I’m writing a story about a biracial superhero. He’s in his 20s, and his dad is a Black billionaire. His mom is Japanese, and she comes from a wealthy family. I don’t want to give too much away, but there is something about his family’s history that resurfaces, and it connects to his powers. He is basically trying to find out what it is. My friend says the story is stupid and no one would want to read it.
Just write it, your friend doesn’t have to like it.
It doesn’t sound like something I’d be interested in, but who cares? Write it anyway.
I hate it when people say “no one will read it”. That’s untrue for most things. There is at least one other person who will read it and like it out there. If nothing more than for you to finally get it out there and on paper for your own satisfaction of doing it. And even if no one else does, it doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t sound like you’re doing this in hopes of being the next Jack Kirby or Stan Lee or to get rich. It sounds like you just have a story you think is cool that you’ve been sitting on for a while and you want to flesh it out. Go for it. Spend some time and get it out there and then release it for others to read.
Surprise is overrated.
Spoil the best bits early. If it gains traction, you can fill in all the earlier and later details.
Silly example: Star Wars owes it’s success today at least in part to Lucas being willing to drop into “Episode IV” first to let folks know what it’s really about.
I love the fact that the only details you gave about your story are money, skin color, country of origin.
Maybe the problem is that if your character is only defined by their skin color and wealth, it’s not a very good character. You should be able to have a better description of someone than just talking about their skin color and bank account.
So it feels a bit shallow, from whatever small information you gave, which might be what your friend picked on.
I doubt that it was a genuine question. Looking at their post history I’m suspecting that they’re just posting about controversial topics in hopes to start up something.
All stories are stupid.
It’s the writers’ job to make them interesting.
A lot of the most popular heroes are rich. Heck, Richie Rich comics were a thing for decades.
OP gave some surface level details that are pretty much all existing tropes…
If someone read it and said they didn’t like it, the issue probably wasn’t any of the things OP said.
But writing is a skill, you don’t start out good at it, you get good by doing it a lot. Every author’s first stories suck
Honestly, if you’re that easily discouraged, maybe you should give up.
Ask yourself, are you passionate enough about telling stories and creating comic books? If this is your first comic book it probably won’t be very good. If you want to become a good writer you need to put in the work. Finish this graphic novel, reflect on what did and didn’t work and make another one, and another and another.
Even if you do become a good author eventually, chances of commercial success are very slim. For every writer that succeeds, there’s a hundred who failed. At the end of the day, the only thing that keeps struggling artists going is sheer love of the game.
Do you care enough about this story, that even if only your mom and a handful of other people end up enjoying it, it was still worth telling? If not, then you’ll never make it. If you do, then you probably still won’t make it.
From what you told us, your friend doesn’t sound like a great friend or critic. What is stupid about it? Why would that stop people from being interested? Even stupid things can be very entertaining. Evil Dead 3: Army of Darkness is very stupid, but one of my favourite movies. Ask your friend for some constructive criticism or just ignore them.
With what you were willing to tell us, there isn’t enough there for a story. It’s some character background, but if that background is going to play a big part in the story then yeh that sounds interesting, I wouldn’t describe it as “stupid” at all. If it’s just background for a bit of detail and motivation but not a major driver of the story then your friend and also I don’t have enough information to form a conclusion, because that’s not a story yet, but it’s still an interesting little bit of background that I can’t see why anybody would immediately jump to “stupid”.
To be a writer, write.
At first, what you write will be bad.
In time, what you write may not be bad.
Write because you want to write, not because you want other people to read.
If you want to make something for yourself go ahead, stupid can be fun.
If you actually want to create it for other people to enjoy - you will need to find your audience.
It would make more sense to be an adopted child and to not know their origins, than coming from a rich family. Historically speaking all powerhouse/money families have the family tree figured out -they need it to prove the plebs they are better than those poor peepz.There can be family secrets beyond the family tree.
Why are they saying it’s stupid?
The idea is solid, if not exactly new territory in terms of the rich young superhero thing.
So, if that’s what they’re griping about, screw 'em.
If they’re saying that trying to create a comic at all is stupid, they’re stupid. Nothing wrong with a creative endeavour, though if you aren’t realistically planning ahead on how to make it happen, that would be pretty stupid. Anyone can do their own thing if they have the talent to actually crank out the art and writing (most people struggle with one or the other tbh). But getting it published is a very difficult proposition. Indie artists struggle like hell, even if they do their own site and distribution.
So, if you haven’t planned that far ahead, they might be right that your plan is stupid.
However, if you’ve actually gotten some pages done, and they’ve read it and think it’s stupid, it comes down to how much you value their opinion about comics. Being real, some people’s opinions are shit on a given subject, so if theirs are known to be bad, then fuck 'em. But if they tend to have reliable quality takes on comics (or the craft that goes into them), maybe they’re right, no way for us to know.
But nah man, there’s nothing stupid about this kind of project in and of itself. Nor is the basic concept stupid.
But getting it published is a very difficult proposition. Indie artists struggle like hell, even if they do their own site and distribution.
Getting retail distribution beyond your locale is difficult, making a profit is very difficult, but publishing in its own right is quite easy ;).
We can’t know whether a story is stupid til after it’s written. But wasn’t the Harry Potter series about a wealthy superhero who spent his early childhood in privation as a plot device?
In a vacuum, no. In context of your other posts, you really need to gather some more experience to inform your writing. No forum is a meaningful substitute or alternative. Write what you know, if you feel drawn to something expose yourself to it
If you want to write a story, then it is in working-out the meanings that you will earn what your unconscious-mind wants to earn.
Same with people wanting to earn a pilot’s license, or climbing a mountain, or doing SCUBA.
If some of your meaning is hidden in that kind of work, then you aren’t going to earn that part of your meaning by putting it on a shelf, because somebody-else deemed it unimportant.
I’m recommending that you read & understand 5+ books, though, as they dismantle story the technology so that you can more-competently work out your story-meanings:
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-anatomy-of-genres is the most important: it is on the 14 genres that the West has landed on, & the dimension-of-human-meaning that each genre works-on.
Horror works-on one’s unconscious-mind’s understanding of death, & its relationship with it.
Which may explain Grimm’s, tbh.
Detective is intellect.
etc.
The 14 happen in a particular sequence because that’s the sequence in-which each mind-development stands on the previous-ones.
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/presenting-to-win-updated-and-expanded-edition-2 may seem a strange recommendation, but understanding the 12 TYPES of information-presenting, will help crack some story-problems.
Need a character to fail to communicate something?
Pick the correct for your story wrong-method for them to use, if you see what I man.
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-anatomy-of-story is the other-half of Truby’s work. The 22 steps in story, & why each.
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-story-grid is THE book on editing. There is no book that tops that.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Framed+Ink is THE book for getting visual communication working in comics & visual-novels.
Now I discover that there are multiple books in the series ( I got the original, long ago ).
Dig in, earn what your unconscious-mind is trying to earn, grow your meaning, & clobber your difficulties/obstacles.
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Slap ypur friend with a stack of Batman comics and ask if he thinks that was a dumb idea.
Sounds like a cool concept to me. I’d read that.
A wealth superiority comic does sound dumb as fuck, your friend is right in that capacity.
Yeah, surely nobody would ever like Batman… /s
Yeah but that comic exists already. OP probably has cool ideas that don’t require every character being wealthy. I would bet the wealth is used to excuse why they can explore this instead of beung an integral part to the character, thats exactly how batman uses it.
The fact that people like batman is a problem.
If you think that everyone should do what works without any concern about what is right, that’s your issue.
