and it might be a given coz if you can scream that loud you have to be able to withstand the sound you emit and the vibrastons you make as you give of the sound
and yes i ment Angels and its a her
her names Michelle daughter of Michael
shes a Young angel sent to help our Young Banshee princess keep a power book safe and out of evil hands
its kinda like lord of the rings but very diffrent so people wont think its a rip of
and what did you mean by remeber wonder woman?
Well, high levels of concentrated sound can generate heat strong enough to melt steel. Sound cannons are actually capable of moving heavy objects with their blasts.
Seeing the truth in people is good outside of combat. In combat, it’s not all that useful. I suspect you will add a combat friendly ability.
When he said Wonder Woman, he meant that Wonder Woman’s lasso can make people tell the truth.
Ah, well. It’s not really getting them to tell the truth. It’s more to see when they’re lying and if they’re good or evil.
As for her combat skills. I’m looking up any weapons angels had. I’m also giving her flight, because of her wings, but I ain’t giving her a halo.
An angel would make for an interesting superhero, I like where you’re going with that. I don’t know what weapons an angel would really have but I think a bow and arrow would compliment an angel quite nicely. Also, a quick Wikipedia search gave me a picture of an angel holding a sword.
Hmm. For some reason, I’m thinking of angels with staffs.
That’s something I’d associate with angels too.
Maybe go for something you wouldn’t expect an angel to have, like a gun, or a grenade. Something like this: (it’s the logo for a series of books)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e7/Serie-cherub-logo.svg/424px-Serie-cherub-logo.svg.png
Okay, that’s it, you are most definitely British!
I haven’t met anybody outside of Britain who knows that series exists.
. . . This might not seem like a brilliant deduction, but it’s not bad for me. D:
I thought you’d guessed after I spelled ‘realised’ with an ’s’.
I’m not that subtle.
If you’d like to pitch to an American station, then using American spellings will help you reach the editors. Also, British spellings at a US station might raise questions like “does he know our audience?” So, it’s not at all a major problem, but just something to think about if you run out of UK stations.
On a mostly unrelated tangent, one of our e-mailers once asked if we were hosted out of the UK, probably because I blog so much that it’s not really clear when my work-day is. Also, Jacob sometimes makes inane soccer analogies. He’s an Everton fan, so that gives him a hundred different ways to describe futility.
im sorry was the spelling thing aimed at me? if so what series u on about?
No, the spelling thing is for me, I use British spellings like colour and recognise.
ahh im british to lol
iv done my chrater list for my comic/novel (cant make up my mind witch one to make it in to) i’ll post it in my review form
If somebody had the ability control their bio electricity inside of their bodies what kind of abilities would they have?
And also what is biokinetic manipulation?
I believe biokinetic manipulation involves the control of organic matter like flesh, blood and bones, so it would be a useful power for a healer or an assassin.
I’m not too sure about bioelectric control, though. I know sharks have an ability to sense electrical discharges to hunt their prey, because all living cells produce some kind of natural electricity. Or something like that.
Oh, yes. I was wondering if I could have a review forum, B. Mac. I’ve noticed a sudden surge in review forums, so I’ve decided to ride the wave.
Ok, got it. Here.
Thanks!
Bioelectricity manipulation is probably the lamest superpower ever. All I can think it would do is give you the ability to give yourself a heart attack. Living things produce miniscule amounts of electricity.
If, however, you produce superhuman amounts of bioelectricity and can control it, then you’re Electro from Spider-Man.
And if you can control the bioelectricity of others, you can do all sorts, control nerves, cause pain, give heart attacks, re-start hearts after heart attacks. It’d be pretty fun!
Haha, it seems a lot of us use British spellings. Sometimes I spell recognise as recognize, but that’s only because I’m used to using both spellings. I’m going to edit any of those out by my final draft.
Wait, do you live in a place that uses British spellings? I mean, I know you live in a place that gets Doctor Who…
Whovian lives in Austrailia.
According to Wikipedia, Gambit’s ability to charge things with energy until they explode is a form of biokinetic energy control. This is also how he levitates things.
I live in Singapore, so I use British spellings as well. We don’t get Doctor Who over here, unfortunately. I saw a couple of episodes when I was in England and they were fantastic.
Generating and enhancing bioelectricity could be a more plausible explanation for an electricity manipulator, especially when there isn’t a source of electricity nearby, because that’s a common limitation for characters with electric powers.
About 20% of our traffic comes from the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. About 70% comes from the US.
So, I’m writing a story that’s not a superhero story per se, but rather about somebody who has supernatural powers (in the vain of Jumper). Basically, I wanted it to be about a teenager in high school who is homosexual. I wanted to come up with a power that tied into him having to hide his sexuality and/or his quiet, reserved personality.
Would you like a review forum, Jumper?
Jumper? The name says Justice.
Ok, I’m bringing back my Masquerade story for a second. I’m changing his origin from the drug to the mask. His powers stim from a neurological boost he recieves when he puts on the mask. I’ll probably have other characters use drugs for their powers. That should clear up the controversy with the “drugs for good use” issue.
I was wondering. My superhero can create mini-realities in which he can go in and also bring other people in. When he is in his created reality, he is virtually omnipotent, but I don’t know how to start it.
Dear j.m. Plese Be my friend and read it – Paul Altman Jr
So I have a question. Is it possible to have characters that seem to be extremely powerful and still have a good story? My belief is that there can be a balance. Every character can’t be super powered but there would be people who have certain abilities and multiple abilities that make them more powerful than other people. So what are your thoughts on that?
And when i say every character cant be super powered i mean every character cant be superman. Which is why you have the batman and green arrows. lol
@Solar: this seems like an overpowered character. That said, I can’t offer much advice on starting your story unless you share something about the plot. What happens in the beginning of the story?
@Chi.Ro: I think it’s possible. In fact, I believe most of Stefan’s plot revolves around this idea. Some characters are probably going to be more powerful than others. As long as the difference isn’t huge, I don’t think that would be a massive problem. Of course, the weaker characters should also be valuable.
For the purposes of your story, I think it would be more interesting to use characters who aren’t extremely powerful. A weaker character who overcomes an adversary will probably come across as more sympathetic.
So is Superman considered a bad character because he is extremely powerful? Or the Silver Surfer for example?
I’m not very familiar with the Silver Surfer, because I’m not a comic book reader. But yes, Superman is overpowered (super-strength, -speed AND invulnerability?)
I’m not sure, I think maybe, before he goes to bed one night. Due to his anger of pollution and people not really paying attention. He accidentally creates like a small white hole. He touches it and is sucked in and taken to another universe where Earth, is nothing but an apocalypticc world. He tries to get out after being pursed by bounty hunters who have become cannibals. He eventually escapes when a talking pig tells him about his powers and origin; that he is just another alien, and then he escapes.
Upon getting back to his bedroom, he begins testing his powers uncontrollably, making portals to his own pocket dimensions. And then, some of his creations escape to Earth and begin rampaging and taking over. And because of all the energy he puts into them, manifests into a Dark Entity who wants total domination.
Now that Earth is in ruins and run by the evil being named ‘The Consecrated’ Our hero Joseph must create new portals and gather a team of superheroes to help him return Earth back to the natural order.
He also makes a dimension in which he can alter his physiology, giving himself powers.
I hope that’s okay.
And also, his alien race finds out about what he was doing, they considered him crazed and mentally unstable. So they also have come to Earth to put a stop to the problem he has created and him.
I also have another superhero who can transform into his imagination and even bring his imagination into reality but I’m not sure if he is a cheap character.
I believe there’s an anime called Haruhi something about a girl who can do anything, but she doesn’t realise it. What was it… Haruhi Suzumayi or something like that.
I say that because that’s the same power as hers, kinda.
Hmm. I’m still not sure about being overpowered, but your story seems to have that sort of theme, so it might be okay.
I would recommend starting with your main character (Joseph?) in his element, before he discovers his power. As for the moment when he discovers it, to place something of a limitation on his power, you might consider that he can only create these portals in windows? So, he stares at his bedroom window when he’s angry and instead of seeing the street outside, he sees a whole new world.
What do you think?
That sounds pretty cool. I thought of an idea similar to that–a girl finds that she can go through mirrors, and on the other side is another world (the same world, not a different world for every mirror but it could work here) and all the mirrors are in the same place in both worlds but of course the two worlds are very different.
So mirrors could work, too–he could only be able to create portals in mirrors. I don’t think there are as many mirrors as windows and that would be more of a limitation, right?
@Tom: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.
It’s a fun anime.
Could you explain what you mean by a “cheap character?”
I think Superman is overpowered. That’s problematic because it makes it hard for writers to challenge him. It’s difficult to introduce a supervillain to fight with Superman whenever your story needs an interesting fight. In contrast, a weaker hero like Batman can have fights with unpowered thugs.
I’m not very familiar with Silver Surfer. My impression is that he’s a bit less overpowered because he relies on a surfboard that can be taken away. Also, he’s less physically handsome, which makes him a bit less of a Marty Stu.
I mean with his power, he’s virtually unstoppable
Your right, Haruhi Suzumiya and mine is kinda the same
Great Idea
I aslo have another superhero but he is in a class of his own
Jack
Jack possesses a god-like ability which may not be anything at first but proves to be one of the greatest powers ever. Jack has the ability to manifest newfound abilities and powers based of and depending on his emotions and actions/behaviour. For example due to his actions of running, he could manifest powers such as superhuman speed. Even by emotions and feelings. For example, if Jack was incredible terrified and afraid, he would manifest powers like superhuman invulnerability or an accelerated healing factor, most cases depending on his situation as well. There seems to be no limit to what powers Jack can manifest but once he acquires a superpower it cannot be removed, his powers also become a little bit more advanced every time his powers are in use. Once his new power manifests itself, Jack will glow and radiate with a white aura, symbolising his body is adjusting to the new ability. Jack can also manifest powers based of his memories or personal experiences and manipulate to his will meaning he could manifest any power as long as it revolves around his situation, the manifestation of his powers are also a way to evolve past situations. For example, if he was being bullied at school or suffocating underwater or in the vacuum of space, he would develop a power allowing him to counter this problem. Finally, Jack can manifest a power depending on his thoughts or worries. For example, if he was worried about dying he might manifest the ability to live forever or otherwise known as Immortality.
What do you think?
I’ve actually got a character sort of like that, Solar, as far as the powers change with emotions. However, having the power always counter whatever is going wrong takes out the suspense. What good is danger if he can just suddenly have a power that counters it?
If I were the editor evaluating your comic book script or novel manuscript, my main concern would be that it’d be difficult to challenge your character in a dramatic way. It’s most satisfying when a character overcomes limits that are concrete to the audience. For example, if a character’s powers only last one hour but no longer, the drama comes from whether he can get the job done in time. If the character’s powers are limited by the need to keep his secret identity hidden, then the audience knows that he has to save the day without exposing himself. For example, if Tony Stark is caught out of his Ironman suit when terrorists attack his building, he has to save the day without his suit. That will require guile, cunning and many other traits that will impress the reader.
In contrast, when your hero faces a difficult situation, he doesn’t get himself out of it… his body gets him out of it. That’s not very satisfying. I’d recommend reining in his powers so that we can see what he can do.
Yeah your probably right.
I’ve got another one. Tell me if this one is good.
Crash possesses numerous abilities such as: superhuman strength, speed, stamina and durability. He also the ability to produced writing without conscious thought, being in two places at the same time, communication with animals and spirits of a people who have died experiences of being disembodied. Crash can also have visions of previous lives before current incarnation, perception of future events before they happen, manipulation of matter, space, time or energy otherwise known as Psychokinesis or telekinesis, Transfer of thoughts or emotions, especially knowing another person’s thoughts and Bodily levitation or flying.
Due to his telekinetic powers, Crash can also
• Speed up or slow down the naturally occurring vibrations of atoms in matter to alter temperature.
• Aerokinesis, the telekinetic subspecialty of being able to control the movement of air molecules specifically.
• Hydrokinesis, the telekinetic subspecialty of being able to control the movement of water molecules specifically.
• Object deformation (including metal softening and bending).[41]
• Influencing events.
• Biological healing.
• Teleportation (disappearing and reappearing elsewhere).
• Phasing through matter.
• Transmutation of matter. Shape-shifting.
• Energy shield (force field).
• Control of magnetism.
• Control of photons (light waves/particles).
• Thought form projection (a physically perceived person, animal, creature, object, ghostly entity, etc., created in the mind and projected into three-dimensional space and observable by others; for thought images allegedly placed on film, see Thoughtography).
Crash can also create weapons out of his own psychic energy which can be altered to be more powerful than another weapon.
Ok, hmm. It seems like you’ve got a lot going on here for one character. For a single character, I’d recommend picking maybe 2-3 of these. I suspect that 2-3 thematically linked powers would be easier to build a character around than ~15 powers that don’t seem to share much of a common theme. For example, I’m not feeling the connection between water control, influencing events, light control, shapeshifting, etc. Most popular superheroes are limited to just a few powers. (Superman is the only exception I can think of). For example, I think you could do something with telekinesis and mentally-created weaponry. Those go together pretty well.
Yours,
B. Mac
I think keeping all these incredible superpowers makes him far too powerful, but I think the idea is a great one. What do you think about him losing the powers when he no longer needs them? Practically, it would be hard to adjust to suddenly having a new superpower, and this ability would only work if he’s aware of the danger, so he would still be vulnerable.
I would seriously recommend that he loses the powers later, though. It will be hard to challenge a character like that, and also hard for him to feel threatened. If he’s invulnerable to harm and impossible to defeat, why should readers care about him? (On a more practical level, it would be difficult to remember all the superpowers he has).
Whoops, that was about Jack. I agree with B. Mac’s thoughts on Crash.
I just made a new story line
Diablo is a powerful demon that belongs to the ‘Seven Demon Gods’. He is the second most powerful demon in the group. Once he was a pitiful virus who merged with a baby but eventually through war and death he began to evolve into a great demon and was taken in by the ‘Six Demon Gods’. Once rebelling against his clan, Diablo suffered a humiliating defeat and was transformed into a sword and was banished to the human world for 5million years. Humans heard of this and scattered the world to control his power, wars were raged; people died and now 5million years later, Diablo has returned to his normal form and has a change of heart, now turned to the light, Diablo protects the Earth killing demons but he also has another motto to follow: Revenge.
That sounds okay. I wonder though, what’s the significance of him being turned into a sword if no one ever finds him. Couldn’t they just have imprisioned him in a seal or something? I would suggest that if you make him into a sword that somebody finds him and then releases him from his prison.
Okay but I changed it. He was imprisoned because he fell in love with a human women. The demons took this as an insult and then beat him up.
I dunno, maybe because he was praying inside his prison and then he was released. But when he comes out, he sees there is a new league of more powerful demons.
But he has the power to transform a soul into a weapon based on their characteristics.
Hello, my name is Chulance and I’m writing a superhero novel series. I’m currently going to start book 1 soon. Anyway, I’ve been working on the plot and things like that. I had some questions about my story and things. Each of my characters have different abilities but I’ve noticed some problems about certain abilities and came with questions which I hope you can answer.
My main character is supposed to end up being the strongest at the end of the story so I’ve given him the ability of power mimicry so he can copy other abilities. Now, I’ve noticed that the more abilities he copies the stronger he will become and eventually he will have a large arsenal of abilities making him unstoppable. I want him to get a large arsenal but not too early.
How can I prevent him from gaining too many powers early in the series? He is a good person so he’ll try to fight villains but how can I avoid him gaining too many strong abilities, like the power to use the energy of a star or manipulating time?
Here are a few suggestions.
1. He has to remember how to use the power. It would be harder the more powers he has.
2. Or he has to be in close proximity to the user, so it makes him more of an empath than a mimic.
3. He has to be close, but then his powers evolve so that he can use them just from memory. Then, he has to remember how to use them.
I hope that helps.
The Suggestions are pretty good as for remebering the powers his abiltity makes him dangerous he repliactes the abilties of those near him for example if some guy can turn invisible his body naturally replicates the ability so he would turn invisible, but he will become visible in a few minutes. His body down-loads abilties of those near him.
As for remebering abilties that would help although I think I would rember if my powers if I had some. About remebering how to use them that will work so if his friends get abilties he would have to be seperated so they couldn’t just teach him how to use their abilties and it would be harder to control a villian’s ability sense they wouldn’t just tell him.
Also, how can you make someone who can manipulate time interesting? For example if armed men break in he can freeze time and leave or slow the bullets down in time. One of my antiheroes has that ability.
Place a tight limit on how long he can freeze time. Maybe a minute or so.
True, it would be cool if he froze time and has a minute to get people out of a burning building in time. But I’ll increase it to 3-5 minutes.
Sounds good.
See Peter Petrelli from Heroes for how NOT to do a mimic. By season 3 he was pretty much a Swiss army knife of superpowers. Invisibility, flight, super-strength, lightning, time manipulation, healing factor, telepathy, telekinesis, precognition. Yeah, he was unstoppable.
That was a shame, because they handled his powers so well in season 1. It took him about 16 episodes to learn how to use his powers; he had to either be close to the power’s owner, or think hard about them. He had to train with Doctor Who-I mean… the Invisible Man…I mean Claud Raynes to learn how to use his powers.
But they fixed his overpoweredness quite nicely in Volume 4. They made him lose all of his powers and now he can only have one ability at a time, and must touch people to take their ability. So if he hugs his brother he’ll be able to fly, but then if he slaps Matt Parkman he will lose his flying ability and be able to read minds.
Yeah, power mimicry needs strong limitations.
Oops I forgot to put my name in the last post. Also B Mac do you have suggestions on power mimmicry? Well i think Peter Petrelli wasn’t that godly it’s when he get Intuitive Aptitude and gained complete control of his abilties. In Season 2 he was unstoppable especialy when Sylar lost his abilties the only person who could even challange Peter.
Adam had to manipulate Peter, I guess they forgot he can read minds. Anyway back to my guy as for him having strong limitations? It’s kind of hard he’s suppose to end of the strongest person and protector of the universe at the end but I can’t have him become too strong in the middle of the series. At first he could only use his ability to escape danger for example one of his friends can teleport when he is unconscious he can use abilties to save him.
Later he will start to gain more control.
Most published mimics have strong limitations. For example, Rogue’s ability is extremely intrusive and puts the target into a coma. She has very little control over her new powers and only retains the power for a short period.
If the person holds on the power forever, he will get so confusingly powerful that he will break your story. Consider, for example, Peter Petrelli. He should have been able to read Adam’s mind. For whatever reason, the writers forgot about his mind-reading, perhaps because it was just one of the 10+ abilities they had to keep track of. They also forgot that he had the ability to teleport and time-travel. Whoops.
Having that many powers is a problem because it eliminates the need for any other character. Why send Matt to fight Sylar when you can send Peter instead? After all, Peter can do everything Matt can and (much) more, and regenerate to boot. Unless you can find a publisher that’s interested in a story about a godlike hero that is extremely hard to challenge, this is a recipe for absolute disaster. (Publishers tend to stay away from extremely powerful characters; they usually aren’t very interesting).
Additionally, if your character can draw on many, many powers, your readers will start to second-guess you. Why doesn’t your character get out of this tight situation by using that power he got 150 pages ago? Then you factor in all the problems of time-travel and invulnerability and you have a character that is a story-killer.
I’d recommend trying something like the new Peter; I agree with Tom that he is a much more workable character.
Name: Ramolian Gyro
Alias: Collision
Age: 22
Powers: Invulnerability the ability to be immune to one or more forms of physical damage, durability the ability to withstand damage for a long time, superhuman strength the ability to have physical strength much higher than any human possible and also raises hi strength by absorbing others life forces, Accelerated healing the ability of to heal rapidly from any injury; the rate of recovery varies from character to character. Can sometimes result in the slowing of aging, Energy blasts Ability to expel various forms of energy from the body, Merge Ability to temporarily merge two beings into a single being, which results in a completely new and stronger being, Flight Ability to lift off the ground, to ride air currents or to fly self-propelled through the air and Teleportation Ability to move from one place to another without occupying the space in between and Immortality Ability to live forever. This may be complete immortality encompassing invulnerability, partial invulnerability to all but specific events decapitation or exposure to a specific chemical such as kryptonite
Or simply an inability to age normally.
Abilities: master in martial arts and master in weapons
Occupation: Elite guardian
Citizenship: America
Place of Birth: Tronian
Group Affiliation: Powerforce
Height: 6’7
Weight: 165 lbs
Eyes: green
Hair: Black
Race: Half god
Framos
Full name: Framos Klee Môn
Team affiliations: None
Supporting: None
Notable aliases: Emperor of all
Place of birth: Merlok
Citizenship: Merlok
Occupation: Emperor
Abilities: Framos as the father and creator of planet Merlok have five rings of Universes which have five different abilities; the ring of creation can create universes, galaxies, stars, solasystem and planet. The ring of life can create new life and the ring of death can end one being life. The ring of time gives him the ability of time, matter and space. The final ring of power gives him the abilities of controlling all the energies of the universe; manipulate the energy and bestowing him with the power of the cosmic which he can make himself last long over millenniums, And other abilities he can think of.
Height: 9’7
Weight: 890lbs
Eyes: Purple
Hair: Blue
Race: Merlokian\Elder of the Universe
Hello, Collision.
I’ll be blunt, Collision is WAY overpowered. How will his story be interesting if he can’t die or get hurt? Along with being immortal, which raises its own problems, he has other abilities that make him unbeatable. I doubt his fight scenes would be all that interesting. Who wants to read about a character that can’t die or even get hurt for that matter.
Since he’s a half god, I’d recommend cutting some of the invulnerablity and the immortality all together. Maybe immortality can come once he becomes a full fledged god. He would still be overpowered, but at least then there would be drama in that he can die or lose.
What do you think?
Framos works. He’s an understandable god character. As long as he doesn’t play deus ex machina, I think he can work.
B. Mac, my characters will end up strong. One villain is a reality warper and that’s the hardest ability to control. Therefore, my guy won’t have enough time to fully control it. Anyway, I’ve got strong villains and characters with one power will focus on that ability while the one with many has to pick a few he uses the most.
I agree with Ragged Boy. Framos works.
Some suggestions on Collision. He’s not overpowered. No one is truly overpowered unless the author isn’t creative enough to challenge their character in my opinion. As for the immortality aspect, maybe he can still technically die. For example being a half-god he can live forever but he could still die if someone is strong enough to kill him.
If he has immortality, he needs a weakness. If he were truly immortal and invulnerable, he’d be unkillable and unstoppable.
Immortality can be something like they can be killed but they come back to life. So they still feel pain and die but they come back, like self-resurrection. Let’s say he’s trying to stop a robbery and he gets shot he dies and he wakes up after the robbery. Let’s say he jumps in front of a bullet and saves the Mayor. He’d be much more interesting than someone without a weakness.
Also, balance it out. Create villains that are on his level or stronger. That will make the story interesting.
If you combine immortality and durability, then maybe he can still be hurt but it takes a while. For example, one bullet might not do any harm but 20 can do damage and more can kill him. Combine that with self-resurrection and some strong villains and maybe you can have a good story.
I’m still not sure what warping reality is or what you’d be able to do with it. If I were the editor, my concern would be that warping reality might be one of those powers where the author pretty much makes it up as he goes along. It doesn’t seem to have clearly defined limits and, even if it did, they would probably not be very intuitive to readers.
Well the ability to manipulate reality is basically aboslute and ultimate power. Basically a reality warper can do anything or nothing. For example some reality warpers can only warp things on a limited scale like only being able to affect non living creatures that’s mainly for heroes who have the ability or heroes can gain it at the end of a series.
Different reality warpers have different limits though my guy will have some too so he dosen’t just warp reality and the heroes are dead.
“Immortality can be something like they can be killed, but they come back to life. So they still feel pain and die, but they come back more like self-resurrection.”
It works a different way, but essentially, it’s still immortality. It takes a second be he can keep coming back. That sucks out the drama. A reader might say: “Wow that looks painful, oh well, he’ll come back.” It’s not very satisfying.
Hmm. Reality warping doesn’t feel like a very interesting power to me.
Well, I personally think Reality Warping is the coolest ability and my favorite actually. I would love to have it I could help so many people.
Well still, Ragged boy it makes the hero face challanges he’s trying to rescue his girlfriend he can’t risk dieing or he can be captured by some villians trapped underwater and have to find a way to escape. It could be fun to experiment with such as the hero having bombs strapped too himself and having to evacuate people.
I’d watch out, Chulance, with using abilities you yourself would most love to have. It tends to warp one’s view on what’s too much power and what isn’t.
Oros the space god
Full name: Oros Klee Môn
Team affiliations: Space gods
Supporting: Framos
Notable aliases: None
Place of birth: Merlok
Citizenship: Merlok
Occupation: Warlord
Abilities: as the son of Framos the emperor Oros himself do not have genetic abilities but he wield a weapon that is said to be the most powerful creation in the universe forged by the all god, the weapon is a sword called Nemrom the sword have the ability of absorbing all kind of energy and transforming them into different kind of abilities. The sword is said can absorb a large amount of energy and if it’s absorbed all energy for example in a planet it can destroy the planet. The sword can also penetrate time walls and make worm holes to different universes.
Height: 7’8
Weight: 140 lbs
Eyes: purple
Hair: dark purple
Race: Merlokian
Razaruth
Razaruth was the demonic king of a hell dimension called Garoth. But his right-hand man, his general Laketh, overthrew him and banished him to live as a mortal. Razaruth was stripped of his throne and his offspring were all killed.
Razaruth possesses magical powers, often used to simulate other powers. For example, he can use mind control, elemental attacks, possession and the ability to plant false dreams.
He also possesses a level of super strength, super speed, durability, a fraction of immortality, invulnerability, and mediumship (the ability to see and communicate with ghosts). Finally, he has reality warping, only due to that he could manipulate darkness or shadow the ability to create or manipulate darkness, often by mentally accessing and manipulating a dimension of dark energy.
I’ve seen some comments suggesting that time travel and similar powers are very difficult to create interesting challenges from. I agree, but would this be an interesting and reasonably powered adaption? My hero has the ability to reverse time by exactly 60 seconds. Once he has done so, he may not rewind time during the new 60 seconds or the following 60 seconds to prevent him from rewinding indefinitely. Other than that, he can use this power freely. Is that too overpowered or unworkable?
He’s a character in a comic series I am writing that starts as a background character in several editions before becoming a major character with his own POV comics, if that is relevant. (The series will feature self contained stories that eventually link together in the style of Wild Cards). Also, any help with the name would be appreciated. Nothing obscure, it should be fairly easy to understand but better than Do-over which feels wrong and I am sure is not written like that. Thanks.
I think your restriction is a very good one. So the character has other time control abilities, I think they would need similar restrictions, like fast-forwarding 60 seconds. Sixty seconds isn’t much time to get something done, which will make it dramatic. What if the event takes place happened before or after the 60 seconds allotted? I’d recommend you expand his control just a little, but not too much. I think you’ve got a good idea going.
I think this would be relatively easy to work with.
I’m not great with names, but how about Tempo or Reset. Minuteman could work if you’re writing a comedy.
Minutemen is the name of a disbanded superhero group in the Watchmen graphic novel, and a Disney Channel movie about three time travelers. Doubt it’s still up for grabs.
I’m glad you don’t think he is too overpowered, this is probably the most powerful ability in the entire cast.
At the moment he is limited to rewinding but I might expand this rosta as he gains control of his powers, that’s certainly something to look into, thanks.
I know 60 seconds is short but it forces him to be quick-thinking and prevents him from relying on his powers at all times. Also, the idea is less about going back and stopping things from beginning but limiting the effects having seen what happens. Perhaps increasing it to two or three minutes would be better but I’m reluctant to do much more because a lot can happen in a short amount of time and since it’s a fixed time, I would worry that readers will resent having so much time simply deleted. So I think I’ll expand the time to two minutes, thanks.
It’s not a comedy but should capture some of the fun that is in Wild Cards (it’s my biggest influence). The idea is that most of their alter egos are invented by newspapers and fans so things like Minuteman are not unworkable although that would require him to clearly establish his abilities to the world. Thanks for the help. You made some good points that I need to think about a bit more.
Tom, I said Minuteman, not Minutemen.
Two minutes sounds good.
Matt, I think you should make your superhero a bit powerful. Reversing time by sixty seconds won’t do him much good. You let him use all of his powers freely, not limited.
Matt: He SHOULD be able to use his powers freely, but make restriction on them, like the more he uses his powers. The weaker they or he becomes physically or mentally weaker/drained. I dunno, try it so it don’t seem too strong.
I think it’s pretty good as is. Expanding his limit to two minutes will make it easier to manage. I think the wait time is an adequate restriction that keeps the power easy to understand.
I think limits are necessary on character that have a very powerful ability like time control. This keeps them from being overpowered. If he could control time at will, that would get boring because nothing is at stake. If someone gets shot, he just goes back in time and stops them. That’s boring. With the time restriction, you maintain the drama, because the hero still has to save the person in time.
The problem with making it a physical restriction is that it becomes arbitrary. I can employ the restriction whenever I want to limit him but remove it when I want him to win. I don’t need to stay consistent and the audience will pick up on occasions where I am not. With 120 seconds he has a clear limit that is intuitive and easy for the audience to grasp. Also, this is not in the style of Superman or Spiderman where you expect the hero to be able to overcome all problems, his powers are limited so he knows he will fail sometimes because his powers are ill-suited to the challenge.
Thanks for the advice, but I personally feel a time limit works better than a physical one. I’ve never been a fan of powers that tire the user because I find it hard to tell how much they need to use before they are rendered unconscious. Thanks anyway
Something that could be listed above is power gained through an object. For example, the Planeteers have rings that let them control their elements, Dial H for Hero have the dial thingamabob, and in Final Fantasy X2 the three main characters use dresspheres that give them a costume and different abilities. The Planeteers probably come under elements, but FFX2 has varying abilities depending on the sphere used.
I have a new superhero who can turn objects and people into inanimate objects like a packet of crisp or a bar of chocolate. But I don’t know how to make a good storyline out of that. So I was wondering if you could give me something to help me.
It doesn’t feel like a very interesting power. If someone gets turned into an inanimate object, he’s pretty much out of the story.
Moreover, who has this power? What’s his goal? Who’s trying to stop him and why? Why should we care whether he succeeds? What’s at stake? Where and when are the story set? What’s the genre/mood of the story? Etc.
Also, I’m dimly aware that there has already been a DBZ villain that had the same power.
You mean Buu?
I’d like to weigh in:
“It doesn’t feel like a very interesting power. If someone gets turned into an inanimate object, he’s pretty much out of the story.”
–Unless it was a comedy in which the objects could still move and otherwise interact. I could see it as funny if the Big Bad was turned into a vase and was forced to continue his evil-ing as a vase. How terrifying is a vase trying to kill mankind? I say very.
One thing that I read that stroke me as odd, Solar: “I have a new superhero who can turn objects and people into inanimate objects–”
He can turn objects into other objects? I guess it could work if the hero needed a wrench and had to turn a fork into it. (Unless of course that was a typo).
Also, I don’t think it’s a power that would really suit a superhero very well. The same is mostly true of any ability that only affects someone else (whether to age him, de-age him, shrink him, swap his body with another, turn him into something else, etc). How could you do a plotline with shrinking or getting turned into a lamp? In nine out of ten cases, these stories use the following plot pattern. The hero gets zapped; the hero struggles to adjust to his new status; finally the hero uses his status as an asset to defeat the villain.
I don’t know how I would do a plot where the hero can shrink someone else or turn him into an inanimate object. That’s sort of an anticlimactic way to win a fight!
It would be more typical for the hero to be able to transform himself, or perhaps to transform willing targets. Shrinking Violet shrank herself, Beast Boy could turn himself into animals, etc.
I have a new supervillain who can take the form of any creatures he sees. For example, if he sees a dragon, lion or any beast, he can shapeshift into that form. Do you think that’s a good power for a villain?
Yeah, I think that could work. Shape-shifting is very easy to choreograph and can be used to create a variety of interesting fights. However, just don’t have him turn into a snake. It never helps.
My villain can absorb other powers and can keep them until he sees the original owners of the powers again. If he kills them, he keeps the power.
Is that a bit overpowered?
It might be overpowered if he comes into contact with a lot of useful abilities. However, being overpowered is generally less of a problem for the villain than the hero.
I’d say that the main problem is that it might be hard to keep track of all of the powers he has. That’s a problem both for the reader and the writer.
“My villain can absorb other powers and can keep them until he sees the original owners of the powers again.” It might help to come up with a brief explanation for why seeing the original possessor of the power causes him to lose the power. How close does he have to be to the person to lose the power?
Hey, snakes aren’t useless!
When Jazz helps Ian to escape in my book, she turns into a boa constrictor. Then, she uses her power to sneak over to his cell, slither through a hole in the door, and crush the bars on his window. It’s not the best offensive one, but being immobilized by a snake can’t exactly be fun.
Snakes can be awesome!
-Wings
For power absorbing villains, see Sylar from Heroes. Some of it works, some of it doesn’t. The main problem is that the writers don’t keep track of his powers.
Because all of my origin stories are just evolution, the DNA of the original owners of the powers pulls the power back into them when they sense it.
That makes the villain lose the power. But the villain keeps it indefinitely if the original user dies. Because the villain is power-crazy, he kills the people after taking their powers.
I have a new hero about a boy who dies in an accidental gang war. The next morning he wakes up in his bed without a scratch. He remembers being shot, so he runs out of his house to the road and gets hit by a car but he remains unharmed. Now he is out to find his killer.
The story is about a zombie boy but I don’t know what powers to give him. I was wondering if you can help me here.
Well, I think ‘he can’t die’ is enough of a superpower. Despite being slightly overdone:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadpool_(comics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Harkness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolverine_(comics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_(Doctor_Who)
It seems like he already has invulnerability so I think any more powers could very easily make him overpowered. As it is, his invunerability means he can survive life threatening situations so creating tension will have to be done by threatening other characters. Giving him powers that make this easier will reduce the tension but won’t add much to the story. I’d say make him rely on his own wits and strength and leave his super powers at invulnerability. That will make the story more interesting I think.
If you still want powers, avoid powerful ones like superstrength or superspeed and give him small things like heightened senses and reflexes. This will avoid him being overpowered.
Tom, technically Dr. Who can die. He just won’t. Even after number twelve is done with, he’ll come back.
I know.
Oh, how could I forget:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_Bennet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piccolo_(Dragon_Ball)
And anyone in this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healing_factor
I think this zombie character should give something up every time he dies. For example, perhaps at first it’s just that he doesn’t have control over a toe. After he dies a few times, it becomes more serious. That will help increase the urgency for him to avoid dying.
I agree that true invulnerability will probably make the story boring unless there are limits. If the character can’t die, the stakes are very low.
I like it how Doctor Who avoids making the Doctor too overpowered and generally avoids wangstiness. He gets really weak for hours after regeneration, and his appearance changes to allow a new actor, also causing complications when he runs into people he befriended in a previous incarnation. He solves problems by being smart, but he’s also an idiot at times. In Doomsday when all the stuff happens and the Doctor even cries over it, he is distracted by Donna suddenly appearing in the TARDIS. Then he’s off on his next merry adventure, but not forgetting what happened. At least he is happy more often than he is sad.
I’m thinking of a hero who gets abused but I really don’t know what powers to give him.
And for the zombie kid, he can turn breathable air into a corrosive air that turns people in zombies when breathed.
When Crazy Jane was abused she created multiple (64+) personalities. When her metagene activated each personality got a superpower. I’m not suggesting you do this, but that’s just an example.
I think that turning someone into a zombie is only a power if getting turned into a zombie is a bad thing. Right now, it just seems like an easy and painless way to become unkillable?
Braaaains… Haha.
Perhaps they become addicted to human flesh like someone would get addicted to drugs? Or they slowly become less and less human until they are nothing but a mindless shell of their former self? Maybe friends freak out and avoid him? After all, zombies are the plague.
Solar, I have a few ideas for your hero who gets abused (presumably before he becomes a superhero).
1-He sees the crimes of all the people around him, and can cause them mental pain, somewhat like Ghost Rider’s penance stare.
2-He can turn into a giant feral monster, like the one on the plane in Fringe.
3-He can destabilise the molecular structure of solids, turning them into liquids. It might be funny if he accidentally liquidates his clothes.
4-He can cause things to open, for example locked doors, bra straps or villains’ rib cages.
I’ve got an idea for a superpower. What do you think of someone who can change his weight?
He can become very light and be able to jump higher and farther and do everything that lightweight objects do, and he can become heavier, making him harder to move because his body weighs more, be able to sink in water, and do all of the stuff heavier objects do. He would be able to become lightweight, jump high into the air, become heavy, and fall back down with a smash (although that would probably be painful).
There are some limits. He can’t go completely weightless and float around like a balloon, and if he gets too heavy he’ll fall through the floor if in a building with multiple stories or he’ll sink into the ground. Jumping from 100 feet will still hurt like jumping from 100 feet. It will hurt more if he’s heavier because he’ll have more momentum when he hits that ground. He doesn’t get stronger when he’s heavier, which means it will be harder to lift his arms and legs and such, but he will be quicker when he’s lighter because it’s less weight to lift.
What do you think of it? Is it overpowered? I’m also having trouble thinking of a weakness…
Definitely not overpowered. I’m having trouble thinking of ways that he could actually use this power, particularly in a fight.
I suppose he could jump pretty far and launch himself as a heavy projectile, but I can’t think of much else he’d be able to do in combat. I suppose he could also kill a Godzilla-like creature in a spectacularly gruesome fashion by jumping onto his skull and then making himself ridiculously heavy… essentially taking an elevator through Godzilla’s brain. Somehow, I don’t think that’s what you have in mind, though. (At least, I hope not).
In contrast, Spiderman’s webs and Wolverine’s claws and telekinesis strike me as more versatile abilities that can be applied to a variety of situations. It might be hard to write scenes where the hero uses his powers in an interesting and creative fashion. What do you think?
I think if you removed the weightless restriction it’d be easier to work with. It would give him a mode of transportation (drifting). But, like B. Mac said, I can’t see it working well in a fight.
But having said that, kudos for thinking of a superpower! The closest I can think of is that extra from X-Men in that one scene who went from being morbidly obese to super-skinny with a thought. But I imagine what you’re thinking of is nothing like that.
The closest I can think of is Hiram Worchester from Wild Cards, but he manipulated gravity so that he weighed less than he appeared. That could be a way to extend his fighting capabilities as Hiram could change the weight of any object, letting him levitate or crush foes, save people from falling and disable enemies weapons i.e. making a gun very heavy.
This might be a bit far from your original idea but maybe you can adapt something similar, perhaps any mass he loses or gains, is taken or given to nearby objects. Hope this helped, I think it’s a good idea with a lot of potential
Thanks B. Mac, Tom, and Mr. Brit.
B. Mac,
I’m actually not sure of ways he could use his power in a fight besides launching himself as a projectile either. Maybe he could have some kind of see-saw/catapult-like thing that he jumps on to launch other objects. But still, that would limit him to launching or being launched… Do you think he should get some kind of secondary power, maybe like being able to change the weight of things he touched as well? I’m not sure how that would help though, so if anyone could help me this, it would be appreciated.
Tom,
I’d like to stay away from going completely weightless just because of physics (maybe I’m being to strict with following physical laws, tell me if I am). What would happen if you push something weightless? Right now, it would be impossible to tell how fast it would move, or if it would move. Maybe I’m just being too picky though.
As for transportation, I think that just jumping long distances, which I guess is pretty similar to drifting, would work. Thanks for the suggestion though.
Also, I’m glad you can’t think of a similar superhero. The whole reason I came up with this was because I wanted to create a new, unique, and interesting power that wasn’t completely useless.
Mr. Brit,
Again, glad you couldn’t think of any superheros with this exact power. I like the idea of being able to change the weight of other objects, and having to give and take his mass from other objects. I can think of a lot of situations and challenges for a guy with that. Also, it would make it slightly more of a plausible/realistic power, since it would follow one more physical law.
Also, I’d like to clear up one thing that I’m not sure I explained well enough. When he changes weight, he stays the same size. Think of the difference between a bowling ball and a same-sized balloon. Same size. Different weights.
I’m not a physicist, but something doesn’t have to be completely weightless to float like a balloon. They just have to be lighter than air. I agree that having him go absolutely weightless would be a bit cheesy and would raise all sorts of bizarre physics issues.
In physics terms, I think your character is changing density. That would explain why his weight changes but his volume does not.
I agree that a secondary power is probably in order, but realistically any secondary power is likely to be more powerful. I kind of like generic agility/melee skills for this character. What do you think? (Probably not Batman-grade, though… I was thinking more like Spiderman).
I know that it’s possible to have less density than air, but I’d still rather him not be able to get that light, unless you can think of any advantages for the story by letting him.
I think that agility and melee could work as secondary skills, maybe more agility. He could learn to use his weight changing to control his momentum and use it to help him with fighting, maybe using it to swing around on stuff like Spiderman or doing parkourish stunts.
I still can’t think of any good weaknesses though… Do you think that having to give and take his mass from other objects could create enough difficulties, or do you think it’s fine the way it is now? Or does anyone have any other ideas?
Thanks
I’m not sure what weaknesses to give him because I can’t anticipate any situations where it will be too easy for him to succeed. Usually, weaknesses are called for when the hero’s powers make it virtually impossible for him to fail. That doesn’t seem to be the case here.
This is the beginning of my story. What do you think?
Planet Tronian, the planet of the gods, once a powerful and peaceful empire. Full of knowledge and cultural, not a war like, violent race although all was changed in a flash. Today 12 September, the year of 3456 the planet was fighting a civil war.
Civil war created by a feud of two brothers, princes of the planet Bermon and his brother Ramolian, Bermon the corrupted one, corrupted by power, greed and above all stupidity. He chose to side with the violent, dictators and warlords race of Merlokians controlled and ruled by a tyrant, foul and evil prince Oros. To overthrow his father Gyro and rule Tronian for himself this was Bermon intention all along. But one Tronian stood on his way his beloved twin brother Ramolian.
‘The soldiers are tired my lord, we suffered sever losses, we should surrender my lord’ said Captain Froth. Ramolian walked towards his captain then looked at him in his face and simply said ‘surrender is not an option soldier; I will never kneel to my brother’. The hooves of the stamped of horses carrying soldiers or demons as Ramolian calls them got closer and closer. ‘Stand ready men, this is our last stand for your families sake fight with honour’ shouted and screamed with so much spirit and hope in his voice Ramolian.
‘ What do we have here, if it is not my halfwit brother and his so called army, being prepared to be crush and humbly silenced by his much superior brother Bermon’ Bermon mocking his brother while laughing with his soldiers. ‘I love the smell of flesh blood being splattered all over this holy land of the gods and the scream of pain, suffering and despair of men, ahhhhhhhh’. Said Oros while laughing with so much wicked coming out of his cursed and corrupted voice.
I was thinking of a hero who can turn souls into weapons based of their characteristics. He can also separate people from their souls and absorb them, gaining their strength, intelligence and other abilities.
Collision, here are a few thoughts and observations.
–the characters are a bit two-dimensional. I’d recommend introducing at least one of the characters before launching into this scene.
–the first sentence appears to be a fragment. I would recommend adding a verb.
–I wouldn’t recommend using a year far in the future unless this is futuristic sci-fi. That does not appear to be the case (given that many soldiers are fighting on horseback).
–If we’re using a fictional planet, giving us a year is probably unnecessary.
–the conflict between the hero and the villain feels a bit bland.
–I don’t feel that the hero is very likable yet.
–Who’s your target audience?
Kinda like this?
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpiritBomb
Collision, I think your piece is okay, but it’s not very gripping for an introduction. Here are my thoughts and observations:
- Generally, the first and second paragraph aren’t very interesting. The second paragraph is a bit hard to follow and kind of felt like an info-dump. It also introduced us to way too many names at once.
-Severe is spelled this way.
-Stampede is spelled this way.
“shouted and screamed with so much spirit and hope in his voice Ramolian.”
-This is a bit awkward. I think commanded would feel more like he’s the leader. I think you could rewrite this as “Ramolian commanded, his voice full of spirit and hope.”
“What do we have here, if it is not my halfwit brother and his so called army, being prepared to be crush and humbly silenced by his much superior brother Bermon”
- I think this is awkward and chunky. I would recommend rewriting this for reading ease.
-I think you should using quotation marks (”) for dialogue, instead of apostrophes(’).
“I love the smell of flesh blood being splattered all over this holy land of the gods and the scream of pain, suffering and despair of men, ahhhhhhhh’.”
-This is a bit awkward and I don’t understand that “ahhh” at the end. Is that laughter?
-I think the main issue was that most of the writing was too awkward. I’d recommend reading over the piece and editing for things that can be said more easily.
What do you think?
I share a lot of RB’s observations. In particular, I was not sure about the “ahhh.” I thought that he had been shot or something.
Also, I think the story might be developing a bit too quickly. If there is a climactic battle in chapter 1, where does the story go from there? What do you have in mind?
Jack Cobweb
Jack Cobweb was born a normal human in London, England. But when he was in the hospital he was kidnapped by a satanic cult called the Blood Clots. They then performed an evil, ancient ritual on him, causing him to be possessed by an ancient demon named Raar.
The cult then returned him to his parents. Although he was not normal any more now he had something dark inside him.
Jack now possesses special abilities due to what he had inside him, his powers started to work when he just five. He now could run for long without being tired and his senses have enhanced dramatically. For example, he has nightvision, x-ray vision, telescopic and microscopic vision, enhanced smell and hearing, etc.
Due to his supernatural origins, he also has some supernatural abilities such as mediumship (the ability to see and communicate with the dead) and precognition (the ability to see the future). The future may come in vague dreams while he sleeps or it might manifest as a clear “danger sense.” In addition, he can possess people, resurrect after being killed, summon objects for assistance like minions from hell, manipulate fire and heat, and an immunity to fire.
Finally, he has two different personalities. The demon sometimes takes control, causing Jack to take on a demonic form with its own abilities.
Hmm. Here are a few thoughts and observations.
1. The character sounds very similar to Jason Blood/Etrigan from DC Comics.
2. He has a lot of powers, including a few that might make it hard to challenge him. In particular, I think that resurrection will sap the drama. If he can’t die, how will you endanger him?
3. This isn’t relevant to his superpowers, so feel free to address this elsewhere if you’d like. What’s his personality like? In particular, how is he different from Jason Blood? If you’re not sure, feel free to see this article on developing characters.
4. What’s the demon like? How is he different from (and/or more interesting than) similar characters like Etrigan?
And his weaknesses?
Also, the name Jack for a hero is something of a cliche in itself, but that’s not a huge problem.
Not a fan of ‘Blood Clots’ for the name of a satanic cult. Doesn’t sound threatening or evil.
The Blood Clots? I think you could come up with something that will be taken more seriously. The Blood Clots makes me giggle.
I agree with what’s been said already. I think ‘Blood’ in any context is a bit cliche for a cult name.
On a slightly irrelevant note, I’ve been randomly inspired to create a supervillain called ‘the Ripper’, inspired by Jack the Ripper.
After reading your comments about my new superhero, Jack Cobweb, I might make some changes like the name of the cult.
Perhaps an incredibly lame pun like the O-Cult.
This is a new and maybe improved version of my superhero and the name of the cult.
Trevor Cobweb
Trevor Cobweb was born a normal human in London, England. But when he was in the hospital, he was kidnapped by a satanic cult called the Order of Satan. They then performed an evil ritual on him, so that he would be possessed by an ancient demon called Raar.
The cult then returned him to his parents.
Trevor now possesses special abilities. His powers started to work when he was just five. For example, now he can run for long periods without being tired and his senses are dramatically better. For example, he has night-vision, x-ray vision, telescopic and microscopic vision, enhanced smell, hearing, feel and taste.
Due to his supernatural origin, he also has several supernatural abilities such as medium ship (the ability to see and communicate with the dead) and precognition (the ability to perceive the future). The future may be expressed in vague dreams while he sleeps or clearly as a form of “danger sense.” He has the ability to possess other individuals via astral travel and resurrect himself after being killed. He can summon objects for assistance, manipulate heat and fire, levitate objects, people and animals into the air, and teleportation.
Because he has a demon inside of him, he is immune to heat. Finally, the demon inside Raar sometime comes out in a demonic form that has its own abilities. That means that Jack has been completely taken over by the demon when this happens, though.
…I giggled at the demon’s name, personally. “Raar” is pronounced like “rawr,” correct?
Trevor has a lot of powers. I’d recommend limiting him to three or four key ones, and making sure they’re linked. For example, what does summoning have to do with X-ray vision?
I’d give him precognition in vague dreams, but not at will. If Trevor only sees the future when he’s asleep and the images are twisted or symbolic, then it will be more exciting as he figures it out.
Being able to run long distances without getting tired is a worry. When he’s running to or from a situation, it will be hard for people to relate because his heart won’t be pounding, he won’t be sweating and his thoughts won’t be wild and erratic.
Blinking could be good to keep in, but it may work better if it’s limited to places Trevor has actually been. If he can blink to anywhere at any time, much of the drama will be sucked out.
Conjuring could also be a problem. He could just think of a gun and blast someone if he wanted, or imagine a super-mega death ray and destroy the enemy base. I’d recommend eliminating it.
Levitation would be good if there was some form of limit. For example, perhaps he can only lift things for a short time before fainting from exhaustion. I use this kind of limit on most of my characters. If Isaac uses his powers too much he gets dizzy, nauseous, migraines and will eventually pass out if he’s overworked.
Why did the cult perform a Satanic ritual on him and then return him to his family? You might want to explain it a little more. For example, maybe he was missing for days and the police tracked him to the cult through a member who had been seen hanging around suspiciously. Then they return him to his family, but don’t know about the ritual. This will feel more realistic than them just grabbing a random kid, doing their ritual and giving him back.
This is in the new story I’m trying to write for my superhero Trevor. What do you think?
Trevor stood there surprised again, he wondered why is he surprised this is now happening regular, the rain had just started to pour down when a black tinted jeep just parked outside the camp. “Is young Trevor here” a distinctive voice came from inside the jeep. A woman rushed from inside one of the tents and began shouting “leave my baby alone, you monsters”. A man wearing sunglasses and a full black suit stepped out the jeep, “please step out of the way and give us your son, this is your last chance madam” the man put his hands inside his jacket and pulled a desert eagle pistol. “No I won’t let you monsters, I will rather die” shouted the woman. “I warned you, this is your doing” calmly said the man before aiming at the woman head and firing his desert eagle straight at the woman head. The woman dropped to the floor, blood slowly started to drip from her head.
The little boy watching from a distant suddenly runs out of the tent, screaming and crying “mummy! Mummy! Mummy!” as he heads to jeep. “Got him, he is coming straight to us told you it would work” said the man. “I would inform the Order of Satan that we have the package” said the female inside the jeep while constantly tapping on the steering wheel. “What are you doing, you know we are not supposed to mention our employee name” shouting and looking clearly upset at his colleague.
“No I won’t let you monsters, I will rather die” shouted the woman.
It may help to name the woman. Readers will have little or no sympathy for her if she’s just a faceless character. If this is the start, I’d recommend building up the characters of Trevor and his mother before this happens.
“I warned you, this is your doing” calmly said the man before aiming at the woman head and firing his desert eagle straight at the woman head. The woman dropped to the floor, blood slowly started to drip from her head.
The word “head” appears a lot here. You could easily cut it down to “He pulled out a Desert Eagle pistol, pressing the barrel against her forehead. She barely had time to take on a look of surprise before he pulled the trigger. She fell to the ground and began to bleed.”
The little boy watching from a distant suddenly runs out of the tent, screaming and crying “mummy! Mummy! Mummy!” as he heads to jeep. “Got him, he is coming straight to us told you it would work” said the man. “I would inform the Order of Satan that we have the package” said the female inside the jeep while constantly tapping on the steering wheel. “What are you doing, you know we are not supposed to mention our employee name” shouting and looking clearly upset at his colleague.
I’d name Trevor here. It gives him more humanity than “the little boy”.
If you describe how he is running it can show his mood. He will gain a little more sympathy if he is crying and stumbling around as he tries to get to his mum.
Whovian, to answer your question about why the cult performed the ritual on Trevor, they didn’t just pick a random kid. His uncle, the leader of the cult, selected him and returned him to see if the ritual worked. If it worked, he would take him again which clearly worked and that is how the boy got his powers. That means the cult will retake the boy from his parents.
The ReTARDISed Whovian i saw ur comments about my story and made changes wat do u think now
Trevor stood there surprised again, he wondered why is he surprised this is now happening regular, the rain had just started to pour down when a black tinted jeep just parked outside the camp. “Is young Trevor here” a distinctive voice came from inside the jeep. Karen rushed from inside one of the tents and began shouting “leave my baby alone, you monsters”. A man wearing sunglasses and a full black suit stepped out the jeep, “please step out of the way and give us your son, this is your last chance madam” the man put his hands inside his jacket and pulled a desert eagle pistol. “No I won’t let you monsters, I will rather die” shouted Karen. “I warned you, this is your doing” calmly said the man before pressing the pistol barrel against Karen forehead, with little time for Karen to do anything the man fired the pistol. Karen dropped to the floor, blood slowly started to drip from her head.
Trevor watching from a distant suddenly runs out of the tent, stumbling, looking distress, screaming and crying “mummy! Mummy! Mummy!” as he heads to jeep. “Got him, he is coming straight to us told you it would work” said the man. “I would inform the Order of Satan that we have the package” said the female inside the jeep while constantly tapping on the steering wheel. “What are you doing, you know we are not supposed to mention our employee name” shouting and looking clearly upset at his colleague.
As Trevor got to the corpse of his dead mum, he crouched down and started crying. The man who just shot his mum in cold blood walked up to him and then grabbed his arm, “get off you murderer I just saw you killing my mum” the Trevor screamed on top of his voice. “Shut up or the same thing that happened to your mum is going to happen to you” whispered the man into the boy ear, before grabbing his arm really tight and dragging him into the back of the jeep, where he throws Trevor in the boot and slammed shut the door. “Package secure, now lets get out of here” said the man to his colleague who already started the jeep.
The jeep speed off, the body of the deceased Karen slowly washed away by the heavy rain getting rid all of the evidence.
Marissa, you said you giggled at the demon Raar. You said that it was spelled wrong, but I made it up and that’s how I want it to be spelled.
No, I didn’t mean that it was spelled wrong.
I meant that it sounds a lot like the word that is spelled ‘rawr’, which is the onomatopoeia of a roaring sound (like a dinosaur or something), so the fact that it’s applied to a demon amused me.
It’s better, but there is still some room for improvement. Here is how I would write it:
Trevor stood, surprised. He shouldn’t have been, as this was now a regular occurrence. Rain had begun to pour down as a black jeep with tinted windows parked outside the camp.
“Is young Trevor here?” asked a distinctive voice from inside the vehicle. Karen ran out of a tent and began shouting at the occupants.
“Leave my baby alone, you monsters!”
A man wearing sunglasses and a suit stepped out of the jeep. “Please step out of the way and hand your son over to us.” He pulled a Desert Eagle pistol from inside his jacket.
“No, I won’t let you take Trevor! I’d rather die!”
It is told in essentially the same way, just with a slightly clearer sentence structure.
Collision, I feel that there are fairly major mechanical problems like grammar, spelling and punctuation. If your goal is to get published professionally, I’d recommend looking at those very carefully.
B. Mac and The ReTARDISed Whovian i get what your saying. And maybe i will try to look at the sentence structure, grammar, spelling and punctution. But i feel like i written the story as it should been. im not sure about the spelling becuase i know that how the words are spelled is correctly because that is how they are spelled in the dictionary.
I have a new superhero called Elemental who can alter his molecules to transform into virtually any substance, any alloy, any gas or any liquid or solid.
What do you think?
I’d recommend limiting that. If he can transform into anything, he won’t be easy to capture, or beat, or even threaten. Maybe he can only turn into certain elements, or he can’t turn into a compound, or if you want to be a real chemistry buff, only compounds that contain non-metals.
Or maybe he can only transform once every two minutes.
Oh, and brush up on chemistry. Not a total requirement, but it’s a MEGA pet peeve of mine when people get the science totally wrong. If I ever wrote something that contained science WAY out of my league I’d research it first.
I’ll say he can turn into 5 (this is his limit) things like steel hands and arms (Left), left leg made of fire and right leg of wind, Right arm and hand made of Sand and the rest of his body is made of water. He can’t maintain a form like this for long. At the end he would just revert back to normal and probably collapse.
How’s that?
It would be fine if he could turn his entire body into steel, fire, wind, sand or water. You might even add wood in there if you feel like having every western and eastern classical element.
Collision said: “B. Mac and The ReTARDISed Whovian i get what your saying… But i feel like i written the story as it should been. im not sure about the spelling becuase i know that how the words are spelled is correctly because that is how they are spelled in the dictionary.”
Well, the dictionary can’t fix usage issues. For example, both “your” and “you’re” are in a dictionary, but only “you’re” can be used as the contraction for “you are.” I suspect that dictionaries wouldn’t help much with verb tenses, either.
I hope that helps!
Yours,
B. Mac
Solar asked: “I have a new superhero called Elemental who can alter his molecules to transform into virtually any substance, any alloy, any gas or any liquid or solid. What do you think?”
I think most shapeshifters are more limited than this. For example, Colossus can turn himself into metal and Hydro-Man can turn himself into (you guessed it) water. It would probably be better to limit him to one category of transformation because that would force him to be more creative. Also, if you’re doing a comic, it will probably be much easier for your artist to show a character made out of one type of material than a hodgepodge of elements. (For example, Metamorpho looks like a freakshow).
In particular, I’m a bit worried about the ability to turn into gases. If he can turn into air and escape any time he wants to, it will be very hard to either threaten him or confine him. It will also be very hard to keep him out of places he wants to get into.
i decided to limit my superhero Trevor Cobweb only to four powers because it will be easire, to find a way to beat him in my story, normally he is unbeatable.
After a had decision i decided to limit Trevor to this four powers only.
Trevor Cobweb
Trevor cobweb was born normal as any human, in London England. But when he was in the hospital he was kidnapped by a satanic cult called the Order of Satan. Who then performed n evil ancient ritual on him, in Oder for him to be possessed by an ancient demon called Raar.
The cult then returned him to his parents. Although he was not normal any more now he had something dark inside him.
Trevor now posses the mystical powers of the demon Raar as now they are bonded together.
The mystical powers he gained as the result of bonding with Raar are Precognition Ability to perceive the future. It may be expressed in vague dreams while asleep, other times it can be clear and can occur at will It may also be used as a form of “danger sense” to show the user that they are being threatened and from what direction it is coming from , Can project flames of mystical hellfire , Levitation the ability to lift objects, people, and animals into the air without any visibly physical means and float or fly about, Blinking the ability to go anywhere you want to go by thinking of a place and when you blink you go there. This is a form of teleportation. Due to the fact he has a demon inside him any forms of heat energy can not harm him physically. Finally this is not part of his superpowers but two different personalities; the demon inside Raar sometime comes out on a demonic form that increases Trevor powers although it means Jack has been completely taken over by the demon when this actually happens.
What do you think now i limited his powers?
This is the super villian i made for my superhero so what do you think of him, will he be a fair challange for my superhero Trevor.
Paladin
Alter ego (Paladin) Name (Jason Keyes) is a supervillian for hire. Jason Keyes used to be a ruthless mercenary until he volunteered on a mission that will change his life forever.
During the mission which was a fake and a set up mission by the government scientists and a genetics company. He was taken to a secret facility where he was experimented on.
The scientist injected him with a new formula which they developed for cloning and change animal’s sex.
It was supposed to kill him which was the intended objective but it granted him something else. A weapon so powerful that on a ruthless mercenary means one thing suffering.
He gained superpowers which will allow him to shape shift into any living organism thing that he sees on anything. For example if he sees a picture of a dragon on a book he will store the shape on his mind and can shape shift into the dragon he saw, any time he wants also can stay as a dragon for as long as he wants.
Paladin? That’s Tristram’s superhero name. Haha, it seems we are like-minded!
On that note, are you sure it’s fit for a supervillain? It means “someone who displays chivalry, a heroic champion”.
I’d recommend limiting Jason’s power. If he can change into whatever he wants whenever he wants then Trevor will have little chance against him.
Try limiting his power to the last six images he stored. That way he isn’t extremely powerful. I’d also put a time limit on his power, like ninety minutes. If he saw Godzilla on the TV and turned into her (or him?) he couldn’t conquer the world in an hour and a half, but he may well with unlimited time. That way he’ll have to work smart if he wants to be the evil overlord.
This is a bit of my story for my new superhero who can transform into anything he imagines and he can bring his imaginations into realty.
Tell me if it’s okay.
I’m not going to put up chapter 1 becuase that part is just about my hero in love with a girl.
Chapter 2 – Sudden Symptoms
Lance, Lance, LANCE!” Jennifer screamed to her brother through the bathroom door “Why are you taking so long?” She couldn’t hear anything apart from Lance panting and what sounded like him crying. “Lance, I’m going to call mum. Because it seems like you’re in some form of trouble” There was a loud bang on the door “ONE SECOND, I’M COMING!” Lance was going hysterical, he could barely think straight. He didn’t know what was happening to him. He stared into the bathroom mirror and saw that his skin had completely turned dark blue. At first he believed it to be a prank by his sister and brother. He was reluctant to believe it to be true; he continued to run his hands under warm water but nothing happened. Before he knew it, his second and then fourth finger instantly disappeared. Lance screamed with fear as he saw this.
But it wasn’t over; Lance could feel something pointing out of his back. In a matter of seconds, a very long blue pointed tail rushed out of his back. “AHHH!” Lance continued to scream in horror “What’s happening to me” Lance’s parents we’re banging on the door “Lance. What’s going on in there? Are you Okay?” there was a sudden silence “AHHHH!!!” large blue feathered wings sprouted from Lance’s back, covering almost the entire bathroom. “AHHHH! DON’T COME IN HERE!!”
That’s it, I’m kicking the door down,” Benjamin, Lance’s Father. Couldn’t dare to hear his son in pain and peril anymore so he booted the bathroom door down with all his strength and power to see Lance lying on the floor shivering, despite all the noise Lance was making. There was absolutely nothing wrong with him. Was it possible it was in his imagination? “Lance, there is nothing wrong you. “What? Look at me. I’m a monster!” Jennifer laughed “Yeah, you got that right” Benjamin lifted Lance up by his hand “Jennifer, Shut up” and so she did. “Look Lance” he turned him towards the mirror “There is absolutely nothing wrong with you” Lance couldn’t believe it “No, no, NO! That’s impossible. I had wings and a tail and my skin was blue”
Lance, sometimes we see things that aren’t actually there” He put his hand on Lance’s shoulder “Look, you’re obviously in no position to go to school”
I think you did a rather good job at expressing Lance’s feelings in this.
My own characters never really have scenes like this: Meg doesn’t notice her powers (other than the fact that everything electrical in her room has turned off), Ian woke up on the roof but didn’t notice anything different about himself, Connor’s powers don’t really affect how he looks in any way (but he can see auras and the like now, slightly unnerving him), and Darren was wedged in a doorway and, again, didn’t notice anything different.
- Wings
Here’s my ability layout for Masquerade/Facade. He doesn’t have any natural abilities or drug induced powers like the villains in the story. He gets a different ability from each of his gadgets in his suit:
Mask: A powerful sense of perception and different types of vision (night, thermal, etc). Stun beam, capable of paralysis. Suggest to sensory overload.
Gloves: Emit a short range negation pulse. Capable of shocking people and stopping bullets with his hands.
Belt: Capable of extending for ensnaring. Holds smoke-bombs, flashbangs, etc.
Boot: Emit sonic wave. Capable of temporary propulsion, main mode of travel.
He also has combination moves, but I have to go.
What do you think?
My guess is that he probably has too many powers for people to remember. In particular, I’d recommend getting rid of the belt and taking away the sonic wave from the boots.
I agree with B. Mac, RB…
He seems a little overpowered right now.
- Wings
I don’t think it’s overpowered, it’s just too many powers.
Ok, I’ll take away the belt, but I need the shoes.
So perception mask, shock gloves, and blast boots. I think that’s relatively easy to remember. Particularly, because those three will be in focus. His powers were sort of based on C. Viper from Street Fighter 4. She has an electric glove, a seismic glove, and boots that shoot fire and air. I think her shades do something too, but I’m not sure.
What do you think?
I think the original four were fine. The only thing that really seems expendable to me is the belt– since his other stuff is sorta in the super-science field (beams, pulses, waves), whereas the belt uses pretty ordinary stuff like smoke bombs.
It’s all good.
He’ll still actually wear the belt as part of the costume, though. I have to leave headway for Porcelain. In the story she shows up on the scene as the better hero, giving Jackson (Facade) a hard time, at least for a little bit..
Lol. Nice– though I must admit to a small form of hypocrisy; one of my main character superheroes uses smoke bombs heavily (though, he does not use beams or such).
What do you think of giving my non-powered hero gloves and boots that enhance strength? By that I don’t mean with them on she’ll be able to lift heavy objects with ease, but when she punches and kicks, which are her main ways of attacking, the blows will be enhanced, sending ordinary people flying and causing damage to superpowered beings, something she normally wouldn’t be able to do.
Also, what do you think of giving her an extendable staff like Robin from Teen Titans?
She needs something to help her fight crime other than a black belt in Karate.
I think the gloves could work– though, you should keep in mind what could happen if she were to loose them/break them during a battle. Or what if someone stole them? Or accidentally tried them on? The intrigue goes on…
Melee weapons are nice, I think. Robin was the more bad-a with one; and one of my leads also has a bo staff. Using that should be fine, but have you thought about other melee weapons? There are maces, hammers, nunchucks, swords (another character of mine may use one– still debating that), whips, boomerangs; and does it have to be extendable? These are just suggestions though.
Is she a thinker? Does she lay traps for her foes? There are other ways to bring down crime.
I assume she’ll have superstrength and maybe some agility as well. I don’t think she needs a weapon.
Fair enough. Okay, gloves and boots it is.
Hmm… I might also go with the ‘what if someone steals them?’ idea you had, Dforce.
Dforce said: “There are maces, hammers, nunchucks, swords (another character of mine may use one– still debating that), whips, boomerangs; and does it have to be extendable?”
It depends on the series. If it’s a typical fantasy series, swords are well-accepted.
However, for a few philosophical reasons I can discuss at frightening length, blood-letting weapons are problematic in modern superhero stories. The short version is that most superheroes are vigilantes and drawing blood is extremely unseemly for a vigilante. It crosses a moral line that makes many readers feel uncomfortable. In contrast, readers generally don’t care much for the moral norms of a fantasy society. The regular authorities are probably controlled by the evil Empire, anyway.
Some modern superhero stories try to use swords without drawing blood, but it’s generally awkward. For example, the TMNT cartoons bend over backwards to keep Leonardo from drawing human blood. (This is one of the reasons that the Turtles fight foot soldiers and other mechanical mooks more often than Shredder).
Okay, for one of my heroes, the one that controls heat, in my original draft a few years ago, he was ridiculously overpowered in comparison to the one that controlled light. So, I’ve redone his powers, and I’ve decided to make him manipulate heat, but not the temperature, so that, if the setting is at room temperature, he can force the heat to clump up at one certain area, so that certain area becomes very hot, but the surroundings become cold. And if he’s in a really cold area, and his friends are freezing to death, the only way he can help is by expunging his own body heat.
Is that a good weakness?
How often will this weakness come into play?
I think it will come in play quite often.
hey correct me if im wrong but ceirten powers can have secondery effects im gonna use my chraers as an exsample
for instince Cara has a powerfull scream so her ear drums would need to with stand the sound her vocle cords, her bones would be stronger to withstand the vibrastions caused by the scream this i belive would make the bones denser so she could fall from higer hights than normal humans her muscels would be stronger as well to move these bones agien to wihstand the vibrastions
am i right?
Yeah, David, you’re right. It would make no sense for a power to exist without the rest of the body being able to handle it.
My Jason, for example. One of his powers is super-speed. As such, his leg muscles are very well developed, to the point where it’s not unnatural-looking, but feels very lopsided to him. He has to work to keep up the upper body strength so it doesn’t look odd. This means he can jump somewhat higher than most normal folk (though not by a ton). Also, his bones are stronger so they can withstand the jarring of such speed. All that’s not even mentioning the effects of a faster heart rate, which is another huge side effect.
don’t forget though the heart can only beat so fast before it gives out so he would need a powerfull heart and also the faster you travel the more G force is pulling you back so if jason is traveling at superspeed and only his legs are desined to go at such speeds then he could blank out mid run also berthing and tunnel vision
He’s not traveling at superspeed.
And I’ve got this all thought out, don’t worry. I just didn’t want to feed you the entire scientific paragraph, just an example snippet.
Wow, I totally misconstrued that.
I was thinking supersonic speed. As in, past the speed of sound and whatnot.
Ignore my last ‘not superspeed’ comment.
ahh right no problem lol i think nearly evrypower can have side effects on the body anyone got any other ideas?
I want to make a hero but I don’t know what powers to give him, I want him to be a cross between Deadpool, Batman, Spiderman, Wolverine and possibly Bane.
I was wondering if you guys could give me some powers for him and maybe a background story. Oh and by the way, his name is Assassin.
Hello, Solar. I notice that the five heroes you named tend to rely on melee-based powers with a minor twist (claws for Wolverine, webs for Spiderman, gadgets for Batman, etc). So I’d recommend something similar for you: a character that does most of his fighting in melee but has an exotic minor power for style and versatility. What would you think about wind control, fire control or minor telekinesis?
What’s his personality like? That will help me come up with an origin story that suits him.
Is there a power when you can have all the powers?
Mimicry, but I would heavily recommend against it. If your character keeps a lot of powers, it will be very difficult to challenge him. However, placing a limit could make it an effective power. For example, maybe they can only copy a single power at a time. Maybe the effectiveness of the powers halves for every new power they gain.
I’d recommend against giving a hero more than a few powers. Otherwise it might be hard for readers to keep track of all the powers he has. Also, as Holliequ noted, if the character is overpowered, it will be hard to endanger him. If he can’t be endangered, there probably won’t be much drama.
Hey, I have my list of powers for my hero Shadowblaze. Please tell me what you think about them. This is a description of what his power is and his actual attacks.
Fighting styles: ninjitsu, hapkido, judo and jujitsu.
Abilities: complete manipulation of dark energy.
Special techniques:
Moonwalk. Generates dark energy in the feet to propel long jumps and he releases a quick burst of energy to soften his landing. The motion of jumping and landing looks like walking on the moon.
Dark blast. Generates and fires a ball of dark flame with one hand.
Double blast. Dark blast with both hands at once
Shadow cloak. He creates a cloak of dark energy around his body to hide his presence at night. He uses this for recon, as well as to hide his attacks making it seem as if he blends in with the shadows. It tricks many opponents, but higher level enemies know the truth behind this technique.
Kage shield: he forms a shield of energy in front of him that repels physical attacks.
Soul slayer. Shadowblaze carries a hilt and handle which he can use to form a sword. It takes two forms depending on how much energy he releases into the hilt: a sword four feet in length and a double-sided blade wielded like a bo staff.
Maelstrom. Creates a vortex of dark fire and energy that sucks anything in front of it inside,destroying it in the process. In the case of a human body, it burns and incinerates from the outside in.
Midnight sky. This is an ultimate level technique that charges Shadowblaze’s body with dark energy. At the pinnacle of the energy, he releases the energy in a blast covering about a quarter-mile radius. Everything is frozen with dark energy
reflecting a grayish white light, looking like the stars in the midnight sky.
Dead zone. Shadowblaze encases himself and his enemy inside a dome of dark energy which no one else can escape.
He then breaks down his dark energy to that particle level, and has it infiltrate the enemies body through the air, once inside, the dark energy draws toward each other, then explodes from inside the body.This is his most devastating technique. Although he can break down the dark energy into particles, it is only effective when in an enclosed environment.
Those are his techniques. Let me know what you think about those. Thanks.
Wow darknesslives, I’m guessin’ he’s more of a Manga/Anime-style hero? If you ask me, he has a bit too many techniques/powers. In my opinion, I would recommend thinking about getting rid of at least five of his powers.
Unless, of course, you go the way of, say, Naruto and have him train to use his powers in such a way. I think that would work.
But that still seems a bit much, although Naruto and Sasuke each had at least 3-5 powers.
Well, I want to provide ample opportunity to showcase each ability in a different way. Yeah, I am influenced by anime. I find it more interesting to be able to take a power, like dark energy, and use it in different ways to create interesting abilities.
He only has one power, but he took that power and manipulated it to create the techniques. When watching cartoons and reading comics, I always wondered why they can’t do this or that with their power. Characters can only do this one thing with an ability and it gets stale because it’s like a repetition of the same thing. Also, most of my main story characters have a skill set similar to this one.
I am trying to bring these powers to life. I can admit this is a quite a skill set, but I am looking to tweak it, which is why I put it here. I want my battles to be epic. When I read hero stories and comics/manga, whatever they may be, I have always been captivated by the excitement of how the characters use their abilities in battle, puzzle-solving, stealth operations and so on.
That is what influences my style of skill creation. My depictions and battles will rely heavily on power use, as opposed to nonpowered action. I mean if anyone could defeat a hero with a single ordinary punch, then what would be the point of me writing a hero story, instead of a story about a normal person.
Not to say that a punch would not hurt them, because surely it would. All of my characters are human, none with the ability to not get hurt. But what I mean is that their abilities shouldn’t let something like a simple punch defeat them.
I understand what you mean, but when you started putting names on all of them it looked a little much. I don’t mean any offense, but if you intend for him to use his powers in creative ways then you don’t really need to put names on every one.
I’m basing my opinions on the more American style of comics, so I don’t usually prefer naming every single technique.
Now hold on, naruto and sasuke have a crap load of an arsenal of techniques they use, with a crap load more that they can learn. I mean having chakra alone allows them to be able to do many things that in an ordinary superhero world would be an individual power all on its own. I mean walking on water, running up trees, transferring energy into objects, elemental manipulation. All of that can sustain itself alone, before you add their actual fighting techniques, and signature moves. Compared to that i think im very limited, however, there is a move or two in there that i will probably remove or change, like shadow cloak. Its the most illogical manipulation that i have up there. i find it a little cheesy to actually try to make people believe that a mass of dark energy cloaked over his body would be unnoticeable.
ah i see, no offense taken, but i mean everything has a name. When you create something you name it. i mean if it were a comic i could draw the power, but you would still need to know what it is in order to reference it. Superman had ice breath, spider man has spidey sense, all of batman’s gadgets had a name. in martial arts, the movements have names, even in wrestling, the techniques all have names so i didn’t think it was so far fetched to name them. Its easier for me, as a reader and writer to have a name for it. Its just what i like. But thanks for the feedback i have already made changes.
If you’d like to work with an English-language publisher, I think I’d recommend taking away most of the names. I think that readers will have trouble remembering 8 named moves. I’m only familiar with a few series that give the protagonist named moves (like Legendz, DBZ, Yu Yu Hakusho, Sailor Moon, etc) but usually they only name 1-2 particularly powerful attacks. Pokemon is the main exception I can think of, but I’m not sure if a Pokemon-esque feel is what you’re going for.
I like the idea of him using his powers in a versatile way. When he propels himself with dark energy, that’s cool but it doesn’t need a name. In fact, it’d probably be easier to take it seriously that way. (Also, “Moonwalk” is copyrighted, so it’d be legally problematic to use it anyway).
I think that the dark blast and double blast are a bit redundant.
I don’t know what the word “Kage” means…
I’d recommend naming only Dead Zone and Midnight Sky.
Interesting point. The names are mostly for visual interpretation. especially with moonwalk. And i definitely don’t want a copyright issue. Dark blast and double blast, are merely variations, meaning that he can do it with one hand or two, its not actually two separate moves. Midnight sky and Dead zone are the only extreme powermoves he has, the others are just standard. This is just a question. By not naming them, am i leaving my self too open ended as to what he can do with his power? I dont know if that is a good thing or a bad one. What i mean is, the names were my limiter in a way. Im not sure if the concern is about the amount of moves, or the names for the moves. if it is about the names, then that is one thing that is easily remedied, but if its about the amount of moves, then i would probably go nuts with all the different crap to have him do without names. I think the problem im having is that i am relying so much visually, so i write these descriptions of moves, but i also dont anticipate wanting to have to write the description over and over and over throughout when using the same move. What can i do to be more versatile about writing battles, without using move names? I would like to publish english of course im from america lol. I just find it unfortunate that, its so commercial in the industry, its so formulaic. Its almost like the stories have the same crap with a gimmick attached to it. Not that im griping about my names because im not, and i agree that they all probably dont need names, but i am a little saddened that Something like having names would prevent being published.
oh and i could probably go into to much detail about all the moves in those anime you wrote up there, but lets take dbz for example. They can shoot plane energy shots, its not a specific name, but its an energy shot. its the basic ki move. dark blast is the basic energy shot for Shadowblazze. Then goku has kamehameha, spirit bomb, kei o ken, instant transmission,solar flare, supersaiyan1, 2,3,4, and then has fusion. I mean thats a shitload. i definitely dont want to go that far. But thanks once again for the feedback.