Oct 04 2011
How to Distinguish Your Hero’s or Villain’s Superpowers
1. Maybe the superpowers have some cost to the user.
- Fatigue. The superhero’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.
2. 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. May be voluntary (Captain Marvel), involuntary (a werewolf) or both (the Hulk).
- Superpowers are accessible only through a particular item, usually a magical or technological item (Sailor Moon, power armor).
- Achieving a particular power or effect requires the cooperation of unsavory characters. For example, maybe the superhero needs to convince a brilliant supervillain to help him build a particular feature into his powersuit. Alternately, in Bitter Seeds, every spell is fueled by negotiations with nefarious spirits, and each spell requires various unsavory deeds.
3. 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 or something magical)
4. 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.
Hey bmac. I’ve got this MC that I’m working on how’s power is the ability to control the elements(fire,water,air,lightning,earth).He also has enhanced combat skills,ability,and reflexes. The problem is that I don’t no how to distinguish it from charactera like the Avatar. Please help.
@ the monk
What if your character turns into the element he is controlling at the time and uses reflexes/techniques similar to that element (like fluid and graceful for water, as opposed to brutish and forceful for rock/earth)?
That’s definitely cool I’ll think about that. Thanx!
“My main character’s power is the ability to control the elements. He also has enhanced combat skills and reflexes. How can I distinguish it from a character like Avatar?”
I’d like to preface this by saying that I don’t know anything beyond your character’s superpowers, which makes it difficult for me to offer tips that are actually in line with your story and writing style. One possibility is that the character’s powers come with a terrible cost (e.g. Bitter Seeds’ demonic negotiations), and the character has to weigh his need for his powers against the cost of using his powers.
Also, regardless of how you differentiate the character’s superpowers, I would definitely differentiating the character in other ways. If I could brazenly self-promote, I think my own Agent Orange is sufficiently different from Leatherhead (a Ninja Turtles character) even though they’re both mutant alligators with very similar combat capabilities. I think their personalities, voices, attributes, flaws, goals, obstacles, backgrounds, etc. are different enough that they will feel different even though their powers and origin stories overlap. I think that a significantly-different character will also find different ways to use his powers. For example, in AO’s first scene, he uses his abilities in a social context (terrifying an accountant, theorizing on the unique properties of the American alligator, and devouring the accountant’s resume because he thinks the accountant is useless). I think the scene feels unique to AO rather than LH because I don’t think LH has the personality to do this scene (although he’s physically capable of doing it).