Forum: Story Ideas

Seeing the dire state of Earth and the abysmal quality of its leadership, the powers-that-be decide the world needs superheroes. The powers-that-be build a 'supercomputer' that, literally once in a blue moon, picks a random human and endows them with a single, randomly chosen superpower that can only be activated in times of crisis.

An unassuming young woman named Jane Everyone gets chosen and, due to an uninitialised computer variable, gets endowed with every one of the possible superpowers.

Whenever Jane Everyone, the superheroine, encounters a crisis, one of her superpowers is activated at random. She has to think outside the box to tackle each crisis without knowing beforehand which superpower will be available to her.

AJ

An unassuming young woman named Jane Everyone gets chosen and, due to an uninitialised computer variable, gets endowed with every one of the possible superpowers.

There is always the concern about "balance" in a story involving super powers. And a writer should always be careful so as their character is not so strong that they are basically gods (unless that is your intent).

In fact, it is those flaws that has probably allowed Marvel to dominate DC in most things the last several decades. DC generally wrote in favor of god0like characters that could do damned near anything they want. Marvel on the other hand tended to go with "regular people", that had relatively few powers.

All Spider-Man has is strength, reactions, can stick to walls, and a higher than normal healing factor. That's it, but he has a big negative at the start as he is still a kid and can't even drive yet. All Daredevil has is reflexes and a kind of super-sonar. But on a big downside, he is blind. Punisher has no powers at all, just a driving need for vengeance.

I think that makes for more interesting stories, as it gives them something they have to overcome themselves. And that is something that DC only recently seemed to realize again, so their media spin-offs only in the last few years are finally worth watching (where as Marvel has dominated there for decades).

In my own "Superhero Story", I gave each of them some good powers, but there are also some negatives in there to balance them out. Two of the obvious being that the main character when not using her powers is blind. Then one who changes forms, and her "hero" form is almost invulnerable and stronger, but that is apparently it. And because of the difference in forms that causes unique problems (as well as her suffering from a form of PTSD). And another the guy is super strong and can heal from most wounds, but looks like a Bigfoot monster so can never blend in.

I find those are often some of the most interesting things to write about. Not just overcoming the "bad guys", but some of the negatives that come with their powers.