Someone’s Been Messing with Reality by John Hearne
We are delighted to share a guest blog from John Hearne, author of Someone’s Been Messing with Reality. He writes about his main character and how to avoid the cliche’s around giving characters superpowers!
Characters with Special Abilities: Make cliché-avoidance your super power
The kid with superpowers is one of most popular tropes in sci-fi. It’s caked in clichés. So if you’re going to do it, you’ve got to do it right.
I think the critical thing is that less is more. It’s very difficult these days to get away with a character who has any more than one special power. The original superman with his array of special abilities (flight, super-strength, laser eyes) is tacitly understood by kids to be overdone. Is there any friend group who hasn’t discussed which superpower they would like most? There’s an understanding there that one is enough, and anything more is excessive and – even within the boundaries of fantasy – unrealistic. So don’t overegg the pudding. Don’t pack your character with a Swiss Army Knife of powers. Pick one and stick to it.
Then you’ve got to embed it in the real world. Terry Pratchett pointed out that we may think of a unicorn as a gentle beast, but when you get right down to it, you’re talking about ‘a damn great horse with a horn at the end.’
Ok, you’ve just been bitten by a radioactive eagle and now you can fly. But do you trust that ability? Are you going to soar into the sky with careless abandon, or are you going to get freaked out by the possibility that these powers might wear off at any minute? What are the practical realities of having a super power?
In Someone’s Been Messing with Reality, my main character, Martin Ryan, discovers that he can fly. His parents are not quite of this earth, and they’ve been drugging him for years to ensure that his powers don’t emerge. But then they do. Only the thing is, Martin is scared of heights. And like our friend Eagleman, he’s not sure he can trust it. Even if you discover you can fly, how do you stop becoming paralyzed with terror every time you attempt to rise any more than six feet in the air?
The other problem for Martin is that when he attempts to use his powers, he gets crippling headaches, and he can’t figure out why. As he says himself in the book. ‘There’s a price to pay. You don’t just get to soar.’ That’s the essence of it. The wonder of being able to do something no one else can do must be balanced by an equally unique set of consequences.
If your character can become invisible, do their clothes become invisible too? Or are they only invisible while naked? How do they manage if it’s raining and cold? Where do they stash their clothes in preparation for becoming visible again?
In the Harry Potter universe, there’s an implicit understanding of this need for balance. You can’t simply wave your wand and utter the magic words. It can’t be easy, and if you screw up – again – there has to be consequences. Take teleportation for example. (When superpowers are discussed in our house, this is always the most popular choice.)
Harry and co can teleport – or apparate as it’s termed – but if you don’t do it right, your risk ‘splinching’ – leaving body parts in the place you you’re teleporting from. Ron Weasley, we are told, failed his apparition test when he left half an eyebrow behind. When you think about it, the whole Hogwarts process is all about teaching kids how to manage their superpowers without killing themselves and everyone else in the process.
Finally, it’s also vital that you be consistent within the rules you’ve set yourself. If your character can move objects with her mind, don’t suddenly decide that she can also read minds because the plot demands it.
Remember too that in the best stories, the super power is never the only thing that the hero has going for them. It’s native wit, or new-found courage that always drives the action forward and resolves the story.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Federation.
