In terms of productivity, Seattle’s authors have dominated the National Novel Writing Month for two years in a row. But this year the furious scibblers of northern Indiana will strike fear into their hearts!
CADET DAVIS ADDS: Northern Indiana’s secret weapon against Seattle is unemployment.
“Hello, my name is _____.” An even worse version is “Hello, my name is ______, but you can call me ______.” If the most interesting thing about your main character is his name, you should probably get back to the drawing board. Leading with another detail– any other detail– is likelier to interest readers.
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Today we got an e-mail that asked “who’s paying you to crank this [expletive] out, the CIA?” Well, no. As far as I know, the CIA doesn’t offer grants for superhero novels, even kickass ones with accountants and mutant alligators from Homeland Security. In fact, judging by my ramen account, it looks like no one is paying us to write this novel.
Not sure what to name your superhero’s alternate identity? This name generator can give you hundreds of suggestions based on US census data. Also, its names are surprisingly ethnically-diverse.
The Independent reports that Kevin Spacey will be reprising his role as Lex Luthor in the next Superman movie (Hat-tip to io9). God, I hope not. He has none of the competence, charm or combat skills a supervillain needs to shine in a movie. Lex Luthor can’t have an interesting fight. (And no, Superman limping around because of Kryptonite is not interesting). So casting Luthor as the villain would pretty much guarantee that the movie has at best mediocre action scenes*. I like Superman saving planes as much as anyone, but no one reads a comic or watches a movie to see the superhero stop a natural disaster.
Virtually nothing in Superman Returns worked. At the very least, the next Superman movie needs a new cast, new writers and a new villain. A different mood might help too. I don’t think that a “darker” Superman will be much better, but it’s hard to imagine that it could get any worse.
*In the cartoons and the comics, Lex Luthor actually gets superpowers, so his fight scenes are interesting, but that’s probably too campy for a movie.
B. MAC ADDS: I walked out after around an hour of Superman Returns. I can’t remember the last time I walked out on a movie. Hell, I made it through Superhero Movie.
On art-sites like DeviantArt, if you do searches for things like “superhero” or “book cover,” more than 90% of the results will be utter garbage or half-past-strange. If you think that searching for visual references shouldn’t feel like a creepy waste of time, you might like our new DeviantArt wall of favorites. You can use that to check out hundreds of visuals we’ve found impressive. We have separate folders for superhero stuff, fantasy and sci-fi, depending on what you need your visual for.
TV Tropes notes the cliche that stories with real-world settings tend to be in New York City. In comic books, that’s overwhelmingly true. (And Gotham/Metropolis aren’t fooling anyone… at the time DC Comics first used those, they were nicknames for New York City). There are a few reasons for this cliched setting.
This trailer sells an unusual premise effectively. It also makes a skillful pitch to its target audience with reviews that specifically say that geeks will enjoy the book. I found its comparisons to other works of geek-culture helpful. However, I thought that its emotional cues were a bit mixed. The book-cover makes this look like a light-hearted comedy, but but the only clear emotional image in the trailer is her sobbing as mushroom clouds loom in the background. There isn’t very much in the trailer that suggests the book is actually funny, or what kind of humor it uses. For example, if this is a dark comedy about the protagonist and her failure friend trying to survive, it might have helped to show us a glimpse of the comedic relationship between the two characters.
The cover-art was very eye-catching, even though it rips off a famous scene from Dr. Strangelove. My main question is that she appears to have wings on the cover, but the trailer doesn’t mention that strange detail at all. (My guess is that it’s a nuclear mutation).
I hate ancient philosophy. I find it interesting that the only endeavor in which the ancients are generally taught to undergraduates is philosophy. In 2000 years, I hope that students (to the extent that we have students in 2000 years) learn more about us than the inconsequential quibblings of our philosophers.
Generally, characters that are based on the friends and family members of the author turn out poorly.
1. These characters tend to be boring because they lack flaws. If your character is based on a friend or family member, you might feel afraid to give that person flaws because the friend might find out. PS: If you’re using someone as a model, they’re probably close enough to you that they’ll read the book eventually. (Alternately, if the character is based on someone the author hates, the character will probably have no likability or style whatsoever — that sort of character is usually a liability even as an antagonist).
2. It may limit the character’s development if you feel that you have to be “true” to the real-life model. Generally, it’s easiest to write when you completely own the material.
3. Your friend or family member might not fit into the story or a satisfying development arc. Well-constructed characters will have traits, flaws, skills, conflicts and usually growth arcs carefully tailored to the story. If the character’s details don’t work for the plot, it may detract from the reading experience. For example, Soon I Will Be Invincible inexplicably tried to fit several adult superheroes into a conflict between geeks and jocks. If it seems strange that adults would really care about who was popular back in high school, it seems absolutely mind-blowing that a mutant tiger would.
4. Your friends and family are probably not quite as interesting or endearing to readers as they are to you. No offense, but most people aren’t interesting enough to have biographies written about them. Why will we care about your friends?
5. If I were evaluating a novel manuscript, I’d be really concerned about whether the author had enough distance from what he was writing.
6. While modeling characters on acquaintances is probably problematic, you can still use your real-life observations to make your characters or story feel more realistic. For example, you might draw on certain traits or habits from people you know rather than transplanting characters wholesale. That will help you maintain full ownership over the work and modify characters as necessary to fit the plot. If you find yourself making writing decisions based on what your friends/family would do in a particular situation, you would probably benefit from more creative control over your material.
Microsoft Word automatically corrects common spelling mistakes. It also allows users to tell it which words should be autocorrected. Here are a few ways you can use autocorrect to make your life easier.
If you use the same long phrases repeatedly, you can use autocorrect to create a macro. For example, our book repeats phrases like Agent Orange and the Office of Special Investigations, so we told autocorrect to turn the “word” [OJ] into Agent Orange and the “word” [OSI] into Office of Special investigations. When you set up macros, I recommend either using a combination of letters that will never come up naturally (like OJ) or a bracketed phrase. That way, you will reduce the odds of accidentally setting off your macro.
If you change a character’s or location’s name, you can use autocorrect to help remind you not to use the original. If you change your hero’s name from Hiro to John, suddenly referring to him as Hiro will confuse readers. Autocorrect will help you from adding more mistaken references to Hiro. (However, it won’t fix instances of “Hiro” that are already in the work– use “Find and Replace” to hunt those down).
This can help you maintain stylistic consistency. For example, sometimes authors forget how they spelled the names of minor characters. Mr. Merriman might become Mr. Merryman. Mrs. Busch might be married to Mr. Bush. If you notice that this is a problem, you can use autocorrect to prevent future occurrences by telling it to turn Merryman into Merriman.
Hoping that the show would overcome its second-season slump, I watched the third-season premiere. It was ridiculously bad… even worse than last season. Here are some spoiler-heavy observations…
In cinema, he was best known for his performances in films like Butch Cassidy, but he also played the villain in the phenomenally funny Hudsucker Proxy. Along with Team America and Canadian Bacon, it’s the only movie with heavy political undertones that I find remotely watchable. This clip is most funny from 3:10 to the end.
The widget would count the words of all articles tagged with the category in question and then display that for readers. “B. Mac has written 12,500 words on ‘Characterization.'” “B. Mac has written 30,000 words on ‘The Superhero Nation Novel.'” If you want to get really fancy (or sadistic, depending on how much you procrastinate), you could add a feature where the word-counter breaks down results by month. “B. Mac has written 0 words on ‘The Superhero Nation Novel’ in September 2008.”
We’ve started using Share This on about 20 of our most popular articles. Hopefully it should be easier to share our sage insights with the unenlightened masses now.
This means that Georgia and Florida might be #1 and #2. If that happens, I promise we’ll put out a commemorative webcomic… thesis be damned.
UPDATE: Erm, due to unexpected losses by both Georgia and Florida, it appears we will be able to keep our theses on schedule.
A few weeks ago, we applied for a university grant to underwrite a non-fiction book about how to write superhero stories. (Ahem, we’ve written more than 50,000 words about the subject here). Today I learned that our application was very well-received…
One of our Google queries today was “can radiation give you superpowers?”
No. However, if you’re writing a superhero story, that doesn’t matter! Your readers will accept that tropes like radiation can give someone superpowers, so radiation makes for a completely plausible origin story. Except for intense training, it’s not like there’s any better alternative. (In real life, one drug addict put his brain under so much neurological stress that his sense of smell sharpened to canine-like levels, but he died a few weeks thereafter. Also, for obvious reasons, narcotics do not typically work well for superhero origin stories).
Here are some other origin stories that readers have generally come to accept.
Cybernetics (Bionic Woman, Cyborg).
Genetic engineering (Spiderman).
Chemical enhancement (Green Goblin).
Powersuits and/or exoskeletons (Iron Man, Steel). I think that the Iron Man suit will be mostly scientifically viable within 30 years (but too expensive to be practical).
Other technological hardware–for example, three-dimensional invisibility and technopathy (a mind-machine interface) will be viable within 30 years.
Neurosurgery. At the very least, we’ll probably be able to surgically enhance reflexes within 30 years. Suppressing pain is a distinct possibility, although pain serves an important biological role (alerting the brain to danger–for example, if you’ve been in a car accident, pain is the clearest indicator of whether you’ve injured a limb and will help you know how far you can push your body without causing lasting damage).
Ridiculously tough training (Batman, GI Joe).
The hero belongs to a tougher-than-human species (Superman, possibly X-Men).
Mutations, probably (X-Men, Heroes).
Miracle operations (Kick-Ass).
Stimulating the visual cortex so that skills can be learned extremely quickly (The Matrix). There’s been some exciting work on this front recently.
Typically, plausible origin stories tend to be scientific. Fortunately, you don’t have to have a strong grasp of scientific research to write a compelling origin story. Generally speaking, modern scientific research in fields like genetics is conducted by large teams of scientists that spend years on each project and have access to large budgets. If you’re writing a superhero story, your readers will almost always accept that a single supergenius can perform unimaginable feats of science. Reed Richards is apparently a world-class researcher in every branch of science, and he’s able to instantaneously solve problems that would probably take a real team of scientists decades.
Here are some other (incorrect) assessments of modern science that readers will usually accept.
Superhero scientists rarely keep good notes. When the doctor that created Captain America got killed, the formula for the serum was lost forever. Whoops. In real life, researchers keep exhaustive notes so that their experiments can be replicated.
Superhero scientists rarely fail. In real life, scientists would test hundreds of variations of a drug, which tends to make the process inordinately laborious and expensive. But readers will accept that a superscientist tends to get it right almost immediately.
A super-scientist can accomplish anything if he’s desperate enough. Tony Stark built a powersuit in an Afghan cave and Norman Osbourne became the Green Goblin because he was willing to subject himself to premature tests.
Every scientifically gifted high school student will be the best in the world if the plot calls for it.
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 […]
