Feb 20 2010
How Creative Do Your Superpowers Need to Be?
1. It doesn’t matter much whether the superpowers you use are unique or not. It is virtually certain that several published superheroes will share the same main powers as yours, and possibly a few of the secondaries as well. The key to differentiating your characters is giving them distinct personalities, voices, attributes, flaws, goals, obstacles, backgrounds, etc. If you have those things, you don’t need unique superpowers. If you don’t have those things, unique superpowers won’t save you.
2. The superpowers are merely a means to an end, an interesting story. But the superpowers themselves are rarely interesting. When you’re picking powers, please focus more on whether the powers can make interesting scenes than on whether the powers are original.