Writing the Paranormal Novel: Techniques and Exercises for Weaving Supernatural Elements Into Your Story. (35 page)

The shorter words and sentences move the fight along much better.

Within the same novel, fight scenes need a different pacing from “regular” scenes. For example, Ginn Hale uses a fairly florid style in
Wicked Gentlemen
, as this typical passage demonstrates:

The passage is heavy with metaphor and is fairly typical of Hale's writing style throughout the book — except when it comes to fights. Then her style shifts somewhat:

Only one bit of figurative language here — a simile — and the wording is punchier than her descriptive sections. The paragraphs are shorter as well. All of this adds to the faster feel of combat. Hale still manages to preserve her overall style, but the action and combat sections move faster than the other scenes, as they should.

Supernatural fights can introduce a dozen impossible things before combat, and they completely change the picture. Pitting a guy with a gun against a witch with a wand gets tricky — how do you know which one would go off first? Would the spell fly faster, or the bullet? Could the guy dodge the spell after he fired the gun?

Really, once you introduce a purely supernatural element into a fight, the result comes down to exactly what you decide the story needs. If the story requires spells to outspeed bullets, then so it must be. If the story requires the guy to dodge the spell, then so he must. However, as we saw in chapter seven, you must always remain consistent with it. Once you decree magic to be faster than bullets, you can't renege two chapters later.

Every scene in a novel must have a reason to exist. Each scene must move the story forward, develop character in a specific direction, or give the reader specific information — and it's best if you combine these functions. Unnecessary scenes slow your pacing and hurt even a leisurely novel.

There's also a practical reason for writing shorter. A longer novel takes up more pages to print. More pages means more paper, and more paper drives up the cost of the book. (We're talking about print novels here, as opposed to electronically published books.) Publishers like to keep the cost to the reader as low as possible, especially with new authors. The idea is that readers view new authors with suspicion — they have no way of knowing whether they'll like this unknown entity's fiction or not. If the book's price is high, readers are unlikely to overcome their suspicion and buy the book. If the book's price is low, readers are more willing to take the risk. Shorter, less expensive books are therefore more likely to get a green light for a new author, so you'll want brevity over length.

When my editor returned that novel manuscript to me with 40,000 words to cut, I went though every single scene and asked myself, does this scene
really
need to appear? Can it be cut? If not, can it be shortened? Combined with another scene? Ask yourself the same questions.

One thing to remember is that you don't need to explain everything. You can imply certain things and let the reader fill in the rest. Some time ago I was critiquing Cindy Spencer Pape's manuscript for
The Gaslight Chronicles
, which was a paranormal work in progress at the time, but has since been published. During this read-through, I came across a set of scenes that I thought could be condensed. In the first scene, Merrick, the male protagonist, is dealing unsuccessfully with a group of magically talented street urchins whom he'd more or less adopted. In the second scene, Merrick's aunt, who knows the situation, spends considerable time convincing a governess named Caroline to come and interview at the house. In the third scene, Caroline leans back in the carriage, wondering what this strange man and his street urchin children will be like.

I mentioned that the second scene could be cut. It didn't really do anything except show the reader how Caroline is persuaded to interview with Merrick. All Pape needed to do was show the children running wild through the house and end with something crashing to the floor. Merrick turns to his aunt and whimpers, “I think I need a governess.” The aunt replies, “I know just the one.” And then we jump to Caroline in her carriage. We don't
need
to see the persuasion scene — Caroline's presence in the carriage implies it for us — and removing it trims unnecessary wordage from the novel. Pape agreed and cut the scene.

This isn't to say that every scene
needs
to be cut or shortened. My editor put on the chopping block several scenes from my book that I insisted should stay, and I did keep them even as I cut several others. Just as in life, moderation is the key in fiction. You can't cut everything, but what you can cut, you probably should.

A
character from Louisiana doesn't speak the same way as a character from London, and a character from three dimensions over won't sound like a native to this world. And imagine the slang that might spring up if elves publicly showed up and made themselves at home in Detroit. Introducing supernatural elements to a book naturally changes the way the characters speak and will likely have a significant impact on the narration. This chapter examines those issues in detail.

Human conversation grabs the mental ear — it's a chance to eavesdrop on something fascinating — and it's the reason dialogue remains the main thing readers want in a book. In fact, dialogue is one of the stronger opening hooks you can use.

Dialogue performs a number of functions. It moves action forward by telling the reader what's going on. It sneaks in exposition. And most importantly, it tells the reader what your character is like.

Everyone has his own speech patterns. This means no two people talk alike, not even ones from the same part of the country. Part of it is upbringing, but part of it is also outlook. People's ideas and attitudes shape the way they speak. Someone who expects the worst will choose different words than someone who expects the best.

All your characters should be differentiated by dialogue, whether they're ordinary people or supernatural ones. If you can reassign the dialogue in a given scene to another character without changing any of the words, it means you haven't done your job well.

Dialogue differences can be very overt. Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black use wildly different forms of dialogue among their fairy characters in The Spiderwick Chronicles books. Thimbletack the brownie speaks in rhyming couplets. In
The Seeing Stone
, Jared meets a caged hobgoblin named Hogsqueal, and the difference between the ways the two characters speak shows clearly:

The differences between Jared's and Hogsqueal's dialogue stand out sharply. Hogsqueal's word choices have a New Jersey flavor to them with some invented fairy slang (
chicken-beaked and nib-head
) mixed in. DiTerlizzi and Black are going for humor here, since no one would expect a fairy to talk like a New York cab driver, and the resulting dialogue very quickly paints a picture of a crude but crafty creature. We also learn that Hogsqueal likes to eat cats. Jared is meant to be a nine-year-old boy who could be from anywhere in the country (since the books don't get specific in their setting), so his dialogue is free of regional dialect.

Christopher Moore's characters in
A Dirty Job
speak differently from one another as well, though the difference is subtler. Here, Charlie is talking to Mr. Fresh about what it means to be Death — or a death.

Here, Moore doesn't even need to tell us who's talking. Partly it's that he gives us a cue up front when he writes that Mr. Fresh shrugged and then slips in a cue when Fresh addresses Charlie as “Mr. Asher,” but mostly it's the dialogue itself. Fresh has a more formal, polished mode of speaking. Later we learn he can drop it and speak much more informally — the polished dialogue is part of an image he tries to project. His attitude affects his dialogue. Meanwhile, Charlie's dialogue is peppered with fits and starts. He also uses
yeah
whereas Fresh uses
yes
. The differences are subtle but clear. You certainly couldn't put Charlie's words into another character's mouth without serious changes.