Writing the Paranormal Novel: Techniques and Exercises for Weaving Supernatural Elements Into Your Story. (8 page)
Authors: Steven Harper
Tags: #ebook, #epub
There are great advantages for the author who writes this type of story. Since the main character is a total newbie to the fantasy world, the author has the perfect excuse to explain anything and everything. Conflict packs the story from the beginning. It lets the author create an entire new world from scratch. What's not to like?
There are challenges, however. Creating an entire world takes a lot of work, especially since you'll want to make the place as realistic (within the context) as possible. And you'll have to figure out exactly how the gate works. Is it a one-time thing or does it repeat? Does the gate stay open? If so, for how long? Can someone control it, or is it a “natural” phenomenon? If it can be reopened, how can this be accomplished? Can a traveler take anything with her through the gate, or does she arrive naked? If someone returns through the gate, does she arrive at the same place as she left ? Has a similar amount of time passed, or has time done something else while the character is gone? Like everything else in your book, the gateway needs to be consistent with itself.
A vampire and a werewolf fight a dragon for a magic ring while a demon tries to steal the fairy treasure and open the mystic gate. Or is that too much? How do you decide how much of the supernatural to include in your book?
It's really a matter of taste, of course. A single supernatural element can be enough to generate an entire novel. One magic character, a psammead who grants one wish per day, easily drives the plot of E. Nesbit's classic
Five Children and It
. At the opposite end of the spectrum are the Harry Potter books, which use every supernatural element imaginable.
There is a rule of thumb:
The more realistic you want your book to feel, the fewer supernatural elements you'll want to include
. It may sound counterintuitive to talk about realism and the supernatural in the same breath, but the rule makes a great deal of sense. Nesbit's five children get a single wish per day at the beginning of each chapter, and then spend the rest of the chapter dealing with the real-world ramifications of the wish. When they ask for gold, they have a hard time spending any of it because no adult believes that children their age would have so much money — a real-world problem. When they wish for wings, they have great fun at first, but then discover that other people are afraid of them. Robert wishes to be bigger than the local bully, but forgets that the adults back home will find him monstrous. The kids are oft en hot, hungry, or scared soon after each wish, and the novel is surprisingly gritty for an Edwardian-era children's book. The five kids have access to one supernatural element, but their world is quite realistic. And that's what Nesbit is writing about — the intersection of the real world with the supernatural one. (A subtler theme in the book is that magic is forbidden and you monkey with it at your peril.)
On the other hand, J.K. Rowling rarely allows Harry to worry about food or clothes or money once he enters the wizarding world. The Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry feeds its students to bursting, Harry is heir to a considerable fortune, and invisible house elves take care of the laundry. Even when Harry and Hermione go on the run in
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
, they live in relative comfort in a magic tent. The few times normal people notice anything supernatural going on, agents from the Ministry of Magic wave their wands to make them forget all about it. Rowling doesn't even try to be realistic, but she doesn't need to — she isn't writing about how the real world intersects with the paranormal. She's writing about death, conflict with authority, and the search for immortality.
Also, the more elements you include, the
less
time you'll have to explore each one. If you want to create and explore an intricate culture of demons and angels, you'd best not include genies, werewolves, and vampires in your world. The more supernatural elements you include, the less you're actually writing about each one.
But world building is something we're taking up in the next chapter.
EXERCISE
Read the following mundane plots and add a supernatural element to each. Or, if you like, add more than one.
The ink has barely dried on Theresa Garibaldi's graduate degree when she gets the news — her ailing mother has died. Praying her elderly Toyota would hold it together for the cross-country trip, Theresa drives back to her childhood town for the funeral. Now temporarily ensconced in the tiny, cracker-box house she grew up in, Theresa begins the process of going through her mother's things. Stashed in a locked steel box in the attic crawl space, she is stunned to find a series of letters that reveal her mother was not her birth mother. She stares at the letter in disbelief as a loud knock pounds at the front door.
Robbie Graves, age thirteen, is a popular kid with a lot of friends. Well, actually they're acquaintances. Robbie feels he's never had a true friend. He's learned that a lot of kids think he's cool mostly because his dad is on that TV show. Last week, a family moved into that house on the edge of town. They're weird. They dress weird, they have weird haircuts, and they drive a car with weird stickers on it. And their daughter Thelmoline is weird, too. The kids in school pick on her, but Robbie likes her, and they become friends. But being friends with Thelmoline isn't easy. She says strange things. She disappears for days at a time, and then shows up at school with no explanation of where she was. And she spends most of her time in a tree house she built herself in her backyard. Robbie sets out to find what's wrong.
Ingrid Fell swears a pact with her best friend Helen — they won't date for thirteen months because men suck. They even sign a contract. Not even an hour later, Ingrid slams straight into the most breathtaking guy she's ever seen. He helps her up with profuse apologies and introduces himself as Lucas, but everyone calls him Lucky. It turns out Lucky is moving into the apartment just up the hall from Ingrid, so she runs into him often. And every time she does, something good happens. She chats with him while picking up her mail and finds her tax refund. She runs into him at the store and wins fifty dollars in groceries. She pauses to talk to him at the coffee shop and hears the DJ announce the thirteenth caller will win free concert tickets, so she dials — and wins. Lucky is handsome, nice, and a great guy. Even worse, every time Ingrid sees Lucky, he asks her out, but the contract hovers over Ingrid's head. How long can she refuse?
Greg Travers isn't a private investigator. Not really. But he does have a knack for helping people solve their problems. He can't seem to turn anyone down, either — if someone asks for help, he has to ride to the rescue. One Saturday morning, Greg is looking forward to a day of sweats, pizza, and video games when Pete, an old college buddy, shows up, unshaven and smelling like a sewer. He needs a place to stay for a few days. Greg can't bring himself to refuse. That night, a terrible commotion wakes up Greg. He rushes into the living room where Pete was sleeping on the couch. He's just in time to see Pete being dragged away by two strange men. One draws a gun and fires at Greg, who dives for cover.
The Paranormal at Large
N
othing can exist in a vacuum. Not even the paranormal. This means that you can't plunk Ranadar the Elf into your story without figuring a few things out. First of all, it doesn't seem very likely that Ranadar is the only elf in existence. (Even if he is, he still had to come from somewhere.) And if other elves exist, it seems likely they'd interact in some way, which at least hints at a society. If that's the case, what kind of society do elves have? Who, if anyone, is in charge? Do they have gender roles — or even gender? Do they form family groups? What is elven etiquette like? And, most importantly, how do elves fit into the rest of the world?
To take this a little further, the existence of elves may indicate that other magical races exist. What about pixies, goblins, sprites, and gnomes? Is one of these races more powerful than the others? How do they get along? Do they trade with each other? Speak the same language?
In other words, if elves run Poughkeepsie, does that mean dwarves rule Pittsburgh?
We'll start with the big questions and work downward to the smaller ones.
The first issue to resolve is whether the supernatural in your world is a secret force or if it's a well-known phenomenon. Which one you choose will have an enormous impact on your book.
This is the most common paranormal world, especially in a modern Earth setting. Magic and supernatural creatures remain hidden to most normal people, and the majority of the population spends its entire life completely unaware that magic is real. Meanwhile, a small group of people moves within hidden supernatural circles. Often, the protagonist is a normal person who discovers these supernatural circles and is drawn into the secret world. In darker books, the supernatural controls the mundane world in a super-secret conspiracy.
This setting has a built-in draw. The world starts off comfortable and familiar — it's ours, after all — until the author whisks the lid off her metaphorical cookie jar, revealing an enticing treasure within. The reader feels pulled into “the know” and is made special right along with the protagonist. The most famous secret world setting is, of course, in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, but a horde of other authors compete for the title: C.S. Lewis, Stephenie Meyer, and many, many others.
The secret supernatural is also, in some ways, the easiest setting to use. You're not changing the normal world at all. It carries on as normal, since it knows nothing of what's really going on. Sure, vampires may be secretly running the FBI, but everything
looks
normal. Cars, phones, TV shows, computers, schools — all are unchanged. A fair amount of conflict in these stories revolves around ensuring everything
stays
normal. After all, if the general public found out vampires were real and sucking blood … well, there are a lot more mortals than vampires, and mortals can walk around in daylight. They also have tanks and other inconvenient weapons that can wipe out public vampires. Other magical creatures and people are in the same boat — forced to keep things quiet lest a much more powerful government or powerful corporation should get hold of them and their powers.
A variant of the secret setting is the secret history setting. Here, we're operating in the historical past — ancient Ireland, colonial America, the Ming Dynasty of China — with a twist: Magic works and has incorporated itself into history as we know it. The Seelie and Unseelie Courts really battled over Ireland. Witches wreaked havoc in Salem. Dragons secretly ruled behind the Chinese throne. But somewhere along the line, magic faded, resulting in the world we know now, and no one these days seriously believes those old stories. This is a fun one to play with, too. For example, maybe William, Duke of Normandy conquered England in 1066 so readily because he had supernatural help that history didn't record. Keeping things consistent with what we know of history while telling a paranormal story makes for a satisfying challenge. C.C. Finlay does a beautiful job of secret history with his Traitor to the Crown books, set during the Revolutionary War.
The contrasting idea is to blow the supernatural all out into the open. Paranormals operate in the bright of day — those who can, anyway. Everyone knows about magic and magical creatures, and they're simply a part of everyday life.