Character 2: “Vancouver?”

Character 2 comes across as sort of mentally slow, right? Unless you’re trying to make characters sound slow (or totally disoriented), I would recommend against having them just repeat each other.

Whenever a character says something, it should develop a character and/or advance the plot.  For example, you can use questions to bring in new details rather than just repeating something that has already been introduced.

Here are some more interesting responses to “Bob and I are going to Vancouver for the summer.”

• “Where’d you get the money for that?”
• “What about your job?”
• “But there are Canadians there. You don’t even own a gun!” (This character isn’t much smarter than in the original, but is definitely more memorable).
• “Isn’t Bob convinced the airlines are trying to kill him? How are you getting there?”
• “Did that Canadian put you up to this?”

Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It’s a prestige posting, and Andrew is thrilled all the more to be assigned to the ship’s Xenobiology laboratory.

 

Life couldn’t be better…until Andrew begins to pick up on the fact that (1) every Away Mission involves some kind of lethal confrontation with alien forces, (2) the ship’s captain, its chief science officer, and the handsome Lieutenant Kerensky always survive these confrontations, and (3) at least one low-ranked crew member is, sadly, always killed.

 

Not surprisingly, a great deal of energy below decks is expended on avoiding, at all costs, being assigned to an Away Mission.Then Andrew stumbles on information that completely transforms his and his colleagues’ understanding of what the starship Intrepid really is…and offers them a crazy, high-risk chance to save their own lives.

Lone Superheroes

Superhero Teams

Below, I listed all of the superhero team movies and lone superhero movies which went into these ratings.

LIST OF MOVIES WITH ONLY ONE SUPERHERO

Marvel

DC

Other

LIST OF SUPERHERO TEAM MOVIES

Marvel

DC

Other

Methodological Notes

• I only counted movies since 2000 which grossed at least $10 million at the box office and actually had Rotten Tomatoes ratings (Dr. Horrible didn’t).
• My crude measure for whether a movie counted as a superhero movie was whether its Wikipedia article used the word “superhero.”  Foolproof, I know.

As always, these articles do not need to be about superheroes specifically. 

Not sure what to write about? Here are some ideas on my board:

• Anything on how to write child protagonists, particularly ones that are significantly younger than the target audience.
• Anything about how to write superhero teams, particularly conflicts within the team. I think this friction between members was absolutely essential for the Avengers movie to work out as well as it did.
• A list of common pitfalls for superheroines and possibly suggestions about how to avoid them.
• Speaking of young protagonists, I’ve had a few writers request help on creating interesting schools in young adult works. If you wanted to take this in a more superhero-specific direction, how do you create a superhero academy without it coming across as a second-rate knockoff of Xavier’s academy?
• I’m always looking for writers’ reviews of novels and movies, particularly ones about superheroes. Show us what worked, what could have been more effective and how, and anything else writers should take away from a particular story.
• Search engine marketing tips for fiction authors–what sort of things can fiction authors do to build online traffic for their work?
• Anything on action scenes, particularly superpowered fight scenes.
• Anything about writing satisfying gun battles. Assume for a second that an author’s only exposure to firearms is through video games and/or Hollywood. Could you give him/her a list of things he should know about firearms?  Or maybe X things a competent shooter would do in real life that you wouldn’t see in many video games or movies  (E.g. TAKE COVER, DUMBASS) and/or vice versa (Wild West movies sometimes have shooters try to count how many rounds the enemy has left in a gun, but that’d be crazy in a modern setting because clip sizes vary).
• A lot of superhero authors struggle with giving their characters interesting things to do outside of action. I think this is where 90% of horrible superhero romances come from. Two possibilities come to mind: 1) What are some possibilities besides romance? 2) Do you have any ideas on how to execute romances well, particularly with a superhero and/or superheroine involved?

• The writing was very fresh and clever. I liked the way they played on the (sort-of-tired) trope about a supervillain breaking out from captivity. Additionally, the scene where SHIELD tries to contact Black Widow (who is being interrogated by Russian smugglers) is hilarious.
• The conflicts within the team and between the teammates and Fury/SHIELD were impeccable. I think this was the main difference between Avengers and the vastly inferior Fantastic Four II–the characters have great reasons to fight amongst themselves. In contrast, the Fantastic Four’s squabbles were mostly fueled by stupidity and it left me mainly wanting to punch all of them. Compare pretty much any scene in Fantastic Four to the Avengers confronting Nick Fury over what he’s been holding back from them. It’s like night and day.
• BLACK WIDOW: “This is just like in Budapest.” *She stabs an alien in the head.* HAWKEYE: “You and I… remember Budapest very differently.”

• I believe the weak point of the movie was the selection of Loki (and his army of aliens) as the main villain. Fortunately, he got better characterization than, say, the antagonists in the two other recent movies with alien invasions (Green Lantern and Fantastic Four II). However, in terms of screen-time, I don’t think he was as cost-effective as more limited, terrestrial villains like the Joker, Green Goblin, or even Obediah Stane.  In terms of relatively epic villains, I found Hugo Weaving’s Red Skull significantly more engaging.
• Except for possibly Hawkeye, all of the characters contributed enough to merit their spot in the movie. That’s quite a feat. For example, in The Incredibles, I think Violet and Jack-Jack could have been easily removed.
• The best acting performance was probably (!?!) Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow. Mark Ruffalo was a pleasant surprise as a very mousy Bruce Banner. If they had gone with a more assertive, active Bruce Banner (like in the last Hulk movie), I think someone like Michael Hall (Dexter Morgan) would have been a better replacement for Edward Norton.
• I was extremely impressed with the writing for Tony Stark in Iron Man 1 and 2. However, besides one incredible line about a life-model decoy, Tony Stark was not quite at that level here. In one interview, Joss Whedon mentioned that he chewed out one special-effects guy for suggesting a Stark line like “I’m getting too old for this.” But a few of Stark’s lines were almost that tired.
• The battles were generally solid but the climactic battle with Loki was lackluster.  It lasted about as long as Buffy’s takedown of Dracula or an alligator eating a doughnut.
• I was apprehensive about the inclusion of Hulk: His movies have averaged 64% on Rotten Tomatoes vs. 81% for the other Avengers. However, he was very effective as a side-character. Also, maybe 75% of his screen-time is as Bruce Banner rather than the Hulk and the Hulk only gets around one line of dialogue (“Puny god”).
• You know how Nolan’s Batman movies refer to Batman’s vehicle as “the car” rather than “the Batmobile?”  I think Avengers only used the word “Hulk” twice (vs. “the big guy” and “the other guy”) and “Black Widow” once.  As far as I remember, “Iron Man,” “Hawkeye,” and “Captain America” were also missing.
• If you’re really into comic books, you might (minor spoiler) notice that Thanos smiles when he is told that to attack Earth is “to court death.” He’s been hitting on Mistress Death for quite a while, trying to woo her with various acts of mass murder.  I don’t know how you do Valentine’s Day, but in Chicago, that’s how we roll.
• I found the shout-outs to sustainable energy mildly annoying. I don’t know… it was probably in-character for Tony Stark, but what about Nick Fury? (Would Fury/SHIELD really do dangerous research into a supernatural power source which could attract unwanted attention from hostile aliens? He’s got a flying aircraft carrier.  Doesn’t that pretty much rule out that he’d pick environmentalism over security?)
• *There might have been a minor plot inconsistency about what SHIELD was doing with the Tesseract/Cosmic Cube. At the start of the movie, Nick Fury is told that the Tesseract has gone haywire even though they weren’t actually working with it. Later on, Thor claims that Fury/SHIELD have helped cause the alien invasion with their research into the Tesseract.
• Minor spoiler: As soon as I saw the Chicagoan, I knew the comic book fan was going down. Also, being a comic book fan pretty much marked that character for death. Unfortunate. I was hoping they’d kill this guy instead.

I’m looking forward to the resulting anthology, because Canada has everything a superhero story needs: international intrigue, dark plottings, and enough lies buried in murders to make even a Minnesotan gasp. How does a superhero survive in a country where even the geese are trying to kill everybody? Are Canadian superheroes mortified when Hollywood casts them as Australians or Britons? What sort of doomsday schemes are unfolding in the barely-inhabited reaches of the Canadian wilderness? (The Apocalypse Nome Theorem, multiplied by Canada). And, of course, the Wolverine Paradox: how many Americans does a Canadian have to slice to become popular in the United States?

This Wired article suggests that Whedon and his team are at least aware of these issues, which bodes well. On the other hand, I would have been more encouraged if Whedon had been more involved in the selection of the villain (the company selected Loki for him).

UPDATE: Initial reviews for the movie on Rotten Tomatoes (based on an early overseas release) are astronomically high, 94% so far. Among superhero movies, only The Incredibles (97%) has done better.

Don’t Forget the Death-Ray!: How to Write Compelling Superhero Stories will help prospective authors write superhero stories that are as effective and unforgettable as the titular doomsday implement. It will cover storytelling elements such as characterization, plotting, dialogue, and how to craft villainous schemes that will make would-be Supermen wish they were back in Smallville.

In particular, this book will appeal to:

• The 450,000 people that have read my superhero-themed writing articles at Superhero Nation.
• Prospective authors that have been inspired to write a novel or comic book but want help developing and distinguishing their ideas beyond the 25 blockbuster movies that have come out since 2000.
• The 180,000 people who search Google for superhero writing advice each year.
• Adults who want to encourage younger superhero fans (relatives and perhaps students) to practice and sharpen their writing. Several English and creative writing teachers have asked me for class handouts and posters based on my articles and I’m certified to teach ESL.
• Anybody that loves death-rays, which have been a mainstay of doomsday shenanigans since Archimedes’ senior prom.

The main competition would be books about how to write comics and/or graphic novels. Don’t Forget the Death-Ray! has several competitive edges:

• My book is entirely about writing. In contrast, most comics guidebooks spend many chapters on art and lettering (e.g. 9 out of 20 chapters for The Everything Guide to Writing Graphic Novels). My bet is that comic book writers would rather share space with novelists than with artists, because material for novelists is more likely to help comic book writers develop their skills than material for artists would. My goal for the table of contents is that comic book writers and superhero novelists would both feel that almost all of the content will be helpful to them.
• My book is superhero-specific. Superheroes dominate the comic book industry (landing around 280-290 of the top 300 bestsellers in any given month), but surprisingly few comic guidebooks focus explicitly on superheroes. My book will cover material especially helpful for superhero authors—for example, in addition to general material on how to write interesting villains, I’ll have specific material on how to write supervillains, mad scientists, terrorists, and government/police antagonists, which are mainstays of superhero stories but would probably not get much attention in a more general work.
• My book would be the only one on the market that covers superhero novelists. This is useful for several reasons. The market of prospective superhero novelists could be rather large. Each year, Google users do about 87,000 ambiguous searches which might be for a superhero novel or a comic book (e.g. “how to make a superhero” or “superhero story ideas”). When I asked my audience whether they were more interested in writing comic books or novels, my 164 respondents split 25% for comic books, 43% for novels and 32% for both/undecided. If my survey respondents are representative of prospective superhero writers as a whole, those 87,000 ambiguous searches per year could represent thousands of sales for a guidebook which covers both novels and comic books.
• Educational appeal. Parents and teachers usually find novels more mentally challenging and meaningful than comic books, so they might be more receptive to buying a guidebook which covers novels and comic books rather than just comic books. Additionally, I’m certified to teach ESL and have two years of experience tutoring in high school English.

Would you want to read this book and/or keep reading this proposal? If not, please let me know how I could make my pitch more effective. If you might be interested, please sign up for the email list so that I can let you know when it comes out. Thanks! (If I can show publishers that many people are interested, it’ll be easier for me to get published).

1. The superhero is investigating sensitive cases.

• The hero might be challenging cases that have already been “solved.” If the superhero can show that the police & district attorney have arrested and convicted the wrong person, it will make the police look bad, could open up them to lawsuits, and could jeopardize careers.  Also, the police will probably be skeptical about whether the superhero knows more about the case than the police investigation was able to find. What if the superhero is wrong?  If a superhero even looks into the case, that could create unwanted media attention for the police and prosecutors.
• Major politicians (e.g. the mayor) might pressure the police if the superhero is tackling politically sensitive cases (for example, if the suspect is a politician or major donor or if the case is highly publicized).
• The case is likely to implicate police officers or otherwise make the police look bad. For example, anything involving police brutality, corruption, police misconduct (e.g. why did the police drop the case against Lex Luthor? Did the mayor put them up to it?), etc.

2. The superhero refuses police commands (which will especially irritate police if the case ends badly). For example, if the superhero tried breaking into a hostage situation while the police were still trying to negotiate a surrender, that would make the police livid (particularly if any hostages then got injured or killed). If the superhero does something that causes the police to get heavy media and/or political criticism, the police might throw the superhero under the bus to protect themselves. “We had this case completely under control until Captain Doomsday showed up!”  (The superhero would probably disagree with that claim–if it looked like the police had the situation under control, the superhero probably wouldn’t have charged in).

2.1. The superhero is too rough. If the hero has a history of gratuitously injuring criminals, getting bystanders/hostages injured, and causing serious property damage, the police might think they’d do a better job on their own.

3. The superhero (intentionally or accidentally) sabotaged a police investigation. For example, if a superhero breaks-and-enters into a supervillain’s home, that might compromise evidence that the police needed. Additionally, if the supervillain found out about the breaking-and-entering, the police might be upset because the villain will be more cautious moving forward. That will make the investigation more challenging.

4. The superheroes are federal agents.  Federal agents and cops sometimes clash over issues of conflicting cases, media attention/budget, office politics, pride, career ambitions, jurisdictional battles, etc. Just one of many things that might go wrong would be the New York police arresting a critical SHIELD informant. Yeah, SHIELD can probably get him out of jail, but it would be challenging to do so without compromising the informant. (If John Doe has been arrested for a serious crime but gets quickly released, his associates might assume that he was only released because he offered to help the police). If the informant thinks that his associates suspect him, he might be a lot more reluctant to help.

5. The superhero’s motives are hard to understand and/or not purely heroic.  If Superman kills a criminal, the police would probably be more likely to give him the benefit of the doubt because he has always been so careful and because his motives are demonstrably benign. In contrast, if the Punisher kills a criminal, the police will probably assume it was an assassination (even if it wasn’t).  Another case where a superhero might attract additional police scrutiny would be if his motives are unclear (e.g. Rorschach or a superhero new to the scene).

6. The superhero is very secretive and/or paranoid. For example, does the superhero wear a mask? The police might be suspicious because usually the people that fear openness the most are up to no good (or at least raises that possibility). The police might also get suspicious if the superhero refuses to share helpful information. (Why might superheroes decline to cooperate with the police? Cooperating might jeopardize the superhero’s sources, result in a corrupt cop tipping off the villain, and/or give the police more opportunity to do something that interferes with the superhero’s investigation).

7. The superhero committed a crime against the police. Breaking and entering is one thing, but breaking and entering into a police lockup to steal and/or destroy evidence would probably make the police very surly.

8. The hero’s superpowers are hard to control and/or unsettling. For example, telepaths might be more alarming than a superstrong hero would be, especially to a police officer or agent with something to hide (e.g. any criminal past or any major governmental secrets). If your only power is to induce insanity or create category 5 hurricanes, don’t expect many invitations to police potlucks.

9. The superhero’s relationship with the villain and/or government is complicated. For example, the police might wonder about whether Xavier is really on their side, because Xavier is opposed to the mutant cure which most nonmutants feel is the most humane way to fight against Magneto. (Also, I think most cops would regard Wolverine’s cop-stabbing as a pretty big deal).

10. The police are backing a rival superhero or group of superheroes (e.g. the Ultimen rather than the Justice League). 

11. The police have false and/or misleading evidence implicating the superhero in a crime.  Maybe the police have security footage of a superhero shooting at someone off-camera, but don’t have footage of the victim drawing a gun or otherwise provoking the shooting. Alternately, maybe the superhero has been framed and the evidence is fake or maliciously edited.

12. The superhero is dismissive of the police and/or needlessly antagonizes them. Granted, most superheroes ask the police to do unglorious work like crowd control at some point, but being an ass about it might make the police less likely to cooperate.  Mishandling a situation could create dramatic obstacles for the character to overcome. (Just please don’t do a “You police officers are the real heroes” speech).

13. The police feel that the superhero is unnecessarily endangering children. It’d probably be somewhat easier for police to look the other way if it’s just adults putting themselves in harm’s way rather than, say, a 10 year old and a 12 year old.  The police might interfere with the team, particularly if one of the kids gets seriously hurt.

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I’m working on a guidebook about how to write superhero stories. Please sign up for the email list so that I can let you know when it comes out. Thanks—it’ll be easier for me to get published if I can show that many people are interested.

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What Worked:

–The characterization is unusually strong, particularly for the main protagonist. His development arc was unexpected and fresh. The book has hardly any romance (besides two brief conversations between the main character and his ex-wife), but the relationship definitely added something to the main plot which would have been otherwise missing. As for the main antagonist, he’s not one-dimensionally evil, but he’s definitely a problem that the protagonist needs to deal with.  If you’re struggling with how to write a not-conventionally-evil antagonist without making the stakes less urgent for the protagonists, No Hero  is a good example.

–The ending sequence was eerily effective. The author (Tom Andry) made an unusual decision to end the book with a conversation between the protagonist and his ex-wife rather than, say, a conversation with his assistant or anybody else that’s actually present in his life.  In retrospect, I think it really effectively showed how the character had evolved and made his previous decisions in the climax both more interesting and morally questionable.

--I would strongly recommend this book to anybody who wants to make a disagreeable protagonist more likable.  Notably, the book doesn’t gloss over his disagreeable actions and other characters (mainly his ex-wife) call him out for it in reasonable ways and he responds in a mostly reasonable way.  I think that helps readers stay on board even if they aren’t taken with the character’s occasionally hard-boiled approach.

–There was curiously little superhero action.  On the one hand, I loved that the author didn’t spend 50+ pages on superhero brawls with pretty much nothing at stake*. However, it makes it hard to describe the plot. I would say the book’s genre is something like detective/drama.

*If you’re writing a climactic battle between a hero and villain, if there isn’t serious doubt about whether the villain can win, the battle will be boring.

–I found it very refreshing that it’s a superhero story about somebody besides a superhero or a superhero’s lover. That’s an unusual hook and the character fits very well into a world with many superheroes even though he doesn’t have superpowers or major-league technological support.

–I would highly recommend this book to any author that is struggling with a slow-burning plot.  This book is structured very unusually: the inciting event (being called onto the main investigation) happens about 50% through the book and the main character first realizes that a crime has actually been committed around 75% through.  The author effectively used intermediate goals to keep me interested early on.

–The main character feels like a private investigator.  The author put more thought and research into what a private investigator would actually do in high-stakes situations rather than just going with what Hollywood has done with PIs.  In contrast, I’ve seen a lot of characters (especially soldiers and police officers) who sound dumb enough that they’d get shot to pieces on their first day (e.g. trying to bumrush a rifle-armed goon without being bulletproof).  This character is a hardboiled PI without superpowers or a gun and somehow that makes him even more badass.

What Could Have Worked More Effectively:

–The book’s introduction misrepresents the book as juvenile. For example, early on a superhero in far-too-tight spandex gets far-too-excited about pictures of lesbians forming a, uhh, superteam.  However, it’s a misleading portrayal of the book, which is generally far more sober/serious than puerile. I’d recommend writing an introduction that’s thematically and tonally similar to the rest of the work–otherwise, some of the readers that would have enjoyed most of the work will put the book down because they got thrown off by a misleading introduction.

–The minor characters could probably have been used to more effect (or pared down). For example, I doubt the plot would have changed much if the main character’s assistant had been removed.  The main character’s lawyer could also be removed–I think she added at least a thousand words to the story which contributed very little to the plot or character development.

–The setting could have been a lot more memorable. As far as I can remember from reading the book yesterday, the only aspects of the city that came up were that some parts are richer than others.  I think the author could have done a lot more with description (e.g. sensory imagery, interesting observations, interesting historical snippets, etc).

–The book cover could be stronger. The concept was a bit bland–superheroes can be more visually interesting than visual silhouettes flying in the background.  Additionally, an action shot might help (e.g. the protagonist slyly taking a photograph of a superhero while hiding behind a bar table stocked with hard alcohol).  The execution was also lackluster–I think the artist hesitated too much when doing the face. The lips and eyes look strange.

Other Notes:

–Personally, I prefer stories where the setting is somewhat realistic (rather than where there are so many superheroes that extraordinary events become routine and banal). However, I thought that this novella was better-executed than Alan Moore’s Top 10, which I think is the most notable story in that mold.

–The content after the book is ridiculously entertaining. If you ever need to write an About the Author section, I’d check out his because it adds something to the book. Additionally, I was definitely interested by the author’s discussion of a few of the writing decisions he made. I’ve never seen anything like that included with the book–I wonder if it might help a few dedicated readers become very dedicated?

–The book is free. Download it today!

Substantive Changes

1. If you have too many main characters, please eliminate and/or merge some and/or demote some to minor characters. If you’re an unpublished author, I’d recommend limiting yourself to at most 6 main characters (protagonists and antagonists total) that will require substantial space.

2. Eliminate and/or merge side characters.  Individually, a side character doesn’t take as much space as a main character, but there are usually more SCs and it’s generally easier to reduce their roles because they have a smaller individual effect on the plot.

3. You can eliminate or pare back side plots. What the characters are doing when they’re NOT pursuing the main arc of the book? Is it worth the space?

• Relationships between major characters and side characters.
• Anything a side character does without developing a major character.
• Anything characters do in their daily lives or day jobs (e.g. when they’re being Bruce Wayne rather than Batman).

4. Make the main plot more efficient.  For example, remove intermediate steps in the main conflict which don’t contribute enough to tension and/or character-development.  For example, in the last book of of the Hunger Games series, the main character spends about 6300 words taking down an intermediate obstacle (a fortress standing between her and the main enemy). The fight wasn’t terribly interesting and it didn’t show us much about the characters we didn’t see elsewhere. The author could probably have shaved off a few thousand words there.  Another possibility is making the villain’s scheme less monotonous/repetitive. For example, if you had your villain and hero racing around the world to gather 9 plot coupons, it might help to cut that down to (say) 5 so that you have more space for each intermediate step and readers have less cause to grouse (“Oh, God, another Pokemon badge?“).

4.1. Another way to make the main arc more efficient is to shorten the buildup to the inciting event. For example, if your superhero action novel takes 20,000 or 30,000 words to give the main character superpowers, you might be burying the lede too much (assuming the superpowers are the most important plot development early on–if the action is secondary to the story, that might not be the case).

Phrasing Changes

5. Convert some/most of your adverb phrases into shorter verb phrases.  For example, “He moved quickly through…” could be “He ran through…” or “He raced through…” Your book probably has hundreds of adverbs*, so you could probably save a page or two here.

*To count your adverbs, have your word processor find all of the examples of “ly ” in your manuscript.

5.1. Root out passive and/or unnecessarily long phrases. For example, “There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground” can be shortened to “Dead leaves covered the ground,” saving you seven words. I’d recommend having your word processor finding all examples of “there were” and “there was” and rephrasing most of them.

6. Glance through each of your chapters for unnecessary words/phrases and eliminate them. For example, if somebody has just thrown a plate at the wall, you don’t need to tell us he’s angry or surly. Additionally, the word “then” is usually unnecessary in sequences of events. For example, in “Mike did X and then he did Y,” you don’t need to tell us “then” because it’s obvious that Y came after X. (Otherwise, you would have put Y first).

Are you “showing” enough of your story?  One way to check is to see how much of your story is implied.  For example, on any given page, how times can the reader infer something rather than just read a conclusion you gave to them?  My rule of thumb is that each page should give us room to make an inference (rather than tell us what to think/feel) at least twice.  Show us the llama.  That may sound difficult, but you have a lot of possibilities.  For example…

• Characterization.  Can we make inferences about personality traits, demographic traits, or any other information that might develop a character?  (For example, in the excerpt below, the character doesn’t say how old he is, but there are clues).
• A character’s thoughts/feelings/beliefs.  For example, is there any evidence implying a character is lying or putting up a facade? Is there any evidence implying that a character’s beliefs are incorrect?  (For example, in the scene below, the main character is probably wrong about his father in at least one crucial way).
• Motivations and plot. Why does a particular character do X rather than Y? For example, in the excerpt below, if you think about why a murderer might poison a victim rather than shoot him, you probably know more about the victim than his son does.
• Setting.  Can we figure out anything about the setting beyond what the announcer has told us?

Here’s the opening paragraph of I Am the Jackal:

There are a lot of things that could wake you up in the middle of the night in Bellem—you know, that don’t involve gunfire. Cop cars, cop sirens. Shattering glass. Sometimes yelling from the streets, screaming, sometimes the guys trying to party in the apartment next to you. Sometimes normal things like phone calls. And sometimes phone calls from the hospital, saying that your dad’s in the E.R and that he’s been poisoned and he’s convulsing and, would you please come to the hospital right now for him, only I don’t hear that part too well ‘cause by then the only thing I can hear is Mom screaming “GET OUT HERE, SETH!”, a slamming door, and nothing else.

What sort of inferences were you able to make?  Here are some I came up with, starting with the most obvious.

• The city is a hellhole. Crime is out of control.
• The main character is almost certainly a teenager. First, Seth lives with his parents and it’s unlikely anybody would say “your dad’s in the E.R.” to an adult (rather than “your father’s…”).  His voice and vocabulary are mature enough that he’s obviously not a child.
• Seth is badly shaken up by his father’s situation… Just look at how disoriented that last run-on sentence is.  It’s 64 words long.  The sensory imagery and syntax shows he’s overwhelmed.
• …but Seth doesn’t admit he’s shaken up.  This suggests to me that he’s something of a stoic, perhaps a tough guy.
• There’s something extraordinary about the father that made somebody want to kill him. Poisoning takes a lot more effort and skill than a mere shooting would.  The father is obviously a big deal to somebody if he’s worth poisoning.  It’s unlikely anybody would put in that much effort unless the father were special in some way.  (Also, the use of poison strongly suggests the father was the target, whereas a shooting victim might have been a random bystander).
• The son doesn’t know what is extraordinary about his father.  It’s hard to tell from a passage this short, but the main character doesn’t mention anything about who might have poisoned his father or why.  In contrast, if he had known his father was very special (e.g. a superhero or major politician), he probably would have mentioned that or at least hinted at it right away.
• The father is probably a superhero or a criminal.  Why else would somebody be poisoned in a crime-ridden city?  This also gives us one possible reason the father wouldn’t have told his son and why the killer(s) chose an exotic murder weapon–if the victim was a superhero, trying to shoot him would have been crazy.  I also considered the possibility that the victim was a major political or business figure, but dismissed it because he lives in a really bad area.
• Backup theory: If the victim isn’t a superhero or criminal, maybe he was poisoned by his wife or a jilted mistress? I mostly discounted romantic motives because the mother’s shocked reaction suggests that the marriage is happy, but it’s worth keeping an eye out for any signs of romantic trouble.  Even the distant possibility that there’s more to this marriage than meets the eye makes the relationship more interesting than it would have been otherwise.

In part, the opening paragraph above is gripping because it gives readers room to speculate. How much more boring would it have been for the narrator to just tell us everything on the surface without giving us any room to wonder about what lies beneath?  (E.g. “I’m a teenager that lives in a city with a lot of crime. My father just got nearly killed”). Give us details and let our imaginations roll.  By the way, it’s okay if readers come up with some incorrect speculation.  Even wrong inferences encourage the reader to pay closer attention.

(Thanks to Margaret for suggesting this article).