Opening with the characters in combat can be tricky because the characters can’t speak as naturally.  For one thing, if your superheroes have secret identities, they’d be bloody stupid to blab about their day jobs when they’re surrounded by enemies (more on that later).

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The fact that I found this amusing is probably my body’s way of telling me I shouldn’t stay up this late.

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According to Lulu’s Titlescorer, “Superhero Nation” has a 35.9% chance of being a bestselling title.  Here are some titles that beat “Superhero Nation.”

• The Romance of Vampires (69%)
• The Vampire of Darkness (69%)
• The Magical Elf (69%)
• The the of of (41.4%)–what, you don’t like it?
• Dark Vampire (41.4%)

Darn it.  Next time, I’m writing fantasy.

Characters

–The protagonist(s) don’t have significant flaws.  (For more help on flaws, please see this and this).

–The names are goofy and/or wildly hard to pronounce. I’m looking at you, Anamamana’Qupy.  For more help, please see this.

–Characters act the way the author needs them to, not because they have a compelling motivation or logic. “Let’s split up to cover more ground!”  Please see #3 here.

–The main character(s) don’t make mistakes or face no consequences for them.  Guardian angels are a red flag here.

–The main characters don’t have setbacks. If the villain can’t beat the heroes once in a while, he will probably be pretty disappointing.  Also, if the villain defeats the heroes in combat, don’t just let them go.

–The main characters don’t have distinguishing traits.  If that’s a problem, please see this.

–The characters don’t have urgent goals.  Please see #3 here.

–The protagonist is hated by an antagonist for no discernible reason. Common offenders include teachers, bullies and adopted parents. If you go down this path, at least make them stylish. Thanks.

–The author focuses on visual details rather than establishing anything interesting about the character. In particular, eye color and hair color don’t say all that much about a character–I’d recommend focusing on these details instead.

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Hopefully your writing sounds more interesting than this: “I called my agent for lunch.  I went to Panera.  I tried to find him there but he was late.”  This is just a bland list of facts. As a writer, it’s your job to make the story as interesting as possible by bringing in details that shake up the narrative.  One possibility is opinions.

In the above passage, the narrator doesn’t have any interesting opinions or any other thoughts about what’s going on around him.   He doesn’t have to be that invisible.

My agent was late to lunch.  Probably getting seduced by some cold-eyed harpy with a Twilight-meets-Eragon manuscript.  Sparkly dragon vampires.  He fell for bestsellers every time.

Notice that the narrator/author hasn’t said anything about himself, but he has shown much more about his personality and why he’s an interesting character.  We also learn more about the missing agent, even though it’s all just opinion.

PS:  If you can remove unnecessary details, like where they were meeting for lunch, please do so.  Alternately, find a way to make the detail useful.

It’s not quite a superhero comic book, but

please check it out anyway.

If you’d like to get on the mailing list, I’d really appreciate that! It’s free to sign up and I’ll send you an e-mail reminder to buy the book whenever it comes out.

Also, there’s a prize! One lucky person on the list will receive a free signed copy.

Thanks for your help. Signing up will help me get published because it indicates that I have enough waiting customers to turn a profit.

The shortest, most cheesy answer is “however long it takes to tell the story.”  Unfortunately, if it takes you hundreds of thousands of words to tell the story, getting it published it will be practically impossible.

According to Chuck Sambuchino, the most publisher-friendly length for an adult novel manuscript is between 80,000-100,000 words.  Science fiction and fantasy authors usually need a bit more space for worldbuilding, so he says the ideal range for them is between 100,000-115,000 words.  However, Chuck is sort of working for the Devil, so I’d feel bad if he were my only source for this post.

Colleen Lindsay, a literary agent at FinePrint, has similar guidelines: around 100K for epic fantasy or sci-fi, 80-90K for thrillers and 80-100K for crime fiction. Also, she’s not in league with Lucifer.

Both Chuck and Colleen emphasize that there are exceptions, like first-time novelists publishing 200,000 word behemoths.  But such exceptions are extremely rare. If you try going well above or below the usual range, your writing needs to be extraordinary. I would not recommend doing so unless you are absolutely sure that your story cannot work at a more conventional range.

UPDATE: If you’re writing for a younger audience (YA, middle grade, picture books, etc), please see this.

Since this is a website mainly about superhero writing, I should probably tie this comedy video into superhero writing to make it relevant for you. Well, this video might help you write a superhero who’s really a journalist in The Matrix cutting off lighthouse operators’ heads with laser beams.  Relevant enough?  (Caution: the language is a bit rough).

READ THE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES.

Courtesy of Miss Snark.

I haven’t come across too many comic book writers that work with literary agents. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t find a literary agent for your comic book.

For example, Bob Mecoy wrote me that he’s sold several projects to DC Comics as well as many more to book publishers and their affiliates (such as FirstSecond, Three Rivers, Lerner, Aladdin, and Abrams ComicArts).

So, if you’re absolutely dead-set on selling to Marvel or DC, pursuing literary representation may be a strong option.  Marvel and DC do not accept unsolicited submissions. However, if you have an experienced agent, he may be able to use his own credibility to convince them that your comic book is worth considering.

Here are some other pieces of advice from Bob.

B. MAC: What are some of the most common reasons you pass on graphic novel and/or comic book submissions?
BOB:  Poor storytelling, telling a story that I’ve seen a hundred times before, telling a story “unlike anything you’ve ever seen” which is unlike anything I’ve ever seen because of a series of arbitrary choices, lack of understanding of the market, slavish service to the perceived market, lack of originality, lack of understanding of my taste.

B. MAC: How long does it take you to reject a typical script?
BOB: It takes as long as it takes. If there seems to be something here, I research the category, the writer and/or artist and the comparables or competition before making my final decision.

I’ve uploaded the thumbnail sketches for my five sample pages on Flickr.  If you hold your mouse over a panel, you can read the panel description from the script. What do you think?

• Page 27
• Page 28
• Page 29
• Page 30
• Page 31

My freelance work is picking up, so I don’t think I’ll be around very much today or tomorrow.  If you’d like me to look at something as soon as I get back, please leave me a comment somewhere reminding me what you’d like to look at.

1. Diligence.  A novel manuscript usually has 70,000+ words, most of which will be rewritten many, many times.  We’re talking about thousands of hours of work to complete a first manuscript that rarely earns much more than $5000.   (Happily, the pay tends to improve as you accumulate readers).

2. The ability to learn and improve. Look at something you wrote 2-3 years ago. You’re much better now, right? If you’ve plateaued even before getting published, you’re probably dead in the water.

3. Voice and authorial confidence. “John shot George. George fell down. John had won.” Ick.  Don’t just tell us what happened–tell us with style.

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A query is a page-long business letter introducing your novel or comic book proposal to an editor or agent.  Here is some advice that will help you write a convincing query.

1.  What goes with the query? A novel’s query is usually accompanied by a partial manuscript (~50 pages) and/or a 2-5 page synopsis.  If you’re writing a comic book, you’ll probably send in a cover letter– a page accompanied by some combination of the synopsis, the full script of the first issue and art samples. (Follow the submissions guidelines, obviously).  Cover letters are very similar to queries, so I’ll refer to both as queries for simplicity’s sake.

2. Your main goal is to show that your story is strong and interesting. Do NOT give them opinions like “my book is interesting!” or “everybody I know loves it!” Give them the evidence so that they will conclude the book is interesting. “I’m writing an interesting novel about a detective solving a murder case” is weak. “I’m writing about a poisoned detective that has two days to solve his own murder” is much more gripping. Likewise, if you’re writing a comedy, you need to prove yourself by making them laugh. According to literary agent Janet Reid, “if you tell me your book is a comedy, and the query letter isn’t funny or amusing, you have a big problem.”

3. Most queries include the following: an introductory paragraph/hook, a body paragraph summarizing the work in a clear and interesting way, 1-3 sentences about your writing qualifications, and contact information. Don’t worry too much about your writing qualifications. It’d be nice if you had them, but it’s not a deal-breaker for fiction writers.

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Superhero Nation specializes in writing advice related to novels and comic books.  Are you looking for advice about how to write movies, TV shows, video games, poetry or songs?  If so, I’d recommend asking professionals (or at least well-read amateurs) that actually know your field.  Here are some tips about how to get advice from professionals in your field.

1.  Read some how-to books. For example, I did a quick Amazon search for “video game jobs” and there were 654 results.   “Screenwriting jobs” got 234 results.  Pick out a few that look relevant.

2.  People love talking about themselves, so it’s frequently effective to ask a professional how he entered the field. He/she may offer a few tips about how you might get a job.  You can find industry professionals on LinkedIn or by checking relevant departments at a university near you.  For example, if I were interested in becoming a Hollywood writer, I might ask professors in Notre Dame’s Film, Television and Theatre Department.

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A query is a page-long letter used by a novelist or comic book author to interest an editor and convince him that the writing is promising enough that he should spend the time to look at the sample chapters (for a novel) or script (for a comic book). What do you think about this query letter?

Dear [EDITOR NAME],

It’s been a normal day for IRS Agent Gary Smith, besides the car-bomb.  And the US Marshals threatening to send him on a one-way trip to Alaska.  And the revelation that everybody he knows has a pretty good motive to murder him (even besides the fact that he’s an IRS agent).  His only chance of surviving with his sanity intact rests on joining a top-secret spy agency and partnering with a mutant alligator whose powers of deduction make Scooby Doo look like Batman.

Superhero Nation is a wacky mix of an office comedy and national security thriller.  I’ve enclosed the script for the first issue, five colored and lettered sample pages, and the synopsis for the five issue arc.

My main writing qualifications are that I’m a communications contractor for [AGENCY NAME] and the webmaster for a superhero writing advice website with hundreds of thousands of readers.

Thank you for your time and consideration.  I can be reached at [PHONE] or [EMAIL].

Yours,

[NAME]

If you’re a Firefox or Chrome user that likes to read deep through blogs, I think you’ll like FastestFox. Rather than making you hit “Previous Articles” again and again, it’ll automatically add the next set of articles below the last article. I’m doing some heavy editing work on all of the articles I wrote in 2007, and I enjoy not having to hit “Previous Articles” 25 times.

This is the second article in a series. Please see part one here.

9.  Getting published is really, really hard. Publisher’s assistants at major publishers go through hundreds of unsolicited manuscripts a week. Out of every thousand or so manuscripts, they’ll probably send on around five to an editor for further consideration. That means PAs reject about 99.5% of manuscripts. Of the five surviving manuscripts, usually one or two will eventually be offered contracts.

10. Publisher’s assistants do not have the time to pore through each manuscript. They are not on your side. They have to get through hundreds of manuscripts each week and the only way to do that is to throw out manuscripts as fast as possible. Most manuscripts do not survive to page two. If something does not make sense on page one, they will throw away the manuscript long before you’ve explained what is going on. The story absolutely needs to be clear and engaging from page one.

11. SPELLING, PUNCTUATION AND GRAMMAR ARE EXTREMELY IMPORTANT.  They are the difference between conveying that “I am a polished writer that will be easy to publish” and “I am not familiar with basic writing craft.” If your writing has more than a few typos, you are dead on arrival. Even one typo per page would raise eyebrows. Remember, around 99.9% of unsolicited manuscripts get rejected. Don’t give the publisher any reason to drop the guillotine.

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Characters doing a usual activity in a way or setting that is unexpected.

• For example, someone would look pretty mundane smoking a cigar, but what if he were smoking right next to a corpse?  Probably much more interesting.
• Holding an iPod is boring, but Thor holding an iPod raises an interesting contrast between tradition and modernity.
• Many badass detectives and criminals carry guns, but it’s distinctly more disturbing if it’s a kid holding a massive sniper rifle… with a Kennedy campaign button.
• A guy holding a briefcase is the epitome of dullness.  But a guy handcuffed to a briefcase or a mutant alligator holding a briefcase is more striking.

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1. Marvel and DC Comics don’t consider unsolicited submissions. Fortunately, Optimum Wound has a useful list of publishers that do. If you’re dead-set on working with Marvel or DC, I’d recommend taking a job with them in some other capacity (such as editing, sales or marketing) and then moving laterally into writing.

2. Most publishers won’t evaluate a comic book submission unless it has ~5 illustrated sample pages. This means that a writer will usually need a professional-grade artist friend willing to work for speculative pay, a paid freelancer or the skill to illustrate his own work.  If you don’t know any artists and don’t have $500-750 for a freelancer, I’d recommend submitting to Dark Horse or another publisher that doesn’t require art samples.  However, if you can pull off a competent art sample, it will really help your submission.

3. Pretty much no one considers proposals for licensed works. Do you have an awesome idea for a Star Wars or Buffy comic?  Unfortunately, with licensed works, the publisher will almost always contact the writer it wants to work with rather than vice versa.  Additionally, when they need a writer for a major series, they will hire someone experienced and proven rather than an unpublished author.  Sorry. If you want to write for Spiderman or Batman, you need to establish yourself first.

4. Comic book companies usually buy the rights to the series and characters. In contrast, novel series are almost always creator-owned.  If you really care about maintaining ownership over your characters and stories, I’d recommend looking at Image Comics. Almost all of their series are creator-owned.

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The Intern provides some useful advice she got from her book promoter.

I’m a bit skeptical about some of the advice, though.  Is Facebook really the Holy Grail of online book promotions?  If you’re tech-savvy enough to handle WordPress or something similar, I doubt it. Facebook pages don’t handle search engines well and are not very customizable. Also, if you’re writing for a target audience older than 30 or younger than 13, I’d wonder about whether Facebook is actually the most effective way to reach your prospective readers.

1. Even if you get published, you will get paid much, much less than you can imagine. A 75,000 word manuscript takes 2000+ hours and typically sells for around $5000. That’s not even close to minimum wage, particularly when you consider the work you put in after getting published. If you plan on eating food more expensive than Kibbles and Bits, get a day job.

2. Most novelists don’t get their first novels published. According to a Tobias Buckell survey, only 35% of published authors broke out with their first novel.  This shouldn’t be too surprising–look at what you were writing 2-3 years ago. You’ve gotten a lot better, right? You’ll probably feel the same way about what you’re writing now in 2-3 years. It may take a novel manuscript or two to develop professional-grade writing skills.  (Keep practicing and you’ll get there!)

3. Novel publishing is freakishly competitive, particularly compared to English courses. In an English class, most of the papers will get A’s and the teacher will usually explain to everybody else what they need to fix so that they will get A’s. In contrast, publishers reject over 99% of submissions and the vast majority of submissions are rejected without any specific feedback.  Thanks for submitting–we enjoyed your manuscript, but not enough to tell you what to fix.  (By the way, if the publisher does tell you what to fix, you’re almost certainly on the right track.  Publishers would probably only spend extra time to write an individualized rejection if you had potential).

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My nonfiction manuscript for a book about how to write superhero stories won his yearly award. Thanks, voters!

I decided to swap out the US flag for a background more recognizable as a writer’s background. Also, I swapped out the red-to-blue title gradient for just blue. I think it’s easier to read. What do you think?

ORIGINAL VERSION

NEW VERSION

I think that Lash (the black guy) sticks out much more smoothly than he did before.  And the new SUPERHERO NATION title text is significantly cleaner and easier to read.   (My grasp of Photoshop has gotten a bit better; can you see that the new version’s title text is a bit more three-dimensional than the original version?)  However, I think that Gary (the white guy) sticks out less.  Aside from that, I think that the new background is an improvement because it indicates this is a writing website more effectively than the US flag did.

When you’re laying out your book for agents, publishers and prospective readers, you need to keep in mind what the “default” story in your field is. If you say you’re writing a superhero story, people will assume it is a default superhero story unless you specify otherwise.  Be careful! Default stories will probably be rejected.

• Audience: 13-30 year old males.
• Genre: action.
• Main character: a Peter Parker (student-turned-superhero) or Clark Kent (mostly unconflicted adult)
• Character voice: none.
• Interesting events: none.
• Mood: none.
• Authorial style: none.

Hopefully you’re thinking to yourself something like the following: “wait, that’s not fair! My story’s not like that!” (If not, I’d REALLY recommend fleshing out your characters and plot events and practicing your writing as much as possible).

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Building Your Audience

• Promoting Your Book, Part One and Two–some innovative and mostly free ways to promote your writing.
• Search Engine Optimization Tips for New Bloggers— this will help you write Google-friendly content, which is helpful if you’re the sort of writer that enjoys having readers.
• Author’s Guide to Podcasting–this will help you market your writing with online video and audio.
• Should You Advertise on Facebook?–Therese Walsh talks about her experiences advertising her writing on Facebook. If you’re thinking about ads, I’d recommend checking this out. Personally, I’m a bit skeptical (you only make about $1 in royalties every time you sell a novel, so your advertisements would have to bring in near-guaranteed sales to justify the expense).  I’d have trouble seeing how you could get away with paying less than $.10 per click, so you’d have to sell at least one copy per 10 prospects just to break even.  (Normally, I think 1-2% is typical). I suspect that advertising would probably make more sense for experienced authors with many books to sell.  It increases the potential profit per customer.

Beating Writer’s Block

• How to Finish Hard Scenes–excellent for anybody that’s ever struggled for days with a particularly tricky scene.
• How to Turn Off The Internet While Writing on Your Computer–some tips to increase your writing productivity by removing online distractions.
• Six Ways to Make Your Writing More Productive–here’s a seventh one for free: stop reading SN and start writing! SN will be here when you get back.

Miscellaneous Advice on Writing Better

• Writing Plausible Villains–because villains are far too important to suck.
• How to Write Strong Cross-Genre Fiction–some tips in case you’re sitting on a killer idea about a goblin detective… in space!
• Kim Blank’s Wordiness List–a vast list of wordy phrases that can be pared down shortened or eliminated.

Miscellaneous Advice on Getting Published

• How to Find an Agent–if you have a manuscript completed and need an agent, I’d highly recommend checking this out.
• Completing Your Author’s Bio–whether you’re completing an “About the Author” section of your website or preparing a manuscript submission, you’ll probably provide a bio to your readers. Here are some tips.

Advice for First-Time Authors that Want to Self-Publish

• Don’t. Seriously, that’s probably the best advice you’ll get all day.

Advice for Authors that Want to Self-Publish Anyway

• Digital Book Formatting for Dummies–you’re not a dummy, but you might benefit from this guide anyway.
• Designing Your Book–one of the biggest opportunities (or challenges, depending on how you look at it) of self-publishing is that you make your own design choices. Don’t suck.

• Basic proofreading. I’ll fix your grammar, spelling and punctuation.  The rate for this ranges from one cent per word for a polished writer to five cents for someone who needs more proofreading help.  If you have fewer than three typos per page, I’d offer you a rate of one cent per word.
• Query letters and submission letters. When you submit a novel manuscript or comic book script to a publisher, you also need to include a letter explaining your proposal in a persuasive fashion.  Usually this is one page long for a novel and one to two pages long for comic book proposals.  $100 for the first page and $50 for every subsequent page.
• Header design. I’d have to work out a rate based on what you’d like in your header, but this would probably be around $100-125 for Photoshopped photography and text and $200-300 if you’d like something more cartoony, like our header.
• Stylistic rewrite. I’ll rewrite a chapter (or chapters) to be more effective.  This is considerably more expensive than simple proofreading.  I’ll quote you a rate after seeing the chapter(s), but probably around 10-15 cents per word.
• Comic book formatting and proofreading. This ranges from $10 per page for a well-polished script to $20 per page for a script that needs a lot of editing.  If there are fewer than 3 typos per page, I will offer a rate of $10 per page.

A few notes to keep in mind.

• If the order is more than $100, I’d like half of the total payment upfront and half upon completion to your satisfaction.  If it’s less than $100, I’d like all of it upfront.
• Most of my past clients have paid with Paypal.  If you have something else in mind, please let me know and we can work that out.
• I am (ludicrously) American, but I’ve worked with British spelling before.  If you’re trying to get published in Britain, Australia or Canada, I’d be honoured to work with you.

If you’d be interested in working with me, please let me know at superheronation-at-gmail-dot-com .  Thanks!

There are three main ways your site can get new viewers: referrals (links), search engines, and ads.  I’ll focus on getting referrals here because ads are probably not cost-effective for authors and search engines can have a low payoff. 

1.  Have content worth sharing.  If your material is good and plentiful, spreading it will be a lot easier. 

2.  Make it easy for your users to share your content.  For example, SN gets a free 50-100 readers a day from StumbleUpon, probably because several of our popular articles end with a link asking readers to Stumble SN.  Adding those links only took me about 30 minutes. 

3.  Hit-and-run selflinks don’t really help very much.  If you insert a comments like “See my webpage!” onto people’s sites apropos of nothing, people are just going to scroll past them.  Interact with prospective readers!  Work your website into a conversation where it fits naturally.  For example, if somebody had a question about male characters, linking a story where you did a male protagonist well would feel very natural and helpful.  (Or, if you’re into nonfiction, you might have an article on writing male characters lying around).  Interacting is critical because it gives people a reason to look. 

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