So much horsepower, and all you got is a learner’s permit.
Chaz, Sunglasses After Dark, p 141 of Midnight Blue
In the scene I just quoted, Cattherine Wheele, the super powered villain, tries to pull information from Chaz, a hustler with a small psychic ability. He bests her and makes the previous taunt.
I wish more authors of fantasy and sci fi remembered that line.
The irony of this post is I am talking about something that peeves me that I see in stuff I like. Stories I don’t enjoy I won’t spend time or energy analyzing, and instead I move on. I am not naming the book I saw this in because I like it. But there is a trilogy where the main character acquires a dozen supernatural powers at the end of the first book, spends the second stumbling over what she can actually do, and in the third book is mistress bad ass.
First of all, she didn’t need all those powers. Three of them were essential to the plot and I actually felt were justified, but the rest were overkill. Her journey from “wait, what did I just do?” to unstoppable superpower went way too quickly. Part of the reason I believe three of her abilities is that there are sequences of her training and learning two of them, and the explanation for acquiring those two would explain the third as well. But one ability in particular, a pretty complex one, she suddenly knows what how to use with only a brief explanation and minimal training.
Both as a writer and a fan I went: no. I came up with a term to describe it, because I have seen other examples of it: Power Overdrive. A character has more powers than makes sense, and/or masters them immediately. Good fiction will have a time gap and an explanation of training/ experimenting/ practicing that explains how the character became so skilled. Worse ones you simply are left to believe they figured this out overnight.
When I think of the effort it takes to master mundane skills, I doubt supernatural ones would be any easier. I don’t identify as a witch, but I know enough about magick to know it is not easy. Even if someone has a natural aptitude for something, they still need to study and practice. There are skilled self taught artists, but they spent just as much time, maybe more, working on their craft. There is a difference between being intuitive vs not practicing. Intuitive means someone didn’t go by the traditional A to B to C path, not that someone didn’t spend time and energy working on something. Ironically enough, developing good intuition can be harder than taking a class and memorizing the material. Sometimes, what someone before you figured out actually makes the task easier than stumbling around on your own.
In a TV show a very powerful telepath wiped someone’s long term memory to read their mind—but how did the telepath know the difference between long term and short term memory in someone’s head? I highly doubt they are labelled. There could have been some throwaway line about him practicing/studying because there was a time gap between seasons during which it is assumed he perfected his abilities. That isn’t a question of powers, but of having the skill to use them for a specific and not necessarily intuitive task.
Much as the fangirl in me loves to watch super powered fights (I am still a comic geek at heart) what the character can do needs to make sense. In my own writing, it is said that a powerful telepath without training is like a surgeon with the finest scalpel who has never studied anatomy. You can have the best tool in the world, but you still need to know where to cut and how. In general, when I have super powered but inexperienced go up against the skilled and trained it doesn’t end well for them.
A part of the fantasy of all the superpowers is for them to come easily. But all powerful beings don’t make good fiction without human flaws, unless the story is about their not so powerful go betweens. Powers themselves can be Deaux ex Machina without rules, and that isn’t a good story. Characters still need to have human weaknesses and desires to be interesting, even if they are aliens or demigods. Rogue in X-men has the power to defeat almost anyone if she touched them, but it has a price. Her inability to control her power at will leaves her emotionally vulnerable, and even absorbing someone else’s powers has consequences for her.
Which is what good fiction needs: consequences. Rules that don’t get forgotten about when it is convenient. Characters you root for and identify with, no matter what planet they are from or what their race is.