SUPERHERO Project
Explain the character's want and need and how they differ.
My superhero character, Arthur, lives in a complex world and time, which reflects his wants and needs. After 500 years, Arthur wakes up from Cryosleep, however, the world he wakes up to is not at all the same as the one he left behind. Arthur wakes up to find that his beloved planet, Lyptus, is being invaded by Planet Dwarfmen. A passion, a desire, an inner calling, if you will, rise up inside of him like never before to protect what is his. Arthur feels like it is now his job to gain the full power of the home planet, Lyptus. Arthur becomes obsessed with gaining control and power over his planet that it becomes a fault. After arriving at Townhall, the realization set it for Arthur. He began to notice all of the nice things the mayor had in his possession. He also noticed how protective the people of Lyptus were and how much they cared for the Mayor. He began realizing that he was their only hope to become their hero. He wants to be protected just like the mayor is.
Explain how the decision points and branches in your story address these motivations.
My character's key motivations were complex, just like the world he is existing in. I tried to subtly and subconsciously introduce these motivations as the story developed and unfolded right before the reader's eyes. I wanted them to make their own “wants” so they were a little different from the others. Whenever the major was introduced was when I really started pushing the “power” role. I said little things like how Arthurs's eyes were caught by how many nice things the mayor had and how nice his house was. I also mentioned how much the people cared about him and that was really pivotable for Arthur and his story. In the beginning, I mentioned his mother passing away in hopes the reader would look at him in a different light for the remainder of the story.
Tell us how you came up with the story beats that made these decisions make sense.
When brainstorming with anything, but especially this type of story, I try to think as big and unrealistic as possible. Honestly, the bigger the better, I want to completely confuse and almost scare people when I tell them my ideas. From there, I begin to not really shrink my ideas but I create a realistic world for this unrealistic idea I have dreamt up. Almost creating a place where this event would actually happen and be considered normal. A world that is just someone's whole world. Like to us, it makes no sense, but to them, nothing else would make sense. I try to completely take advantage of a “made-up superhero”. Like obviously superheroes don't exist. So why create a made-up scenario of NORMAL events that can happen in a world without superheroes? Rather than acknowledging superheroes don't exist and trying to shrink that idea down, I like to create a world where that would be normal. I came up with the most outlandish ideas on my iPhone notes app. I just did the talk-to-text with every idea that popped in my head about superheroes and WHY an astronaut with a diamond sword came to mind when I thought about superheroes, I don’t know?! Nevertheless, it did and this is where my story began.
Explain how you worked to align the reader's interests with the character's motivations. From start to finish, writing the storyline down to finalizing the little details I wanted to create a very thought-provoking story that provided tons of imagery and made the reader feel like they were there in the story seeing everything first hand. From the smells of breakfast to the color of his spaceship, I wanted to take the reader there. For every unrealistic thing, I tried to make a world realistic scenario. For example, when I included the Mcdonald's choice, it was the first restaurant and came to mind. Instead of changing the idea and maybe saying a realistic space name, I tried to combine two worlds by looking up “space McDonalds” and found a really cool picture to include and give the reader a better understanding of what their planet life looks like and to connect the dots of an Earth Mcdonalds vs a Space Mcdonalds. I included pictures of the sky and tried to connect people reading to envision what is happening.