This is our inaugural guest post.  Thanks, Marissa!  If you’d like to provide writing advice, please send me a sample post of up to 500 words at superheronation-at-gmail-dot-com.  — B. Mac

Just recently, I tripped over a very interesting fact of writing: “If your character cries, your reader doesn’t have to.”

Think about it. Which would you rather read: A character bawling her eyes out? Or a character shivering, her eyes squeezed shut and her breathing labored, trying to deal with grief without bursting into tears?

This is probably a painfully obvious statement, but usually, crying is meant to convey sadness. Grief. Loss. That’s not it’s only purpose, however. Most of the time, the author brings their character to tears to garner some sort of reader-character sympathy. The reader sees that Character A is so sad that they’re crying, and so the reader feels sad as well.

Look at movies, though. The saddest parts are never when the character is sitting there bawling, are they? I bet you can’t name one time when the memorably poignant moment is when the character is doing nothing but crying. That’s just it: Crying loses the reader’s sympathy.

Having a character cry is usually the cheap way out. There are so many thoughts, feelings, actions associated with grief that plopping your character into the sobbing stereotype would cheat both the character and the reader. If you want your reader to feel something too, I’d recommend either removing the crying altogether and focusing on other symptoms of sadness, or easing up to the crying stage and not giving it much focus.

Now think about this: How does your character respond to sadness, grief, or loss? It depends on their personality, so it’s really up to you as the author to figure it out. Do they shiver for a while, until it all builds up, then explosively punch an inanimate object? Do they try to take deep breaths, calm themself down? Etc. Just don’t go straight from zero to sobbing. (After all, you wouldn’t have an angry character suddenly punch someone in the face without showing his anger building up, right?

The Emotional Thesaurus does a great job listing symptoms of sadness to help you start small and gradually escalate.

You don’t have hundreds of pages to persuade an agent or a publisher that your work is worth publishing.  More like five.  Since agents and publisher’s assistants and editors receive hundreds of proposals every week, time is not on your side.  Your story has to be interesting immediately.  If it feels like the story’s going nowhere, the reader will toss your manuscript and move on to the next.

To help you write sharper and more compelling openings, I’m starting a writing contest that will end on July 31.  Both novelists and comic book writers can participate as many times as they’d like.  If you’re interested, please post the following below…

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Next week, I’m off to a wedding.  I’m very excited, but I’ll be away from my computer for 4-5 days.  Over that time, I’d like to run some articles written by our guests here.  If you have any writing advice you’d like to share, please write up a sample post up to 500 words and send it to me at superheronation-at-gmail-dot-com.   Thanks for your help.

After the first issue, comic books often include a page-long recap so that new readers can figure out what’s going on and who’s who.  Here are a few tips.

1.  Make your recap stylish and inviting. It needs to convince a prospective reader that this series is worth his time.  Ideally, it will interest him so much that he goes back to look for the old issues he missed.  The most effective recaps tend to be funny.  Failing that, at least make it easy to follow and exciting.  If it feels like the backstory is hard to follow, readers are probably going to put the book down.

2.  You can make the recap feel fresher by doing something that fits into your story. For example, most of the characters in Superhero Nation work for the Human Resources department of a top-secret agency.  So we do our recaps as personnel files and mission debriefings written by the head of Human Resources, who is a bit crazy.

For example, the main character’s “file” might contain blurbs like these.

Superpowers? None known.  We’ve ruled out intelligence and usefulness.

Main contributions to team? Could be used as a battering ram.

That’ll help remind readers that he’s the guy without superpowers and that his co-workers regard him as useless. Just as importantly, we want to show to prospective readers that this series is witty and comical.

3.  Make us feel the appropriate emotions. If your series is a horror, the blurb should feel eerie and chilling.  If your writing is supposed to be remotely funny, make us laugh.  If it’s a romance, focus on why we should care about the characters and their relationships. Etc.

1. What their eyes look like. Eyes are almost never as interesting to the reader as they are to the author.  Additionally, describing what the eyes look like suggests a level of closeness that often implies romantic intimacy.  Finally, eye-color comes up so rarely in real life that it’s weird to mention it in fiction.  Here’s a mental exercise:  take yourself, your mom, your dad, and your significant other.  How many of their eye-colors can you name with certainty?  If eye-colors are such a minor detail to you that you can’t name your mom’s eye-color, what are the odds are that your readers will care about your protagonist’s eyes?  Very, very slim.

2. What they did when they woke up. It is almost impossible to write an interesting morning routine.  If your book starts with a character waking up, the manuscript is probably dead on arrival.  Just cut to the part where they do something interesting.

3. Extra names. In most cases, I’d recommend a first name or a last name, but try to avoid switching between the two.  Middle names are almost always a waste of time.  (In contrast, secret identities are usually acceptable because they are plot-important and because readers can easily understand why the character is sometimes called Superman even though his name is Clark).

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1.  Focus on details that develop a character. For example, it’s not so interesting that your hero’s bedroom has a dresser. What can the dresser tell us about the character? If he’s such a neat-freak that he even sorts and folds his underwear, that helps build his personality.

2.  Use sensory details and props to develop a mood. For example, let’s say you’re describing a hospital.  Is it clean and professional like the Mayo Clinic?  Or is it seedy and dangerous like a Tijuana chopshop?  Is it primal and raw like a shaman’s hut?  What do the patients look and smell like?  What sort of medical implements are on hand?  How do the staff and receptionists behave?  What does the place smell like?  Are there any noticeable sounds?  What are the bathrooms like?  Etc.

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Which female characters do you think are the most awful? Which are the most excellent? What separates the two? Marissa and I really appreciate your feedback; Marissa’s writing an article for us about how to do female characters well. (You can see our article on male characters here).

Many novels, particularly fantasies, spend a lot of time on traveling scenes.  Here are some suggestions to keep the journeys smooth and interesting.

1. Don’t give the journey more length than the goal merits. If the characters take a 20-page trip through the wilderness to find something minor, readers will probably feel annoyed.  In contrast, a journey that is absolutely critical to the plot might span hundreds of pages.  For example, if the book is about settlers on the Oregon Trail, then almost all of the book is probably going to be in transit.

2. Make the journey urgent. For example, the characters are running out of time and/or they are in danger.  Urgent journeys are usually more interesting.  Urgent journeys also go farther to develop how impressive the characters are.  Anyone can get around the world, but doing it in 80 days in 1872 is pretty remarkable.

3.  Use the trek as an opportunity for character development. A strong journey usually requires chemistry between the characters.  Chemistry is hard to pin down, but it generally entails a bit of conflict and style.

4.  Show us some new scenery. In a fantasy, this is a great opportunity to use your imagination.  Why should travelers should stay away from the Mangled Forest?

5.  Stay away from redundancy.   For example, if the characters defend themselves from bears one page, it would be pretty boring if they had to fight off wolves or wild zebras or rabid gnomes or whatever a few pages later.   Also, don’t spend too much time building the landscapes. Show us just enough to build a mood.

6.  A journey depends on effective use of low-intensity pacing. Unlike, say, a car chase, a journey is going to consist of scenes that are mostly unintense.  There may be brief intervals of intense action (probably combat), but those will get redundant fairly quickly.  In general, suspense and/or spookiness usually go farther than a battle royale rumble through the jungle.

7.  If at all possible, just cut out the description of the journey by having the narrator tell us that the characters made it. If you can do that without eviscerating the plot, chances are that the journey isn’t important enough to draw out.  Readers will really thank you for glossing over minor, boring details.  (For example, see our review of Empire of Ivory).

When you do a proposal, publishers may ask you for a comparable works section.  Your goal is to come up with similar works that have sold well, so that the publisher can visualize why your book will sell well.  Here are some tips to help you pick references that will go farther in the publisher’s office.

1.  If at all possible, focus on bestsellers. Publishers care much more about finding the next Harry Potter or Spiderman than the next John Banks. In general, publishers will only pick up a project if they think it will sell well, and the most persuasive evidence is that similar works have sold very well.

2.  Please use titles that have sold well recently. Contemporary references are usually more convincing because they suggest where the market is now.  Additionally, a twenty-something publisher’s assistant is more likely to be familiar with a recent title.

3.  Please pick comparable works that have a similar target audience to yours. If the audience isn’t similar, the work probably isn’t all that comparable to yours.

4.  Make sure that the works are well-tailored to the publisher. In particular, I’d recommend focusing on works that have a style similar to what they’re already publishing.  Also, if at all possible, focus on works that are in the same medium (novels, comic books, manga, nonfiction, etc). In particular, I recommend staying away from TV shows and movies because they have a very different business model than novels and comic books do.

5.  Don’t pick a work unless you’re certain you understand why it was successful. For example, don’t try to sell an action-packed book about an inordinately powerful superhero by claiming that “it worked for Dr. Manhattan in The Watchmen.”  That is a horrible misreading of the series.  Over the course of twelve issues, Dr. Manhattan has two fight scenes that span a total of perhaps four pages.  If you cite works you aren’t really familiar with, you might come off looking like an idiot.

5.1. Don’t cite a work unless you’ve read it.  

5.2. Read successful works that are similar to yours.  

6. If your work has any plot elements that are hard to market, make sure you find some bestsellers that have handled similar concepts. For example, if you’re dead-set on selling a book about a retarded protagonist, explain why the success of a book like Flowers for Algernon (or something more recent) suggests that your book will be successful.

Evil Editor reviewed my query letter for Don’t Forget the Death Ray!, a guidebook about how to write superhero stories. Although he and his readers mostly panned it, I found their comments very helpful and informative. It’s really important for prospective writers to have thick skin, so I’d like you to know what kind of feedback I’m getting.

• “You may not have meant it this way, but you managed to insult professional writers while talking down to teens.”
• “This is a bad query letter… Now you show a great facility with language in this letter. Obviously your writing ability is there; but you need to consider the subtext of what you are saying just a teensy bit when you read what you wrote.”

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I’d only delve as deeply into science as much as the story and audience warrant. For example, if a villain shrinks the hero, 99% of readers don’t care that a shrunken human body couldn’t function because human cells are designed to function at a particular size. Unless you’re deliberately targeting a technically savvy audience (such as in hard sci-fi), your readers probably don’t care much about surface-to-volume ratios and the like.  Similarly, most readers don’t need elaborate explanations for superpowers. You don’t need to explain where Spiderman keeps all that webbing.

However, if you’d like go off on a tangent to satisfy the few readers that do care about these elements, I’d recommend trying to make it interest readers that don’t care so much. For example, one recurring implausibility with the Hulk is that the character’s pants stay on even though his size fluctuates so much. Real pants would burst off if you got twice as big, right? The latest Hulk movie addressed that rather hilariously by showing the character buying elastic maternity pants in Guatemala. (“¿Tienes más stretchy?”) That’s intuitive, simple and clever. In contrast, if the movie had made up scientific mumbo-jumbo like Pym particles or whatever, it probably would have confused or annoyed many viewers.

Finally, I would recommend taking with a grain of salt any reviewer concern that you expect would be limited to a tiny, tiny fraction of the potential readership.  In particular, my rule of thumb is that if you need college-level coursework to know that something is implausible, it won’t probably won’t create a major problem for most readers (unless you’re writing something like hard sci-fi). You can still address the concern if you’d like to–maybe you feel that addressing a scientific implausibility will make the story feel more believable–but don’t feel like you have to. Fiction doesn’t have to be realistic.

Professional communication tip: When you have a philosophical difference with a review (for example, if the reviewer cares a lot more about scientific plausibility than you do), I think it really helps to be polite. Coldly dismissing someone’s writing style is not a great way to make friends or win new reviewers. One possible approach would be something like “Thanks for your advice. I know this story may not be 100% scientifically plausible, but I think that most of my readers will be okay with that.” For one example of dealing with different artistic styles, I think I responded pretty courteously to a Marvel artist that was concerned the coloring on a mutant alligator protagonist wasn’t realistic enough.

Many, perhaps most, real life jobs have a fairly narrow and specialized focus. For example, most people of a company’s employees work for a particular department and newspaper reports usually focus on stories related to their section of the paper. In general, I’d recommend giving your heroes jobs that are more flexible because it gives more opportunity to entangle the character in the plot and add new developments.

Here are some aspects that can make a job more flexible and plot-friendly.

1. Get the character out of his office. Offices are mostly bland, forgettable, comfortable and safe. As far as readers and interesting stories are concerned, they are Kryptonite. I’d recommend giving your character a lot of work outside the office because the real world is harder to predict and gives you more opportunities to work in new scenes, danger, seedy characters, etc.

2. Please avoid making the character the boss. Usually, the boss has the least interesting job in the building. Privates and flunkies usually have more at stake than a general or a business magnate does. In addition, low-level work is generally more interesting. I’d much rather read about a platoon patrolling hostile streets or a corporate flack trying to steal corporate secrets than about the men that decided to send the patrols or steal the secrets.

3. As much as possible, I’d recommend having the hero spend his time working in situations that are high stakes and/or heavy on conflict. E.g. if the character is the CEO, it’d probably be easier to create interesting situations if most of his problems can’t be resolved just by telling people what to do (like unreliable employees, dissension in the ranks, embezzlement, corporate sabotage, labor unrest, whatever). If the relationships within a company are usually tidy and well-controlled, it might help to have the characters interact with outsiders. For example, if a police officer has to convince a reluctant witness to testify, that’s a better opportunity to show how impressive he is. In contrast, if the cop could just order the witness to testify because it’s the law, it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting or impressive. (Technically, a cop probably could order a witness to testify, but persuasion may be necessary (e.g. if the case is dangerous, the witness is wary of police, the witness has a good relationship with the defendant or a bad one with the victim, and/or would be creating major problems for himself by admitting that he was there).

4. I’d recommend making the hero accountable to a tough boss. Characters like JJ Jameson tend to add a lot more dramatic potential than friendly bosses like Perry White. They create more of an obstacle for the heroes and usually make the heroes seem more likable.

When you’re making a pitch to publishers (or explaining your story to prospective readers), I’d strongly recommend focusing on crucial details like major personality traits, unusual decisions, major goals/motivations, and anything else which has a major effect on the plot. In contrast, these demographic details tend to be irrelevant and forgettable: 

• Hair color
• Eye color
• Height
• Weight
• Age, unless perhaps it creates an important contrast with other characters or is critical to understanding the plot. For example, if I were doing a synopsis of Scott Pilgrim, I’d probably mention that the main character is a 23 year old trying to get over a crushing breakup by dating a high school student.
• What the character wears, unless it does an exceptional job of developing the character and/or establishing interesting personality traits. Note: Being rich or poor is neither a personality trait nor inherently interesting.
• Nationalities. Okay, this could be useful, particularly to point out an unexpected setting, but generally I wouldn’t recommend mentioning this unless it’s hard to understand the plot without knowing who’s Canadian and who’s Russian.  (Rule of thumb: If you’re listing nationalities mainly so that we know how diverse your cast is, it probably doesn’t matter).
• Birthplace–unless, say, we need to know that a character is from another town, country or planet.
• Educational background–unless it is relevant to the plot and/or suggests an important trait or skill.  (For non-students, the character’s job usually covers this better, however).
• Blood type, horoscopes, or birthday (Japanese publishers may care; Western ones definitely do not).

However, some demographic information could be relevant because it affects the book’s audience appeal and how the book will be marketed.

• Race–if the protagonist’s race is critical to understanding the plot and/or audience appeal.
• Gender–usually relevant (on at least the grounds of audience appeal) but usually it’s unnecessary to explicitly tell us who’s a lady and who’s a guy. You can cover that with gendered pronouns (e.g. he vs. she).
• Anything else that is particularly important to the plot.  Some examples may include jobs, species (for nonhuman characters), major illnesses, mental disorders, etc.
• Anything that affects major character decisions or goals.  For example, if the character’s main goal is to get over some past trauma, it would probably be worthwhile to briefly discuss the trauma.

Obviously, these are just guidelines.  If the character’s height or weight or eye color are particularly important to the plot and/or provide a major obstacle, then mention them. However, in most cases, they are not.

…

Many beginning authors start out by doing lists of their characters’ demographic traits.  If that information is for your eyes only, I don’t think it’s an issue.  However, when you’re presenting your book to professionals, I would recommend a smoother approach that spends less time on extraneous details and more time on why your characters matter to the plot.   A particular detail might be relevant for some characters but not all characters.  For example, if one of your characters is an alien or elf, it’d probably be worthwhile to mention that (assuming it’s plot-relevant), but you probably don’t need to explicitly tell us which characters are humans because we can infer/assume that on our own.

Good luck!

Here are some of the things that can make a character likable.

• A distinct personality, even if it’s sinister or abrasive. This is one of the reasons that Sylar (a serial killer) and Dr. House (a curmudgeonly asshat) are fan favorites.
• Relationships. These are particularly important if the character is unrelatable.  If the character has a thought process that is really unusual to readers, we’ll probably get to know him through how he interacts with other people.  If an unusual character isn’t interacting with other people, readers probably won’t find him very interesting because they don’t know enough about him.
• Competence. This is especially important for villains.  Readers usually love the villains that scare them, and competent villains are scary.   See Hannibal Lecter and Darth Vader.
• Relatability. For example, in young adult fiction, the hero is usually a few years older than the readers (young enough to be relatable but old enough to be impressive).  Having an everyday job (or having once had an everyday job) can also help here.
• Style. Most stylish characters are competent, a bit clever and witty.
• A sense of humor. Obviously, not every story is a comedy, but even a bit of humor can make a character more likable.   For example, Han Solo only got a few lines like “we’re all fine here now, thank you,” but they were enough to establish his personality.
• Flaws. Often, the flaws make a character more likable than his assets do.  Flaws are more unique and they tend to stand out more.  There are thousands of brave heroes, but what people remember about Captain Kirk and James Bond is that they’re recklessly brave.
• Limit the complaining! Brooding, moping, crying and angst usually make the character sound whiny.  It’s really hard to like a character that whines, no matter how seriously awful his life is.
• Proactivity. This is what distinguishes Sylar (a character dealing with a seriously hard life) from someone that complains about how hard his life is.  Readers would much rather see a character try to solve his problems than talk/complain about them.  This is one of the (many) reasons that Han and Luke are more likable than C3P0.
• Good intentions for the villains. This is a useful way to add depth to the antagonists.
• Variety. This is particularly important for the hero.  Give him opportunities to try different solutions and improvise.
• Stark characterization. Please don’t make your characters “kind of an ass” or “sort of brave” or whatever.  Go big!  It’ll be more distinctive and interesting than a hero that just sort of does whatever is most convenient for the plot.  Also, it will raise the stakes and make the conflicts sharper.
• Growth. Stagnant heroes are usually a bit boring.  If the hero’s quest doesn’t change him in some way, what’s the point?
• Vulnerable. This is particularly important for the hero.  Ideally, he’s a bit less powerful than the villain and might actually lose.   That will force him to be intelligent and will leave readers on the edge of their seats.
• Lone superheroes often benefit from interesting alternate identities. The alternate identity helps establish what’s at stake and makes the character feel real by giving him something to do besides beating people up.  Alter-egos are more challenging for superhero teams because there’s less time available for each character.
• Context/justification. Some traits that might otherwise raise a lot of eyebrows might be forgivable or even endearing in the right context (e.g. extreme paranoia and being hyper-violent might be an issue in a police story but probably not in a zombie apocalypse or a DC fundraiser).

There are many more, I’m sure.  What am I missing?

Hello. This is an early draft of my query letter for Don’t Forget the Death Ray!, a book about how to write superhero stories.
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Generic niceness is a dangerous trait to give a character–particularly the protagonist. First, it’s probably not very interesting if the character is always agreeable and only does things that the audience is meant to sympathize with. That reduces the potential for conflict.  In practice, a character that’s 100% nice is usually boring and/or a Mary Sue.  Here are some traits that suggest that the character may have issues with generic niceness.

• Polite
• Compassionate
• Agreeable
• Kind
• Personable
• Friendly
• Social
• Helpful
• Pleasant
• Nice, of course.
• A complete lack of flaws besides ones that nobody would hold against him (e.g. “he tries too hard,” unless that leads him to make decisions that most readers will disagree with)

If your protagonist has traits like these, I’d recommend taking them in a direction that they might create some problems for the characters.  For example, perhaps the character is so social that he tries to negotiate even when the audience knows that action is necessary.  A character that is too polite might be stiff or reluctant to speak her mind. A character that is too helpful might try to help even when it’s unwise for her to do so.  Alternately, perhaps the character’s traits lead him into conflict with non-antagonists*.  For example, being agreeable and trusting is generally desirable, but if you were a prison guard, your coworkers would be on your case all the time.

*I think non-antagonists would probably work better here because an antagonist conflicting with a hero for being too nice would probably be one-dimensionally unsympathetic.  A conflict with a relatively sympathetic character would probably develop the protagonist more and be more emotionally interesting.  For further details here, please see #5 in How to Fix Mary Sues.

You deserve to lose if…

1. …you have access to every Russian and American ICBM and still cannot exterminate the human race.

2. …you make a human into a cyborg and then show him where to find his control chip. You deserve to have him tear out the control chip and kill you.

3.  …you make a cyborg with a control chip, and the control chip does not prevent him from ripping out the control chip.  What was the control chip doing?

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Gotham Central was a police procedural series that ran for about 40 issues.  It focused on an ensemble of homicide detectives in Gotham City.

What Worked

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Figure out what your story’s central question is.  For example, Spiderman’s central question is “can a regular teen be a superhero without giving up the people and values that matter to him?” The central question of the Superhero Nation comic book is “what sort of changes would a regular accountant have to make to survive as a superhero?”

Once you know what the central question is, it’s easier to decide which ideas are relevant. Ideally, everything– the villain’s plot, the side-characters, the side-plots– somehow relate to the central question. For example, pretty much everything Spiderman does endangers his family and makes it really hard to enjoy a normal life. The plot frequently puts him in morally difficult situations to test his values. Does he kill the man that killed Uncle Ben? Does he save Mary Jane or a bus full of kids?

It’s easy to get discouraged because you have a lot of ideas that don’t seem relevant. However, please consider whether they could be relevant. For example, let’s say you have a cool idea for a romantic sideplot. Make it relevant to the central question. For example, the Spiderman movies made Mary Jane relevant by using her to create moral dilemmas. Is it possible for him to keep seeing Mary Jane and work as Spiderman? Should he tell her? How can he keep her safe?

I’d also recommend making sure that the villain’s plot is relevant to the central question. In the first Spiderman movie, the climactic battle between the Green Goblin and Spiderman shows that Spiderman can be a superhero without compromising his values. Spiderman manages to beat the Goblin without killing him. The Goblin dies only because of his flawed morals. (He tries to kill Spiderman and ends up offing himself instead).

1.  Please don’t use multiple exclamation points or question marks. It’s far less likely to suggest that the character is really surprised than that the author is really inexperienced.  It’s cheesy.

• REJECTION:  “I hate you, Martha!!!!”
• REJECTION: “How could you do that to me??”

2. I recommend against giving the narrator exclamation points. “John turned around.  Then a ninja burst through the ceiling!”

3. Smiley faces are generally a poor choice in professional communication. If your novel manuscript, query or proposal use any kind of emoticon, I’m guessing (X_X).

4. Please use exclamation points sparingly. Strings of exclamations are generally disorientating and hard to process. “I’m surly! You’re not listening to me! That is unacceptable! I’m getting even surlier!”   If you use exclamations too often, they will become diluted and lose their zing.

5. Please be REALLY careful about capitalizing sentences for emphasis. “AND NOW YOU DIE, MR. BOND!”  I wouldn’t even consider doing it more than once or twice per novel.  And even that might be unnecessarily risky.

Magical superheroes are rare and haven’t sold very well since the Silver Age of comics (late 1950s and 60s). Here are some tips to help you write a magical superhero story that a publisher might take seriously.

1. Do it as a novel, not a comic book. Comic books depend on male readers aged 13-25. The problem is that the people that are most receptive to magical superheroes (kids and women) generally do not buy comic books.  This is one reason that magical superheroes are very, very hard to publish as a comic book. The magical superhero stories that tend to sell even remotely well tend to be TV shows (Sailor Moon or Jake Long) or novels (Dresden Files).

2. If you are absolutely dead-set on a comic book, I recommend using Japanese-style art. American teens are somewhat more tolerant of magic in anime stories like Sailor Moon than they are of American-style stories like Dr. Strange or Zantanna.

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I’ve been getting a few questions like this, so I think it might be worthwhile to offer some untrained advice. For the love of God, please do not use this in lieu of professional advice from a medical professional.

Hello, B. Mac. I suffer from [mental condition X.] How will that affect my writing career?

1. Get yourself diagnosed and treated by a professional… self-diagnosed conditions are not credible. If you really believed that you had something, you’d be an idiot not to have it looked at. If you tell a coworker that you have a self-diagnosed condition, you’re pretty much admitting that you’re idiotic or dishonest. (If money is an issue, the good news is that professionals tend to be pretty accommodating of financial need).

2. Your medical history (including psychiatric conditions) should be provided only on a need-to-know basis. Telling your boss or coworkers more than they need to know will create barriers between them and you, particularly if they don’t know you very well. It could also creep them out.

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• Query Shark: Condensing a 300 page novel into an intriguing page is difficult, but this site provides excellent advice about how to write queries effectively.
• Pub Rants.  The author of this site is friendly and patient.  That’s a refreshing change of pace for the publishing industry.
• Evil Editor.  This is maybe a bit more humorous than helpful, but it’s quite entertaining.  Written by the author of Why You Don’t Get Published.

Patricia Chui did an article for Salon about her experience reading unsolicited manuscripts.  Here are some choice excerpts.

To our credit, we readers did give every single submission, no matter how ludicrous, a fair and honest appraisal. During my reign as slush handler, a few projects garnered further consideration from our editors; one was even published. [emphasis mine] …

The slush pile [is] a teeming smorgasbord of mediocrity sprinkled with healthy doses of the awful and the insane. Fair or not, there’s a kind of self-selection process that governs the pile, the perception being that good writers are the ones who manage to stay off of it in the first place. The job of our readers was to sift through the pile and find the exceptions to the rule. It was a Sisyphean task at best. Every day, boxes of self-help, pet-inspired wisdom and near-death experiences would cycle through my office to be read and rejected in what seemed a never-ending stream of futility. Being on the slush pile was the literary equivalent of being on death row…

It was the phone calls that were the bane of my existence. Most of those who called were probably hardworking folks who showed courage just by picking up the phone. By God, I hated them…

The callers who irked me most were those who hadn’t done their homework and were using me as some sort of research tool. They asked me how to publish a book, how to get an agent, what kinds of books we published. One gentleman inquired, “When you publish my book, how much will you pay me?*” Another wanted to know, “How many copies of a book do you usually print?**” (When I said it depended, he countered, “So, what then? Millions?”) I was astonished at these questions; I couldn’t imagine dialing the general number at Miramax and asking how to make a movie. There’s a place you can find this information, people. It’s called a bookstore. Look into it.

*– It depends, but Tobias Buckell found that the typical first-novel earns a cash advance of around $4000. Around $5500 if you have an agent.

**-Again it depends, but most novels get an initial print-run of a few thousand copies.

I’ve read the first thirty issues or so of Invincible.  A lot of it is awesome and a lot of it is an absolute trainwreck.  Here’s what I think went wrong.  (I’ve detailed its positives here).

Especially by issue 20, the story felt like it had ADD. The story flits around a lot; a character might be introduced for a few pages in issue 15 and he might make his next appearance a few issues later and actually matter a few issues after that.  This storytelling style is often effective, but it can get grating.  Let me demonstrate that by doing this review as a random series of paragraphs.  Take that, transitions!

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1. Shrinking. First, this is a horribly cliche type of one-off story.  Second, it is pretty much impossible to do anything fresh with it. The characters get shrunk, deal with some tiny obstacles (usually including a cat or some other suddenly dangerous animal), and then get their size back. What else could you do with it?

How can I do it right? Have the character stays shrunken for longer than just an issue.  It’ll push you to develop the formula in a fresh direction, and hopefully one more fertile than “and then they discover a microscopic civilization!” E.g. it seems to work fairly effectively in Ant-Man, where the character spends most of his time full-sized.

2. Body-swapping. One character switches bodies with another, usually involuntarily.  The drama usually comes from the characters having to survive despite having different powers or different roles than they’re used to.

How can I do it right? This isn’t necessarily bad, but it has been done extensively.  It tends to work best if the characters have to keep their identities secret.  If Jim and Luke can just tell everyone that their bodies have been swapped, it’s not really an interesting obstacle.  But if Jim and Luke can’t talk about magic or the supernatural hijinks they’re involved in, then body-swapping makes it that much harder for them to maintain the masquerade.  Give them difficult situations they can’t duck.  For example, “Luke” suddenly has a piano concert and “Jim” is now the starting defensive tackle.  The only way for them to protect the secret is to learn (or feign competence in) something totally new.  Good luck!

3. Age change. The villain or an accident causes a character to get drastically younger or older (usually younger).  This is even worse than shrinking because a hero turned into a baby is no longer a character so much as a prop.  Also, these episodes/issues tend to be overwhelmingly cute.  Ick.

How can I do it right? I’d recommend trying it like Big or Thirteen Going on Thirty or Seventeen Again. The story follows the character as he enters another stage of life. How does he handle his new predicament?  That’s an interesting situation.  In contrast, babies can’t do anything but cry.

4. World War II time travel. Time travel is not a problem in series that have been built around it, but “let’s do an issue set in World War II!” is shoot-me-in-the-face bad.  The villains are one-dimensional, there’s no chance the writers will let the heroes lose and it’s cliche.

How can I do it right? Realistically, you can’t and I wouldn’t recommend it.  However, if you’re dead-set on trying anyway, maybe try something more creative than sending the villain back in time to help the Nazis.  One alternative would be having the heroes try to stop a well-intentioned “antagonist”–say, somebody who lost his family in the Nazi death camps–from going back in time to kill Hitler because killing Hitler might lead to Germany winning the war with a competent leader.  This setup is stronger because the villain is more morally complex and because sneaking in to guard a hostile target is inherently more dramatic and challenging than an all-out assault.  Also, the outcome is less guaranteed/predictable, particularly if the story is set towards the end of the war.  Perhaps the story ends with the heroes and assassin agreeing to stage Hitler’s murder as a suicide, but only when the Allies’ victory is guaranteed.

5.  Underwater adventures, particularly with Atlantis. It’s very hard to do an interesting aquatic tangent.  Have you ever heard anyone wish that Aquaman or Namor would show up?  Me neither.

How can I do it right? I think your best bet is to set most of the story in a sealab or a sealed city under the waters.  The less time the characters spend in submarines or swimming, the better.   Also, this kind of story might work better as a series focus than as a tangent.  It’s not that aquatic stories necessarily suck (please see Finding Nemo or The Little Mermaid), just that an aquatic setting is usually a waste of time for land-bound heroes. Additionally, few land-bound heroes have powers well-suited to interesting underwater fight scenes, so it might help to have the climactic battle in a sealed environment like a domed city or in a coastal city above the water.

6.  Saving helpless women. (Hat-tip to commenter Heather).

How can I do it right?  At the very least, if she’s going to get herself kidnapped or otherwise endangered, maybe it’s because of something she did besides dating the hero?  For example, in Iron Man, Pepper Potts endangered herself by sneaking into the villain’s office to steal his computer files.  Sometimes Lois Lane is a competent investigative journalist.  Give your characters a chance to be something besides just The Screaming Girlfriend.  Maybe even you have some female characters that aren’t love interests!  (A revolutionary concept, I know).

UPDATE: If you’re interested in plots that don’t need to die, I think this list of stock plots might help.

What do you think?  Which comic books or graphic novels should a comic book writer be familiar with and why?

Chris Garrett has some intuitive ideas about how to turn readers into intense fans that will spread your message and convince other people to check out your material.  I agree that this is a very important goal, but his suggestions are very skeletal.

1. Provide value and delight your audience.
2. All of your posts and interactions with readers should be professional.
3. Be genuine, approachable and friendly.
4. Let your readers know that you appreciate and value them.

Except for #1 (which is too vague to be useful), these focus more on how to treat your fans than how to create content for them.  So how do we create content that will attract and build enthusiastic fans?  Here are some ideas.

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1.  Make it clear who’s narrating which chapter. The biggest problem with multiple narrators is that it’s hard to keep track of who is narrating a given chapter.  One way you can fix this problem is by placing the character’s name below the chapter heading.  Or you can use blatant demographic cues.  (For example, someone that starts a chapter by saying “Damn, I hate high-heels!” is probably not a male).  Some publishers even sign off on a tiny picture of the character below the chapter heading.  Do whatever it takes.

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Your hero should be accountable for his actions.  If his actions don’t have consequences for him, the plot will be much less satisfying.

Guardian angels are characters that remove accountability and make the hero’s actions meaningless.  For example, Heroes’ Claire had at least three guardian angels (Noah, Peter, Nathan and possibly her mother).  That’s really undramatic.  By giving your character guardian angels, you remove opportunities for them to deal with the repercussions of their decisions.  That usually makes them boring and less impressive. For example, when the feds come to lock the mutants up, Nathan has Claire removed from the wanted list.  Repeatedly.  If Claire is meant to seem like an interesting, proactive hero rather than a helpless damsel in distress, it would be much more compelling if she solved her own problems.

Another problem with guardian angels is that they tend to sideline the hero.  Children protagonists are particularly vulnerable to this. If the parent swoops in to solve the kid’s problems, why are we reading about the kid?  No one wants to read a parentis ex machina, especially young readers.

When a protagonist requires assistance, here are some suggestions to make it more dramatic than just having another character solve his problems:
1. I recommend making sure that the help creates some sort of problem or price that needs to be paid back later. For example, perhaps the helper expects some sort of payback and/or opens up another major problem. For example, in Breaking Bad, the main character (spoiler) allies with one drug lord to protect him from the drug cartel that previously employed the main character. The relationship with the new drug lord creates its own set of problems, and the new drug lord is not able (or willing) to protect everyone the main character cares about from the cartel.

2. I’d recommend keeping the assistance as limited as possible. For example, in The Matrix, the first scene between Neo and Morpheus is a lot more interesting because Morpheus isn’t there to personally escort Neo to safety. He’s just talking to Neo over the phone, which makes Neo’s actions in the scene a lot more interesting than if Morpheus did all the work himself. Please don’t let your main character(s) get sidelined.

3.I’d recommend putting the helper at serious risk.I think this is helpful because it will make the assistance more high-stakes, whereas someone who can save the main character by flipping a switch will probably not create an interesting scene.

4. I’d recommend murkying the waters — altruism is not your friend here. If Character A saves Character B from a major problem, it’s easier to build upon that moving forward if A acted out of self-interest and/or any other motive which suggests that it wasn’t just a free favor. For example, a self-interested character might expect Character B to help in problems of his own, involve Character B in a new conflict, or have Character B do something he might not otherwise want to). Alternately, Character A might be helping Character B because B is useful to him now but there may come a time when A and B conflict or when A could benefit by throwing B under a bus. For example, a criminal might help a detective put away a rival criminal, and later use the detective’s trust to feed the police misleading information in a case against someone the criminal wants to protect. (Alternately, in Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lecter was a convicted serial killer that cooperated with police to find another serial killer in exchange for being transferred to a less secure facility, which allowed him to escape).