Jun 19 2009
This is strikingly funny.
Jun 19 2009
Bleach’s writing is not terribly inspired and it introduces its premise in a fairly awkward fashion. However, this visual from episode 2 made me burst into laughter. The hero is at school and meets someone that is obviously the girl he saw dice up a demon the night before. (Because of secret identities, he can’t say anything to the people around him, though). He starts to freak out and she turns to shake his hand.
Jun 18 2009
Here are some of the things that can make a character likable.
There are many more, I’m sure. What am I missing?
Jun 17 2009
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.
Continue Reading »
Jun 15 2009
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.
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.
Jun 14 2009
If you’ve ever been to Arlington, VA, you know how accurate this is. Down to the bad rappers.
Jun 13 2009
Both Chicago and comic books are pretty awesome. Hence Sequential Chicago, for all of your Chicago comic book needs. Hmm. Is this a half-baked idea or a well-targeted niche? What do you think?
Jun 05 2009
Ok, that settles it. I’m getting cremated.
Jun 04 2009
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?
Jun 03 2009
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
Jun 01 2009
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).
May 31 2009
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.
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.
May 26 2009
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.
May 25 2009
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.
May 25 2009
“Please enjoy our authentic tapas. I am afraid they are not like that Taco Bell stuff you Americans like so much, sir, but if you want I can smother them in sour cream and you will hardly be able to tell the difference.”
Hat-tip to our Japanese correspondent.
May 23 2009
I found this dangerously amusing. “Ah, excellent. Simmering sexual tension is my specialty.” Please look past the awful production values; they’re part of the humor.
May 22 2009
May 21 2009
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.
May 21 2009
Gigantic #1 is an issue that starts out spectacularly. I can’t think of any series that are as immediately engrossing. But, aside from the beginning, it was a disappointment. The main character has to be likable and stylish, and Gigantic is neither.
May 21 2009
I have a business trip to the East Coast this week. I’m very excited! I will probably be less active than usual this week.
May 20 2009
Invincible is an ambitious and wildly uneven superhero series. A lot of it is awful and a lot of it is incredible. If you’re interested in what went horribly wrong, please see this separate review.
The plotting is generally quite good. The plot progresses in a natural and even way, which is almost unheard-of for an ongoing series. Most ongoing series pace themselves something like this: plot point! Filler arc! Filler arc! Plot point!
There is filler material, but it’s generally well-integrated with the recurring threads. Although characters are interrupted frequently by random events, it rarely feels like a “creature of the week.”
May 18 2009
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!
May 17 2009
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.
May 16 2009
What do you think? Which comic books or graphic novels should a comic book writer be familiar with and why?
May 14 2009
CNN published an article titled “Superheroes rise in tough times,” which claims that superhero stories are most popular during rough economic times. It’s a plausible theory, but the evidence suggests otherwise.
May 12 2009
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.
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.
May 11 2009
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.
May 11 2009
If you’re a blogger interested in accumulating a large audience, it’s really important to do posts as regularly as you can. But life sometimes gets in the way. Anyway, I’m back!
May 07 2009
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).
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