forum Writing a superhero story, how scientifically accurate should I make it?

Started November 28, 2018 by Deleted user

tune

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I'm writing a superhero story in which the protagonist gets her powers through sciencey stuff. Her powers are based on kinetic energy, and I was wondering how scientifically accurate I should make it, and where I could blur the lines.

"Either blow them away with your brilliance or baffle them with your bullshit."

Always go with bullshit
My motto "Bullshiting my way through life"

obviously you're going to have to bend the rules a bit, since people don't actually have superpowers. my suggestion is to gloss over how the character gets their powers, and instead focus on what they can do with them. Im currently working my way through a japanese light novel series/anime called 'A certain scientific railgun' that embodies this concept perfectly. In this world, people with 'esper powers' are fairly common, and they all have wildly varying powers, from teleportation, to mind control, to vector manipulation, and of course the main characters electrical powers. They never explain how people have these powers, because no matter how viable an explanation it is, it will never feel realistic because that is just not how the laws of physics work, and we all know it. science just doesnt give us superpowers. instead, the science is implemented in the functionality of the powers. the main character can generate an electrical current, and as anyone who knows anything about electricity will tell you, if you can create an electrical current, you can generate a magnetic field. this added application of her power lets her stick to walls, make a buzz saw out of iron sand, and… what was the other thing again? oh yeah, TURNS HER INTO A LIVING RAILGUN, which is basically a big f*ck of gun that uses lorenz forces to launch a projectile at stupidly high speeds. anyways, long story short, if you want to include science, don't use it to explain the supernatural, because the two just do not work together and your readers will know it. instead use science to explain what can be done with the powers, because every nerd that reads it will fall in love with you instantaneously.

If your actual plot includes the science (trying to take away their powers, build more super-humans, government trying to expose all those with super abilities) it doesn't hurt to have an explanation. How MUCH explanation i think is directly proportionate to how much your plot revolves around the science. If he's just a superhero against a villain… not a lot of science is needed to propel that plot. But you can still keep it simple in plots such as government trying to expose them, than you can say something as simple as their blood looks normal but reflect ultra violet light because of what they were exposed to that gave them their powers. So how much does your plot revolve around the science of the superhero's abilities?