Young Writers Society

I have got two story ideas. Please give feedback, opinion, plot or story changes or tips. Warning I have a certain fixation on super powers.

First: A boy is the descendent of a long line of people with the power to run at super- natural speeds. However there is a family who have hunted down the "light-foots" ever since they were discovered and now they wish to destroy the boy.

Second ( it is kind of under developed): A teenager has the discovered he has the power to create and control fire.

I would have created a story about vampires or werewolves but everyone is kin of doing that.

Everyone and his dog seem to have a fixation on superpowers, including myself, but I restrict myself from writing about it because it's become quite cliché. What you have here, certainly for the first idea, has been done several times; maybe not with those exact circumstances, but still. I think if you include superpowers, you have to really make sure the plot, the characters, the whole idea is unique enough to pass despite that. Don't have an evil government who wants to experiment on your character, don't introduce variants of the Van Helsings and don't make your character "just an average boy". That phrase is the oldest trick in the book, closely followed by the character being disliked at school for no apparent reason.

Personally, I think teen-who-gets-superpowers is still good fun to read, but hopelessly cliché. If you want it to be well-written, you're going to have to pull out all the stops with originality, and work in a new idea everywhere you can. Don't just pour your story into the rather overused mould.

I'll have to agree with KJetpack.
I would suggest thinking up of something new and different and not your average-teen-turns-superhero kind of comic.

Check out this blog post about superheroes and their uses in fiction. Might give you some ideas on not making this story cliche (since all stories have a grain of salvageable material in them. The right twists just need to be made)

Hope this helps.

~Rosey

The first idea is reminding me disturbingly of the Flash family.

Ditto what the others said about superpowers. As a fan of superhero comics, I like superheroes and superpowers and I'm glad you're exploring them, but I have to admit there are not very many original superpowers left, and most superhero plots are very cliche.

I find it works best when you explore not the powers, not the action, not the evil conspiracies, but the characters. Focus on how the powers affect the characters as people, how they interact with others, how others perceive them (as heroes? As monsters? Do their powers detach them so much from humanity that they [like Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen] can no longer sympathize with regular people?). But don't descend into X-Men-esque emo moaning.

Lastly, if you're going to write a story about "boys with superpowers", then please do watch Sky High. That's the trope done right--because it's character-centered.

Can i just say that I thought Sky High was terrible?
Oh, maybe you should try using powers that aren't super, or that are realistic. Like being really fast may well be an ability, it just depends to what extent. He could just be quicker then average, but I think you'd have to give him some sort of negative, like a lack of endurance while running. Maybe even an overweight superhero, that's something that I haven't heard of...

OK.
1) the 'family who hunt these light-foots' ideas... Jumper already did that, but more to the point, it seems a leetle bit more. I mean, why do they want to kill the light-foots off?
And anyway, I always like to see from the point of view of someone close to the MC; that way, you get a taste of action, but also a feeling of what others think of him/her.

2)the pyro idea.. I like it, especially because fire is one of the most painful ways to die or get injured, so you have this boy trying not to create fire, but at the same time, trying to manipulate burning houses; except, sometimes things go wrong... Darn, I'm getting into the idea.

Hero,I don't really get what you're saying with the pyro idea, please explain.
also bickazer I don't actually know about the Flash family and could you give an example of the "focusing on characters, not powers", please.

Well, sort of, apparently, fire is the worst way to die.
This kid has pyromanic powers.
He gets angry and sets someone on fire when no one's around. The guy dies, the police are looking into it because HOLY DANNY it looks like the killer used rocket propulsion fuel for the burning. So he's trying to live an ordinary life, trying to keep them in check.
Maybe he decides to put out a girl's fire. Instead of falling in love with him, she gets instantly suspicious, and starts to hypothesize that he's somehow involved with the fire...

So, in effect, you have an anti-hero; fire is good and bad, and you have a MC who is trying not to go to the bad side, but its inevitable.

First- Okay, so the idea is cool, but it seems either too Sky High, or too indirectly related to Twilight too me. But I think if you developed it a little differently, it could work.

Second- Okay, so this one is a little better, but only because it's less developed than the first and could go many ways. But if you want ideas, or if you want to know if it's too similar to it, read Firestarter by Stephen King. It's about a little girl who can start fires.

And I agree, everyone seems to have latched onto the whole vampire and werewolf thing. It's getting kind of annoying now, if you were to ask me...

also bickazer I don't actually know about the Flash family and could you give an example of the "focusing on characters, not powers", please.

I hope Bickazer doesn't mind me cutting in here (at least for the character-centered bit)...

What "focusing on characters, not powers" means is, the story isn't just "The world is in trouble, super-powerful guy needs to save it." To explain a character-focused story more, I'm going to give you the plot for Sky High, the example she provided. (At least in part. Don't want to spoil too much; it's a good movie)

One of the first scenes in the movie shows two superheros, a guy and a girl, (it was established before hand that they were superheros) getting breakfast ready. They get a call thanking them for their work, and the guy remembers that it's their son's first day of school. The scene then cuts to the son trying to lift a rather puny barbell of weights, to see if he has super-strength like is dad. He doesn't. As he hears his dad come up the stairs, he adds on a bunch of weight to the barbell, and just as his dad reaches the door he pretends he's just finished 200 repetitions of lifting the weights. He's been lying to them for years about having powers, because he doesn't want to disappoint them by saying he doesn't have powers.

This school he's going to is also different. It's a school for superheros. His lying has stuck him there, because his parents want him to save the world just like they do. Because he doesn't want to tell them he's powerless, he goes there. On the evaluation day (first day), the teachers try to test him for powers like his parents. He's got to live with a bit of humiliation as he gets stuck with the side-kicks because he's powerless. He studies with the side-kicks at home and his dad is proud and a bit amused that his "superhero" son is socially-secure enough to hang out with side-kicks (think of the superheros as the cool kids in school and the side-kicks as the geeks. The two don't really mix). The son smiles and pretends he's secure in his standing, still not telling his parents he's powerless.

As the movie progresses, he makes friends, enemies, and discovers his "inner superhero" in more ways than one. Yes, he does get to the superhero rank eventually, but those powers are never the focus. Instead, the MC of the movie, and the inner battles he does through, are the focus. Making "Sky High" a character based story. It's not just "Hero has to save the world with his powers!" (which is often the case in comics such as Superman, I believe) but "Hero is trying to discover who he is and it just so happens he's got superpowers and needs to fight bad-guys" (As I said above, Sky High is an example of such a story).

All this means is, you need to have fleshed-out characters like any other story. Each character (heros, villains, side-kicks, parents, ect) needs to have loves, fears, hopes, dreams, and complex motives. They need to be real. Here is one article on characters you might one to check out. Here is another. And finally, here is an article on superheros in fiction.

And just because I can, here is an article on the Flash family.