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.
3. I would recommend against spending more than a few sentences explaining a character’s superpowers in the submission. In most cases, each extra sentence spent describing a character’s superpowers (or, worse, how they work) is a sentence not spent on something that develops the story.
4. If you’re dead-set on using unique superpowers, it may be easier to use unusual combinations of well-known superpowers rather than really exotic powers. Readers are familiar with martial arts-based characters and a bajillion varieties of elemental controllers, but probably not too many martial artists that control an element (besides Avatar). One of the advantages is that you don’t have to spend much time explaining the powers and they may have unexpected and interesting uses. For example, the aforementioned earth controller/martial artist might hobble his enemy’s footing by messing with the ground and then beat him silly. In contrast, if you go with a power that’s very rare (like the ability to control something unusual like gravity), then you’ll spend more time explaining to readers what the character can do.
5. If your character’s powers include the word “reality,” tread very carefully. For example, “reality manipulation” or “reality warping” or “reality control.” To me, “reality” is code for “this character can do whatever the author wants,” which will make it very hard to challenge the character and/or explain the powers to readers. Will you be able to set up limits so that readers can understand what the character can and cannot do? Can you come up with enough ways to challenge the character? If not, please go back to the drawing board.
Are you writing a fantasy or sci-fi? I think these guidelines apply to magic, supernatural abilities and the abilities of nonhuman races just as easily as superpowers.
My heroine’s power is basically a downgraded version of Static’s, though I did not set out to copy him.
Sometimes I forget that my heroine has superpowers at all — I’m usually more focused on her motivation for fighting.
My main character has a sort of “reality altering” power but in the sense that he is able to merge past and current events to suit his own vision. The thing is once his powers are active other peoples perception are also included in the “big picture”.
@ Brontes
You might want to work on that — “reality warping” sounds like something troublesome.
That’s rather complicated, Brontes…
Hello, Brontes! I have two main concerns about these sorts of powers.
1. Can the character be challenged? How would other characters beat him? (I think Sandman did a pretty good job of this).
2. Can readers easily understand what he can do? I feel like this is a pressing issue in your case. In particular, I’m having trouble envisioning how other peoples’ perception and “the big picture” tie into the ability to merge past and current events.
Also, I think his powers might make it harder to remember what’s going on because he may be able to radically change the past events of the book. For example, let’s say your book has John die and Lucy born fairly early. Can he merge past events of when John was still alive and/or when Lucy was unborn to bring John back and/or get rid of Lucy? If so, readers might have trouble keeping the story together. “There WAS a character named Lucy, but she’s gone now. Also, please try to forget that John died; that never really happened, either.”
This is actually a really comforting article to me, I’ve always felt insecure about my primary protagonist’s powers due to the number of superheroes with similar abilities, he is a Jekyll/Hyde type with lycanthropy mixed in for giggles, but I’ve spent a great deal of time trying to make his personality, backstory and the predicament presented by his powers unique. The thing that worries me is you’ve got Hulk, Wolverine, Timber Wolf, several Jekylls, the Astonishing Wolf-Man, Beast from X-Men, Wolfsbane and a few others all in either the Jekyll or Werewolf-y camp, which is quite daunting.
Not even mutant crocodilians are unique. They came up in TMNT, Elephantmen, and probably Batman depending on how you classify Killer Croc.
Also, there are so many comic book characters named Agent Orange (four) that it has its own disambiguation page on Wikipedia. And one of THOSE is another reptile (the Green Lantern villain).
My character is able to produce a virtual reality based upon his perception of time. The reality he creates is not concrete, but is a maleable substance. This is true only after his power is activated. It takes a independent course which can be altered.By each sentient individual
based upon their own perception of the past and their immediate time. He is vulnerable and dies because of the side-effect of another character’s power. When this happens reality is restored to its original state.
@ Brontes
I dunno…it still seems like it would be confusing.
I think it might be a short-story or small graphic novel from his description, not an ongoing series. I think there is a market for it, and without achieving months, years, or even dozens of pages of continuity that is constantly being remolded and needing to be kept in mind, most of the common concerns don’t really apply, as plenty of Philip K. Dick-ian type stories of altered histories, unreliable narrators and drug addicts have worked, even from first time writers.
Don’t forget this: readers are often even MORE thrown into the story if the see character struggle; that is, they’ll keep thinking: “Cool, but I wonder what’ll happen if the character has to fight someone who is good at there weakness?” Make sure the weaknesses balance out the strengths. One shining example is Ender’s Game . Ender was a born leader. But Bonzo cornered him alone in the bathroom. Yes, Ender kicked his jass, but the danger was, NOBODY ELSE WAS WITH HIM! Or Bean, a loner, buuuuuuuttt he manages to get five other people to witness Achilles’s confession.
In my ongoing…thing, I do use some standard powersets, but I also have some I think are unique:
The main character can manipulate momentum and inertia (if something is already moving he can change it’s direction, speed it up, stop it, etc.) of inanimate objects that aren’t moving too fast and aren’t too heavy. Sort of a limited telekinesis for mobile objects.
Other powers are:
Musclemass manipulation. The character can move his muscles around his body so if he wants to run faster he’ll make his legs more muscular, if he wants to hit harder he’ll increase his arm strength, etc. He can only work with what he has, so he can’t spontaneously create muscles.
Unlimited metabolizing of alcohol. Essentially the guy can drink all he wants and never gets drunk or impaired. He’s used as a sort of spy; he’ll infiltrate an organization, go partying with the people, and get them drunk to try and get information out of them.
And a few others.
I used to (and still do) suffer from the problem in #2. I’m always trying to come with inventive, original powers. I doubt it’s something I’ll train myself out of, though. I have a lot of fun coming up with unique powers. Although, water manipulation is a bit generic for Showtime, but I feel it’s very malleable to my creativity. Also, I added that he could control its properties for a little extra kick. I think a writer’s creativity is also a very important factor in writing powers. A good writer can take a generic power and use it interestingly.
Yo guys, as a possible strategy for those of us who like to come up with unique powers (like Ragged), how about using simple logic. Identify a problem, fix it. All you need is a basic knowledge fo scientific principles I say. e.g No fire underwater? YOu could use the lame excuse about how your character is SO powerful, or you could look at fire and what it’s all about. It’s energy, essentially. And if you could continue that energy… Okay, that’s not really my idea. (http://www.superheronation.com/ – look for energy continuation or something) but it works! Your ketchup/tomato sauce is too slow? Have a hero that can manipulate the viscosity of liquids (Then put some limit like what he is in physical contact with) and viola! He could do stuff like run on water, make his saliva sticky, swim faster than most, make water thick etc.
And how would you explain that in 2 sentences? “I can manipulate viscosity. Basically, my ketchup.tomato sauce is never runny – so long as I can touch it.”
I participated in a collaboration in which the main characters were Reality Warper gods. However, they existed in a universe where almost everyone had equal or greater power than them. Would they still be considered overpowered?
- Wings
If reality warping is something like “My character can do anything he wants to do,” I think it would be a problem. It’ll probably feel like the author is just making up stuff as he/she goes along (i.e. why a character is able to get past some situations but not others). If readers know what the limits are, it might not be. Otherwise, it’ll be hard to challenge the character without readers wondering “Umm, he can bend reality! Why can’t he get himself out of that one?”
At the beginning, both of them main characters are nearly omnipotent- but bear in mind that they live in a world inhabited by people with that are equal to theirs – and in some cases, more powerful than theirs (A Greek goddess, the personification of vengeance, and a demonic Evil Counterpart come to mind). Recently, both have been brought down to normal, with one’s powers being greatly diminished and the other one only retaining Batman superpowers (Money, resources and a faithful butler).
- Wings
I got an idea for a new power. Psionic disruption, gives the power to cause disturbances in matter including, making things freeze or heat to extreme temperatures. It also allows the user to rearrange atomic particles. Not sure about it tell me what you guys think.
It’s reminiscent of Jinx’s abilities in the Teen Titans Animated Series, but I don’t think the idea is unoriginal. I’m still not exactly sure of her capabilities but the ability sounds doable.
i’m still on the drawing board for my book at the moment, but my main character has the ability to control the air around him (eg. in a small room). I know that sounds rather vague as its main description but there are various sub powers that come as part of it which manifest sporadically throughout the book a) can influence air temperature; b) air composition (eg. amount of oxygen etc.); c) manipulate refraction of light around him to become invisible (sounds kind of corny but based on scientific theories) d) fly by creating air currents… just wondering if it’s kind of overkill? :S haha
Well it is too vague. And if he can control how much oxygen is in a place then all he has to do is suffocate the attacker/victim. Those sub powers are a bit too much.
“And if he can control how much oxygen is in a place then all he has to do is suffocate the attacker/victim.” Possibly, but I got the impression that his ability to control the air composition might not be that precise. For example, maybe he couldn’t suffocate someone in the room without suffocating everybody else (including himself) because he can’t control just one person’s air supply at a time.
The invisibility sounds believable. The flight, maybe less so. Is the flight really important to the plot? If not, one related ability that might be more believable would be the ability to safely fall great distances. He could do that by dramatically increasing his air resistance* or by thickening out the air enough so that the impact of him hitting the ground was drawn out as long as possible. (It hurts less to fall onto a bed or trampoline than concrete because the springier surfaces distribute the force over a greater period of time). Levitation would also be believable, I think.
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If this is for a comic book, one concern I’d have if this were the main protagonist is that these powers don’t seem to lend themselves well to interesting visuals. (If it’s a novel with a heavy action component, the powers would probably not make for the most epic action sequences, but you could write around that pretty easily).
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*I suspect that 99%+ of readers won’t catch the friction problem here. If you think physic-minded readers are a major portion of your audience, you could briefly explain how he keeps the heat from melting him.
B.Mac, it would appear that I require your advice and services once again. I’m writing a comic called, “Unstable”. The story focuses on two main characters with electricity-based powers (to an extent): The muscular, yet intelligent Samuel Macon (powers: Electrical generation, telekinesis, and electrical manipulation) and the intelligent, yet insane Allen Lanoire, a villain operating under the alias “Lucifer” (his powers are exactly the same as Samuel’s).
Anyway, their powers come about as a result of an unstable amount of human voltage and electrons in their body.
But how can I get the powers I’ve listed to work for them accurately, while making the confrontations interesting?
“How can I make the confrontations interesting?”
–It may help to tweak one of the character’s powers so that they don’t overlap as much. Right now, it looks like a mirror matchup, which I think is relatively difficult to make interesting. Some of the mirror matchups that come to mind are Hulk-Abomination, Superman-Bizarro, Green Lantern-Sinestro and Snake Eye-Storm Shadow. Maybe Wolverine-Sabertooth. I think SE-SS, Wolverine-ST and maybe GL-Sinestro are the most promising because their powers lend themselves well to a fight where the characters put more thought into it than just rushing at each other or a DBZ-style battle where the characters just mindlessly blast each other with their powers and pray that their powers are strong enough that they win that inevitable scene where their laser blasts hit each other in the middle.
–What settings did you have in mind for the battles between the two? For example, in a Wolverine vs. Sabertooth wilderness battle, the wilderness adds a few layers (e.g. the hunting aspect, more of an element of surprise, maybe luring the opponent into an unfavorable position so that he can’t easily flee, etc). In Chronicle, a movie with one battle between telekinetics, I think the urban setting added a third and fourth party to the fight (police and helpless bystanders). That and the chase element made it a bit more complex and enjoyable than just two telekinetics trying to zap each other.
“But how can I get the powers I’ve listed to work for them accurately…” I’m not sure I understand this question. Could you please clarify? (Does “accurately” mean “in a precise fashion,” “in a scientifically believable way,” or something else?)
I mean accurately as in scientifically believable. How can someone have telekinesis via human voltage?
BTW, the settings are mostly urban.
And, while they have the same powers, they are not equal. Lucifer kills people who give off electrical charges like him and Samuel. Then, he absorbs the charge to enhance his own powers, making him stronger than Samuel.