Matthew Smith Super Hero Story

When I was first trying to think of a story that fit within the guidelines and made sense from a storytelling point of view I had no idea where to begin. After pondering for some time I ventured to Netflix to look at their superhero movies to gather inspiration. Upon doing this search I stumbled across an old movie that I once loved called Sky High. This movie is about a boy who is the son of the 2 most important super heroes in the world but he is faced with the problem of not having super powers even though everyone expects him to gain his powers and join his parents in the perfect crime fighting story. For me this posed a great character arc that gave many opportunities for development. However, I did not want to directly rip the story from the movie for obvious reasons. So I drew inspiration from a few main key elements; His parents are both super heroes, he goes to a super power high school, and he’s side by side with his 2 best friends. Other than that I saw no reason to continue drawing from that premise. My version of this plot idea goes into him having a very real world issue that happens to people all around the globe. Dealing with bullies and having to figure out over time that what’s important isn’t material but emotional. Having the understanding that yourself worth weighs much more than approval from others. When brainstorming for what I would base this tale off of in terms of a characters wants and needs I thought back to high school about the things most everybody held to high standards in terms of social lives. I landed upon the act of doing things in order to please other people. Back in high school this seemed like the only thing most people cared about, especially with the growth in popularity for social media. So going off of that I developed my character into having a want of his super powers (since he doesn’t actually get them right away) and a need of self acceptance. Throughout my story I have many branches that lead to the same “choke” points. The reader may take a number of paths to get to the same temporary destination although not all paths will unlock the same variables along the way. For example, in the start of my story the reader will have to make a choice that doesn’t seem to carry any weight to it but it will ultimately decide the tone for the character’s story. I wanted to make sure to keep the decisions light and seemingly not impactful until the moments where they are. I wanted to juxtapose small decisions that are subconscious (even though sometimes they most certainly are not) against decisions that the reader is very aware will have different consequences. Coming up with the beats for this story was somewhat of a challenge. Like I said before I did not want to plagiarize the movie I drew initial inspiration from so I had to take what I though could be universal from the movie and then write my own character development that was totally different from the film. In doing this I found that the main parts of the story would be when our the main character is talking to the people whom he wants to keep the secret of him not having his powers from (Parents and teachers). Everyone expects great things from our character so he has this false pretense that he MUST live up to these notions. The way I tried to align the characters interests with that of the readers was through expectations; sympathy. Throughout the story there is a repetition of people meeting the main character and stopping in awe when they find out who he is, he’s a legend. So with that every time someone gives the character praise it is subconsciously indicating to the reader that this person is important and everyone around him knows it, but at the same time the reader is aware of the main overarching problem the character is facing, thus generating sympathy.