Heroes or Superheroes?

There is a difference between a well constructed heroic character and a Mary Sue. Weaknesses in personality or power should balance your character. David Eddings did a great job with Belgarath in terms of balancing great power with limitations.

By that definition, mostly heroes. Of course, when I do a superhero story, superheroes.

Some people hate it when the main character dies in a book, because it causes them to think "Why should I read? Everything I care for will just be removed from the book at any moment." They'll fear the book will disappoint them by killing more people they like and they'll just stop reading.

It can also create a certain aimlessness in some readers("So wasn't that guy the main character after all? Who is the main character then?") who think that there must be a strong main character in a book and that he can't die.

option 3.

Heroes with brains and friends.

A hero can survive any situation they like so long as it's through a combination of planning, skill and help. I don't like the lone gunslinger who's "just that good" but i like the lone gunslinger who's spent the first two acts stacking the deck in his favour and who's got snipers on all the rooftops.

adriansia said:

So... Are your characters heroes or superheroes?

I usually dislike characters (even main characters) that seem to escape an inevitable death. Personally I think killing off a main character strikes the reader hard and that's what you want a book to do.

A hero can be an expert gunslinger but he probably wouldn't live against 100 novice gunslingers.

A superhero can be a novice gunslinger, but he probably would live against 100 expert gunslingers.

Regards,

Adrian

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Can't remember reading a book where one gunslinger defeated a hundred.

A hero's win should be plausible, but real life is full of people who overcame great odds. And damned if I want him killed just because the writer thinks it hits the reader hard. It usually doesn't hit me nearly as hard as the book hits the wall when a writer tries to get philosophical, or tries to manipulate my feelings.

Summarizing, whatever it is that happens had better be organic to the needs of the story.

My characters are heroes, in that they do their best to live the lives they've got, kind of like the rest of us.

That's an interesting distinction you made, and I really like you're definitions.

My characters are heroes, but they catch that definition by the skin of their teeth. By that I mean that they may be the heroes of the story, but they're not really "heroes". Yes, they have special abilities (99.99999% of MC's in fantasy do,) but they are not abilities that help them defeat the bad guys in any way. They're really just used as means to get my characters into the supernatural situation of the plot. I really wanted to see what normal people would do when thrown in a supernatural situation without any help from anyone who had previous experience with the supernatural, and the result was that they were heroes, but not by the traditional definition. They're certainly not "super-heroes".

Can they be heroes with super abilities?

Well, I generally disagree with killing main characters, unless they are an unreformable villain. I strongly prefer to read and write stories with happy endings, romance, and humor. I'd much rather make a reader smile than cry or flinch or be grossed out.

That said, I don't usually want some characters to be vastly more powerful than others. So instead of superheros which pretty much require the majority of people to be normals for contrast, I have have races where many people have at least a little magic and no one can be a master of multiple types of magic, a person can only master the type their "soul" or whatever has a natural affinity for, and usually can't do other types at all. A guy who can turn into a lion might seem like a superhero to you or me, but he might be helpless against the guy who can throw fireballs, and he in turn is helpless against diseases, while a healing-focused mage has no offensive abilities except the ability to make people fall asleep. All of them would be useless if you needed automated security spells set up or magical appliances crafted.

I do have one story concept involving literal superheroes and supervillains. I really love Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and I wanted to do something like that, exploring a situation where the official hero is making others miserable, the official villain is an adoring husband, and the main character who is an official neutral commits the greatest crime for the most noble reasons.

baileycakes14 said:

I really wanted to see what normal people would do when thrown in a supernatural situation without any help from anyone who had previous experience with the supernatural, and the result was that they were heroes, but not by the traditional definition. They're certainly not "super-heroes".

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This is the key element in lots of stories from a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court to Narnia. Of course, some of these characters do receive supernatural help. Often portal fiction is the regular guy in an extraordinary situation finds his heroic self.

Military fiction has this theme as well, I believe. Training yes, special powers no.

He has powers that are pretty awesome, but the antag's powers are awesomer, and he still hasn't figured out why.

Interesting question. It seems by super hero you mean able to cheat death. In this case I don't know if my main character is a super hero or just a hero. I mean she has a bunch of powers and can heal herself to some extent, but I haven't decided if she can cheat death. When I decide whether or not I'm writing a stand alone or not then I will know. Right now I'm leaning more toward stand alone and just killing her off but I'm not sure. I want to hit the reader hard in the heart but I don't wanna tick them off either.

I have heroes and superheroes depending on what story I want to tell, but they're always human.

And I hate when the MC dies. If I, as a reader, have developed an emotional attachment to them, you better not kill them off. Put the through hell, sure, but don't kill them or you've lost meas a reader. I remember reading one fantasy and the MC died in the end of the first book of a trilogy. I never bothered reading further. Even when someone told me that theMC was resurrected in the next book... Sorry, too late. I'll find another author who wants me as a reader.

Shadow_Ferret said:

And I hate when the MC dies. If I, as a reader, have developed an emotional attachment to them, you better not kill them off. Put the through hell, sure, but don't kill them or you've lost meas a reader. I remember reading one fantasy and the MC died in the end of the first book of a trilogy. I never bothered reading further. Even when someone told me that theMC was resurrected in the next book... Sorry, too late. I'll find another author who wants me as a reader.

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You're some sort of death Nazi. Uncool. I mean he brought 'em back!

The major heroes/villains of my two novels are God, angels, demons, and other vastly powerful supernatural beings including human mystics.

I like playing around with powerful characters. Powerful characters, powerful challenges. Good stuff.

I stick to hero characters, and I prefer to read, or watch stuff about them.
I really dislike the entire superman franchise because he's a really boring protagonist.
Superman returns: He's ultra-super unbeatable! Guy with a cane has a magic rock that turns superman completely helpless and the old man is beating him up with the cane. No wait, superman gets over it, lifts a small island made out of the magic rocks and wins again... yay....

Having said that, you take the same character, call him Hancock, give him a drinking problem and it's really entertaining.

So I think superheroes can work, if their conflict is equally super, or somehow creative.
I don't mind if a main character is killed if it's done well but sometimes it feels like a cheap- I want you to feel bad for the protagonist - go!
I approve of side effects from injuries. I hate when characters get shot, tied up, pulled behind a horse, and thrown down the side of a bank and come out a few months later looking shiny and new with no scars, limps, or disfigurements to show for it.

I usually prefer heroic characters (like, say, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser) over super-heroic characters (like Driz'zt and co.).

It seems nigh impossible to accurately account for how a high level of supernatural power would shape a world. This seems to lead to a range of issues starting from lack of originality in the setting (people can use magic to raise buildings in a day yet agriculture is still at the level of the Dark Ages) and leading up to glaring plot holes (previously established magic could have easily resolved a key point of conflict but was not used to do so).

The protagonists/main characters of the piece I'm writing have special abilities tied to their skills. However, said special abilities can be achieved by anyone if they're willing to work and train for it. Essentially, the only thing that's 'special' about the MCs is their devotion and drives to acquire their abilities. Personally, I dislike the concept of 'you're either born/destined to be powerful or you're nothing'.