Our overriding goal is to provide a friendly and professional meeting place for aspiring authors.  Please keep that in mind!

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These fonts are poison.

1. Comic Sans
2. Times New Roman
3. Helvetica
4. Arial
5. Chronicles of a Hero
6. Anime Ace

Sometimes a minor character will “steal” the scene from the main character, taking so much of the spotlight that the main character just seems to disappear.  Here are several scenarios that often to lead to scene-stealing.

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“Keep the change, ya filthy animal.”  Indeed!  If your character changes in some way , it’s usually a good idea to “keep the change” rather than undo the change later on.  Backtracking often makes the characterization feel unsatisfying and usually suggests that there was no reason to make the change in the first place.  If the hero moves from psychopathic to mostly sane, it probably won’t feel right if he suddenly jerks back to psychopathic two episodes later.  (I’m looking at you, Sylar!)

In a novel or comic book, backtracking is best-handled as a major failure for the main character.  For example, it might be a decisive event that sets up the climactic struggle.  As an immature kid, Simba runs away when his father gets killed.  That sets up his return to fight Scar in the climax, establishing that he has finally become responsible.  Alternately, the hero backtracks because the hero loses at the end.  For example, if The Lion King were a dystopian tragedy about Simba failing to become mature, Simba gets hunted down and eaten by the hyenas shortly after fleeing to the desert.  That’ll teach you to try to run away from your problems!

Backtracking is generally not well-suited for traits that aren’t particularly important, or for minor characters. Backtracking tends to take a lot of space (to clear up potential confusion), so it probably isn’t worthwhile unless the character and trait are crucial to the story.

Now I’m going back to watch Home Alone.

Fevered rumors occasionally surface that Marvel and/or DC have copyrighted the word “superhero” and plan to sue anyone that uses them.  That’s obviously bunk.  However, a more credible blogger claims that Marvel and DC have jointly trademarked the term superhero and are the only ones that can use it when naming a comic book.  It is true that they have the trademark, but there is virtually no chance that it would hold up in court. (Whether or not your publisher is actually willing to risk a case is another question, though… it’s cheaper to come up with a new title than go to court).

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I’m kind of fond of this classic one about a Holocaust survivor and a former death camp supervisor.  However, the twist ending is too predictable.  (Hold your cursor here for the spoiler).

Florida just won the national championship in college football.  I feel a comic coming on, just not soon.

I was browsing around Once Upon A Geek, which has a lot of amusing superhero content.  For example, I liked this blending of Peanuts and the Watchmen.

They also collected some interesting Christmas-themed covers.  Below the jump:  Spiderman lassoing a surly Wolverine with Christmas lights, and two shots of Santa packing heat.

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1.  The story fails to hook readers in the first three pages.
The easiest way to do this is to show a likable character facing a serious problem.  It doesn’t have to be a life-and-death threat, but that helps.  Another method is to establish that the writing style is particularly compelling.

2. The plot lacks urgency.

A character walking from his door to his car is not very interesting. Running to his car to make it to work on time is better. Running to his car to avoid gunshots? Even better. To make the plot more urgent, I recommend making giving the characters goals that are time-sensitive and high-stakes. If John doesn’t make it to work in ten minutes, he will be fired. If Captain Carnage can’t find and defuse the bomb in ten minutes, the building will explode. Etc.  The goal doesn’t have to be life or death, but it helps.

3.  The writers rely too much on exposition (particularly narration and dialogue) to tell the story.

Try not to tell your audience things that they should be able to see in the picture. For example, check out these two versions of one of our panels.

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Just wondering.

Superhero Nation is slightly eccentric and wacky, so I kind of want an eye-catching cover that conveys that.  Here are a few of my latest ideas for our first cover.

1.  This cover shows a desk with a careful array of US presidential bobbleheads.  (It’s Agent Orange’s desk, so this should look a bit wacky).  At the front of the desk would be bobbleheads of Agent Black, Agent Orange and their boss.  In the background, we’d place a motivational poster for humorous flavor.  (Maybe “Human Resources:  Killer Service Every Time.”)

ALTERNATIVE:  The desk still has presidential bobbleheads, but the bobbleheads of the cast are gone.  Agent Orange is behind the desk in a surly boss pose and Agent Black is staring at him dumbfounded.  As before, there’s a motivational poster for humor.  (Hat-tip to Brett).

2.  Agent Black is getting chewed out in an over-the-top manner by Agent Orange.  I’d probably frame it like a scene between Peter Parker and JJ Jameson.  I’m relying on the “what the hell?” factor of having a mutant alligator as the boss to make this eye-catching and appealing.  I’d probably give Agent Orange a business prop like a wacky chart or graph in lieu of the motivational poster.

3.    Agent Black is in a mock Rambo pose, ineptly wielding a machine gun on a firing range.  All of his bullets are wildly off his target.  (The bulletholes may spell out the Superhero Nation logo).  Agent Orange is looking on exasperatedly with a hand on his forehead.  He’s shaking his head.  This is probably better-suited for the second issue than the first.

We’re compiling a list of common mistakes of first-time comic book teams. I’ve got 40 so far, but I’d love to know what you would come up with.

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Only a few weeks ago, Dark Horse required writers to have artists on-board before their stories could be considered.  However, according to Dark Horse’s Submissions page, it seems like Dark Horse has nixed that requirement.  In the miscellaneous notes, it says that “If a submitted project has an artist collaborator, samples of the artist’s continuity work must be included.”  That suggests that DH will consider submitted projects that don’t yet have an artist.  That should make it much cheaper for writers to prepare a script for DH.

However, if you’re applying to DH, I would really recommend getting an artist anyway even though it’s not required. Preparing a sample of 5 pages and a cover will probably set you back $400-500 (colored) or maybe $250-350 (inked). That’s a major investment.  However, if you’re serious about your application, having art accompany your writing could really help you.  Providing pages that have been inked (preferably colored) will make it very easy for the editors to decide if you’re worth hiring.  If all you have is your script, it won’t be nearly as clear whether your team has the style and skill to convey the story on the page. Remember, businesses hate risks. When they put money down, they want to know they’re getting quality.

1. Novels are overwhelmingly word-driven.  In contrast, the primary tool of a comic book writer is visual imagery.  Words are a secondary tool to express what can’t be shown visually.  Comic book readers are annoyed by long blocks of text.  As a rule, I’d recommend limiting a page to 175 words of text for an adult audience.
2. Novels will usually describe the settings and what’s going on in the background at some length.  In comic books, those worldbuilding details are almost purely visual.
3. Every novel relies on a narrator.  In contrast, virtually every comic book avoids narration and instead tells the story with a combination of action, visual scenery, and dialogue (in roughly that order).   A comic book narrator may offer us little snippets of information like “FIVE MINUTES LATER…” but it’s not very interesting or smooth for him to drop paragraphs of information on us.
4. Novels are much longer (60,000-80,000 words vs. 2500-5000 and ~300 pages vs. ~24).  As a result, novels tend to focus more on dialogue and low-intensity scenes than action sequences, particularly combat.  A 24 page comic book might spend 10 pages on 2 fights, but a 300 page novel probably wouldn’t come close to 120 pages of fighting or 25 fights.   Having that many fights would get tedious.  Also, novel fight scenes tend to suck.  If readers wanted to see a rolling fight scene, they would go for a comic book or, more likely, an action movie.
5. Novel readers (particularly adults) tend to expect deeper characterization, fresher characters and more interesting relationships.  Character growth is far more important in a novel than a comic book.  If the main character has not changed or grown in some way over the course of the novel, readers are likely to feel dissatisfied.  In contrast, a character like Superman tends to change very little over the course of a comic book series.

My goal is to provide high-quality writing advice for adults and young adults.  Here are a few ground rules.

1.  No R-rated sexual content.

Anything more sexually graphic or creepier than a James Bond movie is probably not a great fit for this website–for one thing, about half of our readers are younger than 18 and many of the rest are teachers.

2. No gratuitous self-promotion.

I’d love to see your website, but contribute something first.  For example, if you’d like to link to your site, connect it in some way to previous comments or the article itself.  If you’d like to market yourself without contributing something, please go somewhere else, okay?

3. Don’t give too much information.

In particular, please don’t ever post your phone number or address on an open forum, especially if you’re younger than 18.  It is not the best way to convince a professional to reach you.  Personally, when I see someone post a business proposal with a phone number in an open forum, I’m more likely to think “Good God, what’s he thinking?” than “Wow, he’s really making himself accessible!”

4. No fan-fiction. 

Is your main goal as a writer to have a good time?  If so, serious reviews listing 25+ possible revisions for a chapter would probably be more emotionally overwhelming than fun.  If not, I think you’d give yourself a better chance to develop writing skills by building your own stories/premises/characters/settings from scratch rather than starting with a story somebody else has already written.  For fan-fiction reviews, I’d recommend fanfiction.net instead.  Yes, the reviews will generally be as useless as “this’s really good!!!” or “this sux!!!” , but that’d only be a problem if you wanted to become a professional author.

5. Be friendly and professional.

A professional demeanor and friendly attitude are extremely helpful. Probably more than raw talent, actually.

Thanks!

We have page 2 fully colored.  What do you think?  (The main thing from page 1 is that we know someone’s trying to kill the protagonist here).

The rest of our query will include 4 more colored pages, the script for the rest of the first issue, the cover for the first issue, the synopsis for the series, and the query letter.  I think the main obstacle at this point is the cover.

Generally, a book has only 5-20 pages (depending on audience age and genre) to establish three critical elements.

1. The status quo of the main character.  What is this character like before everything goes wrong?  In the Lord of the Rings, for example, Frodo celebrates Bilbo’s birthday before being called upon to save the world.  In Superhero Nation, Gary is a workaholic accountant.
2. The inciting event.  What throws the character off his status quo?  Usually, this is the point at which everything starts to go wrong.  For example, in Superhero Nation, Gary narrowly survives a car-bombing very early on.  This forces several changes on him:  first, he is transferred away from his job for his safety.  So he’s completely out of his social comfort zone.  Second, assassins are now trying to kill him.
3. A goal for the main character.  This is usually a response to the inciting event.  This can be as simple as “I want everything to return to normal.”   Gary wants to rebuild his life by getting a job somewhere and he wants to survive the assassins.  This brings him to the superpowered Office of Special Investigations.  Wacky hijinks ensue!  (Buy the book when it finally gets published, heh heh).

A lot of manuscripts get bogged down in details that are typically too far removed from these three goals.

1. Prologues.  They usually lack immediacy and, far too often, they just skip the main character entirely.  Ick.  The main character is almost always the best available way to hook readers into your story.
2. Backstory.  Typically, it doesn’t really matter what your character was doing 5 or 10 years ago.  Readers want to know what’s happening now.  If you are literally unable to start the story without explaining what happened 5 or 10 years ago, you may wish to reevaluate the starting point for your story.  Ahem.  “If your backstory is more interesting than your current era, you’re writing the wrong story.”  If you have to introduce backstory, try to keep it to a bare minimum. Tell us only what we need to understand what is going on now.
   
3. Side-characters.  If the side-characters are the best hook to your story, there’s probably something wrong with the main character and/or the plot.  For example, if a fantasy novel wants to show us the parents of the hero right before he is born, that will trap us in backstory.  Furthermore, will readers care about the hero’s parents?  Probably not.  If they were the most interesting characters in this book, they would be the leads.  Harry Potter #1 was very well-written, but it made a questionable choice to start the book when Harry was an infant.  It was a very slow beginning.
4. Elaborate settings.  Typically, the main character is a better hook into the story than the world is.  A strong character can be relatable and likable, mostly unlike a strong world.  Try to limit the setting at the very beginning to just what we need to understand the main character and the plot.

I originally wrote this article for novelists, but it’s largely true for comic-book writers as well.  The main difference is that a comic-book writer has even fewer pages to establish the status quo.  What is your Peter Parker like before he becomes Spiderman?  If your character has a particularly interesting origin story, I’d recommend giving the status quo no more than half an issue (12 or 16 pages, probably).  But readers tend to appreciate introductions that are much shorter. A good establishing shot is typically sufficient and lets you get to the interesting stuff faster. (I love alternate identities as much as anyone, but usually the superhero identity is more gripping.  Would you want to read a comic called The Amazing Peter Parker or Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne?)

In a comic that probably ranges from 24-32 pages, you really need to get to the inciting event (probably the radioactive spider-bite or however else your hero got his powers) as soon as possible.  In a superhero story, I’d recommend giving the hero his powers early enough in the first issue that you can introduce his goal.  Ideally you can conclude the first issue with a fight or some other climactic event that gives you some room to offer some resolution (which satisfies readers) while setting up a greater conflict that will leave the readers wanting more.

“Even as we speak, Dr. Insidious might be building a deathray or a weather-control device!”  Unless readers know whether this speculation is accurate, this is idle speculation that’s probably not very interesting. Like musing, speculation tends to make stories stall.

If you’d like to use speculation, I’d recommend narrowing the scope as much as possible.  For example, if the heroes find a giant robotic hand, the characters might speculate how close Insidious is to completing the robot, and where the rest of the robot might be.  At least we have a better idea of what grisly fate we’re contemplating.  As always, the trick to intrigue is giving us enough to care.

I found this Atomic Robo pinup amusing.

Atomic Robo Saturday 6 by ~LordVenom05 on deviantART

This is a list of the top 35 bestselling paperback mass-market novels.  Afterwards, I have some observations about the titles as a whole.

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This is the inked version of the second page of our comic. On page 1, we just establish that someone’s trying to kill the main character.

I like our artist a lot, but I’m a bit concerned that his depiction of the bystander might be a bit, umm, insensitive to black people.  Yeah.  We’re probably going to have to cut those lips by a third or so and shrink the nose a bit to make them look more realistic.  It would probably be best to clear up these cultural issues sooner rather than later.  Aside from that, I think it’s generally well-inked.  I especially appreciate some of the stylistic notes like the squirrel falling out of the tree in the bottom panel.

In the final version, the bystander will be thinking “Should have bought a Honda.”

If you have any tips or comments, I’d love to hear them.  What do you think?

I’m very close to sending out feelers on a nonfiction manuscript about how to write superhero stories.  I have one main problem, though.  My target audience is young (10-20 years old) and my writing style is not naturally breezy or accessible.  Ahem.  I’m a political scientist/journalist by training.

So I have a writing exercise/contest for you. Take any one of our articles and rewrite it so that a typical thirteen-year-old would find it authoritative, fun and easy to read.  I have a few stylistic suggestions.

1. Fragmented sentences are OK, but I recommend against run-ons.
2. Keep the words as simple as possible.
3. It must be fun!

We’d appreciate your help greatly.  Depending on how good the entries are, we may also give Amazon gift-cards or a free, signed copy to show our appreciation. Thanks!

Finals ended today, so we will resume lengthy reviews on Saturday night.  Thanks for being patient.

The students’ lounge had It Must Have Been The Mistletoe on infinite repeat.  Always the editor, I was thinking about some simple ways to fix this song.  It was surprisingly easy:  It Must Have Been the Missile TOW.

I got an e-mail about an annual conference at the Naval Academy and now all of my Google ads are from test-prep companies.  “Do you want to get into Annapolis?”  No!

This source gives the figure $80-150 per page.  That’s $2000-4000 for a comic book script.

Let’s see if this works…
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This is a piano performance of The Corridors of Time.

You’d have to be crazy to blow $250 on a word processor that can only display 6 lines of text and has 512 kilobytes of storage capacity.  Dell laptops start at $350.  Admittedly, a $350 laptop only has a nine-inch screen, but even so, it’s far more useful than this.