Writing the Paranormal Novel: Techniques and Exercises for Weaving Supernatural Elements Into Your Story. (39 page)
Authors: Steven Harper
Tags: #ebook, #epub
On the other hand, when I wrote the first word of my novelette “The Soul Jar,” a sequel to “Thin Man,” I already had the themes firmly in mind — every person and event has multiple parallels, and every choice destroys a thousand pasts even as it creates a thousand futures. When I started the story, I had only the idea of a set of identical twins who perform in a clown act by mimicking each other on either side of an empty mirror frame. I also knew that one of the clowns was going to die, unbalancing the mirror gag and destroying everything the surviving brother knew. But as I wrote the story with the themes in mind, it changed. I saw that I was also exploring the idea of the foil, a character's opposite, and I wove that into the story as well. I saw that I needed to kill another character, one who had survived in my original concept, which changed other parts of the story. A caged mechanical feline that I'd thrown in for background color became a central focus of two key scenes — and turned into a parallel for Schrödinger's cat. The themes became more and more intricate as I wrote, and made the story far more powerful than I'd even planned it.
Overall, starting with a theme in mind is better for the simple reason that it's easier to incorporate one into the book as you go rather than go back and rework material to reflect a theme you discover later. (I say this as someone who's done it both ways.) But however you work it is up to you, as long as the theme is ultimately under your control.
Besides, as I've already pointed out, some themes will escape your notice. In chapter four I mentioned the saying
Write what you know
. There's a corollary:
You may as well write what you know — you will anyway.
In other words, some aspects of your worldview and real-life experiences will inevitably sneak into your fiction. You won't be able to keep them out. After a while, your readers may notice a pattern to your work as I noticed with Octavia E. Butler's. Since themes will appear whether you want them to or not, do your best to find as many as you can and tame them into serving the book instead of letting them run wild across your pages. Becoming aware of your themes will also prevent you from writing the same story over and over again.
You do have a theme in your book somewhere. We just need to find it. The first step is actually an exercise.
EXERCISERead the following question, then set this book aside and write down your answer separately:
What is your book about?
Now check. Which of the following two statements does your answer most resemble?
It's about an ordinary young man who trades his last possession for a magical plant that transports him to another world, where he finds wealth — and danger.
It's about how poverty creates a world in which theft and even murder can become sympathetic acts.
If your answer is more like number 1, you're thinking more about the plot. If your answer is more like number 2, you're thinking more about the theme.
If you answered like number 2, you have at least one theme. If you didn't, let's look at a few ways to draw your theme out.
First, go back and try to answer the question so it's more like number 2 above. Don't talk about the plot — talk about
ideas
. Love, hate, religion, nature, power, sex, money, cruelty, yearning — what is your book
about?Should you get stuck, make a list of words that describe your book. Use free association and let your mind wander within your story. Generate a list of twenty or thirty words. Using that list as a starting point, see what sort of theme you can generate.
Themes can also ask questions. Perhaps your book asks questions about the nature of life or human nature or God. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do smart people make stupid choices? Is there a plan behind the universe? You don't necessarily have to posit an answer, either — the fact that the question has no answer can itself be a theme.
Themes vary wildly along the comfort continuum. Some themes are safe, some are risky, some are frightening, and some are taboo. You'll need to decide where your book will land on that continuum.
Safe themes abound in fiction.
Good triumphs over evil. The son becomes the father. True love wins in the end
. Safe themes produce safe books. They make readers feel good, and no one challenges them in school libraries. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, and you can make a decent living writing safe books. The danger is that safe themes have been so widely explored, you run the risk of boring yourself. Safe themes don't go anywhere new — if they did, they wouldn't be safe. It's difficult to challenge yourself as a writer with nothing but safe themes, since you have thousands of years of examples behind you.
Risky or challenging themes also abound:
No one gets their dreams. Challenge authority. Religion promotes ignorance
. Risky themes are harder to write about. They have the potential to make readers uncomfortable or angry — or maybe just challenge them to think. People remember them after they've put the book down. Risky themes also tend to stretch you, since they're harder to address, perhaps even uncomfortably so. If a theme drags you out of your own comfort zone a little and makes you think a little differently, you've created a risky theme — and you'll grow as a writer. For a real challenge, try writing about a theme that runs counter to what you believe.
Taboo themes lie at the far end of the continuum.
Abuse portrayed in positive terms. God is secretly evil. Racism is a good thing
. And others even more explosive. These themes are difficult to handle — readers who enjoy being pushed or challenged may only go so far. They'll be distracted by how upset they are about your theme and not be thinking about how good the writing is. Editors know this and are oft en reluctant to buy explosive books from first-timers — or even established authors. Books with taboo themes that do get published can get quite a lot of attention, both positive and negative.
In the end, your themes will outlive you. They're what touch people, move them, pull them into new places, and make them remember your story forever.
Once you and your theme have been introduced to each other, it becomes a matter of working your theme into the story obviously enough so readers can pick up on it but not so heavily you seem to be working with a sledgehammer. There are a thousand ways to pull this off, some obvious and some more covert. Here, the best way to learn is by example. Read, read, read, and read some more. As I mentioned above, Octavia E. Butler's novel
Fledgling
deals with the relationship between vampire and prey. It also examines building communities out of nothing. Shori awakens at the beginning of the novel naked and suffering from amnesia. In other words, she has nothing at all, not even her own memory. She meets Wright Hamlin and from that base begins to build a community. Read the novel with that theme in mind to see how Butler does it.
Ray Bradbury's classic and scary paranormal book
Something Wicked This Way Comes
deftly and darkly explores the conflicting fears and desires related to growing up — and growing old. It also looks at the power that belief and fear hold over the human mind and body and how to conquer both. There's also a parallel to
Peter Pan
by J.M. Barrie (sometimes known as
Peter and Wendy
), another paranormal novel worth reading in the original.
Outside of the paranormal genre, I suggest looking at John Steinbeck.
Of Mice and Men
is a short read packed with theme and symbolism, and if you haven't looked at it since high school, now would be a good time to take a look at it again. Steinbeck weaves several themes into the novel: people trying to find their dreams, the consequences of giving up a dream, the idea that everyone is lonely, and that to be a real man, you need a full name and two hands (or perhaps that real men have two hands and a full name). He does all this and more in a compelling story that takes up less than 120 pages.
Almost every set of submission guidelines from agents and editors says they're looking for authors with a
strong voice, a unique voice
, or a
powerful voice
. Guidelines for everything from thrillers to cookbooks mention the importance of voice. My own agent's Web page mentions
original new voices
. But none of them says exactly what that means.
Voice
is a little hard to pin down. It basically means
how you write
. It involves the words you choose and the rhythms you write in. It's how your writing sounds on the page. I know, I know — these descriptions actually sound a bit like writing
style
. Style is related to voice. Voice goes deeper. Voice is also the persona you put on when you start writing.
When you put words on paper (yeah, yeah — or on computer screen; work with me here), you aren't really being
you
. You aren't showing the world your true face or personality, though glimmers of your true self will show through. Like an actor strolling onto the stage, you're adopting a different persona, one that combines elements of yourself with a bunch of stuff you've made up. This persona, this voice, is the one who tells the story.
An author who writes in first person very naturally slips into a particular voice, since the main character speaks directly to the reader, and the main character will speak differently than the author. Let's compare three different first-person vampire novels. In
The Vampire Lestat
, Anne Rice writes:
I turned my back on it and let out a terrible roar. I felt its hands close on my shoulders like things forged of metal, and as I went into a last frenzy of struggling, it whipped me around so that its eyes were right before me, wide and dark, and the lips were closed yet still smiling, and then it bent down and I felt the prick of its teeth on my neck.
Out of all the childhood tales, the old fables, the name came to me, like a drowned thing shooting to the surface of black water and breaking free in the light.
“Vampire!” I gave one last frantic cry, shoving at the creature with all I had.
Then there was silence. Stillness.
Octavia E. Butler's vampire in Fledgling speaks very differently:
I stared down at the bleeding marks I'd made on his hand, and suddenly I was unable to think about anything else. I ducked my head and licked away the blood, licked the wound I had made. He tensed, almost pulling his hand away. Then he stopped and seemed to relax. He let me take his hand between my own. I looked at him, saw him glancing at me, felt the car zigzag a little on the road.
He frowned and pulled away from me, all the while looking uncertain, unhappy. I caught his hand again between mine and held it. I felt him try to pull away. He shook me, actually lifting me into the air a little, trying to get away from me, but I didn't let go. I licked at the blood welling up where my teeth had cut him.
And the voice of Lucienne Diver's young vampire in Vamped plunges into a completely new direction:
“You're right,” I said, thinking feverishly. “I do need a bite to eat. And I know just the thing.
Based on how quickly [Bobby] stepped back, I'm pretty sure he thought I meant him, but that wasn't it. Mom and Dad had been big with the child-rearing clichés.
When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade
had been a favorite of theirs, and I guess it must have sunk in a little. All I needed was a place to shower and change, a stylist, a mani-pedi, and some skin cream and I'd be as good as new. I could even start my own entourage for touch-ups. Better than any mirror. I tried to believe it.
Three vampires, three voices. Rice, writing as Lestat, uses an abundance of figurative language. Similes and metaphors dominate her work, competing with an abundance of adjectives. Her word choice leans toward florid. Butler, writing as Shori, uses a more spare, straightforward voice with little in the way of description and more focus on action. Shori speaks with more verbs than adjectives. Her words are plainer, leaner. Diver, writing as Gina, tends to speak in short, punchy bursts. Her clauses are short, and she avoids prepositional phrases that might lengthen her sentences, giving Gina a breathless voice appropriate to a teenaged fashionista.