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Writing a superhero story?  Try to keep your hero’s powers from committing these mistakes.

1. The author can’t use the character’s powers creatively. Readers really want to be surprised. If your character is only superstrong, you can only surprise them by using different things as weapons.  That gets tedious fast. (Watch a Superman or Dragon Ball Z fight scene). Test your superhero against some of these situations. Can he get through them in an unexpected way?

   1. Distracting a guard (expected: ventriloquism, mental control)

   2. Nonviolently subduing a cop or security guard (???)

   3. Preventing a building from falling (expected: superstrength, telekinesis)

   4. Getting past a locked door (teleportation/phasing, lockpicks, superstrength)

   5. Finding a password (electronic/electrical anything, beating it out of a bad guy)

2. The character’s limits are hard to grasp. In Heroes, a head wound will permanently kill the regenerating heroes, but a nuclear explosion won’t.  Huh!?!

3. The character’s strength fluctuates arbitrarily. Most Superman cartoons feature two battles. Superman will lose the first bout (to raise the stakes) but he’ll win the second.  He hasn’t gotten any stronger, so why does he wins the second time? That usually feels unsatisfying.

4. His superpowers are hard to understand. Ideally, you can explain the superhero’s powers in a brief sentence.  “He has spider-powers, like slinging webs and climbing and sensing danger” is OK.  “She can control the weather” is much better. The worst is when you have many superpowers that aren’t related.  It’s harder for readers to keep track of them.  What is the connection between eye-beams, cold breath, flight, superstrength and x-ray vision?
   

5. He’s overpowered. Superman is the best example of this. He can only have interesting fights with supervillains. (Theoretically, he could fight thugs armed with kryptonite, but Superman limping around isn’t much of a fight). If your character is completely immune to bullets and other common weapons, it will be hard for you to challenge him.  Also, humans are vulnerable and we relate more to (somewhat) vulnerable heroes.

6. His superpowers ruin the drama. Time travel, reading minds, erasing memories and resurrection are particularly bad here.

   1. Time travel: if your character can undo anything bad that happens, nothing will ever be dramatic. “Why doesn’t he just go back in time?”
      

   2. Reading minds: surprise, suspicion and uncertainty are all dramatic. A story about a psychic is all-but-unable to use any of them.

   3. Erasing memories: “well, you found out my secret identity, but let’s just pretend that never happened.” This is an extremely lame way to protect a secret identity.  It will also confuse readers because we can’t keep track of who actually remembers what.

   4. Resurrection: if someone can bring people back from the dead, death will cease to be dramatic. “He died, big deal. Why don’t they just bring him back?” This is almost as serious as time-travel.

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