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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

  1. List of Superpowers
  2. How to Write Effective Origin Stories
  3. How to Write a Plausible Origin Story
  4. Superhero Creation Questionnaire
  5. How to Create Weaknesses for Your Superhero
  6. How to Name Superheroes
  7. Modern Superhero Naming Conventions
  8. Questionnaire for Nonhuman Characters (Transformed Humans, Aliens and Otherwise)
  9. Random Name Generator for Alternate Identities

The Mechanics of Writing a Superhero Story

  1. How to Write Superhero Fight Scenes
  2. How to Pick Superpowers that Make Your Story Work
  3. Common Problems with Superstrong Heroes
  4. Common Problems with Psychic Superheroes
  5. Common Problems with Powersuited Superheroes (like Iron Man)

Marketing and Visual Issues

  1. Easy-to-Fix Visual Design Problems for Superhero Characters
  2. How to Make Your Story Less “Weird” and More Novel
  3. Superhero Visual References: Boots
  4. Superhero Visual References: Gloves

Be sure to check it out!

One thought on “Writing for Superheroes

  1. 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.

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