Superheroes and Supervillains

Superheroes and supervillains - the staple of comic book history. All in black and white (first literally, still metaphorically) and all about the eternal struggle of good and evil where good always wins. One might wonder why the villains still try…

 

Comics are not the only place where black-and-white sensibilities are common. Pulp stories also deal in absolutes, with good heroes and evil villains. It’s easy to portray the fight between hero and villain as a binary one - making one purely good and one purely evil. Fairy tales have done that a long time before pulp stories came about. A lot of our stories, no matter the genre, are based around the idea that someone is fully right and someone is fully wrong.

Yet, is that necessarily the case? Modern comics and comic book movies often give the villain a point - instead of having the purely evil villain, they have a person who uses the wrong means to achieve understandable ends. That is both good and bad, to be honest. It makes the villain more human, which is not a bad thing, but often takes away from the actual conflict, because the villain does have a point. On the other hand, heroes have often been replaced by anti-heroes - people who are not good for goodness’ sake, but do things for the sake of money or glory or other things. They, too, are not a classic hero any longer, even if that makes them more modern and more realistic.

 

Almost to the day one month ago, I did release “The Lives and Times of Isadora Goode”. It’s the only series I write (volume 2 is fully plotted, but not yet written) which is set in a world where both superheroes and supervillains exist and I didn’t go all ‘black and white’ for my hero.

Isadora was born into a family with a long history of heroic deeds. Her father is a legendary hero, her brother is training to be a hero, and her mother used to be a damsel. That was to be Isadora’s fate, too - becoming a damsel because her powers weren’t extraordinary enough to become a hero.

I could have made her story about becoming a vigilante at night and proving people who think a woman needs to be extremely powerful to be a hero wrong. Yet, that would have made her quite similar to Maddie Dempsey, the main character from my ‘The Eye’ series. In addition, I found another path more interesting.

Instead of becoming a hero, a damsel, or just a regular citizen, Isadora chooses the evil side. She’s my second necromancer and, unlike Gabrielle Munson, has chosen this path and worked for her powers. Isadora’s biggest goal in life is to codify necromancy as the first necromancer in over a hundred years, to make it more science than superstition. Research needs funding, though, and funding needs work, so she creates undead creatures for other villains, as workers or guards, and assists them like it.

I also created her equivalent from the other side of the battle - Lisabet Lewis, a woman from an old villainous family who decided to join the good side and become a damsel. Fate throws them together by making Lisabet the damsel assigned to Isadora’s brother Connor. Since Connor chooses Isadora as his nemesis, this also connects Lisabet and Isadora, as a damsel in the highly ritualized fight between good and evil is as connected to the villain as she is to the hero.

 

Why have I decided on this? Well, first of all, because it was fun. In addition, because I liked the idea of a society where the fight between heroes and villains has been going on for so long that it has become ritualized, that there are rules for how heroes and villains interact. There are two organisations, the League of Heroes and the Villains’ Cabal, which represent their members, codifying and ritualizing their relationship further.

At the same time, this has also given me the chance to show that underneath the headings of ‘hero’ and ‘villain’ are human beings. Neither are heroes all good, nor are villains all evil. Through Isadora’s eyes, people like Baron Asmodeus (her mentor and her father’s nemesis), the Master of the Deep, or Christian de la Croix are not evil at all - they are colleagues and friends. Through her eyes, William Goode aka Thunderclap and Connor Goode aka Powerhouse, her father and brother, are not all that good - they are prone to bending or even breaking rules to make sure the evil side never wins. I do enjoy that very much, because I’ve never bought that there are such clear distinctions.

 

Yet, I do like those ‘good vs. evil’ stories in general. I’m a big fan of pulp stories and I do love fairy tales, too (even though modern retellings are more to my taste). ‘Good vs. evil’ means high stakes, instant conflict, and can lead to very interesting stories. A lot of action movies are based entire on the hero being all right and the villain being all wrong, which means that audiences don’t have to think about any philosophical or moral questions. What the hero does is right, what the villain does is wrong, end of story.

I also do like the idea of pure evil villains, especially with people these days no longer writing so many of them. There is something very satisfying in having a villain who is powerful and competent and at the same time has no ‘understandable’ motive for what they are doing. We don’t demand of the hero to give us a reason for ‘doing good,’ so why should we demand a reason for ‘doing evil’ from the villain? Reasons can be found, of course - world domination or just riches always make for an explanation. Yet, the point about a pure evil villain is that they enjoy being pure evil. They don’t have a goal they want to reach, they enjoy wreaking havoc and causing misery. It can be a lot of fun to write them - as it can be a lot of fun to watch them or read about them.

 

Don’t take the whole ‘good vs. evil’ spiel for the only way to use superheroes and supervillains. There are a lot of other interesting and fun ways to use them. Try out making a pure evil villain and have fun with their unbridled evilness. See whether you can turn the idea of who is good and who is evil on its head. There are many ways to have fun with the principle of superheroes and supervillains, with and without cape and spandex.

Plotting

This is a very personal post, because it’s about my changing stance on plotting stories in advance. You see, I used to be a discovery writer, but then I took an arrow to the knee (not really, but still…).

 

When I started writing more seriously, I was a full discovery writer. Whenever I tried to outline my story, I wouldn’t write it. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the plot as I had written it down and work from that. I needed the freedom of the discovery, even if it meant going back and making changes in my story so it would fit together. Well into my first novels, this was the only way I could work.

But novel writing is a slow sport. You can’t write a full novel in a few days, it takes weeks at least (months to years for most people, but my novels are shorter). While working on one story, I was constantly pestered by other ideas, by other stories I could and should write. That was when a bit of plotting, a bit of preparation came into my life.

At first, it was merely a short sentence per chapter. I would write down the chapter headers (only ‘One,’ ‘Two,’ ‘Three’ etc.) and put a short sentence about what I expected to have in this chapter underneath them. Sometimes, I would have to add stuff and move those sentences down the line, so there was still a lot to discover about the story.

Then I decided to move into One Note and write down a short description of what was going to happen, telling the story in a summary in present tense. That worked well enough for me, too. I still had a lot of things to think through and a lot of details to add while I was writing the chapter. Yet, I could judge the pacing better and could often spot the holes in my plots while I was still composing the outline.

Last year, I spent a fun month transferring my series bibles and my outlines from One Note to Campfire Pro, which I’d had for a few years, but wasn’t using. Since then, I have been using the program’s ‘timeline’ feature for plotting. I went down one more level, from the chapter to the scene, noting a short description for every scene and putting it where it belongs.

By now, the outlines help me to write two chapters a day, up to ten chapters a week (with a free weekend), and to keep up with the speed at which I get new ideas.

Why have I been coming up with a blog post about my shifting opinion of plotting now, though? Because last month, while I was editing, I thought I could do some light-hearted writing on the side, but had to realize that by now I need this outline to write something. A short story I wanted to write without preparation has, under my plotting hands, turned into an outline for a novel, which is a bit of a shock.

I was happy to be a discovery writer for a long time. Writing was an adventure, since I didn’t know where I would end up when I started a story. The adventure is still there, but it’s mostly in the outlining phase now.

Since I only have an outline, it’s like having a map when you go on an adventure. You know the general direction, but you don’t know the little details that will happen along the way. Writing the chapters is still interesting, because I have to expand on the notes, turn a few sentences into a full-fledged scene. I flesh things out and give them depth, I add a few details here and a few details there. Character development still happens mostly in the writing process, since I usually only follow the external plots while outlining.

My outline isn’t set in stone, either. I do try to keep to it, but sometimes I find there’s something I need to add or to remove for one reason or other. A scene might fit better when it’s put in later, after other things have been established. Or I need a little foreshadowing early on. Knowing what will happen later makes it much easier to put in a bit of foreshadowing here and there or add a bit of information in the right place to prepare the readers.

 

A few years ago, I thought I would never use outlines and always trust to my ability to write on the fly and discover the story as I wrote it. Today, I’ve reached a point where I can’t work without outline any longer. The change was not from one day to the next and there were quite some steps in between, but it shows that writing habits can change.

If you don’t outline, try it out. See if there is something you can take away from making a few plans ahead of time - like an adventurer who makes sure to take a few rations along before walking out of the door. Perhaps you will stay with the rations, perhaps you will add a sleeping bag at some point. Perhaps, after you’ve added that sleeping bag, because you never know where you’ll end up sleeping, you will also add a map.

The map, the outline as I use it these days, is still far from taking the adventure out of writing. It gives me direction, but a map will never show all the details on the way. The map doesn’t include that quaint little house in the middle of the meadows which you can see on the way. Neither does it note that friendly innkeeper who lets you stay overnight for less than the regular charge, just because she doesn’t have that many guests and it’s going to be cold outside.

Adventures can be more fun when you have a general direction to walk in and a little idea of what you might need on the way. Working with a map doesn’t take all the surprises out of your trip, it simply makes sure you stand a decent chance to make it to your destination.

 

Do I miss discovery writing? Not really. I still have fun writing, it’s not a chore for me. Is it good to have an outline? Yes, definitely. I’m much better at knowing when to finish a story and I know what’s going to happen in the chapters I write on any given day. I can write quickly and I can get a lot more done than I used to.

 

My personal trip from discovery writer to outliner has been an adventure. Not the same as writing a book without knowing where I’m going to end up, but still a fun trip which led me past many interesting places. I don’t regret taking the trip and I like the character growth it has caused in me. I’ve become more professional in my writing, which is good, yet I haven’t lost the fun. I can only recommend trying it, no matter whether it works out for you or not.

Types of Editing

Since I was editing last month, the topic of revising and editing is fresh on my mind right now. I admit that editing is my least favourite part of writing and publishing stories - research, plotting, and writing rank far, far higher than the necessary edit to get the story out into the world. Yet, it is a necessity for everyone who wants to let the public see their writing, so let’s talk about it.

 

First of all, there are several levels of editing: content editing, copy editing, and line editing. Each of them has its time and place and each is important to create the optimal version of your story. By the way, the order in which I have listed them is how you should be doing them, too. Everything else, as you will see, makes little sense.

I would also advice to take a break from a story before you revise it. Distance helps with a more objective look at the manuscript and that is what you need.

 

Let’s begin with the content editing. It’s the first thing you should do when revising a story. Content editing is all about the content of your story, that’s where the name comes from. Go over your story. See how well the plots work their way through. See if all the threads are neatly tied up in the end (or a plot you want to continue in the next book has reached the right point). This is the stage in which you will, most likely, make the biggest changes. Remember that all scenes should either further one or more plots or give insight into the characters. Ideally, they’ll do both. You might want to fuse two weak scenes to make a stronger one. You might have to cut a scene completely, because it does do anything for the story.

How heavy your content editing has to be depends a lot on your writing as a such. If you’re one of the people who plot tightly and, essentially, do a first draft in their notes alone before writing the story, there might be little content editing necessary. You might have found all problems with the plots and might have undone them already. If you’re a discovery writer (and thus on the other end of the spectrum), you might need heavy content editing to get your story into a coherent state. Yet, you need to take a look at the story content-wise, no matter what type of writer you are. With a bit of distance, you might spot a problem you didn’t see before.

 

Once you’re happy with the content of your story, it’s time to tackle copy editing. For most people, this is the largest part of editing, because it’s the one where you dive in at the deep end. Copy editing isn’t concerned so much with the story, but with the writing instead. You are looking for grammar errors, wrong words, and typos. You also optimize the language of your script, make sure sentences are easy to read and aren’t easy to misunderstand. While this might be easier to paraphrase, it takes a lot longer. I’m not saying that you should ignore typos or grammar errors you encounter during content editing, but it’s not what you look for then. When you are copy editing and realize there is a scene which doesn’t work, you should drop back into content editing and change it, too, of course. Yet, if you did the first step well, that shouldn’t happen.

Again, how much and how long you need to copy edit is something that isn’t the same for everyone. Some people do some copy editing while they’re writing, when rereading already written text. Others write everything down in the spurt of the moment and leave all kinds of editing for later. Both is equally valid, none is better per se. It also plays a role how well you command the language you’re writing in and how quick you are with spotting errors. For me, this is the longest part of editing, but it might be that you need more time for content editing, depending on your personal work methods.

 

Finally, line editing. This is something I have no experience with, because my books are never set for physical printing. If your books are, however - or you turn them into PDF files instead of regular e-book formats -, this is another thing you need to do. Once you have the completely set text (set by you or by another professional), it’s time to check all the pages for their looks. Are there widows or orphans (only the first or the last line of a paragraph alone on a page)? Are there areas with a strange spacing? Does everything look readable?

With a regular e-book format, there is no setting in the classic sense. There might be widows and orphans, but you can’t prevent them, since the type can be made bigger or smaller by the reader. Yet, if you do a physical book, you will want for every page to be optimized, that makes line editing necessary. Usually, this should be the shortest part of the process, since it’s more about the looks than about the content in any way.

 

These are the three different types of editing which go into the revision process of a book before it is published. Ideally, you have a step even before that - beta readers. It can be very useful to have someone read your first draft - even though it’s going to be horrid - or some scenes from your story and tell you what they think about it. Especially during the writing process, you can catch problems early and revise your plotting already before you do all the work of writing all the scenes and then change half of it.

 

Do you need to edit? Yes - even if you just want to publish on a fan page or a place like A3O. The first draft, what you’re writing down for yourself, is never fit to be released. It’s never in a shape in which you should let others read it. That’s a big problem if you’re releasing chapters periodically, not waiting until the manuscript is done. If you do a tight plotting, it might not be too much of a problem, since you can track the plot points and make sure they work out. If you don’t - and few fan-fiction writers seem to be avid plotters -, you might get into trouble with the coherence of the work. In such cases, I’d suggest writing the whole story first, even if you wish to release it in chapters.

 

Editing is optimizing the story, not only the content (although you should do that first), but also the readability. With my last editing, I worked a lot on my sentences, since I tend to make them too long. I also always read the text out loud in order to see where the sentences are weird or how they could be better. You should always edit before you put something out into the public, even a blog post like this one.

Reboots

 We live in a time of reboots - at least that is what it looks like when you look at the new releases for movie theatres and the new series released by TV stations and streaming services. There’s a lot of known names there which are being ‘redone’ or get an unnecessary sequel.

 

Reboots come in two different varieties: hard and soft. Both come with their own problems and both have their own good sides.

Hard reboots take only the bare basics of a property and build a completely new structure on them. One example for a hard reboot is the “Ghostbusters” movie from 2016. There’s still ghost busting, but the old timeline, the old characters, the old stories are no longer existent. We have new people coming in, a new story, a new tone, a new setting. Apart from also busting ghosts, they are in no way related to those who came before (even though quite some of the old actors have a cameo, it’s not in their past roles).

Soft reboots often happen when writers have written themselves into a corner, so they simply ignore or take back some plot points and continue the series. One example for a soft reboot is “The Empty House” - the story in which Arthur Conan Doyle took back the death of Sherlock Holmes. He wanted to publish more stories about the detective, but had killed him off prior, so he needed to mitigate that and turn the death into a disappearance. Luckily, he’d not given first-hand accounts of the death in the first place, so he could write himself out of that corner again.

 

In general, soft reboots are much easier to do and usually much harder to get wrong. Working again with the same characters in the same environment means it’s much easier for the audience to slip back into the story and enjoy it again.

Sometimes, though, a soft reboot isn’t possible any longer. The actors might have grown too old or died already (as with “Ghostbusters” - one of the original actors is dead and the others are past the age of an action comedy). The story is focused on a new audience (as with properties originally done for children and rebooted for adults). The corner which the authors have written themselves into is too tight to get out of again.

 

Both types come with their own problems.

In a soft reboot, the first question is how much to undo in the story to get back to the new starting point. How much of the lore has to be removed? How many character plots have to be undone? How much time needs to be rewritten? Yet, the core of the property is normally left untouched, because the past is not undone, so what made the story or the characters interesting is still there. They still have their past relationships, their past adventures, and their past development.

In a hard reboot, the first question is what the core of the property was. Which parts of the old lore need to be kept or redone? Are there characters which need to make a return? Is the setting of the world still solid or does worldbuilding need to happen? The big danger with the hard reboot lies in the story losing its core, the basic premises that made it work in the first place and drew the audience to it.

Let me give you two examples for hard reboots, one of which works and one of which doesn’t.

 

Recently, “Fate: The Winx Club” has been released as a reboot of the “Winx Club” series. The original “Winx Club” was a series for children, often watched by young girls. It was bright, cute, emotional, built around the friendship of the main characters. It was diverse, too, adding different POC characters to the story. It had its weaknesses like not having any male characters as fairies or witches and no female characters as specialists (fighters). Not all of the story lines were strong, either, but it ran for quite some years, so it definitely was successful.

The reboot falls into the ‘dark and gritty’ category and has lost all of its brightness. Instead of having a tight-knit group of female characters who get through their adventures together by helping each other and using their bright fairy powers, we have a group of girls who seem to barely tolerate each other. “Winx Club” was always Bloom-centric, since the character Bloom was the entry point into the world of the series and the focus character of most stories. Yet, the other characters were well-created and each of them was distinct, they weren’t just a backdrop for Bloom’s adventures.

According to the creator, the reboot is meant for the original fans of the series (who are in the young adult to adult range now) and has been changed to fit with their sensibilities. Yet, the fans of “Winx Club” loved the series for being bright and happy and full of positive feelings. They loved the girls’ powerful friendship and their fashion sense (the original series actually had fashion designers design the girls’ outfits). None of that is present in the reboot. Yes, there are male fairies and female specialists now, which is good, but for that, the iconic villains of the original have been replaced by a single character and with them the third faction of the witches has disappeared. The magic school looks more like Hogwarts than like any of the three schools present in the original series. If the names of the girls were exchanged for different ones, the whole new series could run as an original, because it hardly shares plot points or worldbuilding with the original. It certainly doesn’t share the original’s core.

It’s easy to say that this is definitely a hard reboot fail.

 

The “Ghostbusters” movie from 2016, despite the weaknesses in writing, is a good example for a hard reboot. While it has a completely new cast of characters, it keeps the core of the original. It’s a goofy action comedy, even if the type of jokes has changed over time. It has four characters who work together on busting ghosts (even if the ‘street-smart’ one is, again, the only POC character) and gives us a good look at them starting their work. Unlike the original, it even has them rent much worse rooms first - the iconic fire department building is their reward at the end, not what they work out of for most of the movie.

The authors have understood that “Ghostbusters” always was an action comedy and they wrote it accordingly. They keep the tone of the original, the banter, the light-hearted fun, but undercut it with darker themes, as they should. There were darker themes in the original as well, it’s not something that is new to the property.

Yes, the villain is a disappointment in this one. Yes, the movie does have a weakness in the third act, which is a shame (but not unique, quite some movies don’t deliver on their initial premise). None of this, though, is the problem of the reboot and all could have happened just as well with a soft reboot or a completely new project.

Despite not being a hugely successful movie, this hard reboot did it right on the side of the property.

 

It is, of course, much easier to do a soft reboot and conserve the core of the property. Yet, it isn’t always possible, because the original actors are not available or the sensibilities of society have changed too much or certain aspects are no longer viable.

I want to add something else here - what is not a reboot, soft or hard. “The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” is not a reboot, soft or hard - the 1990s TV series was based on the Archie Comics character of Sabrina The Teenage Witch and the same goes for the new series. The only difference is in the choice of the comics they are based on. The dark story of the Chilling Adventures is taken from the comics, just as the light-hearted teenage fun of 1990s Sabrina was. The same goes for the Teen Titans ‘dark and gritty’ series - it, too, is based on another medium and picks different aspects of the source material this time. One can like or hate it, but it’s not a reboot.

 

Reboots have their challenges, but they are unavoidable sometimes. Yet, it would be nice if we got less reboots - good or bad - and more new material. Just because something was successful twenty years ago doesn’t mean that it will be successful today and an easy formula (like ‘make it dark and gritty’) doesn’t always help.