Today, I came across a self-published book called Superhumans.
Here’s what it says on the back-cover:
Seth, a college student, is accidentally exposed to an experiment that gives him incredible powers. When he and his friend, Chip, try to unravel its secrets, they discover a threat to the world unlike any other. And soon, Seth will find himself faced with one obstacle after another as he tries to live a normal life with the woman he lives and their daughter.
I’ve posted the first page below the jump. If you’d like a writing exercise today, please rewrite the first two paragraphs of the chapter so that they’re interesting.
When you’re querying your book, please do not mention that you’re thinking about a prequel. Mentioning a prequel suggests that you don’t really know when the story starts. It also suggests that you might leave out crucial information so that you can use it for the prequel. Finally, I’d regard it as a warning flag that the chronology of the series will be confusing and hard to follow. Ick. If you’d like to discuss a prequel with your publisher, please do so after the first book has sold well.
1. Mentioning Dragonball Z eight times would be questionable for any query, but maybe there’s a better analogue for your historical romance.
2. You think the only thing between you and getting published is that publishers misunderstand your spelling and grammatical choices. If only they appreciated your style!
3. Your writing teacher told you to “write what you know,” so you write the story of a tragically unappreciated author who finally snaps and starts murdering editors.
4. Your writing teacher told you to make your characters sound realistic, so you write your teen romance as a series of text-messages. You receive a cryptic message from the publisher: “nothnxbai.”
Many authors here aren’t really sure whether they want to write a superhero novel or a comic book. Here are a list of factors you should consider when deciding which one will work better for you.
Earlier this month, Praxis Comics’ site had gone down for a few days and I assumed that the publisher had folded. After all, it’s a cutthroat business and their website had previously mentioned some trouble with investors. However, I am pleased to report that the website has returned with a new design. (I’m generally fond of Praxis’ art, but I think the design probably uses sex-appeal a bit too blatantly. Ah well. That’s pretty standard for this industry).
So, if you’re interested in doing a trailer for your comic book (or perhaps even a novel), I think you can learn something from their approach. Their trailers are striking because they have no narration and hardly any words; they only use wordless images and an instrumental sound-track. That’s a surprisingly interesting way to present a simpler story like Calibre, an Arthurian legend retold in the Wild West. It did not work for series with a more complicated setup. For example, the premise of City of Dust is that fictional stories have been outlawed 100 years in the future. I don’t feel like the images gave me a good idea of what was going on or why I should care.
I recommend that you look at the entire list on Bookgasm, but here are some of the highlights.
8. The market for Iron Chef slash-fiction isn’t quite as broad as you may have assumed. “Oh, Morimoto,” Chef Batali sighed. “Stuff me like a pepper!”
31. There’s a fine line between writing authentic regional dialogue and making all of your characters sound like stroke victims.
32. Be thankful that they merely refused to publish it. After all, submitting a manuscript that ends with the protagonist realizing that it was just a dream (or was it?) usually causes the publisher to edit your face with a pair of brass knuckles.
36. God may have told you to write this book, but he apparently forgot to tell you how to give it a decent ending.
47. The entire point of your book has already been more satisfactorily made in a single strip of Family Circus.
Here are some tips to help you write a super-intelligent character even if you are pretty ordinary yourself.
1. Try not to focus on him talking intelligently– what can he do that’s intelligent? When you’re thinking about this character’s actions, he should be able to come up with cunning plans and brilliant moves. Try to keep these as simple as possible. After the hero carries out his plan, ideally your readers will say “damn, why didn’t I think of that?”
Many (if not most) magical superheroes have day jobs as stage magicians. (Zatara, Mandrake the Magician, Mr. Mystic, etc). It’s a stale and completely obvious choice for a day job. So I decided to do a fresh concept for a magical superhero. By night, he’s a genuine sorcerer. By day, he works to disprove supernatural claims, like James Randi. I think it would be fairly amusing for a sorcerer to resort to nonmagical parlor tricks to convince the masses that what they saw was not, in fact, a magical fireball. (Umm… perhaps it was a steam pipe malfunction?)
Superhero teams quite often go up against a lone villain. Realistically, the Fantastic Four (or your version thereof) should easily be able to squish Doctor Doom (or the lone villain of your choice).
But that would be boring. Here are several ways to make it seem like a lone villain actually has a chance of winning.
1. Use minions. Technically, this is cheating, but I won’t tell if you don’t. You can always have your heroes fight your villain, and in between hundreds of nameless, faceless villains get in the way. The best example of this is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Whilst they battle Shredder about 100 Foot Clan warriors usually jump in.
2. Give your heroes something else to do. Defuse a bomb, free the hostages, stop the plane from crashing… if there is something else needing done, you can safely split your hero team, making it more plausible for your villain to win. This also raises the excitement level by bringing in time limits.
3. Make your villain AWESOME. What do I mean by awesome? Simple. Make your villain Neo from the third Matrix film, so ridiculously powerful that hundreds of Agent Smiths are required to do battle with him. The downside to this is that when your heroes do win, it may look contrived.
1. Don’t get defensive. The worst case scenario is that someone thinks your writing is awful. So what? Several reviewers have accused me of being the worst writer in the world. No matter how bad it gets, there’s no reason to get huffy. If you think you can learn something from what they’re saying, then read it carefully and make any necessary improvements. If it’s just a generic “you suck” kind of review, then you should move on. Either way, there’s no need for you to defend yourself.
A Berlin woman divorced her husband for cleaning too much. “The wife got through 15 years of marriage putting up with the man’s penchant for doing household chores, tidying up and rearranging the furniture.” One of the advantages of marrying me is that this will certainly not be a problem.
This article is an interview with Marcus Hart, the author of The Oblivion Society. He originally self-published ObSoc but was later published professionally by Permuted Press.
In my list of common day jobs for superheroes, I forgot soldiers. Ack! How did I miss that? Anyway, I just added them. What sort of tips would you recommend for an author writing a story about a superhero soldier?
Hello. I’m still dealing with major technical issues on my end that will keep me from adding new moderators. I’ll let you guys know when I have resolved these issues; I expect it will take us a week or two.
Now we have a tiny favicon to help you keep track of which browser tab belongs to Superhero Nation. Favicons are only 16 pixels by 16 pixels, so they’re very hard to read. Here’s the 64 by 64 version.
I was mulling over a few alternatives, but they were fairly uninspired or unworkable: a book, a cape, something with a pen, etc. I’ll let you know if this significantly affects user-retention rates.
(Picture taken courtesy of The Baltimore Sun; you can read their review here).
This novel has been published by Harper-Collins, so I’m sort of surprised by how unappealing the cover is. It looks like it’s been slapped together for a self-published novel. There’s a typo on the cover. (“a terrific send-up not only superheroes in general” is missing the word “of”).
What do you think? What worked and what didn’t? What would you have changed?
UPDATE: The author of this book has contacted us, saying that the cover is an “uncorrected draft.” Erm, the book has been out for two months. Isn’t it well past time to correct it? Moreover, what were the circumstances that led a publisher to rush out a book that didn’t have a good cover ready?
The Batman was terrible. If you’re mainly watching this for comedic potential, I’d get as many Spanish-speakers or gringos as you can find, and let’s learn about the difference between “el” and “la” with Batman. –There’s a spectacularly strange scene where Batman tries interrogating Riddler and Riddler bursts into a soprano rendition of Ave Maria. […]
–There’s intense violence but not a lot of feeling here. It’s not a very exciting movie. But it’s functional. It’s frequently tedious but rarely boring. Only the political sermons and Weasel are viciously bad. It’s definitely a huge improvement over the first movie. –Most of what sucked about Suicide Squad 1 was an overfocus on […]
1:30 – 6:55: Cyborg sees his Mother Box acting up. Then Mera sees her Mother box acting up. Then Amazon guards see their Mother Box acting up. Also there’s a Lex Luthor flashback where the computer shows him that Mother Boxes are plot relevant in case you missed that. PS: In the first 8 minutes […]
–Wonder Woman 1984 is not nearly as good at the original. Pluses: the cast is still very charming, and a few of the fight scenes are effective. I did actually like most of the first hour of the movie. –Setting: In the original Wonder Woman, the WWI setting contributes to a hard bleakness which effectively […]
1. I don’t know where to start with Captain Marvel. So many things went so wildly wrong that we’d need a presidential commission to get to the bottom of it. It’s like the Chernobyl of superhero movies. 2. If at any point you feel like your action movie would benefit from a character whose main […]
1. This version of Spider-Man is a useless toolbox who actively avoids doing interesting things, and what he does attempt is usually wimpy and/or incompetent. 2. Unlike most main characters, his choices don’t matter much. For example, he chooses to leave his supersuit at home (but his aunt sneaks it in anyway) and he tries […]
We’re up to 72 superhero movies since 2000 (current as of November 2017). You can download the full data here. Some observations: R movies are making up the quality gap with PG-13 movies. Superhero movies are improving. Over the last 5 years (2013-2017), the average superhero movie is averaging 70% on Rotten Tomatoes, up […]
