Writing for Superheroes
I stumbled across this really cool site that gives tips on how to write for superheroes – Superhero Nation: a superhero writing advice site. They offer their advice and observations about writing, editing, marketing and selling a novel. They also provide resources for the authors of superhero stories.
Here is an indexed list of posts they have for writing superhero novels. After reading a few of them, I’m pretty sure many of the principles could be applied to writing comic books or creating characters for a role-playing game.
Creating a Superhero Character
- List of Superpowers
- How to Write Effective Origin Stories
- How to Write a Plausible Origin Story
- Superhero Creation Questionnaire
- How to Create Weaknesses for Your Superhero
- How to Name Superheroes
- Modern Superhero Naming Conventions
- Questionnaire for Nonhuman Characters (Transformed Humans, Aliens and Otherwise)
- Random Name Generator for Alternate Identities
The Mechanics of Writing a Superhero Story
- How to Write Superhero Fight Scenes
- How to Pick Superpowers that Make Your Story Work
- Common Problems with Superstrong Heroes
- Common Problems with Psychic Superheroes
- Common Problems with Powersuited Superheroes (like Iron Man)
Marketing and Visual Issues
- Easy-to-Fix Visual Design Problems for Superhero Characters
- How to Make Your Story Less “Weird” and More Novel
- Superhero Visual References: Boots
- Superhero Visual References: Gloves
Be sure to check it out!
You keep on finding such great stuff to look at!
The random name generators are excellent; there’s a huge list of them for all kinds of settings.