Part of the fun of writing SFF is creating characters that have abilities beyond the norm. In TOPAZ, my heroine has wings and my hero can create wormholes from the shadows. In SENTINEL, my heroine is a powerful sorceress in charge of protecting her city and my hero is the knight who has to protect her. Each one of my characters has some kind of extraordinary power. It's fun, it creates new storylines, and provides different opportunities for solutions to problems.

And it can also cause much hair-pulling.

If you're not careful, you can make your characters TOO powerful. That doesn't sound like such a bad thing, does it? Except where's the conflict if your hero or heroine has gotten so supremely omnipresent that all they need to do to get out of a jam is to snap their fingers?

There have been plenty of examples of over-powered heroes. Some include:

• Willow in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy's best friend and witch extraordinaire became so powerful by season 6, bringing Buffy back from the dead, that an obstacle was written in to prevent her from using her magic: an addiction to magic that increased its hold on her with every spell. Personally, I thought this was the easy way out for the writers. Instead of Willow battling a drug-like addiction, I would have liked to see her dealing with an absolute power corrupts absolutely–type situation. It certainly would have foreshadowed the final few episodes of that season, making it a little more believable.

• Peter in Heroes. Peter started out in Season 1 with the ability to absorb any Hero's power, just by being in the same general area. How cool is that? After a lame attempt at limiting his abilities that season (he ends up in a coma because his body can't handle the stress of all the abilities), it was like the writers said "screw it" and let him absorb powers left, right, and centre. But…when you can fly and turn invisible and have super strength and can shoot lightning and, and, and…you're pretty much invincible. So in season 3 they took away his abilities for most of the season, and when he got them back, he could only absorb one power at a time. Which sucks! Sigh. Funny how they haven't limited Sylar, though…

• Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen. Dr. Manhattan is the ultimate over-powered hero. One line near the end of the movie pretty much sums up his god-like abilities: This world's smartest man means no more to me than does its smartest termite. His powers are limitless. He's an eerie, odd character and not terribly likeable because he is so detached from humanity. Rather than limit his abilities in the graphic novel/movie, he leaves Earth…which, I suppose, has the same effect.

In both TOPAZ and SENTINEL, part of my world-building was determining limits for my characters' abilities. For example, Faith can fly, but she needs a running start to get lift. Jason can create wormholes, but only to places he knows and not if he's injured. Every time Callie, in SENTINEL, uses magic, it breaks down her mental shields and she has to rebuild them…which gets harder as time passes. Derrick, her Knight, can only access his abilities if he's bound to a sorceress.

Limits are essential to creating a believable world. You have to have rules, and you have to stick with them, even if it would be easier to solve a problem if your heroine could just…summon a storm. Or extinguish all the lights in the city. Or something else equally as impressive. But if she's powerful enough to do that, then what's to prevent her from easily defeating the bad guy? If there's no challenge, there's no conflict, and if there's no conflict, there's no story.

Happy writing!

As anyone who's read my novel-in-progress on the WD Forums knows, I'm enamoured with superheroes. I've always found them fascinating. I've collected a few comic book series in my time—two that come to mind are Power Pack (yes, I was a child of the 80s) and Darkhawk.

Last night I watched Watchmen. I haven't read the graphic novel, but my husband assures me the movie is pretty much based frame-for-frame on it. It was dark, very gory, and long, but man...it was a good story. I loved how they blended together the histories of all of these very flawed heroes. For most of the "heroes", there was little to no difference between them and the bad guys.

The character I found the most intriguing, though, was Dr. Manhattan. He is what Superman would really be like. As he says, "The world's smartest man is no more a threat to me than the world's smartest termite." He is a being of such infinite power that he no longer understands humanity. He's an alien, without being an alien. He's just...weird. Scary weird.

And, without giving too much away, I'll be thinking of him as I continue to write Faith's story in TOPAZ.


TOPAZ/SENTINEL status: Same as yesterday. I took a break last night and raided Naxx-10 with my guild in World of Warcraft. Sigh...no drops for me, though.

There is more than one "point of view" and "perspective" an author can choose from when writing a novel. The most common tends to be third-person limited, where the reader knows only what one character is thinking, but is still a step removed by the use of the character's name, pronouns, etc., like: "Bobbi's mouth watered as she thought of the chocolate ice cream in her freezer." At any given time, the reader sees only into one character's head—but over the course of the novel, the POV character might change to provide different perspectives.

Another popular choice is a first-person narrative. This perspective slaps the reader smack-dab into the main character's brain, using "I" and "me", as in: "My mouth watered as I thought of the chocolate ice cream in my freezer." First-person, when done well, can draw the reader into the story and add tension, since the reader doesn't know what any of the other characters are thinking. Yes, I know some writers switch between first-person POVs throughout their novels, but I don't really like that. It seems like cheating, somehow.

Anyway, first-person is the POV I'm writing TOPAZ in, and third-person limited is what SENTINEL is written in. I debated switching TOPAZ to third-person limited because it seems to me in the genre romance category that everyone and their dog is writing in first-person. But in the case of TOPAZ it works—and I'd go so far as to say it's necessary. It keeps the reader in the dark, just like Faith. Using multiple, third-person limited POVs would give away some of the secrets of the other characters before they should be revealed.

But damn...it can be tough to write in.

It's extremely limiting. As the author, you can reveal only what your MC sees, feels, thinks. The other characters' true motives are concealed from the MC, and she can only guess what they're planning or thinking. Unless they're wordy and honest, which, let's be frank, doesn't make for a very good book.

It also puts a lot of pressure on your MC to be likable and engaging, since the reader is going to be in her head for the whole book. And...they're always "on", as in, there isn't a scene in the book without her. That's a lot to live up to.

Okay...now that I've intensified the demands on myself, back to work.


TOPAZ status: Posted the second half of Chapter 15 on the WD Forum last night and received some feedback that Faith's emotional reaction in the scene needs to be stronger. So I'll be addressing that today.

SENTINEL status: Still on the back burner, but I'm continuing to think of changes.

I was working on TOPAZ last night and my fingers surprised me. They typed out a line that made me stop and say, "Huh." It was one of those moments where the creative process was flowing so naturally, it took me in a direction I didn't expect, but one that makes perfect sense. It's definitely not what I'd originally intended for Faith, my MC, but I like it! For those of you following my first draft on the WD forums, I won't spoil it here (you're welcome and/or sorry!).

I believe Cursings and Musings has a post about characters running away with their writers, and it's so true — although in this case it wasn't Faith who ran away from me, just my creative little brain. In the first draft of SENTINEL, though, Callie totally took me off guard by confessing to a murder! I'd intended to have her profess her innocence but she quietly admitted that yes, she'd killed her ex-boyfriend. (As it turns out, she didn't...but it's a moot point, anyway, because that part got edited out. ;) ) It's funny to think about characters as being in control of their stories, but in a lot of ways, they have more control than the writer. Weird, but true.

Oh, and in more writing news, I also wrote Jason and Faith's first love scene last night. Yowza! ;)


TOPAZ status: Working on Chapter 18. Things are flowing again, which is great.

SENTINEL status: Ideas are germinating.

I spent some time yesterday starting to read SENTINEL again. Thankfully, I can do so and not cringe, so that's a good sign. I do like the direction I started taking in in the third draft, even if it does mean extensive revisions. It will be a better story for it.

I also finished Chapter 15 of TOPAZ last night, but I'm not thrilled with it. Blargh.

I decided to spend a good chunk of the evening reading a new book I picked up: Any Given Doomsday by Lori Handeland. Good paranormal romance. She created an interesting world, where an infinite number of demons, descended from the fallen angels, roam the planet. Of course it's her main character's job to hunt them down. I ended up staying up to 1:30 a.m. to finish the damn thing. Ouch.

Anyway, after I turned off the light, I lay in bed thinking for awhile about SENTINEL. Although similar to Lori Handeland's book in that my MC is in charge of eradicating demons in her city, I realized I hadn't really fleshed out those demons beyond them just being bad. I also realized that the good-guy-killing-demons motif is getting almost as common as vampires.

Basically, I realized that although I (think I'm) a good writer and there are some unique elements to my book, it doesn't stand out enough. So I've spent some time brainstorming this morning, and I think I've come up with a solution. Now I just have to weave it into my existing story.


TOPAZ status: Chapter 15 done. Chapter 16 approaching, but I think I'll give it a few days.

SENTINEL status: Brainstorming and revisions. Yay.

Starting a new blog is kind of like a point-of-view character waking up from a coma. All the regular questions come to mind: Who am I? How did I get here? And, mostly importantly, what the hell happened?

The answers for the first two questions are fairly easy to come up with: I'm Jenn Lidster, an aspiring author of out-of-this-world romances. I love the emotions inherent in romances and the fact that romance novels always have a happy ending. But I grew up reading science fiction and fantasy, so sub-genres like paranormal romance, sci-fi romance, urban fantasy romance and the like are perfect for me.

So...what the hell happened? Well, nothing yet. Other than having an uncontrollable urge to write since I was about 12. I've completed one novel, which is currently in the what-was-I-thinking-this-SUCKS stage, and I'm working on a second. Novel 1 is tentatively titled BADGE OF THE SENTINEL, a paranormal romance, and my work in progress is TOPAZ, a superhero romance (not sure if that's an actual sub-genre...but now it is). I hope to have TOPAZ out on agent queries by the end of the summer, at which point I'll revisit SENTINEL and all its issues.

I also hope to have a website up and running by the fall. Stay tuned!