Writing About…

The other week we started watching Batman, the new versions (Dark Knight), my son wanted them for his birthday, and because I’m not a Star Wars fan I bought him them (there was a long hope that I wouldn’t get Star Wars in my house, but alas this year, first 3 dvd’s, though these ones are 1-3, from his grandparents)

 

So I’m watching Batman Begins and I’m feeling like shit (this was Tues last week) and I’m thinking, which isn’t the first time, how cool would it be to write a superhero series.

A gay superhero….yum.

 

But then you have to think, and I’m talking before you get to think about the series plot, or even the first book plot.

 

Where is your superhero going to sit?

 

Are we talking Avengers and that side of the Marvel world? Where there are like four different types:

1.      Gods

2.      Multimillionaire human’s with nothing but time and money

3.      Experiments / being bitten by something / poisoned / or…there’s another but I can’t remember

4.      Aliens

5.      And…and…I feel I’m missing some

 

Or you can go Superman, again that’s an alien in human shield, right?

Or you can go the Batman route, but even that’s has the same qualities as the above

Or X-men with a group of people who are different looking

Or like this new batman were everyone human. All broken humans.

 

The thing is you have to decided, because you have to know what you’re going to put.

If it’s a superhuman one, where there are powers and whatnot the backstory, though it has to be real it doesn’t have to make sense in the real world or it more like, well, drama and it’s flash and there super human.

But if you wanted to go the complete human way you’re more looking at, well, this Batman, but more so like Kickass. 

 

Then there’s the fact that you’re going to be in these peoples head.

So how are you going to do that? Will that change if you have them human or hold powers.

 

They have to have a back-story that’s so out of what your use to and yet it’s something that could happen to you. Could happen to the people you love, so there’s a link to the hero and you, who make what they’re feeling and how they become something evil is relatable. Because at the end of the day, for you to write a superhero you have to have the reader on their side no matter what they do. So things have to make sense and they have to lie on a thin line for as long as you can hold them so that a reader came relate and when they get to the point that they have no choice but to step over that line, the reader is right there, rooting them along. Wanting them to pull the trigger as the character—hell the reader shouldn’t have the hesitation the character has. That’s how connected the readers need to be.

 

You also, I feel, to have a superhero book, especially if you go the human way, which I do love the most, you need to have bad guys that aren’t so different from the hero, which is a point, they went bad when he stayed good, that’s what makes it worth reading. it’s a reason that Batman falls for Catwoman because he’s not that different, she knows that, and is able to seduce him in a way that I don’t think not really manipulative, even though she’s clearly doing it so he doesn’t beat her.

 

So you have to have these evil guys that skim that same line as your hero only, clearly, they are on the other side, but they’re there for the same reasons as the hero is hunting them.

There has to be a part of the reader that’s intrigued by the bad guy. They have to be pulled into their crazy in order for them to seem…more. They need to be that part of your hero that your hero doesn’t want to be. You want the reader to have a little twinge in them when the hero is fighting this person. You have to have this part of the reader that wants the hero to fondle and have this bad guy stay uncatchable for a while longer.

 

On the other hand, you have to hate the bad guy, you have to hate him with a passion that’s frustrating and makes them want to reach into the pages, pull out the bad guy and strangle him to death because he just needs to die. Right now.

 

You need to have that high emotion in these types of stories. You need to make people hate the books, or love them, but mostly you have to have them not knowing why they crave the next and next.

 

But at some point, from when it starts to after to that first bullet fired into the bad guys head, you need a breakdown.

This will make them human even if they have a power. They need to be grounded and been seen to know that something with them is going wrong. Iron Man did it well in movie 3.

You need to bring them up to a point that they are superhuman and then crash them into the ground. Make them human again, because no matter if you have powers or not, you have to have a human mind, and that mind fractures and a some point you have to realise you’ve crossed the line and it’s that moment that demands you turn him evil or you bring him to heel.

 

The good and bad things that also come with it are weapons. They have to have them. The cool thing is you get to make them all up yourself, at least, you do if you decide to go the ‘power’ route since things are left open to you that aren’t if you go more human.

This world you have to have weapons that are there, that are created from things we already have. Yeah, you can have prototype like weapons since your hero is most likely going to be a millionaire, makes things a hell of a lot easier.

If you go with power than it’s the same deal, yet your weapons can be outside this world. Outside anything that’s ever been created.

 

But, as a catch with everything, but you have to make it real.

 

Everything has to be of this world even when you are bringing things outside it. you have to make it realistic even as your blowing the shit out of everything, because no one will connect if they don’t have a moment to absorb and if you think about this, your first book is about setting things up, and the less you have to describe the fast and easier this will be.

 

But people like realism even in there fantasy. They like real emotions and real moments in the book that lets them connect in a way that the book your writing might not be swinging towards.

Like really, how can a human really connect with an alien planet, but the human you have there? Yeah, and they will because it’s something that we do, we connect and we change little things about ourselves so that we can even more.

In these types of books, you are making so much you don’t want to turn around and have it so outside anyone’s knowing that they can’t connect it will lose readers.

 

Then there’s the world.

Oh, the world, I am of the belief that if you should always keep things in the real world, because it just makes life easy. It lets you ground yourself and it means you don’t have to note every little detail because as the real world moves and shits the basses of it stays the same, just as it would if you were walking down the street.

I believe this more so with Superhero stories than anything else. I believe the best ones are the ones that are right here, in our world, because we see the mess it is, what better way than to lose yourself in a book that’s got a hero cleaning up all those problems your facing.

 

But on the other hand you shouldn’t be completely real. Don’t pick New York and work from that, yeah, a lot of people will get it, but a lot wont. Make things generic, because that way it can be placed anywhere around the world, be anyone who’s reading in any country and it can last a lifetime.

This is a philosophy I use when writing romance, you just don’t make it places that are completely real. Like yeah I’m using a town that’s real but what it looks like now and what I’m writing it looks like is completely different.

I don’t use pop culture. I don’t use details that can change so quickly. You see, I read an author who writes pop references into her book. One of those was writing in, like, 2005 and now, it’s outdated and half the people reading might not even remember the person that she’s talking about, because they didn’t become are big as the world thought they would.

 

I think in this situation it’s even more important to write very general, because so much is going to be happening, and so much is going to go on, and time needs to not move.

This is how I feel, it’s got to spin, but as your writing your hero you need to be able to write as if it hasn’t move, one bad guy on top of another and that sort of thing. So your world isn’t going to move like the real world, it isn’t possible, so the less detailed you are about things we use today the better you’ll be at keeping your weapons in date when clearly they should have been upgraded by now. 

 

There’s also a shit load of other things you’d have to do in order to write your own superhero, and mostly, these are the first thought that have come to mind with a flash idea that I don’t really believe I could pull off anyway.

Hence, I suppose, why I have no problem using it as a way to show you how my mind works as an author and what it is you need to think about if you’re planning on writing something so epiclly big as this.

 

Now, a lot of the time my idea don’t come so full, and so  complicated and you get the need to just write it, and then you think of the details as the works expanse, but that can’t happen in a case like this. yeah, you could just write but you still need to think about all I’ve mentioned and a shit load more which will mean re-writing whatever you’ve writing, which is fine, honestly, it will give you pin points of what you need to work out and what can be left off to the next book.

A lot of the times that’s how I roll, because it’s so much easier to only deal with small amounts of problems at a time.

However, something like this…with hero’s and bad guys that are so much what they are, I feel needs to be cut out, at least a little, before your thoughts or even the character hits the keyboard.