Writing the Paranormal Novel: Techniques and Exercises for Weaving Supernatural Elements Into Your Story. Read online

  More powerful Obvious Objects can be used as plot devices for an entire novel. The children in Edward Eager's Seven-Day Magic discover a supernatural library book that transports them to book-related adventures, for example. On a more unusual note, Terry Pratchett uses a supernatural mail-sorting machine as the main object in his extremely funny book Going Postal. Once the machine gets going, it sorts letters that haven't even been written yet …

  The Mysterious Object

  You can't tell what a Mysterious Object's power is by looking at it. The magic is unrelated to the form. Magic rings fall into this category. Can you tell the difference between a wishing ring and an invisibility ring? Neither can I. And why are they rings, anyway? Why not an invisibility sweat sock or a wishing wristwatch? (I know, I know — because no one can say it.)

  Other more traditional Mysterious Objects include potions, scrying crystals, magical jewelry, and Aladdin's magic lamp. Aladdin is rather startled when the djinn emerges in the original fairy tale. At the time the story was written, djinn were free-willed spirits, not wish-granting slaves, and little oil lamps were used for nothing but holding back darkness. The modern equivalent might be finding a fairy in a flashlight.

  Creating a Supernatural Object

  If you want the entire book to revolve around a particular object, you'll probably need a powerful object, one with a general or versatile power. An object that can only wash windows will have limited story potential. The children of Edward Eager's wonderful Half Magic, for example, discover a coin that grants half-wishes. (When one of them idly wishes the four of them could play on a desert island, the coin drops the children into the Sahara — desert yes, island no.) This versatile power has the children dealing with Merlin in the time of King Arthur, a house fire, a sister who is only half there, and a cat who can talk, but only half the time — quite the variety.

  However, your supernatural object must have limits. A limitless supernatural object removes all conflict from your book. Your story will end very quickly if your protagonist simply has to say, “I wish all my problems were solved.” (And you'll need to explain why your supposedly intelligent characters don't wish exactly that.) This means you need to work out exactly what your supernatural object can and cannot do in advance. Limits provide conflict, and conflict leads to plot. You may have noticed, for example, that many fairy tales allow only three wishes. The character uses the first wish to see if the magic really works. He uses the second wish to ask for something big that turns disastrous in some way, forcing him to use the third wish to set things right again. No more wishes — just in time for the story to end. “The Monkey's Paw” by W.W. Jacobs uses this limitation pattern.

  Your object can have a limited number of uses, as noted above. Or it might only work under certain conditions — during the day, when the moon is full, after it's dipped in fresh blood. It might need time to “recharge” after each use, and the more power it uses, the more time it takes to charge up. It might work only for one gender or members of only one family or even only one person. It might drain energy from the user, leaving her exhausted. Or perhaps using the object changes the owner in some undesirable way, like the One Ring from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

  Objects can also be lost, stolen, or destroyed. Take away your hero's magic widget just before the final battle and see what happens. Or maybe the original owner comes back for it. Or it breaks, and the only person who can repair it is in a coma. Another character might unwittingly sell it on eBay. Or even worse — hand the thing over to the villain. The villain's power rises just as the hero's power drops. This is wonderful for conflict.

  One thing you must not do is give an object a convenient new power that solves the hero's current problem. A hero who falls over a cliff can't unexpectedly discover that his grandfather's time-stopping pocket watch also lets him fly. This cheats your reader and shows poor writing. However, it's perfectly legal for your hero to find a creative new use for the device's existing power. Perhaps our hero realizes he can slow time as well as stop it, allowing him to drift slowly to the ground. The idea should be plausible within the rules and limitations you set up before you even begin writing.

  Finally, an object doesn't just pop into existence. It needs a history. Who made the object, and why? What happened to the original owner? Who else, if anyone, has owned the object before now? Does anyone else know about the object? Is anyone hunting for it? Fleshing these ideas out will give you great ideas for plot development.

  Just remember that in the end, the protagonist has to solve the book's problem, preferably without the object. The entire point of reading this type of book is to see how a particular character reacts to having a supernatural object thrust into her life. Your focus should be on the character, not the object. For a truly satisfying ending, the character has to win on her own.

  EXERCISE

  Look carefully at your surroundings. Choose an ordinary object to develop into a supernatural object. It may be any object you like.

  Describe the object in detail, as if you were seeing it and/or touching it for the first time.

  What's the object's history? How old is the object? Where did it come from? Who created it? Who owned it before now?

  What supernatural power(s) does the object have?

  How are these powers activated or accessed?

  What limitations does the object have?

  SUPERNATURAL PEOPLE

  You can also introduce a supernatural person. Does “person” have to mean “human”? Certainly not. The term person has a pretty broad definition in a paranormal book, but in this section I'm going to stick with mostly human-shaped people. (We'll talk about creatures later.)

  As with supernatural objects, you can't just drop a supernatural character into a book without thinking carefully first. Even normal people carry around a certain amount of baggage — family history, likes, hates, hobbies, inconvenient food allergies, and so on. But supernatural people carry around an entire ecology. They eat, drink, sleep, and otherwise exist differently than ordinary folk. And just as with supernatural objects, you need to work out your supernatural person's abilities, complete with boundaries and limitations. Once that's done, you need to stay within those boundaries in order to play fair with the reader. Your werewolf, for example, can't spontaneously develop the ability to shoot death rays from his eyes because that ability traditionally has nothing to do with wolves or shape-shifting or being a were creature. Yes, this is the paranormal, and nothing will stop you from creating such a werewolf, but this will probably mess with your readers' heads, and not in a good way — they may very well toss your book aside. Why? Because you aren't playing fair. (More on this in chapter seven.)

  Supernatural people get to have unique motivations for their actions. This can make them both more fun and more challenging, since you have to think outside the normal human box. Immortals don't worry about death (though they may worry about being killed) and have a rather different idea of what “a long time” means. Paranormals who feed on humans or otherwise depend on humans to exist may look at people as cattle, as possessions to be protected, or as prey that might turn dangerous. Paranormals who haven't interacted with humans before the book opens may be mystified by human behavior, treat humans with condescension, or even be frightened of them. Paranormals who used to be human (such as newly minted werewolves or vampires) are often torn between embracing their new nature and hanging on to their more familiar humanity. Truly powerful paranormals may not realize that humans are sentient — or even notice humans at all.

  A supernatural person who falls in love with an ordinary human is such a powerful image that it spawned an entire genre: the paranormal romance. Stephenie Meyer may have gone mega-platinum with her YA Twilight novels, but Dracula obsessed over Mina Harker a hundred years before Edward and Bella appeared on the scene, and Cupid fell for Psyche nearly two thousand years before that. How to write a paranormal romance would be an entire book in itself, but in short, the
conflict oft en arises between the clash of worlds. One lover is a being of some power, often immortal, who moves in a world that is hostile or even deadly to normal people, and the other lover is an ordinary human who will one day age and die. The story revolves around how these two will reconcile their difficulties so they can be together.

  When it comes to building your book, you have several types of supernatural people to choose from. They include (but are not limited to):

  Vampire

  The perennial favorite. The modern versions usually owe quite a lot to Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. Stoker himself seems to have combined fairy lore (the blood-sucking leanan sídhe), history (Vlad the Impaler), and ancient vampire lore to create his famous villain. Vampires traditionally shun sunlight, holy objects, and garlic, and need to drink human blood to live. They are immortal unless killed, usually by a stake through the heart, decapitation, or dismemberment. (Fantasy author Terry Pratchett has noted that all of these work nicely on non-vampires as well.) They usually have supernatural powers that range from super strength to invisibility to mental telepathy to shape-shifting.

  Vampires started off as bad guys, but in recent decades, more and more authors have swung around to using them as protagonists. As creatures of the night — or cloudy days, in the case of Twilight's Edward Cullen — vampires are often portrayed as mysterious, sexy, and powerful with a strangely vulnerable side, since they can still die. Or fall in love.

  When you write about vampires, you need to work out in advance exactly what they can and cannot do. The checklist below may help:

  THE VAMPIRE CHECKLIST

  POWERS

  Extra strength

  Extra speed

  Shape-shifting

  Bat

  Wolf

  Mist

  Other:

  Enhanced senses

  Mesmerism

  Resistance to physical damage

  Flight

  Wall climbing

  Teleportation

  Leaping

  Claws

  Can create new vampires

  Self-healing

  Telepathy

  Animal control

  Weather control

  Immortal

  Inhumanly handsome/beautiful

  Other:

  WEAKNESSES

  Repelled by holy objects

  Repelled by garlic (or other strong scent)

  Must feed on blood

  How often:

  Only from a living human

  Can feed on animal blood

  Can feed on stored blood

  Effect when can't get blood:

  Can be hurt or killed by

  Dismemberment

  Decapitation

  Stake through the heart

  Silver

  Sunlight

  Fire

  Other:

  Can't cross running water

  Can't see reflection in a mirror

  Image can't be captured (photo, video, etc.)

  Comatose during the day

  Can't enter a home without being invited

  Can't enter hallowed ground

  Must rest on earth from homeland

  Inhumanly ugly

  Other:

  You also need to know whether these rules apply to all vampires in your world or just some of them. Perhaps older vampires have fewer weaknesses and more strengths, for example, or perhaps a vampire can overcome weaknesses temporarily, especially if he's just had a big meal.

  Vampires are a challenge to write about. Why? Readers may love reading about them, but the bookstores are already saturated with vampire novels. The difficulty lies in coming up with something new to say. Did you see that “Other” space in the Vampire Checklist? Don't leave it blank. Try going back to the original folklore for ideas. Plenty of nocturnal paranormal creatures out there have a hankering for human blood.

  Another way to be creative is to make an unlikely character into a vampire. Instead of the usual Handsome Man or Sexy Woman or Goth Kid getting the fang, go for a different type. What about a vampire accountant? Or a vampire ranch worker? Or a vampire circus clown? Lucienne Diver's vampires made a fashion-obsessed high school girl and her chess geek boyfriend into bloodsucking undead in Vamped with great success. Her vampires' powers and weaknesses don't depart too far from the established folklore, but her characters are fresh and new, and that makes all the difference.

  Angels and Demons

  They come to Earth to steal our hearts or terrify our souls. Sometimes it's both at the same time. As agents of divine or infernal powers, they were taboo as protagonists for a long time, but lately they've been showing up as main characters in more and more novels.

  A demon appears in the mortal realm, oft en with some sort of terrible task, but then it discovers it wants to stay here, either because it's fallen in love or because things are much more interesting here on Earth than in Hell. Some demons are trying to escape Hell, or earn their freedom from it. Many are shape-shifters, able to take on animal shapes or any human form.

  Angels often finds themselves in the same situation, but mirror-reversed — sent down to Earth to accomplish some divine duty, only to realize that life down here is more diverting than in Heaven. Some angels have been cast out and need to earn their way back home.

  The fun of using an angel or demon comes from mixing shades of gray. Angels and demons are supposed to be creatures of pure good or pure evil. Putting them on Earth, where almost nothing is absolute, taints their purity and forces them to deal with it, an endlessly fascinating device for writers and readers alike.

  Angels and demons of folklore have an enormous variety of powers and limitations. There's simply no standard angel or demon. This means you can give them any ability you like, but it also means it's vitally important to set the limitations and stick with them.

  Zombies

  Zombies are enjoying a new life, so to speak. They started off as mindless monsters under the control of an evil magician, then evolved into braineating hordes, and have recently become … good guys?

  The main challenge of writing zombie good guys is the ick factor. Zombies are walking, rotting corpses that eat human flesh, and it's hard to empathize with something like that. Stacey Jay gets around this by playing it for laughs in You Are So Undead to Me, in which a high school girl discovers she's a “Settler,” someone who can end the unresolved problems that bring the dead shambling from their graves.

  The other factor zombie authors have to think about is how zombies are made — and destroyed. In original folklore, they were raised by a voudon (voodoo, vodoun) sorcerer in a complicated ritual. Their main weakness (other than a bad smell and an inability to heal wounds) was salt. Flinging a handful on a zombie would de-animate it, melt it, or otherwise destroy it. Since then, other ways to create zombies have cropped up — disease, radiation, poisons, meteor strikes, even nanotechnology — and each version has its own weaknesses. Often a chainsaw is involved. Although the movie version has been around for quite some time, this type of supernatural character is a relative newcomer to paranormal novels with lots of potential to explore.

  Shape-shifters

  There's something irresistible about being able to change shapes. Shapeshifters get to release the inner beast and do cool things in animal shape even as they roil in angst over what terrible deeds they may have wrought. They are forced to cross the thin line between human and animal, and oft en face the unsettling discovery that releasing the beast brings rather more enjoyment than it should.

  Werecreatures are the cursed version of shape-shifters. They must change shape under certain conditions. When in the cursed shape, the beast takes control, and the human side has little or no memory of what happens. Early on, many were creatures have no idea what's happening to them, or even that they carry the curse. Some even join the hunt for the terrible beast that's begun rampaging through the town.

  The most famous of these beasts is the werewolf, a human who becomes a ravenou
s wolf on nights of the full moon. Werewolf folklore varies. Some people become werewolves on purpose by living an evil life or through a complicated magical ritual. Others are bitten by a werewolf and accidentally become one. And some are born into werewolf families, such as the Heerkens family in Blood Trail by Tanya Huff. Although werewolves have the advantage of familiarity — there's less to explain and the reader is more willing to come along for the ride — they have the disadvantage of being overly familiar ground, meaning you'll have to work a little harder to make your werewolf interesting.

  But there's no reason to stay solely with wolves. In her Anita Blake books, Laurell K. Hamilton uses a number of different werecreatures, including lions, tigers, leopards, rats, foxes, hyenas, jaguars, snakes, and even swans. This is the paranormal — pick an animal and run with it.

  Other shape-shifters aren't actually cursed like werecreatures. They can simply take one or more animal shapes at will. Selkies from Irish and Scottish folklore are seals that change into humans, for example. They sometimes fall in love with ordinary mortals, but eventually return to the sea, leaving a sorrowful husband or wife behind. The Manitou from Peter Straub's Ghost Story is an evil shape-shifter that can take many forms, as can Mulgarath, the ogre villain from The Spiderwick Chronicles books by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi.

  Shape-shifters often have abilities beyond changing shape. Their human forms might have the sharp senses of an animal, for example, and their animals forms are oft en bigger, faster, and stronger than a normal animal of the same kind. Other shape-shifters can command animals from their own species. Laurell K. Hamilton's werewolves can force normal wolves to do their bidding, for example. Notice, however, that these powers usually have something to do with the type of animal involved. It wouldn't make sense to have a wereswan that can turn coal into diamonds, though you could probably get away with one that could learn to fly in human form, since swans have flying ability.