This is old, but classic.  However, because of profanity, it probably isn’t safe for work.  Unless, of course, your workplace is awesome.

Other People’s Heroes is easily the best superhero novel I’ve read this year (at least in comparison to the other two, Perry Moore’s Hero and Playing for Keeps). It’s not perfect by any means, but it was fun and definitely helpful for other superhero novelists looking for inspiration.

After a nice-guy journalist with a fervent admiration for superheroes develops powers of his own, he immediately opts to join the community he’s respected for so long, only to find that Siegel City’s heroes and villains are about as genuine as professional wrestlers, from hero merchandising to staged brawls. Though he initially stays in order to expose “the biggest con game this city has ever seen,” he eventually realizes that there’s something even more sinister beneath the system’s surface.

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PM thought Wearing the Cape had convincing characterization, a superpowered world that still felt believable and even one realistic-sounding Supreme Court controversy.  He was impressed that the main character sounded very much like a female even though the author is a male.  I’ll read it and let you know.

UPDATE: He’s having second thoughts about the romance.  He thought that the two characters had about as much reason to fall in love as an abusive ~100-year old vampire and a vapid teenager without any redeeming qualities.

I saw that quite a few Twilight reviews mentioned the poor editing, so I spent 20 minutes double-checking whether the alleged editing mistakes were disputable and/or justifiable by artistic license.  So far, I’m up to eight errors that I consider indisputable and another that might be merely awkward.  I can’t remember reading any other professionally-published novels with more than one typo.

Incorrect Word Choices and Tenses

1. Eclipse mixes up “whose” and “who’s.”

2. Twilight mixes up “moats” and “motes.”

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1.  Unless your plot has changed dramatically, I’d rather not review a rewritten chapter before the manuscript’s first draft is completed.  Generally, it’s a lot more productive for an author to keep moving forward.  I’d love to review your next chapter!

2.  Unless you’re really, really stuck, I’d recommend holding off on any heavy rewriting before the manuscript’s first draft is complete.  You’ll have a much better idea of where the story is going once you have the first draft done and that will make your rewrites vastly more effective.  It will be so much easier to organize the story and determine what is worth keeping or accentuating or removing after the first draft is complete.  Before that, trying to do a rewrite is like drawing up a map to somewhere you haven’t been yet.

3.  In most of the cases where I’ve reviewed early rewrites, the authors got demoralized because things weren’t improving as much as they had hoped.  But it wasn’t their fault or a reflection on their talent.  Before the first draft is completed, everything will suck.  Even rewritten chapters. The only way to break out of “first draft hell” is to finish the first draft.

Joel Wyatt just finished his 41st issue (chapter) of his free superhero story.  It strikes me as sort of a Seinfeldesque take on superheroes.  Here’s the protagonist reflecting on a fight between a superhero and a villain.

But you would be mistaken. Centrifuge, man: this guy’s got class, style… that certain je ne sais quoi that makes him the perfect dark horse for your super-group. His body’s center of gravity shifts wildly when he’s under stress, like the beads in one of those South American rainsticks, making the guy FLIP OUT, like a Topsy-Turvy Titan.

Now that is a freakin’ subtitle. Market analysis my balls.

“But Joel,” you say, “He didn’t even win the battle. Deacon Struck got away.”

“You, sir,” I retort, “are a dildo.”

Through the first several chapters, I’m amazed by the quality of the writing of Bitter Seeds, a paranormal 1920s-1940s novel not merely straddling but making sweet, sweet love to the line between superhero fiction and urban fantasy.  I hope it will retain the charm after we get move heavily into the paranormal WWII stuff.

Some early highlights:

• The author, Ian Tregillis, is preposterously good at handling settings and scene-building.  Even if you read the first chapter for nothing else, I would recommend checking out how Tregellis uses setting details to set the mood and develop characterization.  (Hint: those kid-sized burial mounds outside the Nazi laboratory?  Not influenza victims).
• The writing is remarkably tight.  Nothing is wasted.
• The main character establishes himself pretty early.  Even as a child, he’s sort of interesting.

Vampires Suck is startlingly bad.  How could try something so easy–finding something hilariously awful about Twilight–and fail so badly?  It’s like going to Alaska and failing to find snow.  If you’re in the mood for a good Twilight parody, I recommend this fake screenplay. Here’s an excerpt:

SCENE 2

BELLA: It’s tough being the new kid in school! Especially when everyone is so friendly and helpful and interested in me. Why can’t they just leave me alone so I can sit in the corner and cut myself?
CLASSMATE: You’re awesome, Bella!
BELLA: See what I have to put up with? Hey — who are those hot people over there?
CLASSMATE: Those are the Cullens. They avoid direct sunlight, they don’t eat food, they sleep in coffins in a graveyard, and holy water burns them. I think they’re Canadians.*
BELLA: They sure are spectacularly gorgeous.
CLASSMATE: Yes, they are.
BELLA: I mean seriously, those people are BEAUTIFUL. Especially the one who keeps looking at me. Man alive, that guy is stunning. I mean, wow. He is hot buttered seduction on a stick. I’m not interested in him sexually, of course, because sex is dirty, but wow — LOOK AT HIM! Yee-ikes! Hubba hubba! If you don’t mind, I’d like to spend the next 75 pages talking exclusively about how attractive he is, and then bring it up again every paragraph or so for the remaining 400 pages.
CLASSMATE: Knock yourself out.

*The makers of Vampires Suck stole this joke.

The New York Times uncovered evidence of serious detainee abuse at Guantanamo Bay:

How do you break a suicidal terrorist? Find something worse than death.

Synopsis: Captain Freedom was rough around the edges, but it was clever and funny.  The plot was pretty much an incoherent wreck.  If you liked Soon I Will Be Invincible, I highly recommend Captain Freedom, which put more thought into character-development and world-building.

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For a story ostensibly about zombie football, Play Dead has hardly any football and the zombies first appear in chapter 15. Also, unlike most other zombie stories, it’s not an us-vs.-them fight for survival.  These zombies have to win a football game to save their souls.

There are 15 chapters of setup to the zombies, but only twenty pages of football (a single game). Those chapters mainly establish the two main characters (a smartass quarterback and a student journalist desperately in search of a story) and their relationship. The characters were well fleshed-out (besides the antagonists) and the plot was very easy to follow, even if you know nothing about football. I finished the book in one sitting, so I’d say it’s very easy to read.

That said, I had some issues with it…

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Wahab Algarmi put together a free comic, The Society of Unordinary Young Ladies, and would like you to read it.

Here are some impressions.

–The characterization for the four protagonists is handled fairly well.  In particular, I recommend page 21 as a dramatic portrayal of loyalty as a character trait.  Usually, I roll my eyes when authors say a character is “loyal”  because “loyal” characters rarely get opportunities to act differently than a super-bland protagonist.  In fiction, EVERYBODY will save friends in trouble, so  a character that is truly loyal needs to go beyond the norm.  It helps if the decision to help someone bears a high cost on the loyal character, something more definite than “it could be dangerous.”  In this case, a loyal protagonist spends crucial seconds tending to a dying teammate rather than trying to defuse a bomb.

–I wasn’t fond of the political edge. Among other things, it made the side-characters a bit cartoonish.

–The art was generally passable, but one of the four characters is sort of horrifying.  Natalie looks like a man in a wig!

–A “Charles in Charge” pun… What the hell?  That show got cancelled 20 years ago.

–I love the final panel on page 24. Great use of empty space.

–As far as cliffhangers go, the last page is okay.  It could have been more effective if it had foreshadowed more about the new girl, but the concept is okay.  Or at least, I *hope* the concept is okay, because the first issue of my comic book ends very similarly.

Someone got to this website today by Googling “how could anybody hate Twilight?”  Indeed!  How could anyone could hate books about vampires that are so hot they sparkle and female protagonists that are as helpless as they are flaky?  If you need more help resolving this mystery, please see this and this.

Today, I came across a self-published book called Superhumans.

Here’s what it says on the back-cover:

Seth, a college student, is accidentally exposed to an experiment that gives him incredible powers. When he and his friend, Chip, try to unravel its secrets, they discover a threat to the world unlike any other. And soon, Seth will find himself faced with one obstacle after another as he tries to live a normal life with the woman he lives and their daughter.

I’ve posted the first page below the jump.  If you’d like a writing exercise today, please rewrite the first two paragraphs of the chapter so that they’re interesting.

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The second page of Twilight wasn’t as bad as the first, but it still had many problems. This is how I would have edited it.

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This is how I would have edited the first two pages of Twilight.  In particular, I feel that the main character has a bland personality and needs better motivations.

If I had been the publisher’s assistant considering this work, I would probably have stopped reading at this point.

1. Character motivation is missing.  For example, if she loves Arizona and her father makes her uncomfortable, why does she decide to go to Forks?
2. I’m not feeling the main character’s voice.  She sounds sort of pretentious and not terribly interesting.
3. The sentences are unnecessarily convoluted.  (Bella really likes em-dashes!)  That particularly hampered the pacing during the death scene flash-forward.
4. I don’t think the author is on my page.  The narrator says that she’s terrified, but she actually comes across as implausibly calm.*  She denies that she’s verbose, but even her denial is verbose!  If you want readers to reach those conclusions, have your characters lead the way with their actions and words.  Telling us she has a particular trait when she’s demonstrating that she doesn’t is probably not as effective as it could be (unless you consciously want to make the character look unaware of herself).

*Across the board, the author could have done more “showing” rather than “telling.”  For example, I would have tried to show how terrified the narrator was by using syntax, her word-choice, body-language and actions. Terror is a strong emotion that should be more visible than it was. Although she’s purportedly terrified, she actually comes off as implausibly calm for someone facing death at an early age. It didn’t feel believable to me.

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If you enjoyed this review of Twilight, please also see my list of editing errors in the Twilight series.

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The controls worked pretty well, but the visuals and musics made this game a chore.

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Many readers felt that the heroes of Soon I Will Be Invincible were whiny, insufferable failures.  For example, one review said that “the most [the main character] ever manages is some uninspired teenage-esque angst that her character seems much too old for.”

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What are some well-known books that have major flaws?  We’re looking for books to use to help our readers improve their writing, so I’d especially appreciate books that are superhero-related, fantasy or sci-fi.

The site is http://www.annecordwainer.com/ .  Anne is a friend of mine and I would really appreciate if you would check out her site, particularly if you’re a fan of real-world magic stories.  Does the site work?  It feels like there’s something not quite clicking, but I’m not sure what.

If you’re interested in writing crime-based fiction, Modus Operandi: a writer’s guide to how criminals work is definitely worth your time. For example, if your police officer were investigating the theft of a truck and the merchandise inside, the book suggests considering these possibilities…

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When authors or fans challenge negative reviews, they sometimes say something like “what have you written, because I bet it’s awful.” I think that reflects a fundamentally wrong conception of reviewing. Every day, people evaluate and suggest things without any experience of having made them. For example, over the past few years I’ve suggested that friends stay away from (ugly) Pontiac Azteks, (shoddy) Craftsman tools, and (inedible) McDonald’s food. But I’ve never designed a car, built a tool and hardly ever cook. Does my lack of experience disqualify me as a relevant reviewer?

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Here are several quotes from the book Soon I Will be Invincible. Which character says them? You have three choices: a mutant cat created in a lab accident, a genius millionaire turned businessman and a whiny teen idol. If you expect this will be easy, you obviously haven’t read SIWBI.

“This is all geek stuff.”

“Maybe you should be at work, then. Spend some time on the streets.”

“He always looks fine. I know you two kept in touch.”

“Darkness? Crime, you mean.”

“You honestly think there’s something behind this.”

“We haven’t seen a serious threat for almost a year. I’m almost bored.”

The first four are from the mutant cat and the last two are from the genius businessman. If you’re wondering why a mutated cat would use phrases like “geek stuff,” you’re not alone. I’d like to note that none of these lines actually came from the whiny teen idol, but most of them sound like they should have.

(You can read our much longer SIWBI review here).

A reader asked for my suggestions on reading material. I fumbled the question by saying something like “it really depends on your taste.” He responded (paraphrased) “obviously, if I had thought that your tastes were incomparable to mine, I wouldn’t have asked you.” Touche!

So, mainly for the benefit of said reader, I have decided to post a photograph of about half of my bookshelf.

Of these, I would really recommend only Weapon, Starship Troopers and Black Powder War for the average sci-fi or fantasy reader. (With the caveat that BPW is the sequel to His Majesty’s Dragon, which should obviously be read first).

For readers that are a bit more artsy and literary, I recommend The Best American Short Stories of 2007 (not seen above), which has five stories that I found commendable. “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”  was extraordinary, “Sans Farine” was distinctly excellent, and “The Boy in Zaquitos” and “The Bris” were pretty good. And, if you’re more literary than I am, you’d probably like most of the other stories, I think.

My next book is CS Lewis’ Surprised by Joy, which has not arrived yet. I’m not sure what to expect. I’m a minor CSL fan and memoirs have always interested me. It looks to be very religiously influenced, but I’m basing that entirely on the front-cover.

I think someone with a casual interest in politics would enjoy Jack Goldsmith’s Terror Presidency and John Mueller’s Overblown. TP is Jack’s memoir about his time as the head of the Office of Legal Counsel. (I hate dropping names, but I feel obliged to offer a personal disclaimer here. I was once one of John Yoo’s coworkers, in one of the remotest senses imaginable, and Jack’s book treats Yoo like a minor villain. My recommendation of this book should not be construed as an endorsement of Jack’s legal opinions or his feud with Yoo. I simply enjoyed his style of writing and think he provides an interesting perspective on legalism and the legal side of the war on terror).

Overblown is a more conventional argument piece. Mueller’s main thesis is that the risks of terrorism have been hyped and that it’s more appropriate to try to mitigate the damage of terrorist attacks rather than try to overspend on defensive measures that are unlikely to be 100% effective. I thought most of this book was well-argued and interesting. (Again, this is not an endorsement of his politics: off the record, I disagree with probably 75% of the book, but that’s immaterial to its quality). I did take issue with what I thought was an exceptionally questionable point about Pearl Harbor, though. (If you’re interested in that, please keep reading).

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I have overhauled my review of Soon I Will Be Invincible. I cut its length by about a quarter (from 2750 to about 2000 words). It is now down to a hair over 2000 words (instead of ~2750) and Davis was kind enough to reformat it for me.

You can read part I of this chapter-by-chapter review of Soon I Will Be Invincible here.

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I’ve already written a standard SIWBI review. My main conclusion was that most of SIWBI is wasted space that fails to satisfy readers or advance the main plot. So what do these wasted chapters do? To answer that, I will summarize and analyze the content and writing of each chapter.

This review will include spoilers.

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I read The Last Man today, which made a biomask look pretty good with a hooded jacket. It’s a vaguely sci-fi story with some weird bits of fantasy mixed in. The premise is that the removal of an artifact from Lebanon triggers a curse causing every male on Earth to spontaneously suffer a death-by-eye-gushing. The only surviving man apparently survives because he has some magical trinket.

The character development was pretty flimsy. The male lead is a slightly more reckless but physically tricky version of Peter Parker. The female lead is a Secret Service agent– Agent 523, I think. (Naming a character after a number is painfully cliché)… I’ve seen reviews that praise TLM for this agent being innovative because she’s one of a very few strong black-female characters, but taking an extremely cliché governmental archetype (The KillBot) and making him a black woman doesn’t seem very fresh to me.

Most of the story has taken place in Washington so far. That is usually a cliché setting– second only to NYC, I think– but I’d excuse that because using government figures like the Secret Service pretty much requires Washington. Occasionally, the story took completely random tangents to Israel, which raised red flags about oncoming political sermons. However, in hindsight, Israel kind of makes sense as a setting because Israel’s women play an unusually important role in its national military. The story will probably make more use of the Israeli characters later, but right now it feels like characterization a la Heroes (keep throwing characters at us until someone sticks).

I enjoyed the writing, but tellingly I can’t remember any lines. By contrast, I remember five separate punchlines from The Hood, a comic I read three years ago. (One memorable scene: “You’d make a good FBI agent, Tommy. Do you want to be an FBI agent, like your uncle Carl?” “F*** that! I wanna be an Avenger”).

The villains were a major drawback. In this comic, we saw a neo-Amazonian cult and a gang of Republican widows that storm the White House with shotguns to take the Congressional seats formerly held by their husbands. (I’m not making that up. However, I should point out that the story has actually felt pretty even-handed when it makes political allusions.) The archvillain, the Amazonian leader, is wholly forgettable. The only thing I remember about her is that she once beat Bobby Fischer in chess.

The action has been pretty restrained so far. Frankly, I think that’s one of TLM’s strengths. I think it might help if the writing were as restrained. For example, the surviving women turn the Washington Monument into a memorial for the dead men. Because, you know, it’s phallic-shaped? Haha! Yeah. It was that bad.

The world-building has been moderately disappointing. There was one hilarious scene with a model whose job ended when all the guys died. But besides that, TLM has hardly ventured beyond the generic sci-fi dystopia. You’ve seen this before. Hell breaks loose: people go crazy, form gangs, commit suicide, etc. Except for men dying instead of women, the story seems eerily reminiscent of the N64′s Battle Tanx, which is as sophisticated as anything called Battle Tanx should be.

Verdict: I’d recommend giving The Last Man a look. Its execution is uneven, but I think that it has potential.

Oh, also. If you’re interested in working with comic books and/or visual design for superheroes, I’d really recommend it. There’s a few shots of the main character wearing a biomask with a hooded jacket and I think that the art does a really nice job of making someone with a mask look human. That’s always been one of my problems with masked heroes, that they look like machines.

Eragon is one of the worst novels I’ve ever read.  But let’s look at the positive: how can Eragon improve your writing? It can help you identify and fix problems in character development, story structure and plotting. For example, let’s look at its characters.

1) Eragon

Eragon is the prototypical Chosen One. Unfortunately, he never really grows into something more than someone destined for great things.  Why does his dragon come to him?  Because he was destined to have a dragon.  Why does he decide to stop Emperor Palpatine, err, Galbatorix? Because he was destined to.  Why will he eventually get the girl and save the world… well, I could go on.

A strong character has traits that drive the plot. In His Majesty’s Dragon, Temeraire the dragon is a radical abolitionist and supporter of dragon rights, which leads him to (spoiler– hold your cursor here). That doesn’t feel contrived at all, because Temeraire’s morality clearly dictates that he should perform that action. This works because his character traits cause the plot. Temeraire is rebellious, so he should act rebelliously.

Eragon’s characters do not drive the plot. They act as the plot needs them to.  Eragon is a wuss, until he learns that he’s really a hero.  What causes that change?  His great destiny, apparently.  Being driven by destiny makes him passive. Let me show why that’s a problem.

Saphira (the dragon) comes to Eragon for no particular reason. Eragon doesn’t do anything to get his dragon. That wastes an opportunity to show us what he’s capable of, and why he deserves to have a dragon. His Majesty’s Dragon used the experience much more effectively. Captain Laurence’s ship captures Temeraire’s egg.  Instead of the dragon being an honor and privilege, the dragon is something the characters want to avoid. The unlucky handler will have to live away from civilization and work in a dangerous, filthy profession. The crew draws straws and a 14-year-old sailor draws the dragon. When Laurence sees that the kid is struggling with the dragon, he decides to sacrifice himself by taking the dragon instead.

This shows us several things about the characters. Lawrence is a compassionate and loyal leader.  He’s brave.  He was not passively destined or chosen to have a dragon– he chose to take Temeraire.  He has realistic concerns, like worrying about not ever being able to see a play again.  In short, Laurence is both heroic and relatable.  We even learn something about Temeraire: he has standards and cares who his partner is.  Unlike Saphira, we can relate to him as something more than just an animal.  My problem with Eragon is that there isn’t any reason Saphira comes to Eragon.  Worse, I can’t think of any reason that I would advise Saphira to pick Eragon.  He has no traits that suggest he would be a valuable partner.

2) Saphira

Temeraire from His Majesty’s Dragon is a fantastic example of how a side character can drive a plot and develop the main character. But Saphira is a case-study in cardboard.  Saphira makes most Pokemon look three-dimensional.

Consider the following: Pokemon (successfully???) characterizes Ash’s Charizard as lazy and disrespectful, which is fairly impressive given that he doesn’t say anything intelligible.  Saphira has every advantage but she is actually worse-characterized.

Strong characterization depends on readers being able to associate characters with key attributes. Han Solo is selfish but loveable. Charizard is lazy. Temeraire is idealistic and rebellious. Saphira is nothing but a flying pack animal.  

Wasting Saphira in this book was particularly egregious. She’s on the front cover, and the only selling point of Eragon is that the book has a dragon in it. If all the superheroes in Superhero Nation were as boring as she is, we’d have a real problem.

3) Brom/Murtagh

These characters came right out of Central Casting. Brom is the Friendly Storyteller and Murtagh is the Mysterious (But Friendly) Stranger. Both serve essentially the same role, to provide wisdom and insight to the brash and clueless Eragon. Conveniently enough, one enters as the other dies.

4) Galbatorix

I’ll preface this by acknowledging that I’m fond of many supervillains.  I write stories about them, too. So you might argue that it’s hypocritical for me to criticize Galbatorix for being one-dimensional. On the other hand, you could also argue that “wow, if even a superhero novelist thinks Eragon’s villains were superficial, they must have been truly awful.”  Indeed.

Galbatorix is the villain and he doesn’t have any motivation other than being EVIL. He’s like Green Goblin, but without the nifty armor. As far as cartoonish villains go, Galb is a particularly bad one. And not bad like Darth Vader was bad, but bad-like-Gigli bad.

There are two main ways to make a villain interesting.

1. Ideological power—when the audience vaguely sympathizes with the villain’s objective (separate from his means).  This worked particularly well in The Rock, for example.
2. Badassery—a combination of swagger, flavor and/or whupass.

Galb had neither of these, but the best villains usually have both.  For example, Darth Vader and Doctor Octopus are obviously badass, but Darth Vader is also ideologically powerful because his villainy stemmed from a noble desire to create order. Doctor Octopus (in the movie) wanted to vindicate what his wife died for.  And he had 6 arms.

Cliché fantasy races

The author of Eragon stole his elves and dwarves so blatantly from Lord of the Rings that Tolkien should have been credited as a co-author. Many fantasy novels draw on Tolkien’s conventions, but usually they try to make up for that by adding their own spin to the source material.  For example, if you were writing a book set at a magical university like Hogwarts, you could make it feel fresh by using a new perspective.  Instead of focusing on a precocious young wizard, maybe you’d look at the teachers or the administrators or campus security or the admissions office instead.  Eragon doesn’t do anything like that.  It ends up feeling like LOTR fanfiction.  With Pokemon.

I could say more, but you couldn’t pay me enough to go back to Eragon.  This book and its sequel* are best enjoyed as an expensive alternative to firewood.

*It has two sequels, but I’ve only been unfortunate enough to read the first.