May 02 2009
I’ve got it!
I finally came up with a title that I like enough to use in my proposal. Don’t Forget the Death-Ray! Everything You Need to Write Superhero Novels and Comic Books. What do you think?
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Hmmm … I like it. But that could be because I can’t think of anything better.
It’s recognizeable, interesting, funny…
Congrats!
-Wings
Doesn’t that sound a bit too long? It’ll be hard to gather more fans. For eg., When talking to a friend, you could say “I bought Superhero Guide yesterday. It’s totally cool!”. But it is less cool to say “I bought Don’t Forget the Death-Ray! Everything You Need to Write Superhero Novels and Comic Books yesterday. It’s totally cool”. People will probably think I’m rambling.
On the cover, I imagine that “Don’t Forget the Death-Ray!” will be a much bigger font-size than “Everything You Need to Write Superhero Novels and Comic Books.” So I imagine that people will refer to it just as “Don’t Forget the Death-Ray!”
Similarly, our site is titled “Superhero Nation: how to write superhero novels and comic books,” but people refer to it just as Superhero Nation.
Aren’t death rays a supervillain motif?
Yeah. I couldn’t think of anything similarly stylish that applied to superheroes.
Don’t Forget the Cape! Most readers would roll their eyes. Pretty much every superhero published in the last thirty years is capeless, so I assume that most young writers would lean towards capeless heroes. Also, I fear that readers would think that I’m trying to suggest that every superhero needs a cape. To the contrary, I think it’s very difficult to get published with a cape, unless you’re using it for comedic effect.
Don’t Forget the Secret Identity! This is not very stylish.
Don’t Forget the Spandex! Same problem as the cape.
Don’t Forget the Death-Ray! I hope that it’s pretty clear that I’m not actually suggesting that every superhero story have a death-ray. What do you think?
“Don’t forget the cape” is funny in an cheesy way.
I like it, B. Mac. Definitely distinctive, funny, and it relates to the topic, like all good titles should!
It reminds me of Edna Mode from The Incredibles. Even though her advice was ‘no capes, darling’.
Which of course lead to the epic joke at the end where Syndrome was killed by getting his cape caught in an engine.
Don’t forget the utility belt!
Don’t forget the mask!
Yeah, mine are lame… good job on yours!
Why don’t you change everything you need to know to How. It will be less wordy. And if you have control over font sizes make the don’t forget the Death-Ray a subtitle and in small print.
Hmm. This is how I kind of envisioned the cover page. (Note that authors typically have little control over their cover page… but I’m optimistic that I can get at least a bit of influence worked into my contract. Comic book writers work with covers, after all). In terms of cover size, this book might range from 8 inches tall by 10 wide (like The Idiot’s Guide to Graphic Novels) or 7 tall by 5 wide (Teen’s Guide to Getting Published).
What do you think?
Here’s a medium size. In the finalized version, it would be much clearer that an author has used a death-ray to take a publisher’s assistant hostage. At the bottom, we would have a cartoon version of myself offering snarky writing advice.
If you’d like to see a larger version, please see this.
In hindsight… it would probably make more sense if I changed the first clause of the title to “Forget the Death-Ray!” That’s something I can talk about with an agent after one agrees to work with me.
For your art in this book, are you using Agent Orange and cast when showing examples or are those up in the air?
For the art in the book, definitely not. For the writing examples, probably not. I think it’s mainly an issue of accessibility. I think readers would benefit more from examples they’re familiar with than from examples they’ve never heard of. Also, I think it will be easier to sell the book that way.
I want to offer more insight than just saying “I like it.” Therefore, I won’t.
I love it!