1. A lack of money.  Superheroics can result in injuries, but anybody with a secret identity probably wouldn’t want to reveal those injuries to an insurance company.  (Otherwise, they’d need to lie to the insurance company or reveal their secret identity).  Second, a lot of superheroes spend what must be substantial amounts of money on their superheroics.  For example, Peter Parker is practically on the verge of starvation (and has been evicted at least once), but even he’s buying high-grade flame-retardant fabric for costumes. Even a wealthier team like the Fantastic Four could have financial difficulties sometimes.  Their headquarter alone would probably cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year (in financing/interest, property taxes, maintenance, insurance to protect nearby buildings from FF science, building upgrades, etc).

1.1. Troubles at work and/or school.  Superheroes don’t have very much control over when supervillains attack, so they frequently have trouble maintaining a regular work schedule.  Superheroes can take some steps to minimize the damage to their day jobs, but a worker that’s frequently late and/or absent without leave will probably get in trouble with his/her boss and/or school.

2. Physical stresses of a highly dangerous job.  For example, injuries stemming from fights or overexertion, a lack of sleep and/or time to recuperate, exposure to highly dangerous chemicals or alien symbiotes, mild aging (Batman’s at least in his 40s), etc.

3. Pressure from friends/family/loved ones to give up or minimize superheroic activities.  They may be concerned about the superhero’s well-being because it’s such a dangerous job and/or the superhero might not be well-suited for the job.  Alternately, a spouse or lover may feel that the toll on their relationship is getting too high, particularly if he/she has been kidnapped or nearly killed before.

4. Disagreements with other protagonists (superpowered or otherwise).  For example, Lucius parted ways with Batman over philosophical differences.  Superheroes might privately and/or publicly hold each other accountable if a mission goes awry. Alternately, if there’s a crime or disaster where multiple superhero groups respond, the groups might have trouble cooperating–the teams might be very different philosophically, tactically, demographically, etc.  If a super-SWAT team and a team of superpowered high school students both respond to a hostage crisis, there are a variety of reasons the SWAT commandos would not want to trust the students with any responsibility.  Peter Parker is good at many things, but he’s not extremely methodical and probably doesn’t have much experience with hostage situations.  Alternately, the high school students might have trouble cooperating with the SWAT team, if they’re convinced that the SWAT team is so gung-ho they’re going to get a lot of hostages killed and/or the SWAT commandos don’t have the right superpowers for this situation and/or are using a more standard set of strategies against a completely unpredictable adversary.

5. Impermanent superpowers.  In most superhero stories, superpowers are permanent.  Some stories take away superpowers for short periods (for example, Kryptonite temporarily drains Superman’s powers), but you could also make the problem more long-term.  What if the character’s powers are naturally fading away because of aging, overuse or a weakening of the power source? Maybe the price of recharging his powers is so high that the character isn’t willing to go through with it?

6. Superpowers that don’t handle low-level situations well.  For example, some superpowers would be tricky to use in a situation that wasn’t life-or-death.  If the Human Torch tries to stop a minor scuffle like a bar brawl, he’d have to think creatively about how to get involved without torching someone that is probably more of a nuisance than a superpowered threat to humanity.  He’d probably also want to think about any potential harm to bystanders.  It’d be highly risky to break out fire in a crowded building because it could trigger the fire alarm and set off a fatal stampede.

6.1. Imprecise superpowers.  Most people aren’t 100% accurate at anything.  What would make one person less accurate/precise than another?

• Some characters might not have as much fine control as others do, even though their powers might be similar.  For example, one telekinetic might be able to mentally pluck bullets from the air or turn a screw, whereas another telekinetic might be more powerful but less precise.
• Some superpowers are naturally harder to aim, especially at a distance.  If a criminal is 50 feet away and running, a superstrong character would probably have a harder time stopping him than a psychic or an elemental controller would.  Even at point-blank range, a superstrong character might have trouble exploiting a tiny vulnerability (like, say, the clasps on Juggernaut’s helmet).
• Some superpowers have splash damage that is hard to control.  For example, a superstrong attack is likely to cause reverberations that could be dangerous to passersby.  Even if a fire-based attack is aimed perfectly at a hostage-taker, the hostage would probably get burned even if the fire doesn’t touch him.
• The superpowers may require concentration and/or careful aim.  In a stressful situation, it’s easy to get distracted and/or nervous and/or make unsound split-second decisions.  A character with less training and less experience is more likely to make interesting mistakes here.
• Other factors that might matter: whether the shooter is moving, whether the target is moving, whether the target has cover and/or a human shield, distance, visibility, weather conditions, whether there are superpowers in play that interrupt or disrupt other superpowers, etc.

7.  Unreasonably high expectations on the part of the hero and/or other protagonists and/or public at large.  Superman or not, Metropolis will have murders.  Even Superman can’t be everywhere.  That said, a hero might have trouble looking at it like that without feeling like he/she was writing people off and/or making excuses for failure.  Members of the public may get bitter if a loved one gets killed because they might (justifiably) feel there’s a double standard at work.  Let’s face it–if murder victim Jane Doe had been dating a superhero, the superhero would have prevented the murder.  “Superheroes may say they don’t have time to save everybody, but they always seem to have time to save the people they care about.”  Alternately, a more powerful and/or skilled superhero may expect too much of other characters.  A superhero that has the ability to summon a horde of celestial super-beings might be disappointed if his partner the BMX Bandit can’t keep up.  Alternately, the BMX Bandit might get annoyed because he feels like he’s getting shown up by his partner and/or isn’t getting enough of an opportunity to put his skills to use.

8. Side-effects of superpowers. Whatever caused the character to get superpowers could also result in obstacles down the road.  For example:

• Physical–for example, maybe the person’s body can’t handle the superpowers and/or the body changes in some way that causes complications.  Tony Stark has medical issues related to his origin and Slate is far too heavy to use an elevator or chair.
• Mental–for example, the person’s personality shifts or he has a Hulk-style personality split.
• Social–for example, discrimination against mutants.

9. Team-related conflict.  It’d be impossible to design a company where there wasn’t some sort of potential friction between employees and/or leaders.  In a highly stressful field like superheroics, the media would create some even if there weren’t much to begin with.

10. Conflict with society at large (the public, the police, the press, government as a whole, etc).  Superheroes tend to commit many felonies, so you have room to run with this if you’d like.

Problem 1: The character doesn’t have a distinct personality.

A) Make sure the character has distinct traits.  Can you name 3-4 adjectives that fit your character really well but not most other protagonists in your genre?  If not, please see this list of character traits for some possibilities and this article about how to use traits to develop characters.

B) Give him at least one flaw, a trait that makes it harder for him to achieve his goals and preferably leads to some conflict with sympathetic characters.   Some authors back into rarely-interesting “flaws” like being overly modest or “caring too much.”  If you can use those flaw(s) to create conflict or obstacles, that’s fine.  For example, maybe he wants to succeed in a job where modesty is an obstacle (e.g. marketing, sales or politics).  If you can’t use the flaw to create conflict, I’d recommend trying a different flaw instead or possibly rewriting the plot to accommodate the character.  For example, if you were really dead-set on a character whose signature flaw was his total inability to play the didgeridoo, maybe he’s growing up in a culture where mastering the didgeridoo is a critical rite of passage and/or the main way to pick up ladies.  For more on flaws and challenging characters, please see this article.

C) If all else fails, play up traits to the extreme.  Anything is better than having your character do and say “whatever the author feels like today,” and unfortunately I see many WTAFLT characters.  It’s generally easier to rewrite a character whose traits are too strong than one whose traits are too bland/unclear.

D) Make sure your plot gives your protagonists chances to make unusual choices. If 99% of protagonists from your genre would act the same way if they were in your plot, you’re not giving your protagonist a chance to distinguish himself.  If there’s a goal, a principle or a possession your character values much more than most other protagonists would, your character might make an unusual decision to protect/advance it.  For example, the fugitive protagonist of Point of Impact breaks into an FBI-guarded morgue to reclaim and properly bury his dead dog. It’s a memorable scene because the character is putting himself on the line for a goal that wouldn’t matter to most action protagonists–almost every protagonist would just skip to getting revenge or clearing his name.

E) Flesh out his perspective–what are some things he would notice or comment on that most other people wouldn’t?  What are some things he would draw connections between that most people wouldn’t?  For example, in a superhero-style world where people like Lois Lane or Mary Jane get kidnapped repeatedly, a veteran superhero (or investigator) might guess that anyone that’s been kidnapped by a supervillain for no readily obvious reason is probably very close to a superhero.

F) Force your main character to do or say at least one thing per page that he would do but you wouldn’t.  Don’t let your character get hemmed in by what you would do–most authors aren’t interesting or honest/circumspect enough to make an autobiography work.  Also, if at all possible, please force your main character to do/say at least one thing per page that your other characters wouldn’t.  That will really help the main character feel distinct.  If that’s not possible, I would recommend reevaluating whether the character has distinct traits and whether the plot is giving him opportunities to show those traits.

Problem 2: The character doesn’t have a pressing goal. 

A. If the character doesn’t already have a pressing goal, give him one.  If the character did have a goal but it petered out or he accomplished it too quickly, either create a new obstacle that endangers his accomplishment or transition into a new goal.

B. The goal doesn’t need to be life or death, but the character needs to feel the stakes are high.  If the character can just walk away, the plot is liable to fall apart.  Here are some tips on ways to motivate a character.

C. If you’re near the start of the book and aren’t willing/able to introduce the main goal yet, at least use an intermediate goal to propel the story.  For example, Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World uses Scott’s relationship with Knives Chau to establish that Scott has major problems (he’s dealing with a hard break-up and is dating a high school girl) before we’re introduced to the main love interest and the Seven Evil Exes that are trying to keep Scott from the main love interest. In Iron-Man, we’re introduced to an intermediate villain (the terrorist that kidnapped Tony Stark) well before Tony realizes the identity of the main villain.  The Taxman Must Die starts with an intermediate villain trying to assassinate an IRS protagonist, but the actual villain is someone else altogether.

Problem 3: Nothing’s at stake and/or there isn’t any chance of failure. 

A. Show us that failure is possible by letting the character make a big mistake.  For example, Peter Parker’s most interesting decision–and possibly the most interesting thing about him altogether–is that he didn’t stop the robber, which got Uncle Ben killed.  A taste of failure raises the stakes on whether the character will actually succeed.

B. When a character fails, make sure there are real consequences.  If there are no consequences to failure, then it doesn’t really matter whether the character succeeds or not.  For example, some possible consequences of intermediate failures might include:

• Suffering a major setback on the way to accomplishing his goal, preferably one that will make it harder for him to accomplish the goal next time.
• A significant loss of status (like public humiliation or a demotion).
• Suffering a major setback in an important relationship (like a breakup or a sidekick deciding to part ways).
• The villain accomplishes some (usually intermediate) goal to raise the stakes.
• Something unpleasant happens  to a loved one or bystanders.  This may be physical (like a hostage getting shot if a superhero screws up), but it might not be.  For example, if Al does something that causes Brenda to break up with him, and Brenda starts dating Carl to make Al feel jealous, Carl is collateral damage.
• The hero loses faith and/or faces a new mental obstacle and/or exacerbates an old mental obstacle.
• Allies become less committed to the hero, prospective allies are lost and/or new enemies emerge.
• Serious injury.
• The villain and/or the hero’s loved one(s) learn information that ends up damaging the hero.
• An important resource is lost, damaged or destroyed.  For example, in one Seinfeld episode, George used a photograph of a beautiful woman (supposedly his dearly departed wife) to gain admission into a super-exclusive club for supermodels… until he accidentally set the photograph on fire.
• Getting fired.
• Punishment.

C. Increase the challenge level so that the character will fail occasionally.  For more ideas there, please see this article.

D. What are 1-2 things this character wants to accomplish that readers wouldn’t want him to? You can have him approach those precipices to raise doubt about what, exactly, he/she will accomplish.  For example, a romance protagonist might start falling for a false love interest to raise doubt about whether he/she will find a way to be with a more sympathetic character.

Problem 4: The character is too passive.

A. Cut the whining–have the character act to solve his problems.  Complaining is very rarely an interesting course of action.  I’d much rather read about, say, a drafted superhero trying to get himself fired or blackmail his boss into letting him go than someone who just complains about how much he hates being drafted.  In particular, I’d recommend being creative with your young characters–e.g. if a kid wants something but his parents won’t buy it for him, have him try to enact some sort of plan to get it anyway rather than just complaining about how mean his parents are.  Whatever he tries (persuasion/reasoning, stealth/theft, coercion/extortion/blackmail, hard work, holding a series of bake-sales until he has $130 for a deactivated bazooka and a DVD about how to reactivate a deactivated bazooka, etc), it will surely be more interesting than complaining.

B. Raise the costs of inaction.  For example, pretty much all of the consequences for failure above could convince a character to act.  Alternately, perhaps the plot incorporates a ticking clock and there’s no time to sit around.  My favorite example of a ticking clock so far is D.O.A., a story about a poisoned detective who has two days to solve his own murder.

1.  Pick a niche small enough that you can compete in, but big enough that there are enough readers to sustain you.  Your genre and/or subgenre are usually good places to start.  For example, if you were doing superhero stories, Google estimates that there are at least 50,000 searches related to superhero fiction every month (for superhero book, superhero story, superhero fiction, superhero writing, etc).

2.  After you’ve picked a niche, figure out key search terms/phrases to target.  I brainstormed about 10 possible searches related to superhero fiction, but superhero book(s) and superhero story/stories accounted for 86% of the traffic.

3.  When you’re picking out a site name and URL, I’d generally recommend including at least one of your critical search terms.  When search engines are evaluating which sites are the best match for a particular query, they love to see the search term(s) in the title.  (Case in point: Superhero Nation beats Marvel and DC Comics on Google searches for superhero stories, and it’s not because I have more superhero stories than they do).

3.1. If you’d like to include critical search terms into your title, one possibility is including a colon phrase or dash phrase if you haven’t already.  For example, in my case, I did Superhero Nation: how to write superhero novels, comic books and graphic novels.  I’d generally recommend keeping the total title to 65-70 characters so that Google doesn’t cut you off.  (I do get a bit cut off).  There are two main advantages to including a colon or dash phrase: first, it gets more critical search terms into your title, which helps your site perform better on related searches.  Second, it helps identify your website’s purpose to prospective readers glancing through Google results.  “Superhero Nation” doesn’t say all that much about what I offer, but “how to write superhero novels…” does.  If prospective readers do not understand what you offer and how they will benefit, they will probably pass over your website. 

3.2. Your title and URL are critical resources, so don’t waste them on your name.  First, unless you’re a well-known author, people aren’t searching you out by name yet.  Second, even if people were searching for you by name, they’ll find you whether or not your name is in your title/URL.  I would highly recommend focusing instead on keywords, or at least on a descriptive phrase that conveys your genre/subgenre or what you offer.  For example, JohnMDoe.com doesn’t really say anything about what you offer, but “Crime Scene: Murder Mysteries and Detective Novels from John Doe” is a much better alternative if you’re dead-set on having your name in your title.  It also does a better job competing on popular search terms like murder mysteries and detective novels. 

4.  When you have quality content on your website, find people that would be interested in your genre and style of writing and email them a 2 sentence synopsis of the story with a link.  For example, a Google search for something like superhero blogs will probably turn up a lot of people that are interested in superhero stories.  If your niche has substantial search traffic, there are probably people blogging about it already.

4.1. As much as possible, I would recommend doing this communication gradually and personally.  Take your time with it.  A form letter obviously written to 50+ people probably won’t go very far.  I think a personal touch (like addressing the recipient by name) goes a long way.  Personally, I almost always read emails addressed to B. McKenzie or B. Mac because it suggests that they’re at least vaguely aware of what I do.  In contrast, “Dear Webmaster” emails are almost always machine-generated spam.  (If there’s a human out there that can’t find a name that’s on 99% of SN articles and the About Page, I am so sorry for him/her).  Another advantage of doing this gradually is that you’ll get better at introducing yourself, introducing your content and writing content with practice, so don’t use up too many opportunities before you’ve given yourself a chance to improve.

5.   Write guest articles in your niche.  For example, if you want to write an article for superhero writers, you can find a few websites with searches like write a guest article about superheroes or superhero guest writer.  First, links to your website help your website perform better on search engines.  Search engines judge a lot about your website’s credibility by the quantity and quality of its incoming links.  Additionally, you’ll probably pick up a few readers clicking from the website hosting your article (although rarely many). PS: Links in the comments sections on most websites are coded as no-follow, so major search engines do not count them towards the credibility of your website.

6. If you have stories published or self-published, you can do contests and giveaways.  Whether you have something for sale, you can give away other people’s books, too.  (Some prospective and new readers are more interested when books by several authors are given away—remember, prospective readers don’t know how valuable your writing is yet, so they probably won’t be as excited about the possibility of winning it).  I would caution here that it is probably not economical to give away books unless you have some hope of recouping that cost somehow (such as driving traffic to increase sales of your other books).

7.  You can do comments on articles or stories in your genre and/or subgenre.  I met most of the people in my reviewing circle by offering reviews.  Alternately, you can do comments on web articles.  Just please add value.  Extremely few people click through links in comments that sound like “Hi, this is a great article! Please see my website at mywebsitename.com.”  They will be much more likely to check your website out if you offer interesting ideas.  Otherwise, they’ll assume you’re a spambot (or, possibly worse, a lazy sack of useless) that didn’t actually read the article.

8. I recommend against ads on your website before you have enough traffic to actually make money with them. Aggressive ad placement can inhibit site growth.

9. Use Google Analytics to get free information about your website and its traffic, but don’t worry about day-to-day changes because online traffic naturally fluctuates.  Worry more about trends and patterns.

9.1. What’s your bounce rate (the percentage of your readers that leave without viewing a second page)?  If it’s higher than 80%, the most likely explanation is that your site design is throwing a lot of people off.  My style tips are very minimalist, but feel free to use them if you would like.

• For your body text, I HIGHLY recommend using dark text (preferably black) on a light background (preferably white or off-white).  This is easiest on the eyes, which is essential if you want people to read hundreds or thousands of words at a time.  When was the last time you saw a novel, a newspaper, a major writing website, or any other publication you respect using white text on a black blackground?  Authors and novelists have less room to experiment here than (say) photobloggers do.
• Please do not have music and/or a video play upon entry unless people have actually come for the videos.  For example, on Youtube or a book trailer page, it makes sense if the video auto-plays, but otherwise it’s intrusive and limits a depressingly large market (people at work).  If you do auto-play a video or music, try turning them off for a week and see how it affects your Analytics numbers.
• If you have a custom header on your website, I recommend something well-tailored to your website rather than a random landscape shot.  I spent around $60 on art (the two cartoon heads above*) and did some basic Photoshop work with some text and pictures of a helicopter, an office and a generic skyline.  It’s more distinct and memorable than the skyline would have been by itself. (How many other authors have a helicopter firing on an office?)  *If $60 is out of your budget and you’re not comfortable putting a picture of yourself online, you can just eschew that altogether.  Any interesting visual somehow connected to your theme will work.
• Unless it’s really important to the theme of your website, I’d recommend being careful with shots of readily recognizable cities or landmarks.  A readily recognizable location might make some people feel the website is insular and/or that they are outsiders.  Some people may not be fond of a particular city. In my own header, I used generic, unrecognizable buildings because they are more likely to feel close to home.
• Don’t use Comic Sans, unless your target audience is younger than 13.  For example, the Ty Beanie Baby site used Comic Sans effectively.

Another possibility is the quality of your content.  If you’d like me to take a look at it and suggest potential avenues for improvement, email me at superheronation-at-gmail-dot-com.

10. If you’re posting fiction online, work in critical search terms into the meta description.  When your content comes up in a Google search, that’s the description they see under the title.  A good meta description will help convince prospective readers to check you out.  In terms of search engine optimization, meta description doesn’t have a major impact determining whether your website places high on a particular search, but it does help Google decide which page to display.

When I read a piece of fiction, I’m trying to be transported into another world through the power of imagination.  I want characters, situations, and dialogue.  Tell me a joke, make me laugh, or let me see a glimpse of something that piques my curiosity as to what may happen next.  I don’t want a history lesson.  If your story doesn’t start at the beginning, that’s fine.  Let the people who have been brought to life through your words explain the beginning to me.  Wait!  Don’t get ahead of yourself.  I don’t want characters sitting me down and reciting a history lecture either.  If you can copy/paste your prologue into the dialogue, chances are it’s terrible dialogue.

In my collection of super hero stories, I recounted how the main character met two different people within the confines of one conversation at a house-warming party:

“Holy crap!” a voice cried from over my shoulder.

I turned and saw a masked man in bright green spandex standing on the other side of the counter. His chest displayed a large ‘R’ with a plus symbol next to it.

“Pete!” I shouted. “How the hell are you?”

“I’m great,” he replied, reaching to shake my hand. “How are you? Still a supervillain?”

“Last time I checked,” I said with a smile. “Uh-oh, you’re not gonna try and take me in, are you?!”

We both laughed at the inside joke and Alberto glanced back and forth at us in confusion.

“Pete tried to stop me from robbing a bank once and I totally kicked his ass,” I explained.

“Kicked. My. Ass,” Pete agreed with a chuckle.

“Then, as I’m standing over him about to knock him unconscious, he asks me out for a drink.”

“Worst first date ever,” Pete added.

“It was terrible,” I said. “We were both ready to leave in the first five minutes, but then started talking about how awful the date was and next thing you know we were having a great time.”

“Yeah, we agreed the date part was over then hung out all night,” Pete said with a grin. “It was hilarious.”

Alberto smiled but it was obvious he did not find the anecdote the least bit amusing.

“Man, I have got to pee,” said Pete.

“Well then, it was a pleasure to meet you,” Alberto replied, not bothering to hide his relief that Pete would be walking away.

Pete’s body shimmered for a moment before another identical Pete stepped out of him as if it were passing through a hologram. The duplicate then strolled off.

“So, where did you two meet?” the original asked.

Alberto squinted his eyes trying to figure out what he had just seen.

“They call him Re-Pete,” I said.

“Oh. That makes sense,” Alberto replied in a curt tone. He placed his hand on my back in a casual declaration of territory.

“Desire and I met outside of a club downtown. She was trying to smoke and needed a light, so I obliged,” Alberto said.

“Ahhhhhh,” Pete sighed in relief at something happening someplace else. “Much better.”

“That’s so gross,” I said with a laugh.

“It comes in handy when waiting in line, believe me,” Pete said. He looked over at Alberto. “I’m sorry, continue.”

There.  Now what have we learned about these three characters that didn’t require a prologue, flow chart, or syllabus to explain it to us?

We learned that Desire is a supervillain, she’s friends with a superhero named Re-Pete, and that the two met after he tried to stop her from robbing a bank.  They had one date, and from the sound of their conversation they haven’t seen each other since.  We even learned what Pete’s superpower is, and that he may lack social grace considering his announcement that he needed to use the bathroom.

It was mentioned that Desire is a smoker, and that she met Alberto in an alley outside a nightclub.  Based on Alberto’s reaction to the situation, we can probably assume he is either dating Desire, or has a romantic interest in her, and is not at all happy to meet another guy she once went out with.

The information conveyed was free of extreme detail and presented itself to us, the readers, as if we were overhearing a conversation at a party.  Could I have written all of that as an internal monologue for Desire?  Of course, but it would have been unneeded exposition.  Put yourself in the situations you are writing and bring us back-story only as needed and as naturally as possible.  Your readers, and characters, will thank you.

1. The story’s inciting event is most often the murder of a loved one(s).  For example, in Spider-Man, Peter’s uncle gets killed because he wasn’t brave enough to take action.  One possible subversion is that the uncle got killed because Peter (or the uncle) did try to take action.  Another popular inciting event is an out-of-the-blue event that gives the character(s) superpowers–common examples include scientific accidents, alien landings, living in New York City, and miracle operations.

2. The superhero usually gets his superpowers first.  Or, at least, we learn about the superhero getting his superpowers first.  It’s pretty rare for a supervillain to start his reign of terror before the hero has superpowers.

2.1. The superhero and main villain frequently gets their superpowers either from the same source or similar sources.  For example, Green Lantern and Sinestro both use power rings.  Spider-Man and the Green Goblin are both biochemically enhanced.  Batman and Joker are both fueled by insanity.

3. Many villains and heroes share some sort of personal connection outside of work.  In New York City, the easiest way to become one of Spider-Man’s villains is to meet Peter Parker.  (Green Goblin is his best friend’s father, Lizard employed him as a teaching assistant, Venom is a rival at work, Dr. Octopus once taught him at a science camp, Man-Wolf is J. J. Jameson’s son, etc).  This may be explainable if superpowers are mostly hereditary and/or highly visible in your story.  For example, mutants are a pretty small group of mostly outcasts in X-Men, so it makes sense that they have a better chance of knowing each other and/or being related to each other than two random humans would.

4. Nuclear weapons cannot destroy anything, but hand-to-hand combatants are basically unstoppable.  If there’s anything I’ve learned from fiction, it’s that a single ninja is the deadliest force in the galaxy.  In contrast, nuclear weapons are hilariously unable to kill anything. Even in Watchmen, where nuclear weapons are the grim doom hanging over everybody’s heads, it’s a giant psychic squid that actually destroys a city. In Heroes, Peter’s healing power can be stopped by a bullet to the back of the head but not a point-blank nuclear detonation. Also in Heroes, a nuclear detonation happens within 10-20 miles of New York City and nobody even notices it. In these stories, nuclear romance killed more people (one of Dr. Manhattan’s lovers) than nuclear detonations did.

5. Nobody stays dead (comic book deaths never last).  Almost no superheroes die or lose their superpowers for an extended period in comic books.  It will never happen to bestselling characters, unless a reboot is already planned for next year.  Novels don’t fall into this cliche as often. A novelist doesn’t need to do decades worth of stories for the same character, so it’s easier for a novelist to alter the status quo.

5.1. Women are disproportionately likely to get, ahem, stuffed in a fridge or otherwise brutally slain.  Publishers usually treat highly popular characters much more carefully and the characters that drive sales the most are (except for Buffy the Vampire Slayer) almost exclusively male.  That said, being a male superhero isn’t much better if you aren’t very popular–just ask Jason Todd!

6. New York City (or an obvious stand-in like Gotham) is the default setting for most superhero stories. I think it’s because the comic book and novel publishing industries are centered there and that’s what their editors are most comfortable with.  Also, they’d probably reason that it’s got a recognizable skyline, a large built-in audience, the brightest lights/biggest stage for a superhero, etc.

6.1.  95%+ of superpowered activity will usually happen in and around a single city.  Apparently, New York City has a global monopoly on cutting-edge science–either that, or scientists everywhere else have figured out how not to turn themselves into supervillains.  PS: If your superhero activity is overwhelmingly centered in a particular city, I’d recommend having an in-story reason why.  ”That’s where the chemical spill/alien landing/origin story/whatever happened” is usually sufficient.

SUPERPOWERS

7. It’s very rare to have a team of 3+ characters without at least one superstrong/tank character. In battle this character will usually be more or less indistinguishable from every other tank ever written.  If the character’s main fighting style is running at an enemy and trying to beat them senseless, I would recommend reevaluating whether readers will be able to handle several of this character’s fights without his style getting monotonous.

8. A hero’s superpowers will almost always come without any difficulties or inconveniences.  The vast majority of the people that have any sort of remotely undesirable side-effects with their superpowers are supervillains.  Some of the few heroic examples include Ben Grimm (physical issues), Slate (some unexpected side-effects, like being unable to take elevators anywhere), Beast (mainly social issues) and the Hulk (mental/personality issues).  Such characters are disproportionately male.

9. Some superpowers skew to one gender.  Psychic and magical superpowers are disproportionately female whereas superspeed and powersuits skew disproportionately male, for example. In terms of intelligence, the bell curve strikes with a vengeance: notably dumb characters, notably brilliant characters, and notably dumb-and-brilliant characters are all overwhelmingly male.  Female characters are disproportionately sensible and/or wise but rarely brilliant.

10. Superheroes learn very quickly.  How often have you seen Captain America or Spider-Man miss?  How often do they botch complicated acrobatic maneuvers?  Even in the first week on the job, they are implausibly well-polished.  Personally, I think that the growth arc of someone developing the mental skills and growing into the role is more interesting than many authors do.  Also… if a superhero gets superpowers and is immediately a competent superhero, that suggests that his opponents are either hopelessly incompetent and/or his superpowers are doing all of the work.  It’s not as impressive as it could be.

CHARACTERIZATION

11. After getting superpowers, most protagonists decide very quickly that they want to be a superhero.  Especially if the character is not particularly brave and/or violent before getting superpowers, I would recommend putting more thought into it than that.  You’ve probably taken a week or more picking out an apartment or a car, right? Isn’t becoming a superhero–possibly the most violent and dangerous job in your story’s universe besides maybe henchman–a bigger decision than Volvo vs. Toyota? If a character decides more or less instantly, I would recommend tying that into something about his personality and/or the plot. (Maybe the character is impulsive or maybe there’s a personal crisis like the death of Uncle Ben or maybe there’s an emergency).

12. Virtually everybody that has superpowers will become a superhero or villain.  If Electro can’t figure out how to turn electrical superpowers into a multi-million dollar job offer from a utility company, he’s too dumb not to be in prison. Granted, regular jobs definitely won’t appeal to everybody.  First, they might have had violent criminal histories or major integrity issues beforehand, so most companies wouldn’t want to touch them.  Alternately, some characters might not want to make the sacrifices necessary to keep a million-dollar job.  (If a company is paying you that much, it will probably expect a heavy workload and dealing with emergency calls every time a supervillain attacks a power plant or destroys tens of power lines is probably pretty stressful).

13. The youngest character will complain/whine the most.  When I was younger, I assumed this was mainly because some adult writers just didn’t like kids.  Since growing older, I’m dismayed to see that this comes up quite a lot for younger authors writing young characters.  Red flag: If you list the three most important or interesting things about the character and his youth makes the list, I am 75% sure he’s unlikable and 95% sure he’s boring.  There are at least 20 Scrappy Doos for every Ender Wiggin.

• RED FLAG OF WHININESS: When an overly whiny character is unhappy about something, his main plan of action is usually letting people know how unhappy he is. Instead, have him do something about it.  For example, I’d much rather read about a drafted superhero trying to get himself fired or blackmail his boss into letting him go than someone who just complains about how much he hates being drafted.

14. If there’s a secret identity, side-characters will usually get uncharacteristically stupid whenever it’s necessary to keep the secret identity safe.  Lois Lane may be an award-winning investigative journalist, but glasses and gel fool her every time.  (Arguably, this may not be uncharacteristically stupid for Lois Lane, who once asked how many f’s there are in “catastrophic.”  Still, I’d wonder about the rest of the Daily Planet team).

15. Women protagonists are almost always hot.   For example, geeks/dorks/scientists that actually look like geeks/dorks/scientists (e.g. not Jessica Alba as the Invisible Woman) and nonhumans that actually look like nonhumans skew heavily towards male.  If, by some chance there is a woman that looks like a nonhuman, she’ll probably have the ability to alter her appearance and is much more likely to use that power often (e.g. compare Mystique to the Martian Manhunter).  Also, compare Vixen (a supermodel that sometimes gets as fast or as strong as a particular animal) to Beast Boy (a green guy who turns into animals).  Please note that comic book guys tend to be a lot more attractive than actual guys as well.  The discrepancy here is that the few unattractive heroes grossly outnumber any unattractive heroines.  As for villainesses, I think most are hot or ugly–there aren’t too many in-between.

16. The protagonist is a nondescript teenager without any notable goals.  Fortunately, this doesn’t show up in print as often as it does in submissions.  Publishers are bored of them, too.  PS: Nobody tries to write a nondescript protagonist.  One reason it happens is that writers commit themselves to casts that are so large that they can’t spend enough time developing the characters–one red flag there is that you have more than 4 superheroes on your main team.  Another potential issue is that writers sometimes write based on “what would I [the author] do in this situation?”, which tends to make characters blur together and act generically nice (which is usually forgettable and bland). Forget what you would do.  Show us what your characters would do.  Also, please make sure they have flaws and do some things that the audience isn’t meant to approve of.

17. Some superhero naming conventions recur for no readily obvious reason. 

• [Adjective] Man/Woman/Boy/Girl.  One possible alternative is just going with an adjective (like Incredible or Kick-Ass) or an unusual adjective and a noun (like Grim Trigger).
• [Color] [Noun] — if you go down this path, please make sure that the color actually adds something.  For example, Black Lightning has an element of contrast, whereas Black Panther does not.
• [Animal] Man/Woman/Boy/Girl — one possible alternative here is an animal-themed noun or verb.  I’d much prefer Talon or Rake to Eagle-Man.

SCIENCE!

18. A scientist or any other super-smart character can perform more or less any mental feat.  Physics, biology, medicine (any discipline and any species), chemistry, civil engineering, architecture, aeronautical engineering, bomb defusal, electrical engineering, piloting, linguistics, cryptography, archaeology/history, computer hacking, expert research skills, mechanics/repair–super-scientists can do more or less anything, even if it’s not actually science.  For an amusing subversion, I recommend Justice League’s The Greatest Story Never Told.  (“Maybe you should handle this [helping a woman through childbirth].” “Why me?” “You’re the beautiful doctor.”  ”A physicist!”)

19. A super-scientist can perform miracles of science with a budget of $0 and/or a box of scraps in an Afghani cave.  ”Screw you, terrorists–I’ve got a degree in science!”  

Villains, kill heroes as soon as you get the chance. The life you save from 6th degree burns may be your own.       

19.1. Anybody with a scientific budget is probably an evil CEO.  Despite having a budget, he will always get trounced in every way by a single genius with a box of scraps.

20. The only mental miracle a brilliant scientist cannot perform with science is making substantial changes to the real world.  For example, Reed Richards would rather make flying cars and other super-niche products than try to cure cancer.  There are three schools of thought here: 1) curing cancer is pointless if the world’s going to get blown up by [INSIDIOUS FORCE X] and/or 2) he’s useless and/or 3) he hates cancer patients.

21. Even (allegedly) brilliant scientists regularly use themselves as test-subjects.  I really hope that these guys are doing animal-tests or computer-simulated tests before testing highly experimental chemicals on themselves, but even computer-simulated tests would probably leave something to be desired.  How can you simulate a mutagen that has literally never been used on a human before and probably doesn’t have any close analogues? What results are those simulations based on?

22. Scientific experiments will never be replicable.  For example, the Captain America research project was completely unable to come up with extra batches of super-serum after the lead researcher got assassinated.  Didn’t he have notes or any lab assistants that weren’t working for the Nazis?   (This could be explainable, depending on the story.  If the scientist feared that Nazis/terrorists/supervillains were getting close to stealing his research, not taking notes and cutting assistants out of the loop might be a really good security decision).  In The Taxman Must Die, a lead researcher takes a tip from Dilbert and creates a note-taking system so hopelessly convoluted that only a scientist with an interest in cryptography and five dead languages could possibly use it to replicate his results.  In Dilbert, that ensured that a lazy engineer couldn’t be fired.  In TMD, it ensures that the employer will do whatever it takes to keep the lead researcher alive, which is apparently a major job perk for super-scientists.

23. Scientists perform highly dangerous experiments in densely populated areas.  I’m guessing the Fantastic Four didn’t mention black holes or atomic anything when they were pitching the Baxter Building to the NYC zoning board.  Likewise, Dr. Octavius in Spider-Man 2.

24. Scientists will suddenly develop amnesia whenever it’s convenient to the plot.  For example, if the scientist accidentally shrinks the team in episode three and Godzilla attacks in episode six, it’d be really handy to build another shrink ray, wouldn’t it?

LAW AND ORDER

25. No matter how catastrophic a superpowered brawl gets and how many buildings go down, civilian casualties will range from 0-1.  Apparently, those police off-camera are doing some kickass crowd control work.  (Note: this cliche might be desirable for your story because killing off hundreds or thousands of civilians will really affect the mood).

26. No matter how many people he’s killed, a supervillain will never get the death penalty.  Generally, supervillains can only be killed in combat by the main hero(es) and even that is rarely permanent.

27. Supervillains can break out of prison at will.  Nevertheless, expediting the death penalty will never be considered.  (Superheroes can also break out of captivity as well–more on that later).

28. Superheroes must have really bad lawyers–if they get arrested, they’re going to jail, even if the charges make no sense whatsoever.  If someone in a Spider-Man costume commits a crime, you’d think that the police would investigate whether it’s actually Spider-Man, particularly after Marvel’s NYPD have been fooled by shapeshifters and imposters 10+ times before.  In particular, it should look highly suspicious if a superhero appears to commit a theft.  Most superheroes have incredible talents that they could be using to make millions of dollars, but instead choose to take a dangerous, unpaid job.  That’s not exactly the prototypical thief mentality at work.  (I guess there’s some possibility that a brilliant criminal is moonlighting as a superhero to cover himself from suspicion, but that’d be one hell of a cover story).

29. Violence is the ideal solution to any crime.  In real life, that would get many hostages killed.  Police negotiators resolve most hostage situations without any bullets being fired and negotiators will frequently do things that most superheroes would never countenance.  For example, police negotiators will sometimes make minor exchanges (like sending up cigarettes if the hostage taker gives up a hostage or an extra firearm). Unless the criminal has a particularly violent history, police negotiators will probably let a “you’ve got 1 hour to do X or I’ll kill the hostages!” ultimatum pass silently because hostage-takers almost never deliver on those types of threats.  If the superhero has gotten most of his information about hostage situations from Hollywood (“we never negotiate with terrorists!”), he has NO BUSINESS handling a hostage situation (unless the police ask, but even that’s relatively risky if he’s clueless).  For more details on hostage situations for fiction writers, please see this article.

NONHUMAN CHARACTERS AND EXOTIC CULTURES

30. Most aliens/nonhuman protagonists are like humans, but better.  If they act, think and speak 95%+ like humans, personally I’d lean towards insta-rejection because it suggests the author lacks creativity.  If they look 95%+ like humans (or have angel wings or some other slight alteration), that’s just insult on top of injury.  If they can’t be distinguished from humans in any way, I’d recommend either just making them human or fleshing them out more.  Maybe they’re better at humans at some things, worse at others, have different mindsets/perspectives/priorities, etc.

31. Depressingly many exotic civilizations are either disgustingly virtuous (like Switzerland) or one-dimensionally nefarious (like Sweden).  I really like Invincible’s take here–a civilization that initially resembles a dewy-eyed fantasy evolves into a mostly nefarious empire with some redeeming qualities.

32. I’d like to see more interesting combinations of cultural traits.  Dumb-and-violent crops up quite a lot.  Three more interesting, less cliche combinations that immediately jump to mind are dumb-and-pacifistic, cultured-and-violent and intellectual-and-violent.  If you take any cliche combination and swap out a trait for the opposite or anything unusual, the society will probably be more three-dimensional and interesting.

SUPERVILLAINS AND THE STUPIDITY THEREOF

33. No matter how smart a supervillain allegedly is, he will commit 95%+ of his crimes in a city that has superheroes.  If he’s a Marvel supervillain, he’s probably doing 95% of his crimes in a New York City that has more superheroes than ATMs.  You know where else you can find ATMs?

Houston: over 200 banks, 3300 ATMs, 0 superheroes.  Just saying.  

34. When a supervillain holds a hero captive, it doesn’t work any better than when the police try putting a villain in prison.  You’d think that eventually a supervillain–particularly an allegedly intelligent one–will realize that holding a superpowered combatant as a hostage is very dangerous.  One possible alternative is accomplishing a particular objective by letting the hero escape.  For example, if the villain has secretly injected the character with a virus that gradually takes away superpowers, 1) the hero isn’t a threat and 2) he’s more likely to infect the other heroes than anybody else the villain could get a hold of.  Another alternative is killing the hero.  If the villain is psychotic and doesn’t think of that, why not?  (For example, in Justice League, Joker once tried to kill a captive Batman, but Lex Luthor decided to keep him alive as a hostage).

35. Virtually every supervillain has, at some point or another, violated multiple rules on the Evil Overlord List.  Aspiring supervillains should memorize it, especially the part about killing the heroes whenever they get the chance, NOT killing their henchmen whenever they feel like it, and having a level of destruction between hand-to-hand combat and blow-up-the-world.  When you’re writing a villain, rather than having the character violate the code just because he’s an idiot, I would recommend putting him in situations where violating the code is the best option available.  For example, taking a superpowered hostage is very stupid (see above), but if the villain’s only chance of survival is taking a human shield, then leaving the superhero alive makes sense.

36. Supervillains make their own money, but superheroes inherit it.  There are several reasons for this, I think.  Most importantly, some writers (mostly subconsciously) like setting up their characters as the modern equivalent of kings and knights (generally hereditary nobility).  A lot of heroes are born with superpowers and/or incredible wealth, whereas supervillains rise to power through invariably nefarious business practices.  Very few supervillains were legitimate businessmen before getting superpowers.  A supervillain’s powers are much more likely to come with drawbacks and disfigurements of some sort (e.g. Green Goblin going crazy) to help show that his powers are not legitimate.

36.1. Either way, superpowered characters are markedly more likely to be vastly wealthy than the population as a whole.  My guess is that Marvel and DC have at least 10 American superpowered characters who are billionaires (or were at some point), but America only has about 400 billionaires.  Compared to the population as a whole, being a billionaire correlates highly with putting on really weird clothes and getting your brawl on.  Steve Jobs ain’t dead–he’s undercover.

36.2. Anybody that uses superpowers to gain wealth is almost certainly a villain.  In the extremely rare cases where a superhero expects payment for his work (e.g. Luke Cage), that character is usually treated in-story as unsavory and/or nasty.

37. A supervillain’s power level affect’s the hero’s power level.  If a writer is using a weak villain to challenge a much tougher hero, expect the hero to suddenly get slow and weak (Riddler Syndrome).  Alternately, if Batman is facing one of Superman’s villains, expect supposedly-unpowered Batman to shrug off hits that would level small buildings.

38. Villains are far better at escaping than killing.  A villain can take advantage of the protagonist’s heroic traits to get away.  (For example, if a villain randomly endangers a civilian bystander, most heroes will give up the chase to save the civilian). Even Batman, one of the most ruthless mainstream superheroes, will probably cut off a chase if the writer needs it.  (“Batman would let the criminal get away because he’s so confident he can catch the criminal before anybody gets killed”).

38.1. When antagonists chase after the protagonists, they will almost never catch them.  When heroes actually are caught, they are usually taken by surprise or defeated in combat without an escape attempt.  It is very rare for writers to cover an unsuccessful escape attempt because, generally, actions that end with the heroes failing get less space than they would have if the heroes had succeeded.  (Failure gets glossed over, which I think is usually unfortunate).

39. Supervillains want superpowers and are more likely to acquire them intentionally.  In contrast, most superheroes gain them through an accident or by birth (e.g. aliens and mutants).  Even in a case like Iron Man, where the character creates his own superpowers, Tony Stark only does so out of dire necessity rather than just choice.  Batman is a refreshing exception here.

39.1. A superhero may wish to get rid of his superpowers and/or be normal, but supervillains never do.  For most supervillains, the goal is power.  Most supervillains want to take over the world or be the city’s biggest crimelord, but don’t have a good idea of what they’d do if they actually succeeded.  It’s more about being #1–having the most power–than it is about what they’d do with that power. In contrast, for superheroes, power is usually just a tool to accomplish some greater goal (like justice, revenge, badassery, being Superfly, etc). 

(Amazingly, the nipples on Robin's suit weren't the worst thing Batman & Robin did to the character).

1. If a character is actually interesting enough to belong as a sidekick, promote him to partner or superhero.  Calling him a “sidekick” cues readers that he’s probably a distraction from the character that actually matters.  If he’s not interesting enough to be a partner, you’d probably be better off without him altogether.  Alternately, you can have a character play an interesting role far from the spotlight.  For example, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) adds an interesting ideological dispute with Batman in The Dark Knight but he gets extremely little screen-time and never participates in any fights.

2. Give yourself a reason for writing in a partner/sidekick besides adding “relatability” for younger readers.  If you’re mainly including a sidekick for relatability, I think you’ll probably aggravate older readers more than you’ll please younger ones.  For example, watch Robin in Batman and Robin, Scrappy Doo in too many Scooby Doo episodes, or Jar-Jar Binks in Phantom Menace.  Did these characters at any point take the story in a direction that you wanted to go?  Or were they exceedingly unlikable and a distraction from more interesting characters?

3. Here are some better reasons for having a partner than relatability.  

• In Kick-Ass, the relationship between Hit Girl and Big Daddy (her father) was probably the most interesting character dynamic.  It was somehow simultaneously abusive and touching, both of which helped flesh him out as a three-dimensional character rather than just another ersatz Punisher.  Also, having Hit Girl be insanely effective in battle was a delightful subversion that raised the stakes for Kick-Ass.  (If you’re a superhero getting schooled in battle by a 11 year old girl, maybe it’s time to think about hanging up the tights).
• The character is a loner, but his thought processes are interesting enough that his interactions would develop him and/or the story.  For example, one of Watson’s main roles is giving Holmes a way to narrate the mental leaps he’s making to solve the case.  As the “straight man,” he’s also the audience stand-in, which helps create a contrast with the eccentric and unorthodox Holmes.
• You absolutely need someone with a particular skill to make a plot arc work, but for whatever reason, it wouldn’t make sense to give that skill to the main character.

4. Make sure that there’s some substantial element of contrast.  If the two characters are essentially the same, there’s probably no point to having them both.  For example, do they have notable personality differences or background differences?  (A riot cop and a hippie at a protest at a nuclear power plant at exactly the right/wrong time?)  Do the two have substantially different capabilities? If your sidekick is just a lesser version of your Batman in every way, it might be hard to give him a role that Batman couldn’t just do on his own.

4.1. I wouldn’t recommend using adult vs. teen or adult vs. child as the main contrast.  I feel like I’ve read it so many times before that executing it in an exciting way would be very difficult.  However, veteran vs. newbie could be interesting (and obviously age could tie into that).  The characters are less likely to be angsty stereotypes that way, I feel.

5. Please be EXTREMELY careful with these character traits:

• Permanently incompetent.  Readers will mostly give you a pass on this if the issue is that the character starts out inexperienced/clueless but gets better.  However, if the character’s main role throughout the story is to run off into trouble and get captured, I would recommend reevaluating it.
• Whiny.  Red flag:  He complains about other characters 5+ times over the course of a novel or ever uses the word “mean” as an adjective.  (“You’re being mean!”)  By the way, the only adults that may use “mean” as an adjective are statisticians (“mean life expectancy,” e.g.) and bad crime reporters (“mean streets”).
• Less intelligent than the average reader.  Does this character have an IQ lower than 100?  An immediate no is definitely an acceptable answer.  An immediate yes could be acceptable because at least you’re aware of the situation.  If you had any immediate response besides yes or no (“well, for his age…”), I would recommend reevaluating whether this character is idiotic enough to annoy many readers.  As a rule of thumb, the author is usually the last one to know whether a character is insufferably stupid, so please be sparing with it.
• Any other traits or mannerisms likely to aggravate readers.  If your character doesn’t say ”Me sa Ja-Ja Binks!”, you’re already a step ahead of George Lucas.

From Ace of Spades.  By the way, some pictures had been displaying incorrectly, but P. Mac fixed the issue.  Thanks, PM!

Wild Attire is very fast-paced.  There are a lot of projects going on, so I’m definitely looking for proactivity and the ability to succeed on a writing project without intense oversight.

Job Requirements

• The main job duty will be writing product descriptions that make people want to buy the product.  The most important skill for this position is writing–can you consistently write accurate descriptions that make people want to buy our neckties?  Can you do so under deadlines? Secondarily, I’d strongly prefer a proactive candidate that can succeed without much oversight, so it’d be really helpful to write a cover letter and resume without glaring typos.
• Depending on the writer’s skills, we might have him/her working on a blogging project in the works.  If you have any blogging experience and/or have written articles for a blog, please mention that.  If you don’t have any blogging experience but would like some, SN is always looking for guest articles.
• The workload would be ~5 hours a week for about four months (roughly 80 hours total).
• I’ll know more about the exact stipend amount in a few weeks, but it’ll probably come out to something like $8 an hour.
• It’d be a plus if the intern knew anything about ties and/or scarves, but a willingness to learn is fine.  If you know enough about style that you could plausibly offer style advice on ties and/or scarves to a newspaper reporter, definitely mention that in your cover letter.
• I’d like to encourage everybody to apply, regardless of their major(s), but this would be an especially good opportunity for someone in English, Marketing or any other major that emphasizes writing.
• We have several dogs here.  They’re very friendly, small and well-trained.  None of them have a criminal past except for possibly the chihuahua.  (But not The Chihuahua–that’s a different fugitive).

1. The superhero’s job gives him a very good reason to take up and leave at crucial moments.  For example, Clark Kent has a great reason to run towards disasters–he’s a journalist looking for the biggest story in town.  Matt Murdoch (Daredevil) or another lawyer might have some good reasons to do so–some supervillains have deep pockets and any disaster scene is liable to have tons of victims that will need a great lawyer.  Successfully suing a billionaire villain (or, umm, the police for failing to take reasonable precautions to keep him in jail) could be a huge payday.

2. The superhero secretly prepares some exciting projects for work that he can unveil whenever he needs to get his boss off his back.  For example, it might be a problem that Clark Kent missed a deadline on mortgages in Metropolis, but his editor would probably look past that if Clark Kent pulled a Pulitzer-grade story out of his brief.  “Sorry, chief, I was busy triple-checking the sourcing on this Luthor confession.  We got him on tape!”  A superhero might be able to sit on a huge breakthrough in his work for a long time–for example, a journalist might spend months checking a story because rushing to print with a libelous claim against an extremely wealthy businessman could be disastrous for the company.

2.1. The superhero is valuable enough at work that his bosses and coworkers look past his tendency to miss work and/or come in late and/or incur mysterious injuries/illnesses.  For example, he might be in a white collar job where uncommon bravery is a major advantage but not many people have it.  (I mean, really, how many journalists are there that would be excited to rush to the scene of a superpowered brawl in progress?  How many lawyers would be excited to interview murder suspects in extremely shady parts of town?)  His skills as a superhero might be really useful–for example, he probably has some degree of investigatory prowess, fast reflexes, familiarity with crime/criminals, toughness, an attention to detail, unusual confident, determination and/or well-placed contacts in various industries and positions. For example, someone like Clark Kent is probably careful enough to make a good forensic accountant (although most taxmen would obviously not make very good superheroes).

3. The hero owns the company, works for himself and/or is in a position with very little oversight.  Nobody knows what Hollywood producers or chiefs of staff do, anyway.  How would anybody know if they were acting strangely?  Additionally, #2.1 comes into play here–if someone is valuable enough at his work that their bosses will forgive minor foibles, he’s probably good enough that he doesn’t need to be managed very closely.  Save that for the interns.  (Note: this approach to management can hilariously backfire if the employee has questionable judgment–what’s the frequency, Kenneth?).

4. Somebody at the company is trying to help the superhero keep his strange activities from everybody else.  Maybe the coworker knows that he’s a superhero (like Lucius Fox and Batman), or maybe he has some idea what’s going on but doesn’t know specifically that the character is a superhero.  For example, a coworker might try covering for a partner who’s acting strangely after going through a traumatic incident*, even if he didn’t know about the superhero angle.  Alternately, a coworker might know that something decidedly unnormal is going on, but not know the details.  (For example, if you had a pretty good idea a coworker was secretly a mutant, you might keep your mouth to spare him and his family from tremendous embarrassment and/or to keep your workplace from getting firebombed).

*Such as the murder of the superhero’s wife, parents, kids, dog and/or yoga instructor that convinced him to become a superhero.

5. The character has some sort of long-term excuse that will cover a lot of scrutiny.  For example, a lot of employers will cut an employee slack over something like a traumatic event, a disability or anything else that would generate sympathy.  Firing a blind employee because he was late too often would be absolutely a last resort, particularly if he’s a lawyer that’s handled some civil rights cases.  If the character is working at a police station and has fomented rumors that he’s secretly working for Internal Affairs or is a federal agent rumored to be working some sort of deep counterintelligence angle, it’d make sense if his coworkers gave him a lot of room.

6. The character doesn’t really have a great plan for covering his absences and doesn’t get along very well with his boss/coworkers.  This can be very dramatic.  Just keep in mind that bosses and coworkers have happiness levels between “100% happy” and “you’re fired.”  Depending on the situation, a character might instead face intermediate punishments, such as…

• Getting demoted or assigned to a less desirable role/shift.
• Assigned to a less desirable partner or team.  (In The Taxman Must Die, a mutant commando gets partnered with an IRS agent after threatening to eat a district attorney).
• Given fewer resources and assistance.  For example, a renegade cop might find that it’s taking them weeks to get his cruiser fixed after he tried to play NASCAR.
• Social disapproval, including untoward looks, rude remarks, vandalized workspaces, keyed cars, workplace sabotage, etc.

7. The character amasses IOUs and/or blackmail material to make sure that people at work will cover for his absences.  They may or may not know what’s going on.  If I were a superhero in this situation, I might try to make it look like I was covering something else, like an affair, because 1) it’d explain why I was being so secretive and 2) most people don’t want to get embroiled in personal messes, but they might dig deeper if they suspected shadiness related to work.  Thanks to game developer Gary Dahl for this idea.

8. The company knows that he’s a superhero but isn’t involved with his superheroics.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen this one before.  It’d probably be an awkward employer-employee relationship–”I don’t want to fire you because you’re running off to save the planet, but could you do that during off-hours?”  There could also be public pressure on the company depending on how popular the hero is and/or if he screws up really badly.  It’d look really bad if Wal-Mart fired Captain Awesome (imagine the crazed headlines newspapers would come up–”WALMART IN LEAGUE WITH DR. SINISTER, SOURCES SAY*”).  Alternately, if a less popular superhero misreads a situation and ends up doing something like pounding an undercover police officer, the public and police would probably pressure the company to fire him, even if the company had previously had a warm relationship with him.

*”Sources say” is the easiest way for journalists to present baseless speculation and wishcasting as “news” items.  Whatever “sources say” or “analysts say” usually actually says more about the opinions and desires of the journalist writing the story than any facts on the ground.

1. Very few people are actually prepared for a life-or-death, organ-stabbing fight.  ”Herein lies a crucial distinction between traditional martial arts and realistic self-defense: Most martial artists train for a ‘fight.’ Opponents assume ready stances, just out of each other’s range, and then practice various techniques or spar (engage in controlled fighting). This does not simulate real violence. It doesn’t prepare you to respond effectively to a sudden attack, in which you have been hit before you even knew you were threatened, and it doesn’t teach you to strike preemptively, without telegraphing your moves, once you have determined that an attack is imminent.”

2. All other things being equal, I would imagine someone that’s pretty mild-mannered and hasn’t been in many fights would probably have quite a learning curve as a superhero.  Most violent criminals (e.g. supervillains!) are used to violence that most people could not fathom.  In a savage fight, it is very possible that a superhero’s mental/moral hesitations and inhibitions and unfamiliarity with violence could be disastrous.  Superhero organizations might want to have new recruits fight nonpowered criminals in relatively low-stakes cases until it looks like they might be mentally and physically hard enough to survive a psychotic killer like Mr. Freeze or a death camp survivor that mentally ripped a foe’s tooth out of his mouth… back when he was a protagonist.  And, let’s be honest, it’s not likely that every would-be superhero can successfully make that transition.  (If you’re writing a larger organization like the Justice League, what does the group do about heroes that are so ill-suited for combat they will probably get themselves killed?  For example, maybe some get retrained as crime-solvers and partnered with ace combatants and maybe others get let go and maybe still more take on important support roles like medic or scientist or whatever that might involve some exposure to violence but aren’t as intense as actually being a combatant).

3. Although I think the author discounts the potential benefits of bravery, I agree it definitely has potential costs.  I don’t think we see very much of that in most superhero stories.  For example, violence for Spider-Man is sort of Disney-fied–virtually the only permanent costs of violence (Uncle Ben’s death) are caused by not being brave.   For most superheroes, I think the violence is heavily romanticized.  Being a superhero is more or less fun and games except when a (usually secondary) character dies and, let’s face it, he will probably come back anyway.  On the other hand, I personally don’t enjoy deep-R violence and would feel uncomfortable including it in something primarily meant as entertainment.  (For example, in Kickass, a gangster gets crushed in a car-compactor–it’s decidedly unpleasant and I’m sort of annoyed it was a laugh-line for the audience).

4.  It might be dramatic to make a hero choose between his pride and other goals.  For example, if 3+ muggers have guns drawn on Bruce Wayne, it’d be pretty banal for Wayne to flawlessly disarm the criminals and walk away completely unscathed–pretty much every superhero would do the same in that situation.  It might be more interesting if the character allowed himself to be robbed, walked away and got his revenge later.  How much is his pride worth?  Alternately, if the character does decide that his pride is worth risking serious physical injury and/or revealing that he has superpowers, have him pay something for it.  (For example, the first sign to Gary that something is not right about his coworker Dr. Mallow is that Gary witnesses several men rob Dr. Mallow, taking among other things a cherished personal memento.  Over the next several weeks, all of the assailants end up in mysterious accidents and the good doctor has his memento back.  Mallow could have just let it go, but trying to protect his property even after the fact bears a cost for him).

2.  Superpower selection.  If realism is a major concern, I would recommend shying away from powers that insulate the character from vaguely realistic consequences to actions.  For example, an invulnerable superhero can just wade into gunfire, whereas a character like Batman needs to put more thought into it.  Batman’s restrictions are more human-like in that regard, so his actions will probably feel more realistic.  Alternately, if you have a character like Superman, you can try using a variety of situations where the character has to act very carefully rather than just bumrush an enemy.  (For example, rescuing hostages, dealing with an enemy like The Riddler that isn’t actually present, a “scavenger hunt” situation like finding and defusing several bombs, an enemy like Professor Moriarty that works a lot through proxies that don’t know enough to easily incriminate their boss, etc).

• I’d recommend incorporating as many of the superpowers into the premise rather than having characters develop some superpowers later.  I think it was fairly effective and acceptable that Heroes had a time-traveling character, but just wildly crazy that Superman went back in time in Superman I by flying around the world counterclockwise.  Heroes introduced the time-travel angle fairly quickly, but in the Superman movie, it was a deus ex machina that came out of nowhere.  (Likewise, erasing Lois’ memories with a kiss was not only a deus ex machina, but also an act of raw jackassery).
• If uncertainty, doubt and/or paranoia are major elements of the story, I’d recommend cutting or severely limiting mind-reading and lie-detection.  For example, if mind-reading is a very intrusive act tantamount to frisking somebody, then it’ll be easier to write a situation where the character is vulnerable to uncertainty than if the character is free to read everybody’s mind without anybody else knowing.  Drama comes from vulnerability, so don’t use superpowers that will make it too hard to find vulnerabilities for the character.
• Especially if the story is gritty, I’d recommend reconsidering incredible regeneration powers.  The stakes will probably be higher if the character’s actions have consequences, and one very noticeable consequence is the risk of injury.  For dramatic reasons,  you might want to make the character regenerate faster and/or take less damage than normal*, but I just wouldn’t  recommend overdoing it so much that you couldn’t raise the stakes with an injury at a terribly inconvenient time if you wanted to.

*Pretty much every superhero, even ones whose powers are mainly mental, shrug off some hits that would put the average person in a hospital for weeks.  Having heroes get hospitalized for weeks after every fight probably wouldn’t be very interesting.

3. Consider the character’s motivations for becoming a superhero.  Is there anything about this character’s background or personality that would suggest he’d be receptive to a highly dangerous and messy job?  I’d recommend thinking particularly hard about this if the character wasn’t notably brave and/or the sort to get in fights before getting superpowers.  One example I like a lot here is Spider-Man–I think the series effectively and clearly established why a very unviolent geek felt morally obligated to get into that line of work.

3.1. If the character’s temperament and/or background isn’t a great fit for superheroics, does it create obstacles for him sometimes?  Too often, I think, superpowers serve as a “Get Out of Obstacle Free” card.  If I could offer an analogy here, I feel that superpowers would be a bit like a soldier’s rifle.  Skilled soldiers can do a lot with rifles.  But just giving somebody an assault rifle does not make him a skilled soldier.  So, if the character has superpowers but does not have very much experience in fights and/or solving crimes, it’s very likely that the character will be missing some of the skills, practice and training that would really help him succeed as a superhero.  (And that’s okay! Remember, obstacles are your friend, and not starting out with the ideal skills or background is an interesting obstacle).

4. If at all possible, I would recommend writing in realistic consequences to actions even though they may present obstacles for the characters to overcome.  

• If a character takes on more than he can handle, it’d make sense if he got injured (as above).  When the next emergency rolls around, how does he deal with the injury?
• A lot of superhero stories work in relationship difficulties caused by being a superhero.  Depending on the mood, you could also work in a divorce (they’re depressingly common for police officers, soldiers and others that work long hours in stressful positions, and even a police officer wouldn’t get called on-duty during a wedding, whereas superhero weddings and funerals are interrupted with some degree of regularity).
• Is Reed Richards useless?  Do other scientists think that your super-scientist is wasting his mental talents brawling with bank robbers and Latverian dictators when he could be saving many more lives in a lab somewhere?  (The Fantastic Four series avoids that by having Reed Richards do superheroics and world-grade science, but I think it’d be more realistic and dramatic to handle the trade-offs).

5. I would recommend considering at least minor elements of crime-solving rather than responding to crimes in progress.  If the villains are pretty smart–and most supervillains supposedly are–presumably they’d have a plan more complex and more likely to succeed than just hitting a bank and giving the heroes enough time to respond.  (Seriously, not even any diversionary tactics, Dr. Octopus?)

1. Please make your novel at least reasonably intelligent.  A superhero comic book or movie might conceivably become a bestseller despite being pretty idiotic.  (Batman and Robin sold ~$240 million worth of tickets, for example).  Comic books and movies have other things to fall back on besides the quality of the writing.  Novels, not so much.  For one thing, the target audience for novels is people that actually willingly buy novels, who tend to be more literate than the population as a whole.  Consequently, the most successful superhero novels (notably The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and the Wild Cards series) tend to be more complex than just action. For example, Amazing Adventures and the first few* Wild Cards books  were historical chronicles and AA had more action for an artist escaping Nazi-occupied territory than it did for any superheroes.

• Imagination.  Does your story have elements we haven’t seen before?  If we have seen plot elements before, are you executing them differently and/or more interestingly?  For example, Amazing Adventures deftly handled a stranger-in-a-strange-land with a great ear for the artist’s unusual-sounding voice and some interesting use of his cultural background.  In contrast, the Superman series bends over backwards to make Superman’s transition to Earth as seamless and undramatic as possible.  (Superman looks exactly like a stereotypically attractive human, his English is utterly nondescript, his superpowers don’t create enough problems for him, there are few if any cultural differences in play, etc).
• The ability to make connections and offer themes that are not necessarily obvious.    For example, The Incredibles has a few scenes where superheroics get mistaken for adultery/inappropriate love.

*Thanks to John for the correction there.

2. It might help to consider a setting besides “pretty much any modern First World city.”  I think it’s more acceptable for superhero comic books to use a more or less generic city as the setting.  (Besides the names of the villains, is there anything that could happen in Superman’s Metropolis that couldn’t happen in Spider-Man’s New York or Green Lantern’s Coast City or vice versa?).  If you’re doing a novel, I’d recommend looking harder at more flavorful, distinct examples (inside and outside of the superhero niche) like Batman’s Gotham, Terry Pratchett’s Unseen University (and probably Ankh-Morpork generally), Watchmen’s New York, Transmetropolitan’s The City*, Harry Potter’s Hogwarts, maybe Dresden Files’ Chicago and Making the Corps’ Parris Island.  Also, whereas most superhero comic books and movies are set mostly on modern Earth, quite a few successful superhero novels have experimented with historical settings (e.g. Amazing Adventures and Bitter Seeds are mostly about WWII and the buildup to WWII and the first few Wild Cards books cover the period from WWII to the present).

*Vastly more interesting than it sounds.

3. Three-dimensional characters are paramount.  Do your most important characters have combinations of traits we haven’t seen before?  Do your characters get opportunities to act differently than most other protagonists in their genre would act in the same circumstances?

4.  Who’s your target audience?  Generally, the core demographic for comic books (~16-30 year old men) is not a very reliable demographic for novel publishers.  If you’re really interested in writing something for that demographic, if at all possible I would recommend trying as hard as possible to appeal to older readers and/or women at the same time.  My crude overgeneralization there is that imagination tends to be more important in appealing to older readers because they’ve had more opportunities to read stories and get used to cliches.  (E.g. Eragon sold a lot of copies among young adults but I think most people that have read 10+ fantasy novels would frown upon a story that derivative).  As for ladies, I’m not really sure (and I’ve read too many of the hundreds of thousands of words that have already been written about “how do we get women to read superhero stories?” to think there are any easy answers there), but my crude overgeneralization is that it would probably help to include a genre besides action*.  For example, detective/mystery, romance, comedy, thriller/suspense, horror, zombie ninja romantic-horror, etc.

*Besides, superhero movies will almost certainly have more exciting action than a superhero novelist could conceivably write.  And a vastly bigger marketing budget.

5. Try a daring premise.  If you described your story in a few sentences, would prospective readers want to open it up?  Please give your query (and eventually your backcover) more to work with than just “Superhero X needs to defeat Supervillain Y.”  If your plot is a bit banal, I’d recommend thinking more about character traits and motivations (as noted above) and it might help to try working in an unusual background.  If I could cite my own unpublished work, even though doing so is pretentious*, I think one of the elements of The Taxman Must Die that several beta-reviewers have mentioned favorably is that the main character is an accountant utterly out of his depth when it comes to superheroics.

*Like that’s ever stopped me.

5.1.  Stories that are not daring are probably on the fast track to rejection.  I’ve been reading a few submissions a month for the past few years and I’m already a bit queasy about “Nondescript high school student(s) gets superpowers and must defeat a routine supervillain whose only apparent motivation is evilness and only life experience is being evil.”  I can only imagine that full-time editors that have been reading submissions for 10+ years would be even more jaded (and almost certainly less receptive to superhero stories than I am).  Indeed, when you submit to a novel publisher or literary agency, it is highly unlikely that any of the people evaluating your submission have actually published a superhero story before.*

Shyness: Even a hardened, tough as nails character might have difficulty putting their feelings into words. In real life, sometimes even a suave jock has trouble asking out a girl. This can be manifested through stuttering as well. In the character’s mind, the stakes might be considerably higher than simply taking out the bad guy. Sure, defending the city is important but not nearly as important as fulfilling his or her dream of getting the object of affection.

Holding hands: This helps connect the two people for the first time (usually). You are connected to someone and in a sense it helps you know the other person is always there. It can also be seen when teams do the hand circle and touch one another. It helps everyone feel connected. In romance, this is no different. However, you can add in running fingers over the other person’s hand. Try that in a team and see the looks you get.

Caresses: This is probably one of the more flagrant signs of affection although it can also be accidental. A good example is running fingers through someone’s hair. It is a very simple action but it gives the touch from the other person. Touching someone on the shoulder or arm is also an effective way to show it. Touching the leg though tends to be seen as negative. Why? Because usually there is only one reason for doing that – getting the other person into bed.

Looks: “Their eyes meet across the room, an instant chemistry between them.” This can be rewritten as looking at a person, looking down, then looking back up. It signifies to the character that this person is looking at him or her and no one else. This goes back to the old adage that eyes are the window to the soul. You can tell more about a person by looking at them in the eye than looking at them anywhere else. It gives a sort of vulnerability both to the person doing the looking and the one being looked at. Add extra points if the character looks away with a slight smile. A connection has been made.

The best thing to do is to write your signs of affection based upon what you could get away with in public. It keeps your writing clean and more importantly – it builds the suspense. Sure characters can romp around after the first meeting but building to that point makes the readers appreciate it more.

Danielle Kazemi enjoys having her characters fall in love almost as much as putting them in mortal danger. Check out her writing blog. 

1. Something thematically and/or symbolically appropriate.  For example, Captain America is probably more interesting than “Shield Throwing Man,” because the America and military angles matter more to his story than the details of his superpowers.   Alternately, Oracle can’t actually predict the future, but her name sort of makes sense because her main role is providing information and assistance.

2. An emotional impression.  Some characters have names that evoke the right emotions, but aren’t related to the characters’ powers. Some heroic examples include Wonder Woman and the Martian Manhunter, as opposed to villainous examples like Venom and Carnage.

3. Something in the character’s origin story.  For example, Green Lantern is named after the source of his powers (and his organization) and Batman is named after a bat even though his powers aren’t actually bat-related.  (Unless bats are master ninja scientist detectives.  That’d go a long way to explaining how the bats trapped in my attic have survived this long, actually).

4. The character’s goal.  This is more common in team names (e.g. the Avengers or any name with Guardians in it), but some names like The Punisher or The Question make it pretty clear what the characters want to accomplish.

5. The character’s personality and/or distinguishing traits, particularly mental ones.  For example, Rorschach is mentally unstable, unpredictable and a psychiatric case.  The Taxman Must Die has a mutant alligator named Agent Orange that is helpful and (probably) safe for humans.

6. The character’s actual name (e.g. Luke Cage rather than Power Man).  If the superhero doesn’t have a secret identity, I’d recommend considering this approach, especially if you have a lot of superheroes.  It makes it easier for readers to remember everybody’s name and who’s who.  (If you’re not sure whether your readers can follow which character has which secret identity, try quizzing your beta readers after a few chapters).  Alternately, it might help to introduce the code-names or regular names gradually.  For example, X-Men: First Class held off on the code-names until about halfway through the movie.

7. The character’s superpowers (e.g. the Human Torch and Paste Pot Pete*). Generally, I would recommend this only as a last resort because it’s probably the most cliche of these and because it suggests that the character’s superpowers are the most notable thing about him.   If they really are the most important thing about him, I’d recommend going back to the drawing board and thinking about things like personality, goals/motivations, theme, etc.

*Paste Pot Pete has since been renamed, and not to free it up for somebody else.