Writing a Superhero Story

By Sparky824

9.4K 33 7

400 follower Special. I have decided to go & make an advice book on how to make a superhero story. You can fi... More

How to Write Superhero Stories
Superheroes will NOT make a boring character interesting
Superhero Questionnaire
How to Write a Good Sidekick
How to Name Your Character--Superheroes & Otherwise
Ideas about How to name a Superhero
How to give a Superhero Day Job
Common Superhero Day Job, Part 1
Common Superhero Day Jobs Part 2
Superhero & Supervillain naming Convention
A random name generator
Three Qualities of Interesting Villains
Pros & Cons of Using Secret Identities in Your Story
List of Superpowers
How to Distinguish Your Hero's or Your Villain's superpowers
Selective Effecting Superpower
Superpower Checklist
How Creative do your Superpowers Need to be?
How to Keep Your Story's Superpowers and/or Magic Extraordinary
How to Limit Your Superpowers for Dramatic Effect
Keeping Your Superpowers From Getting Stale
Creating Weaknesses for Your Superheroes
Creative Ways to Use Supersenses
How Do Superpowers Affect Your Characters' Perspectives?
Kryptonite-style Weaknesses Are Usually a Weak Option
Common Superpower Problems
10 Uses for Forcefields
Seven Common Problems with Psychic Characters
Writing Psychic Superheroes and Psionics
List of Superhero Origin Stories
How to Write Origin Stories
Which Origin Stories are Plausible?
Why Secret Origins Are Usually Awful
"Yet Another Comics Blog" argues against origin stories
List of Superhero Cliches, Tropes, and Conventions
Possible Problems and Obstacles for Superheroes to Face Besides Supervillains
Writing More Realistic Violence
Elements of Superhero Stories That Might Be Surprisingly Plausible
How to Do Superhero Gadgets Well
How to Keep Your Story's Superpowers and/or Magic Extraordinary
Difficulties Superheroes Would Face in the Real World
Which Crimes Do Most Superheroes Commit?
Writing a Realistic Superhero Story

Can You Describe Your Protagonist's Superpowers in 1-2 Sentences?

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By Sparky824

When you’re pitching your story to publishers, please don’t waste paragraphs describing each character’s powers.  That’s space you could be using to develop personalities, character traits, the plot, relationships, etc.  As a rule of thumb, I would recommend keeping it simple–generally, if you need more than 20 words to describe a character’s powers, there’s probably too much going on.  (Main exception: if that extra space is crucial to understanding the plot).*
 
Here are some of the popular characters that have been introduced in the last ~30 years.

Wolverine has claws, regeneration and agility.

Cyclops has an eye-beam.

Spider-Man has agility, spider-webbing and danger-sense.

Storm can fly and control the weather.

Deadpool has regeneration, agility and sometimes strength.

Hiro Nakamura can stop time, teleport and travel through time.

The Haitian can erase memories and nullify powers.

Pretty much every other character on Heroes has a single power.

Reed Richards is smart and stretchy.

The Invisible Woman has telekinesis and forcefields.  And, umm, invisibility (though you hopefully knew that one).

Iron Man is tough, smart, and armed with lasers and conventional arms.

Hellboy, Hulk and Ben Grimm (among many others) are just super-tough.

The Human Torch, Iceman and Static Shock (among others) control an element, often alongside flight or another travel ability.  (Well, ice and electricity aren’t elements, but they’re very similar as far as superhero writing is concerned).

 
Virtually every popular hero introduced in the last ~30 years has superpowers which could be summarized in ten words.  (Can you think of any exceptions?  Spawn, Sandman and possibly Invincible are the only ones that came to mind).
 
Almost all of the modern characters that have really caught on have only a few powers that are easy to explain.   This is particularly true–perhaps almost necessarily true– when the story is about a group of superheroes rather than an individual.  You probably don’t have enough space to develop three powers each for a group of five (unless perhaps they’re very generic and require extremely little explanation).  When you’re dealing with a cast as large as X-Men or Heroes, I’d only recommend giving 3+ powers to characters that are unusually important.
 
*Off the top of my head, the only story I’ve read where the superpowers would have deserved more than two sentences in a page-long summary is Bitter Seeds.  Its superpowers come from demonic negotiations with human-hating spirits, which significantly affects the mood (e.g. the protagonists kill innocents to pay off the spirits) and drives the plot (e.g. the two main protagonists part ways over how to handle the spirits). Don’t spend more space on the details of the superpowers unless those details really help us understand the plot and/or characters.

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