Doctor Savant: “Do you know what the difference between you and I is?”

Lash: “I make this look good?”

Doctor Savant: “A Ph. D and 200 I.Q. points.”

This Youtube video has nothing to do with superheroes but is still one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.  It’s hard to describe, but it has something to do with a man’s growing obsession with The Delicious, which is a bizarre and ritualistic dance associated with a bright pantsuit.  The first minute or two are kind of slow but I promise it’s worth it.

[This is part 3 of the Catastrophe strand]

Journalist:  Do you feel discriminated against?

Catastrophe: Someone called me an egghead once…

Journalist:  Has anyone ever made untoward cartoonophobic comments, glared at you, suggested a government internment camp or secret holding/dissection facility, or shifted uncomfortably when you moved near?

Catastrophe:  Hmm, yes.

Journalist:  Really!  The internment camp, I hope.

Catastrophe:  I notice that children…

Journalist:  Yes, children, excellent… they haven’t learned to hide their prejudices yet…

Catastrophe: …have an unseemly tendency to approach me…

Journalist:  Out with it, man.  Out with it!

Catastrophe:  And ask if I’ll get around to killing the son of a bitch in the sequel.
Journalist:  …

Journalist:  …

Journalist:  What about stereotypes?  Do you find that people tend to stereotype you as a cartoon-American?
Catastrophe:  What, umm, stereotypes did you have in mind?

Journalist:  You know… stereotypes… of cartoons.

Catastrophe:  [???]

Journalist:  Christ, man, don’t make that face again.

Catastrophe:  What?

Journalist:  That face!

Catastrophe:  [???]

Journalist:  GAH!  It looks like you’re ready to cleave my skull open with the power of your mind and suck my brains out.

Catastrophe:  If I gave you a look as puzzled as you deserved, I think it would melt your face off.

Agent Black: The quintessential yes-or-no question of our times is not “do you want to win the war on terror?”  There are actually two: “do you feel safe in New York City?” and “Should you?”

[this is part 2 of the Catastrophe quote thread].

Journalist:  What about your superpowers?

Catastrophe:  What superpowers?

Journalist:  What do you mean, ‘what superpowers?’  How could you be turned into a cartoon character and not get superpowers?  Even effing frogs– not cartoon frogs, mind you– turn into super ninjas.  You wouldn’t happen to have developed something earth-shatteringly interesting, would you?  Strong proclivities towards violence, particularly with melee weapons?

Catastrophe:  Well, I don’t suppose I could rule out a superhuman intell…

Journalist:  Fine, fine.  I’ll just say you don’t know yet.

Agent Orange: “If journalism is really the first draft of history, we need some keen editors.”

Journalist:  Mr. Berkeley…

Catastrophe:  Doctor.  Bar-keley.  Doctor Barkeley.

Journalist: Well, if you have just a momen–

Catastrophe: Doctor Barkeley.

Journalist:  Doctor Barkeley, if you have a moment–

Catastrophe:  We’ve met before, haven’t we?

Journalist:  Yes.  Believe me when I say it was an unforgettable experience… one that won’t soon be forgotten, anyway.

Catastrophe:  Ah.  Was it the lecture on the relational degree of freedom in quantum mechanics?  I’ve also done work in noncommutative dynamics and I’ve been branching out into mathematics…

Journalist:  As fascinating as those undoubtedly are, I can’t remember what the topic of your lecture was.  But I’m pretty sure that you were a non-purple human at the time.  I think that I probably would remember if that had not been the case.

Catastrophe:  …and my thesis on combinatorial mathematics– I suppose the more accepted term is ‘combinatorics’– is coming along quite nicely.  Peer view has been favorable.  Do you need help spelling ‘combinatorics?’

Journalist:  Unless it has something to do with you taking on a startling resemblance to a cartoon character, no.

Catastrophe:  Well, there was, uhh… an unfortunate incident with a wizard.  He cursed me.

Journalist:  I can’t print that!

Catastrophe: Fine. Fine! I had been contracted to help produce a sunscreen that would permanently make skin more resistant to solar radiation. Or so I had thought! I discovered, to my chagrin, that the “sunscreen” was actually a weapons-grade mutagen.

Journalist:  How did you determine that?

Catastrophe:  An esteemed colleague threw me in it.

Journalist: …

Journalist: …

Journalist: …

Journalist:  What’s the name of this wizard, again?

Two questions.

1. Do you live outside of Austin or San Antonio?
2. Do you hate puppies?

If you answered no to both questions, look into the TSA’s puppy adoption program.

(Sorry, Oklahoma… this is just another reason Texas is cooler).

Everybody knows that ladies go nuts for puppies and Texan ladies swoon especially for servicepuppies.  Fortunately, you can get the ladies and save the day, thanks to the servicepuppy adoption program.

You don’t hate servicepuppies, do you?

CPT America will be featured in a Veteran’s Day comic sold at military base stores.

The Army and Air Force Exchange Service asked Marvel’s VP for business development to include Captain America and he “agreed because no other character better symbolizes the heroism and patriotism of the American soldier,” the VP said.

That’s funny, kind of. I’d be kind of insulted… well, really insulted if someone said I were as patriotic as Captain Anti-America. Sadly, The Hood (a Marvel anti-hero that trafficks in drugs and blood diamonds and accidentally kills a cop) makes a far stronger case for being patriotic.  He gets extra points for a hilarious reference to Guiliani Time.  

In Marvel’s comics for servicemen, there’s a big two-page spread that puts America in a romantic pose in front of the American flag that wouldn’t have been ridiculous, say, decades ago, when Captain America actually supported the American military.

Posing CPT America in front of an American flag is horribly two-faced.

1. Well, he’s a traitor and/or rebel.  He couldn’t bring himself to be as enthusiastic about fighting terrorists and registering superheroes as the government and people expected, which is fair.  Retiring would have been entirely acceptable. Instead he took it upon himself to militarily prevent the government from doing so, which is quite solidly treasonous.
2. Even before he rebelled in Civil War, his plotlines almost always featured the US government as a nefarious and sinister actor.  The details are blurry to me, but for example he beat the crap out of a sadistic and villainous Navy captain.
3. He’s never been very enthusiastic about either fighting terrorists or, frankly, America.  National Review argues that CPT America’s New Deal comics show that he is a terrorist sympathizer.  I wouldn’t go that far, but his recurring criticisms of the Dresden firebombing are pretty unrealistically severe for a WWII veteran.  Real soldiers–particularly ones that fought the Nazis, I’d imagine– aren’t that squeamish.  My impression is that servicemen overwhelmingly believe that the WWII bombing raids were justified on the basis of shortening the war and reducing casualties on both sides.  It seems a lot like Marvel’s writers have a certain set of views and they use CPT America as a mouthpiece to voice them, no matter how wildly implausible it would be for a WWII-era soldier to have them.  It would probably be more appropriate, I think, to have a younger America replacement make the revisionist case that the Dresden bombing is wrong;  I think that having the original America justify the bombing is probably truer to the source material, at least Captain America circa 1945. 
4. There is a major disconnect between the civic values of America’s servicemen and Captain America. America doesn’t seem to mind very much attacking Americans whenever he thinks it’s his duty to do so, which is unsettlingly often.  

Perhaps I should rest assured that “AMERICA SUPPORTS YOU”!  The comics are selling well, I guess, so maybe I’m looking at this too cynically.  I wonder who would admit to buying a comic book on a military base ;-).  I’ll have to ask around at Parris Island this summer.   

On the other hand, Spiderman is pretty kickass.  I’d be OK with his support any time.  Even Wolverine and the Fantastic Four seem to know how it is. 

Office of Special Investigation’s Retroactive Continuity branch mission statement: “Fixing history, one day at a time.”

A supervillain is easily identifiable because power is sexy.  That’s why we always get the best women (no one really wants to date a mild-mannered reporter or an inept freelance-photographer).  But superheroes are also easy to identify if you know what to look for: the bumbling factor.  The more bumbling someone is, the more superpowers he’s waiting to unleash. For example, the last time my henchmen attempted to break into a presidential convention, they got absolutely shellacked by Tucker Carlson. If you have ever wondered whether someone that looks that bumbling could only get on TV because he was really a superhero, you’re not alone.

There’s really no way to know how many of my plots have been spoiled by Carlson and Alan Colmes, but I’d feel pretty confident saying that they’re the main barrier between me and global domination.

I’d give you two guesses whether it’s Hannity or Colmes that’s the bane of supercriminals everywhere. Remember, people that look bumbling are dangerous. And anyone that looks as bumbling as Colmes can strangle your best assassins with his mind.  Interestingly, Sean Hannity is also a superhero, but any supervillain that fears a conservative diversity hero should reconsider his line of work.

Unsurprisingly, the talk radio guy doesn’t know how important it is to keep his appearance secret.

The Refrigerator of DOOM

Doctor Savant: “Before we open my refrigerator, you better take this.”

Lash: “What the hell, a flame thrower?”

Doctor Savant: “Just in case.”

Lash: “Just in case of what?”

Doctor Savant: “Exactly.”

Captain Carnage: “I reckon I’d be plum crazy if I didn’t say Texas is the doggoned smartest place in South America.”

Captain Carnage: “We have a Department of Defense. We need a Department of Offense.”

Hello. Today, I started running a Quote of the Day. I’ve already got the next two weeks covered.

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This article will review Empire of Ivory (the fourth book of the Temeraire series) and focus on what beginning novelists should take away from it to improve their own skill.

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Hello.  A few of my readers asked me about the chapter titles.  Did I mean ____ as a pun on ____? The answer is probably yes.  I’ll go through a few…

Gotta Kill ‘Em All! is a dark play on Pokemon’s slogan, “Gotta Catch ‘Em All.”  The popular children’s cartoon series, Hegemon, plays a prominent role in this chapter.  A related pun…  in politics, a hegemon is a completely dominant nation.  Since the end of the Cold War, “the hegemon” has always referred to the United States.  After all, what story about superheroes could be complete without a superpower?

How Many F’s are there in Katastrofy? (Win a Pulitzer in 20 Minutes a Day!) is a play on the latest Superman movie, where a supposedly Pulitzer-calibre journalist (Lois Lane) wonders how many F’s are in “catastrophe.”  Katastrophy is the name of the Hegemon that’s clearly based on Mewtwo (he’s in the header).  For reasons that I will hopefully be able to reveal by the end of 2007, the real-world incarnation of said character decides to go by “Catastrophe” because you’d have to be a complete idiot to spell it “Katastrofy.”

National Catastrophe is a phrase.  In a book that already has a character named Catastrophe and Nation in the title, how could I resist?

Dr.  Berkeley’s name is actually a reference to George Berkeley, an 18th century philosopher who claimed that anything we perceive is necessarily real.  (Mirages and The Matrix are both perceivable things that probably aren’t real).  The more obvious Berkeley association features a certain university in California, but that wasn’t my main objective.

What Do We Do About Berkeley? This time the reference actually IS to the university.  Governor Ronald Reagan (R-CA) had been advised by his gubernatorial staff not to hit on the counterculture of UC-Berkeley.  Reagan responded: “Look, I don’t care if I’m [campaigning] in the mountains, the desert, the biggest cities of this state, the first question [I get is]: ‘What are you going to do about Berkeley?’ And each time the question itself would get applause.”  I amended the phrase to “What do we do…”  rather than “What are you going to do…”  because the title is already a bit long.

Forget Who’s Watching the Watch-Man…  Don’t Leave Yourself Alone with Him is a play on the phrase “but who watches the watchman,” and of course the comic book series The Watchmen, but most prominently Syler from Heroes.  You definitely wouldn’t want to find yourself alone with THAT watch-man.

The Empire State Strikes Back is an obvious play on Star Wars…  not too tricky.

Gods and Supermen at Yale is a reference to God and Man at Yale, conservative William Buckley’s seminal work on the relationship between faith and scholarship.  In the context of Superhero Nation, the “Gods” are researchers…  well, I shouldn’t spoil a chapter I haven’t written, right?

The Crisis of Infinite OSIs is a play on DC Comic’s seminal series, The Crisis on Infinite Earths.  Really, really devoted students of US government might know there is a separate Office of Special Investigations within the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the Air Force, and the legislative Government Accountability Office.

It Takes a Child to Raze a Village…  the original is liberal Hillary Clinton’s quote, “it takes a village to raise a child.”  I can’t say any more without hopelessly spoiling the chapter.  Suffice it to say that I hope you won’t miss Greenwich.  (Heh.  A red herring, I assure you).

The First Draft of History is a reference to the quote that “journalism is the first draft of history.” 

Hegemonic Instability Theory.  Maybe you’ve heard of “hegemonic stability theory,” the theory that particularly strong nations contribute to world peace.  Well, mental instability appears to be more relevant to the plot (and creation) of this novel, so I thought that was more appropriate.   It’s also a play on the Hegemon angle, if you’ve been paying attention.   (Additionally, Orson Scott Card wrote a book called “Shadow of the Hegemon,” which  I might turn into something like “Shadowing the Hegemon”)

The Last Oorah.  “Oorah” is a Marine concept…  hell, a way of life! Its origin probably derives from “heard, understood and acknowledged” (HUA), a general expression of enthusiasm (ahem…  “anything and everything but no“).  At one point, I had the chapter called The Last Huah because I wasn’t sure whether the character that dies is a Marine or an [Army] soldier.

The pun is that there’s a novel called The Last Hurrah, which is also a stage in Star Fox 64.  (Wow, I am such a nerd).

A few of the chapters (Agents of Change, Agents of Destruction, etc.) play on the double meaning of “agent” as a federal employee (IRS agent, OSI agent) and a causative factor.  The Free Agent plays on a sports-term for someone who currently has no employer.

Yep, that’s most of it.  I should add– well, it should be obvious that– a title that has to be explained is probably not working.  So hopefully titles like A Free Agent or What Are We Going to do about Berkeley? work even if the reader isn’t familiar with the inside joke.  If they don’t, then the author has needlessly alienated a lot of his readers.  I think the titles would be effective even if the reader didn’t know.

I like the show Heroes a lot.  However, I think that it’s generally pretty poorly-written, at least flabbier than most shows I enjoy.  So many characters are thrown at us that take up an episode but have no bearing on the plot.  Like the woman that’s able to access the Internet remotely…  she was so insignificant that no one noticed that it looks like the writers forgot about her after her first episode.

I can’t tell what the remaining episodes in this season will look like, so it’s hard to tell which characters will become interesting and serve to drive the main plot, but I think that from the first four episodes we can start to tell which characters aren’t working.

In the first season, we had several main clusters of characters.  There’s a lot of overlap.  If one character could fit in several clusters, I tried to place him in the cluster that would be most affected by his removal from the script.

• Peter and Nathan Patrelli (and their family)
• The painter and his girlfriend
• Hiro/Ando
• Claire/Mr. Bennet and the other Bennets.
• The Haitian and The Company employees
• Linderman and his guys
• Nicky, her kid and her husband
• The L.A. cop, his family and the hot FBI partner.  I’d also probably put the nuclear guy and the remote control woman here.
• Suresh
• Syler

(I probably missed some people.  Heroes has an enormous cast).  Please forgive me for having a bad memory.

A few thoughts about the different clusters.

• Peter was the main character– supposedly!  But he does very little.  He matters a lot more in terms of what he doesn’t do, namely destroying New York.
  • Well, he’s instrumental in saving Claire from Syler.  But that doesn’t matter very much, does it?  Remember the episode that looks at five years in the future after Syler survives the stabbing (because he had Claire’s regenerative powers)?  At the end of that episode, five years after he survives the stabbing, Syler kills Claire and takes her powers.  Most people didn’t notice that glaring plot-hole, probably because saving the cheerleader didn’t seem like a major element of the plot (because it wasn’t).
• I would give Peter a more prominent role in the fight against Syler.  If he doesn’t tie into that fight more directly, he should probably be removed from the plot entirely.  His quest, to prevent NYC from getting nuked, really has nothing to do with Syler.
• Syler is probably the character I enjoyed the most.  “This is usually the point where people start screaming” is one of my all-time favorite TV quotes.  As far as supervillains go, he has an interesting modus operandi and origin story.
• I would, however, remove the scene where he kills his mother.  It wasn’t any MORE gruesome than anything else he did over the first season, but it just came out of the blue.  Why did he kill his mother again?  How did that advance the story?  We already KNEW he was damn creepy and violent.
• I’d remove the Nicky/son/husband cluster entirely.  That ENTIRE cluster amounts to two relevant plot points: the device by which Petrelli is going to win the election and Nicky making a ridiculous cameo in the climactic fight against Syler.  As far as supervillain plots go, trying to rig an election with a wunderkind hacker is stupid and ill-conceived.
  • Let’s see… a candidate al0ready under federal investigation for mob ties moves from a 4-way dead heat to a “landslide” victory on the strength of bajillions of electronic votes.  Wouldn’t anyone get suspicious that precincts that presumably turned out pretty close in paper-voting produced enormous Petrelli majorities?
• I like the Company, but it’s never quite clear (to me, at least) why they’re tracking the special people and what their eventual goal is.   How does Linderman tie into the Company’s goals?  I assume that they aren’t related.  If so, what IS the Company trying to accomplish?  Why does it attempt to take in Syler after it knows he’s a serial killer?  etc.  Critiques of Superhero Nation frequently offer some variation of “I don’t get the distinction between the Office of Special Investigations and the Social Justice League.”  I’d say that the Company-Linderman distinction is way hazier.
• Suresh is OK, but do we really have to hear him narrate every episode?
• I love the LA cop, but his role in the plot serves mainly to show what the law enforcement authorities are doing to stop Syler (not much, apparently).  He also makes an almost-cameo in the climactic fight against Syler.  I like this character a lot, but I would deemphasize his personal life– which is kind of trite– and emphasize the Syler connection.
  • The writers shot themselves in the foot with his hot partner.  The writers REALLY want this to be a world where no one really knows about people having superpowers.  To some extent, this suggests that the FBI is comically incompetent, but we’d have to believe that his partner is WILDLY stupid.
    1. She knows that he can read minds.  Ahem, he read HER mind and she knows that he is able to get all sorts of #$^# out of interrogatees.  She eventually shrugs that off with a few lines that are so painful that I can’t imagine they were written with a straight face.
    2. Syler’s kill scenes are distinctly unnatural.  Stuff like a building being iced over is par for the course.  Heads lopped off, etc.
    3. Mr. Radioactive produces radioactivity without any logical scientific explanation.  THEN Mr. Radioactive and his Homeland Security convoy are eliminated by something that threw the van down without leaving explosive residue or a collision impact.

  The easiest way to resolve all of this would be to remove the scene where the cop (Parkman) exposes his ESP secret to his partner.

Using size 12 Times New Roman and short margins, I was able to fit 300 words.  The page fit 25 lines, including paragraph breaks.

This article will cover how to name characters effectively and how to avoid the most common naming problems.

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Short post.

Cliche

Character One: “Give it up or I’ll pound on you.”

Character Two: “Is that a threat?”

Character One: “No… that’s a promise.”

My Version

(Agent Orange speaking to a Social Justice League director about League mutants waging an insurgency against city sewer-cleaners)

Agent Orange: “The sewers, of course, teem with mutant alligators and rats and terrapins and whatever else is stupid enough to want to live in New York City but smart enough not to pay New York rent. Municipal sewer drills have been repeatedly attacked. I won’t say that Leaguers were responsible and I definitely won’t say that they weren’t. But I will say that if a municipal employee is bruised, that the leathernecks that clean out the sewers won’t be crocodiles.”

Leaguer: “Is that a threat?”

Orange: “Fast on the uptake, aren’t you?”

(In case you missed the pun, leatherneck can refer to either a Marine or a certain NYC-sewer-dwelling crocodile). I vaguely doubt that a third of my audience got the Marine reference and probably less know the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle character. However, I do expect that a large majority of my readers would get the TMNT references in “mutant alligators and rats and terrapins” living in the NY sewers even if they didn’t know that a terrapin is a turtle.

A Brooklynite writes:

I don’t know what you’ve got against New York’s sewers. They’re a lot cleaner than Chicago politics.

Touche. Go jump down some more pipes or something.

Outline

• Summary of past novel-writing problems
• Solutions to improve reader longevity
• Improving chapter length
• Marketing!  Marketing!  Marketing!

This is mostly aimed at anyone trying to write a novel, particularly an online novel, but Superhero Nation fans might be interested to see what my writing process is like.

Problems

• My first chapter attracted readers but didn’t keep them. 
• Of the first 100 readers that started reading, 30 lasted over half a minute and 15 spent enough time that I could reasonably assume they finished the chapter. 
• None started reading the second chapter. 

Diagnoses

• My short-term retention was a problem.  70% of the readers decided right off the bat that the novel didn’t work for them.
  • The novel’s opening was not working
• Medium-term retention was pleasantly high.  Half of the readers that read past the first few paragraphs made it through 9000 words.
  • The middle was considerably better-written than the beginning
• Long-term retention was zero.  15 readers read 9000 words, but none started the second chapter.
  • The first chapter was incredibly long, 30 double-spaced pages.  Readers that finished that lacked the time/energy to proceed.     

Fixing the Introduction

It’s hard to describe how bad my first five pages were.  But I’ll give you the first 75 words, along with parenthetical comments from a dangerously perceptive reviewer. 

Courtney had problems. 

One.  His name was Courtney.   He hated it but knowing  that he vastly outsmarted the gigglers comforted him.  (This opening does not grab me. Who are these gigglers?)

Two.  He was an ex-superhero, the once and present Lash, the best nonpowered hero New York had never heard of.   He had showed Gigas, the head of the Social Justice League, up when a supervillain struck.  Gigas had him fired and, more humiliatingly, violated the first rule of superheroics by x-raying Lash’s face. (Very un-superhero like) But they couldn’t take his name.  (do you even need this?)

It would take me hours to fully explain why the first 5 pages were so bad, but let me summarize. 

• Melodramatic
• Anticipation problems.  A good opening makes readers think “Sweet Jesus, I want to see where this is going.”  This opening probably makes people wonder whether the story would interest them.  (Who’s Courtney?  Why should we care about people laughing at his name?)
• Passive narration (‘telling’ a story rather than ‘showing’ it).  High on backstory, short on action.
• There’s no scene.  
• Hard to understand (maybe not these first few paragraphs, but certainly the rest of the five pages). 

It took me three months to turn my deservedly savage reviews into a rewrite.  You can see the rewritten chapter here, but I’ll analyze the first two paragraphs. 

[start] The tree was critical.  The blueprints for the Governor’s mansion clearly showed that the tree’s branches came intriguingly close to a second-floor window.  It was less obvious that the window led to the room of a servant scheduled to work during tonight’s fundraiser.  Most importantly, the Governor’s security detail only sent a guard past the tree every forty-five seconds, plus or minus fifteen.  The superhero had spent an hour counting.  Lash had estimated that the leap through the open window would be four feet.  He could do that.  Maybe.  Being an unpowered hero was always interesting. 

Lash lay behind the courtyard fountain as the hapless guard wandered past the tree again, his heels clicking against the cobble-stone path.  The beam of the guard’s flashlight soon faded around the near corner.  Forty-five seconds. [end]

The most obvious change is that this is a scene: a character attempts to break into the Governor’s mansion.  After the first three sentences, he seems like he’s a criminal, probably an assassin.  Then I off-handedly refer to him as “the superhero,” even before we know his name or what he looks like.  A traditional individual-focused story would probably start with the character and then describe the mission, but I start with the mission and hardly describe the character at all, besides how physically inept and meticulous he is. 

Up to the word “superhero,” this could very well be a police procedural or a Mission Impossible-style spyfest.  Then the story gets ridiculous, particularly in “…four feet.  He could do that.  Maybe.”  My first opening was melodramatic, but I think this comes off as comically melodramatic and patently ridiculous.  (Four feet?  The ‘superhero’ can’t jump four feet?) 

I think that my readers have been cued to expect a somewhat strange story about superheroes.  (In case that weren’t obvious enough, Lash’s main weapon in the first chapter is a fire extinguisher).  I think that reader anticipation has shifted much more to “I’d like to see where this is going” from “this sounds boring.”

Is my new opening effective?
I’m inclined to say yes.  Remember, before I had…

• 100 readers started chapter 1

• 30 made it past thirty seconds

• 15 made it to the end of chapter 1

• 0 started chapter 2

I rewrote my opening two weeks ago.  Since then, I’ve had…

• 37 readers started chapter 1

• ?? readers finished chapter 1

• 10 readers started chapter 2 (so I’d assume that at least 10 readers survived to the end of chapter 1).

• 9 readers started chapter 3

• 64 readers started chapter 4 (I bet you’re asking what the hell!?! I’ll explain this in just a second). 

These numbers are drastically better.  My first-to-second chapter conversion rate is more than 25% and the people that start the second chapter appear to be dedicated readers.  My survey sample is pretty small (only over the last two weeks), but it seems that the first three chapters are generally successful enough that this story might be publishable.  But publishing is a distant concern and right now I’d like to worry about 1) posting the best chapters I can write to the website and 2) getting as many readers as possible to those chapters.

Advertising

Remember that 64 readers started chapter 4?  That probably seemed pretty weird, given that only 9 readers started chapter 3.  My brother linked to my site in a discussion on sympathetic villains at The Volokh Conspiracy.  Since then, ~55 Volokh Conspirators have started chapter 4.  So even a comment can generate a significant amount of traffic.  I suspect that a link from, say, one of the writers at Volokh would generate enough traffic to be commercially significant.  But TVC is mainly a legal blog; I can’t imagine why it would be disproportionately loaded with comic book fans. 

I suspect that my demographics will be better represented at Daily Kos or Little Green Footballs link.  Speaking of LGF, it actually inspired the conservative-lizard and liberal-frog demographics of Superhero Nation. 

Chapter-Length

The original version of my first chapter—the terrible version—was 9000 words long (30 pages).  9000 words is a hell of a commitment, probably several hours.  Who wants to spend several hours at a single site? 

I’ve since split up the first 9000 words into 3 chapters, but chapter 3 is still ridiculously long.  I have to cut it down more.  (Everybody Dies is also too long).

One thing I’ve learned is that chapter length really matters. Shorter chapters—no more than 2000 words—work much better. Each chapter’s end is an opportunity to leave your reader on a cliffhanger and make him feel that he’s accomplished something.  Each chapter’s start is a chance to rehook your reader or at least give him a chance to recuperate and return. Additionally, each chapter allows you to subtly shift the focus of the reader’s attention and focus by using a new chapter title.

I’ve mentioned before that chapter titles are really important to selling a novel. They’re also important for the reading experience. You can use the title to create a sense of anticipation, foreboding or establish the mood. Right now, the chapter titles I’m going with are:

1. Life, Death and the Manhattan Mangler [~1000 words]
2. The Empire State Strikes Back [~1500]
3. The Best Investigator in the World [~7000 words]
4. Everybody Dies [~8000 words]
   • Unless I also want my readers to die, I should probably break this up into many chapters.  Possible chapter titles include “The Human Condition,” “Only Human,” “Grim Prognosis,” “Reach for the Skyline,” and “Two Girls for Every Guy.”
5. The Human Resources Promise [~1500 words]
6. Stockbroker to the Slaughter [~2000 words]

This article addresses how to write concisely by revising or eliminating individual sentences.

Revising Individual Sentences

Let’s examine the needlessly long sentence “Writing concisely matters not only because it shortens the work but because it makes the work more readable.” This sentence has many problems.

“…it makes the work more readable.” This phrase is too wordy. Consider the alternative “it improves readability.” Tweaking word forms can often make a sentence more efficient.

“Writing concisely matters not only because it shortens the work…” Generally, explicitly saying that something matters is an unnecessary waste of space.  If you lay out the reasons it matters, readers will reach their own conclusion.

The original sentence was 15 words long. Consider this revision: “conciseness improves readability.” That distills what matters into an 80% cheaper product.

How to Eliminate Sentences Well

Question: I’ve looked at my sentences and can’t tighten any further. What now?

Let’s pretend that your individual sentences are perfectly concise. You need to find sentences that can be removed entirely or merged into other sentences.

But all my sentences are doing something important.

They’re probably not. However, when you look at individual sentences, it usually seems like each is productive. Consider the sentence “it’s raining.” It’s a short sentence and could be useful. But consider the sentence’s context. What if the paragraph were:

“Thunder crashed. John drew his umbrella. It’s raining.”

“It’s raining” is obviously unnecessary here, but that might not have been clear just looking at the sentence itself. To identify which sentences should be removed, we usually have to look at longer passages.

As a rule of thumb, I recommend examining sequences of ten sentences—that’s usually two or three paragraphs. Of the ten sentences, generally at least one can be eliminated.

Let me demonstrate this theory with the work of an authorial friend. This passage is an interesting description of a cop that’s investigating rumors of corporate shenanigans, but it isn’t as concise as it could be.

Harland ordered dinner, and settled into reading through the information gathered by the avatar. He called up Epp’s skills profile first, looking for justification for TeleComm’s offer of a senior contract. Epp had an outstanding background in both biomedical and software fields, a profile that Harland usually associated with companies and feeder universities in the instant transport field, rather than TeleComm’s data and communications segment. He remembered the scheduled takeover battle at Distance Instant Transport. Was TeleComm planning to take advantage of DIT’s management being distracted to make a push into instant transport? That would start a significantly wider corporate battle and active monitoring by WorldPol. He made a note to notify the Economic Management Group if things started looking more serious, and went down to the canteen to eat.

This is my rewrite.

Harland started sifting through the information his avatar had gathered on TeleComm’s new hire. Epp had outstanding biomedical and software skills, a profile more typical for the instant transport sector than TeleComm’s data and communications work. Epp’s hiring and the contested takeover at DIT suggested that TeleComm might be planning to push into instant transport when its competitor was in turmoil. He notified the Economic Management Council that a significantly broader corporate battle might be brewing.

The word count has dropped about about 150 to 100, but I don’t feel that the substance has changed considerably.

Avoiding Mistakes When Tightening

Although conciseness helps, it is possible to improperly tighten. Cutting out information may make it hard to follow the story or may make the plotline a lot more jagged. Cutting may also remove flavor. Compare “she unloaded a clip into his face” to “she shot him repeatedly.”

The Washington Post described a meeting between two Congressmen, Jim Moran (D-Va.) and John Porter (R-Nev.), and the Iraqi national security advisor.

the three were trying to discuss the state of Iraqi security forces with [the NSA], but the large, flat-panel television set facing the official proved to be a distraction. [The NSA] was watching children’s cartoons.

When Moran asked him to turn it off, [he] protested with a laugh and said, “But this is my favorite television show,” Moran recalled.

Porter confirmed the incident, although he tried to paint the scene in the best light, noting that at least they had electricity.

It would be easy to criticize the NSA for prioritizing cartoons over two Congressmen. All things considered, it was probably a shrewd assessment. At least cartoons end.

That must be horribly awkward for both Congressmen. The Democrat has to act multilateral with an ally that obviously isn’t interested; the Republican has to make it look like supporting Maliki’s government advances US interests.

To commemorate this fine moment of US-Iraqi relations, I’ve slapped something together.

Anyone who reads comic books knows that weird stuff happens in New York. A lot. A spaceship randomly crashes into Earth? Central Park or maybe the Brooklyn Bridge. A rampaging lizard is born in a nuclear test site? Why wouldn’t he come to New York? One guy left alive on Earth? Probably a New Yorker.

It should not surprise us that Iraq’s WMDs have been found… in New York.

This article will cover how to write novel titles that sell and when/how to name your chapters.

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Inquiring minds want to know:

• Supervillain prisons. Why have them?
• How does Superman keep getting movie deals?
• Why don’t Superman’s movie deals stipulate the presence of a supervillain?
• Lex Luthor: brilliant mastermind or government plant? His most brilliant schemes endanger fewer people than a fully loaded Yugo. And he gets pardoned FAR too often for it to be a coincidence.
• Who is Captain America working for? He couldn’t cover the security deposit on that cavernous NYC apartment with an Army paycheck.
• WWII time-travel. Aren’t any WWII time-travelers gunning for Hitler? Would assassinating Hitler doom the Allies by letting someone sane lead German forces? (Hitler: Allied plant?)
• Time travel. “Dr. Demented escaped into the time-space continuum. He could be anywhere.” “No problem. I’ll start at 1939, you start at 1945 and we’ll catch him somewhere in the middle.”
• Supervillains have attempted to influence WWII at least twenty different times in the past fifty years. Presumably, supervillains will keep trying. Wouldn’t superheroes from our present cross paths with superheroes from our future that are pursuing their own supervillains in WWII?
• The Hulk: why does he still get published?
• Invisible Woman: dumbest Ph. D. ever?
• Beast. Reptile. Catastrophe. Donatello. Aren’t there any animals/monstrosities that are less intelligent than the Invisible Woman? Why do said animals typically wear more clothes than the Invisible Woman?

• Lois Lane: “How many F’s are there in catastrophe?” How did she win a Pulitzer?
• Static Shock’s sidekick, the white gadgeteer (AKA Gear, AKA Whitey, AKA Chunky McGee). What, a black person can’t be smart enough to make gadgets?
• What is the fascination with supervillains (and sometimes heroes) running for president?
• Did Savage Dragon run for VP because he realized how useless he was?
• How could Lex Luthor POSSIBLY win the presidency? Voters regularly write candidates off because they’re Mormon, divorced or inexperienced. But, you know…a supervillain… I guess I could give him another chance…
• What was the reasoning behind making an Ant-Man movie?
• Dr. Hank Pym, Ant-Man, Shrinking Violet. Why haven’t they learned that intelligent people don’t shrink themselves? That’s why supervillains build shrink rays.
• What the hell is going on in NYC? Judging from comic books, at least 90% of the world’s supernatural events happen there, including regular influxes of tan New Yorkers from alternate dimensions where NYC is apparently devoid of black people (the Friends Effect).

There are already thousands of writing websites out there.  Why do we need another?

1.  Most writing websites don’t handle superhero stories very well. If you want to check whether superstrength or superspeed fits your story better, a generic writing website like Critters Writers Workshop is rarely helpful.  They aren’t used to superhero stories.  In contrast, we handle superhero-specific advice every day.  If you have a question about writing superhero stories, I can almost guarantee that we can help you.

2.  Most writing websites are not particularly well-suited for teens or new writers. Young writers are a special breed because they aren’t used to the extremely cutthroat world of publishing yet.  For example, a high school paper that has 2-3 typos per page might get an A.  But a manuscript with 2-3 typos per page will get rejected.  In high school, almost every paper passes.  At most publishers, more than 99% of unsolicited manuscripts are rejected.   It takes most young writers a a lot of hard work to adjust to the ridiculously high standards of professional writing.   As a 20-something myself, I’m familiar both with the publishing world and the experiences of a young writer.

3.  Most writing communities are dominated by sloppy comments. Let me make a law-enforcement analogy: New York City found that fixing broken windows reduced crime because broken windows suggested to the community that crime was usual.  Similarly, on a writing website, poorly written comments are like broken windows.  We aggressively edit our comments because we want to set high standards for our guests.  When you submit to a publisher, I want publishers to take you seriously.  That starts with grammar and spelling.  If your grammar and spelling are bad, you won’t last a minute in the publisher’s office.  I’m not exaggerating.  Not even a minute.

4.  Most writing workshops are slow. I’m very fond of Critters, but waiting six weeks for 5-20 reviews struck me as unacceptably slow. On Superhero Nation, almost all of our review forums generate at least 20 comments within a few weeks.

5.  I really want you to succeed and I am friendly and patient enough to do my part. In contrast, many publishing professionals are cynical and impatient.  They don’t have the time to help prospective writers.  It’s easier for them to reject any remotely flawed manuscripts and keep looking for the one or two manuscripts in the pile that are thoroughly excellent.

This article will help female authors avoid some common pitfalls of writing male characters, perspectives and narrators.

Common Problems

The most obvious problem is relying on unrealistic stereotypes. Readers of both sexes loathe muscle-bound cavemen and sobby, helpless women. Don’t insult your readers’ intelligence.

Less obviously, many female authors shun stereotypes that are realistic. I’ll say much more about some realistic stereotypes later, but men do talk less about their feelings than women, particularly with other men.

Third, the author might not appreciate the differences between male and female perceptions. This is really crucial. Women writing male characters tend to linger on descriptions of scenery and what the character sees or feels. Generally speaking, male readers feel that it’s creepy when men describe something at length. Let me demonstrate.

One female classmate wrote a scene with a male narrator and his male roommate. The first characteristic the narrator mentioned about his roommate was his eye-color. That feels creepy because it suggests a level of closeness uncomfortable to most US guys. Later, the narrator focused on other weird details, like how buff the roommate was. It sounded like he ogling his roommate. The roommate says “stop staring at me” and the narrator asks “can I help it if I have such a sexy rommate?” The author meant that to sound sarcastic. But male readers assumed that the narrator really was gay. Try to keep your readers on your page.

Men are also more likely to offer details that are directly plot-relevant. For example, a male author wrote a story where a male narrator describes the passengers on the bus at some length. The narrator mentions some unusual details, like their ethnicities and the quality of their clothing. Virtually every male reader at the workshop readily concluded that the guy sounded creepy and sinister. The narrator turned out to be a terrorist. The guys weren’t surprised, but many female readers thought that it came out of nowhere because they thought that details like “I was sitting next to a suited white and a Hispanic in a coat” were just scenery.

Real males and females generally have different styles of tone, language, nonverbal communication and preferred subjects of conversation. Especially at younger ages, males and female sound very different. I’m reluctant to use myself as a baseline male, but I know that I talk a lot of smack– that is, when I’m playing something like bowling or fantasy football, I let my friends know how guilty I feel about their certain destruction.

In terms of subjects of conversation, I think that men are generally less likely to talk about people outside the conversation than most women. Men are also less likely to talk about their social status (how others view them). Men react to social status, of course, but I feel it’s something that they generally talk about less. They may be quietly resentful that someone less qualified got the corner office, for example.

This next one is a cheap stereotype, but I think it has enough validity to mention: sports! Many, many men are diehard fans of at least one team, usually from their college or hometown. I think that watching sports serves three main purposes for men: 1) it’s a nice way to socialize with other guys and 2) I love competing with my friends through March Madness pools and fantasy sports, even though I’m thoroughly unathletic, and 3) many men live vicariously through their teams, particularly college teams. Men really care that their school wins– a national championship says something! (What, exactly, is less clear). In fact, it’s hard for me to get through a job interview without a male consoling me about the plights of Notre Dame’s football program. (Don’t worry, Irish faithful! We’ll have a winning season next year).

I think that women generally appreciate that sports are important to men, but I think that women authors sometimes have problems with sports scenes because some women are unable to hide their contempt of the ritual. I think most men (and at least one woman!) are similarly contemptuous of Grey’s Anatomy and other luridly sexed-up dramas. If you treat either football or Grey’s Anatomy as an inherently frivolous activity that has no bearing on anything that matters, you may be missing the point. Of course they’re frivolous. But they are serious as far as men/women take them seriously and use them as socialization tools.

I’d also like to mention a quick psychological difference between men and women. Men more often think of things in absolute, rigid terms like weight and other measurements. Directions from men tend to sound like “turn left on Oak Street after driving a mile down Winchester.” Women are more likely to use landmarks, like “turn left at the orange house”.

Now I’d like to talk about stereotypes in general. Stereotypes are a major part of believability. For example, any Marine could be a pacifist, but everyone knows that Marines generally aren’t. Likewise, you can break any gender stereotype, but it gets harder with each character. If all of your guys act like women, that will probably bother readers.

Because everyone knows at least some males, we all have expectations (stereotypes) about what a male character should be like. So I would encourage any woman writing a novel or story about a male character to be bold. Don’t be afraid to show men acting or thinking differently than females… we’re not just women with short hair! The worst case scenario is that your guys are too stereotypically male, which is easy to fix. Beta reviewers can point that out for you. It’s much harder for a beta reviewer to circle a passage and say “this is too timid– I think this guy should be more masculine here.” So I urge you to paint in bold strokes , rather than worrying about offending men or looking unknowledgable.

ADDENDUM: Male Dialogue: Functional Conversation

I mentioned above that it would be unusual for a guy to describe another man in terms of his eye-color because that suggests intimacy. Generally, guys avoid physical descriptions unless they are directly relevant to the conversation. “Dunking on John is hard because he’s so damn tall.” Usually, men describe other guys in terms of what they do, even if what they do isn’t directly relevant to the conversation. I overheard this on campus.

Female: Is John a nice guy?

Male: I think so. He’s in my physics class.

Is John being in the guy’s physics class really relevant to whether John is nice? Probably not (although the guy might have seen John doing something polite in class, like holding the door for someone). I think that it’s better to interpret the physics detail as a functional definition of John: “I know John as my physics classmate.” The subtext is that he doesn’t feel very confident about his ability to assess whether John is nice. (NOTE: Perhaps even more so than women, men are dreadfully hesitant to use the phrase “I don’t know”).

My impression is that women are somewhat more likely than men to define people in terms of relationships, even if the relationship isn’t entirely relevant to the thrust of the conversation. For example, both of my parents hate Tom Brady. This is how they explained themselves.

Dad: Tom Brady learned real bad sportsmanship from Michigan. No real athlete would run up the score so much.

Mom: He’s treated his loved ones awfully. The mother of his children doesn’t want anything to do with him!

The functional-relational distinction gets blurry here. It would be far too simple to say that “women only think about relationships and men only care about impersonal considerations.” For example, Dad implicitly draws on his own relationship with Michigan and Mom’s objection relates to what Brady has done, been an ass to his family. But I think the distinction is somewhat useful because Mom focuses on actions in the context of Brady’s relationships and Dad focuses on his Michigan relationship in the context of an impersonal goal, like sportsmanship and chivalry.

Good luck! If you found this article helpful, you’d probably enjoy our other articles on writing. our other articles on writing here. If you would like beta-reviewing assistance, please drop us a line at SuperheroNation-at-gmail.com . Our waiting list is generally around a week.