This list of words used to define and describe people will help you design characters for novels and other stories.

Continue Reading »

Here are a few tips to help you write better origin stories for characters in superhero novels and comic books.

Continue Reading »

When fantasy novelists begin a novel with a world-map, that scares me. It is too tempting then to begin the book with a lengthy list of the places in your world, such as the Plains of Woe or Agraria or the kingdom of Lucinel or the Mountains of Rockiness or wherever. Unfortunately, readers don’t really know much (if anything) about these locations and they aren’t very engaging. As a novelist, you have at most three sentences to make us want to keep reading and Lucinel is a word that means literally nothing to us.

When readers pick up a fantasy book, they do not want an atlas. They want a story. Places do matter, but they are most assuredly not the meat of your story. Instead of telling us Lucinel is west of the Plains of the Hobgoblins, tell us about a Lucinel resident who will interest us. “It was only slightly before he saw the elf’s face explode that the reporter had begun to regret signing up with The Lucinel Muckraker.” This immediately immerses us in a story and gets us asking questions. Who’s the elf and why did his face explode? Who’s the journalist? What’s wrong with the Muckraker?

By contrast, introducing a slew of locations raises no questions except for “why should I care about this location?” If readers have to ask themselves why they should care about your writing, they’re probably imminently about to stop reading. Don’t let this happen to you!

This brief article will help you design a premise for a novel or blog that sells better.

Continue Reading »

This article will help you write an opening for your book that develops the characters, plot and world.

Continue Reading »

This article will help you organize the plotline of your story or novel.

Continue Reading »

that John Quincy Adams kept a pet alligator in the White House?

I highly recommend Selling the General, a wacky (and free!) short story about a publicist that works for a genocidal dictator. Its characters are strange enough to be funny but normal enough that you can relate to them on some level.

STG is well-written and have I mentioned that it’s free?

Seth Godin had an interesting, brief post on organization. He finds that alphabetical order is not the best way to organize most things– he argues that relevance is a better measure of organization than arbitrary letter rankings.

I think that applies to sites as well. Most blogging platforms organize posts chronologically by default, but that’s a terrible way to organize information. If someone leaves and later returns, it will be virtually impossible for them to pick up where they left off. If you wanted to send an article you read yesterday to a friend, your only hope is to search through all the posts again. The only strength of chronological organization is that it’s relatively easy to tell when there’s an update.

Avinash at Occam’s Razor has a better approach: a site-map. He splits his articles into a few rational categories and then orders articles within those categories chronologically. That’s effective because it ties articles together in a logical way. If you liked his first article on web analytics, you can run down the list and find ten more in a row. Avinash’s site-map wisely includes dates. That, too, is effective because it helps readers quickly identify if there have been updates and where they can be found.

I like Superhero Nation’s organization– a combination of widgets and chronological ordering– but that clearly pales before a real map. If you look at the widget on the left labelled “Writing About Superheroes,” you can see that we’ve only included links to six articles there and then added a link to a map for our superhero writing articles. Widgets are a great start, but they will probably grow inadequate as you accumulate content. How many widget-links can you use before people’s eyes glaze over? Probably 20, at most. But we have 500 posts (including 120 quotes of the day and 60 articles on writing).

These six character traits will probably make your readers groan… but they don’t have to! Find out how to turn self-guilt, rebelliousness, moral perfection, dishonesty and intelligence into winning character traits.

Continue Reading »

I think I have stumbled onto something really useful about writing character-voice. I’ll post some notes later today, but my thesis is that distinct phrases are crucial.

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

Fiction is a response to threat. No one wants to read happily ever after. That’s why the story ends at happily ever after.

–Cadet Davis

Hey! Superhero Nation offers comedy, superhero writing advice, generic writing advice, and a few assorted articles on how to manage a small online project, particularly an online novel (these include Using Header Art and Using Google Analytics to Self-Review).

Note:  if you’d like to read the article Pat mentioned, click here.

A writing professor at my university suggested that one way to study written rhythm and cadences is to type out someone else’s novel. He says that doing so will help you gain a better sense of style and flow. Maybe. I think you can do better with this technique, though. Instead of retyping someone else’s work, try retyping yours. I think that this will help the aspiring novelist uncover several tricky problems.

Continue Reading »

This article discusses why it is critical to think of your characters as distinct from you.

Continue Reading »

This piece describes how to write the right amount of action for a book.

Continue Reading »

How to Improve Your Characters

1. How to Introduce Major Characters
2. How to Name Characters (Superheroes and Otherwise)
3. How to Save Mary Sues (Insufficiently-Challenged Characters)
4. How to Develop Interesting Characters
5. 15 Interesting Motivations for Villains and Heroes
6. A List of Character Attributes
7. Writing Male Characters
8. Please Don’t Model Your Characters on Your Friends
9. Don’t Make Your Villains Unnecessarily Evil
10. Why Secret Origins Usually Fail (“Leia’s my sister!?!”)
11. How to Make Your Character’s Job Interesting
12. How to Use Characters with Mental Disorders
13. Don’t Let Minor Characters Steal the Show
14. How to Make a Character Likable
15. Please Don’t Use Generically Nice Characters
16. Writing Villains Vs. Writing Heroes
17. How to Make Your Love Interest a Real Character (Banana Slug)
18. Be Careful With Crying Characters (Marissa)
19. Female Characters: Awful Vs. Awesome

How to Improve Your Titles

1. Is Your Title Stylish Enough?
2. 10 Common Mistakes of Novel Titles
3. Even More Ways to Blow a Title
4. How to Write Titles That Sell (Novels and Chapters)
5. Your Title is Bad, But You Can Fix It (Part 1)
6. Your Title is Bad, But You Can Fix It (Part 2)
7. Your Title is Bad, But You Can Fix It (Part 3)
8. Your Title is Bad… (Part 4)
9. Your Title is Bad… (Part 5)
10. Your Title is Bad… (Part 6)
11. Your Title is Bad… (Part 7)
12. Your Title is Bad… (Part 8 )
13. Your Title is Bad… (Part 9)
14. Your Title is Bad… (Part 10)

1. Prologue Tips
2. How to Write Excellent First Lines
3. How to Survive to Page 2
4. The Five Worst Novel Introductions
5. How to Write Strong Introductions (Novels)
6. Don’t Wait to Introduce Your Main Character

Structuring Your Story

1. Writing a Novel’s Synopsis
2. End Your Chapters With a Bang
3. Chapter Checklist
4. Organizing Your Story With Cause and Effect
5. How to Handle Backstory
6. How to Do Multiple Narrators and POVs With Style
7. How to Convey Information the POV Doesn’t Have
8. Be Careful with Sequels
9. Common Problems with First-Person Narration
10. Common Problems with Third-Person Narration
11. Organizing Your Plot: Five Kinds of Central Plots
12. Story Structure
13. Cover Your Plot Holes– It Might Be Hilarious

Becoming a Professional Writer

1. Eight Facts About Writing That Surprise Inexperienced Novelists
2. Another Eight Facts About Writing That Surprise Inexperienced Novelists
3. Why Is It So Important for Authors to Read Widely?
4. Rules of Professional Behavior
5. Mental Issues in the Workplace
6. Think Like an Editor (Marissa)
7. How to Communicate with Agents and Editors

Plotting and Pacing

1. How to Build Coherent Transitions Between Scenes
2. Start Your Story As Everything Goes Wrong
3. When the Villain Beats the Heroes, Don’t Just Let Them Go
4. Make Your Story Interesting with Urgent Goals
5. Automatically Generate a (Goofy) Plot
6. Your Introduction Should Not Read Like an Atlas
7. Don’t Let Your Characters Walk Away from the Story
8. How to Make Traveling Interesting
9. How to Beat Disbelief and Immerse Readers
10. Plot Elements That Should Not Be Added Lightly
11. How to Avoid Info-Dumping
12. Training Scenes

How to Avoid Common Writing Mistakes

1. 5 Common Mistakes of First-Time Authors (Part 1)
2. 5 Common Mistakes of First-Time Authors (Part 2)
3. 5 Common Mistakes of First-Time Authors (Part 3)
4. 5 Common Mistakes… (Part 4)
5. 5 Common Mistakes… (Part 5)
6. 5 Common Mistakes… (Part 6)
7. 5 Common Mistakes… (Part 7)
8. 5 Common Mistakes… (Part 8 )
9. 5 Common Mistakes… (Part 9)
10. 5 Common Mistakes… (Part 10)
11. If You’re A First-Time Author, Do Not Self-Publish!

Dialogue

1. Dialogue Checklist
2. How to Use Dialogue Tags Effectively
3. Common Dialogue Mistakes
4. Keep Your Dialogue Tight
5. How to Punctuate Dialogue
6. Please Don’t Use Bad Accents

Other Writing Mechanics and Miscellaneous

1. How to Write Memorably
2. How to Beat Writer’s Block
3. Don’t Quit Your Day Job!
4. Show, Don’t Tell
5. How to Write Gripping Scenes
6. Write Concisely!
7. Eliminate Gimmicks in Your Writing
8. Don’t Abuse “There’s”
9. 9 Words That Usually Shouldn’t Start a Sentence
10. A Few Notes on Punctuation
11. Make Your Story Intriguing, Not Cryptic
12. How to Do Settings and Scenery Well
13. Don’t Tell Readers What the Character Isn’t Doing

• Amazing Spider-Man
• Avengers
• Bob Moore: No Hero
• Dark Knight
• The Incredibles (coming soon)
• Iron Man 1 (coming soon)
• Iron Man 2 (coming soon)
• Kick-Ass (coming soon)
• Other People’s Heroes
• Priscilla the Great
• Twilight (hear me out)
• X-Men: First Class (coming soon)

Genre Writing and Resources

1. ANYTHING SUPERHERO: How to Make Interesting Headquarters for Superheroes and Villains
2. FANTASY OR SUPERHERO ACTION: How to Keep Your Superpowers and/or Magic Extraordinary
3. ACTION: How to Pace an Action Scene
4. ROMANCE: Common Pitfalls of Romance (ReTARDised Whovian)
5. ROMANCE: How to Make Your Love Interest a Real Character (Banana Slug)
6. COMEDY: How to Write Comedy
7. COMEDY: How to Write Parodies (Tom)
8. DETECTIVE/MYSTERY: Probing for Inconsistencies

1. A Writer’s Guide to Guns and Firearms
2. 7 Things Guns Cannot Actually Do
3. An Introduction to Bounty Hunting

Editing and Refining Your Work

1. It’s Okay If Your First Draft Sucks
2. How to Take Criticism Well
3. Applying “Rules” of Writing to Your Work
4. Twenty Questions to Ask Before Submitting Your Story
5. 100 Questions to Test Your Story
6. Style Checklist
7. How to Make the Most of Beta Reviews

Getting Published and Self-Publishing

1. Length Guidelines: How Long Should Your Novel Manuscript Be Before You Submit It?
2. How to Format a Novel Manuscript
3. How Novel Manuscripts are Evaluated
4. Why Do Good Manuscripts Get Rejected?
5. How Long Does It Take to Get a Novel Professionally Published?
6. 10 Reasons Novel Manuscripts Get Rejected
7. List of Instant Rejections
8. Teresa Hayden’s List of Novel Rejections
9. 16 Reasons Your Novel Manuscript Got Rejected Before Page 1
10. Will Your Manuscript Survive to Page 2?
11. Will Your Manuscript Survive to Page 20?
12. What is a Query? How Do I Write One?
13. Sharpen Your Story With a Two Sentence Synopsis
14. More Two-Sentence Synopsis Tips
15. Marcus Hart Explains: How to Self-Publish
16. How Much Will It Cost You to Self-Publish?
17. Why First-Time Authors Should Not Even Think About Self-Publishing
18. Why Self-Publishing Might Work for You

Target Audience

1. How to Write for Kids (Tom)
2. How to Write for Kids (B. Mac)
3. Your Readers Are Not the Same as You!
4. Market Trends: Teen Literature is Selling Quite Well

Social Commentary in Fiction

1. So You Want to be an Opinionated Author
2. Writing About Racism

Right now I’m working on a piece on character voice. What sort of character voices do you enjoy reading the most? What sort of character voice issues concern you the most when you are reading or writing? If you have any thoughts, please e-mail at superheronation… at…. gmail.com . (I’ll credit you unless you say otherwise).

Continue Reading »

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
–Diogenes

Sir? I still need to see your passport.

–an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement official

This is a list of my course syllabi, posted mainly for my own recordkeeping.

Continue Reading »

This article will teach you how to write exciting fights.

1. Immerse us in the scene. Engage as many senses as possible, particularly the visceral ones (touch, smell, taste). For example, if the supervillain dropkicks his sister, you could work with the impact he feels, the impact she feels, the secondary impact of her slamming into something else, possibly the smell and/or taste of blood, and anything related to the superpowers of either. (Dropkicking the Human Torch should be a different experience than The Thing or Reed Richards).

Additionally, avoid anything that makes your readers wonder what’s happening. It may help to create a diagram of the scene so that you know what’s happening. One frequent area of confusion is how far away the characters are from each other.

2. Don’t put in too many characters. Each additional character dilutes the fight and makes it harder to visualize the fight in real-time. I’d recommend capping your fights to 2-4 combatants at a time. If you want more fighters, I’d recommend writing the battle as a series of more limited duels rather than a battle royale with tons of fighters. If you have too many characters in a fight, it will probably lead to a fight that flits between each character, not sticking around long enough to show them doing anything interesting. (See Soon I Will Be Invincible).

3. Unlike comic books and movies, a novel does not accomplish much by having the hero mow down waves of faceless henchmen or creatures. A novelist doesn’t have visual special effects to show off. The main advantage of a novel is that its length allows it to sustain a deeper plot and better-developed characters. Fighting anonymous and hopeless enemies does not play to these strengths.

4. Be creative. How do your characters interact with the scenery? Brainstorm a few items or props that are in the scene and try to work in a few when a combatant gets desperate. Using props helps remind readers that the characters aren’t fighting in a vacuum.

Also, try to have your hero use his powers in an unexpected way. We’ll expect a shapeshifting hero to copy a guard or the villain to infiltrate the villain’s lair and rescue his girlfriend. But we’d be more surprised if he copied his girlfriend and got captured in her place.

5. Let your hero improvise. Throw a few wrenches in his carefully laid plans. If your supervillain really is a genius, surely he will anticipate some of the things your hero will try and prepare accordingly. (The forcefield generators will be within the forcefields, dammit!)

6. Be suspenseful. These elements should help.

–Stealth and desperation. Typically, heroic efforts that are stealthy and/or desperate are more suspenseful because any false step could result in failure. In contrast, it’s less suspenseful for a hero to barrel into the villain’s lair because readers know that there’s no chance a faceless mook will kill the hero. But the faceless mook actually DOES present some risk to a stealthy hero that cannot afford to be seen–it’s still not likely that the mook will stop the hero, but he could alert somebody that might.

–Ticking clocks. If the hero has 15 minutes to defuse the bomb or two days to stop the villain from taking over the world, that adds urgency to the plot. My favorite example of this was D.O.A., where the main character gets fatally poisoned and has to solve his own murder.

–Strong side-characters. If we feel for the damsel-in-distress, we’d care a lot more whether the hero can rescue her. We’re more likely to feel for her if she’s well-developed and has a distinct personality. I recommend looking at Teri Hatcher’s Lois Lane in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

–Suicidally determined heroes. If the audience knows that the hero’s only goal is beating the villain–not coming home alive–then it raises more doubt about whether he will survive. Whether he does or not, there will be more suspense. I’d recommend checking out Pacific Rim here.

7. Keep it as short as possible. Generally, fights should be the climax of their chapters, rather than the bulk. Dragging out a fight scene for pages typically feels pretty tedious. The worst-case scenario is that the fight will feel like a scrolling list of hits the hero and villain are landing on each other. I’d recommend checking out the last 20 minutes of Man of Steel here. Failure.

This article presents six tips about what works and what usually doesn’t when you’re naming your superheroes and villains. Find out why Mischief-Man is much worse than Mayhem.

Continue Reading »

If you’re trying to capture the sound of a dialect, check out the Speech Accent Archive.  I think it’ll help a lot with inflection, but probably not so much with phrases distinct to a region.

Incidentally, I think that political scientists usually agree that candidates with Midwestern and Southern accents perform better.

Michael Totten took a picture of this sign from Lima Company.

If Illinois’ performance in the Rose Bowl is any indicator, units also get attacked less if they look like Trojans.  

I think the geometry of fires is a set of rules and conditions related to several battalions operating in a close area.
No Marine has been injured in Fallujah for months, leading to interesting techniques to maintain troop alertness.

There are also some borderline-amusing stories about bizarre and dangerous strategies from Iraqi kids to get Americans to give them candy.  (Well, yes, making fake speedbumps on the road will get Marines to dismount, but…)

This article will help you write better dialogue in novels.

Continue Reading »

Nya-nya-nya-nya!

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

1) Eragon

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

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

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

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

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

2) Saphira

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

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

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

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

3) Brom/Murtagh

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

4) Galbatorix

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

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

There are two main ways to make a villain interesting.

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

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

Cliché fantasy races

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

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

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

This article will focus on how to find beta reviewers and how to get beta-reviews that are more useful.
Continue Reading »

This article will discuss some benefits and drawbacks of writing a chapter without scenes and some common problems of sceneless chapters.

Continue Reading »