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

by Harper, Steven

  The primary idea to remember with shape-shifters is that, like all supernatural characters, they need to have limitations. If your werewolves are fast and strong and smart and impossible to kill, why don't they rule over the puny humans of the world? Answer: They have debilitating weaknesses that prevent it. Hamilton's werewolves can change form at will, but they need a lot of food right after they've changed, and when they return to human form, they fall comatose — easy prey for enemies. To make things even more challenging, werecreatures who spend too much time as animals find it difficult to regain human form. You need to make sure your own shape-shifters have good reason to stay in the shadows — unless you're writing about a world ruled by shape-shifters.

  Fairies

  Fairies cover a wide range of supernatural people, including elves, dwarves, brownies, dryads, gnomes, kobolds, goblins, merfolk, trolls, and more. They are oft en long-lived or outright immortal, and usually visit the human world from some other realm. Often, they don't change, and chaotic, ever-shifting humans fascinate them.

  Fairies are similar to angels and demons in that they come in many shapes and forms, depending on their original folklore, and each type of fairy usually has its own powers and weaknesses. A leprechaun must give anyone who captures him a wish. Greedy dwarves create amazing magical objects. Trolls are strong but stupid, and they turn to stone in daylight. Beautiful, immortal elves oft en fail to understand brutish, short-lived humans. Non-European cultures have fairies as well. In Japan, the mischievous kitsune, or fox spirit, loves practical jokes. Tennyo live on mountaintops and fascinate mortals with their impossible beauty. Yosei can change into swans and cranes.

  European fairies usually fear iron and sunlight, which either cripple or kill them. There are any number of other ways mortals can ward them off, including turning their clothes inside-out, striking a church bell, or getting drunk. Often mortals who encounter fairies forget the incident later, or remember it only as a dream. Raymond E. Feist uses fairies as antagonists in a modern setting to marvelous effect in his book Faerie Tale.

  Numerous books have used elves as major characters. Legolas in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is perhaps the most famous example, and Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman created Tanis, a half-elven, half-human protagonist, for their Dragonlance fantasy series. Anyone who wants to use an elf as a main character will be inevitably compared to these two. To get around this, Mercedes Lackey took elves out of their traditional fantasy setting and used them as race car drivers in the SERRAted Edge series she wrote with various co-authors. The new setting and new plot went a long way toward reinvigorating an old trope. Hint hint.

  And the Rest

  Humans have been spinning supernatural people into their stories for thousands of years, and listing all possible types would take an encyclopedia. Ultimately, any supernatural person can become a character in a novel as long as you remember three cardinal rules:

  You must know exactly what your supernatural person can do.

  You must know exactly what your supernatural person's limitations are.

  If you bend or break Rule 1 or Rule 2, be sure it makes sense within the mythology you've created.

  And always remember that the character, not the magic, should be the central focus of your book. Readers want stories about people, not empty animal skins. We'll look more closely at creating well-rounded characters in chapter six.

  SUPERNATURAL CREATURES

  If your book can't exist without a particular fantastic beastie, you're writing about a supernatural creature. They tend to take over because they're so much fun. Supernatural creatures are distinguished from supernatural people by the amount of self-awareness. If your griffin can hold a conversation and ask where to have lunch, it's more of a person. The dragons in Naomi Novik's books are really people, for example, not beasts.

  Supernatural creatures come in a variety of forms, though certain creatures show up all over the world. All cultures tell stories about dragons and giants, for some reason. Terry Pratchett points out that if turtles live on a particular continent, at least one culture there will tell stories about the world living on a turtle's back. Witches take familiars. Sorcerers summon elementals. Some creatures are just slightly more intelligent versions of their real-world counterparts, such as the owls that deliver mail and run other errands in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, and other creatures are more outlandish, such as the manticore in Greek mythology.

  Supernatural creatures seem to come in a couple of flavors:

  Kind Helpers

  These creatures are here to help our hero. They are healers or guides or protectors. They may be operating on their own or at the behest of someone else. Unlike supernatural characters, they can't communicate very well, and their help may be more instinctive than purposeful.

  As a downside, the presence of a kind helper may be inconvenient. Byron the griffin in The Spiderwick Chronicles books is a powerful guardian for the children, but the kids are forced to find creative ways to hide and feed him, since a creature with a lion's body and eagle's wings would attract unwelcome attention from the authorities. This can be played for comedy or for serious conflict, depending on the tone your book is going for.

  Malevolent Monsters

  These creatures are out for our hero's blood. They may be working on their own, or for the villain. In more horrific stories, they may show up as hordes of single-minded animals like the weird toads in Stephen King's short story “Rainy Season.” Or they might be single creatures intent on destruction, as we've seen in any number of slay-the-monster books or in the semi-intelligent Bad Thing in Raymond E. Feist's Faerie Tale.

  The main concern in dealing with creatures of either stripe is figuring out their ecology. What do they eat and how do they get it? Do certain noises or other stimuli make them react in a particular (or awkward) way? Is your creature a pack animal or a loner? What are the form and function of various body parts? Meat eaters, for example, will have teeth (or a beak) to reflect their diet, as will plant eaters. Any creature can have claws, but herbivores usually use them for something other than fighting — digging, climbing, scratching in the dirt, etc. A good way to “build” a creature is to decide what normal animal it most closely resembles and use that as a starting point.

  It is true that supernatural creatures might depart from the rules of nature, and readers will let you get away with it. The laws of physics simply won't let a horse grow a set of wings big enough to let it fly, but no one minds. Impossible fire-breathing dragons have become such a staple — or cliché — that some authors have their dragons breathe something else, such as ice or acid, and readers happily come along for the ride. Some authors even have fun with explaining how weird abilities work. Terry Pratchett's odd little dragons in Guards! Guards! eat coal and, due to a buildup of internal flammable gasses, occasionally explode. There's no reason you can't — or shouldn't — indulge in a little magical Darwinism yourself. Still, your reader's suspension of disbelief will only stretch so far. You'll have a difficult time convincing people that your slow, bumbling plant eater would need a mouthful of fangs.

  GATEWAYS TO SUPERNATURAL WORLDS

  If your life in this world grinds you down, escape into another one. Humans have fantasized about magical gateways for thousands of years. Stonehenge is living proof of that. The idea of a door that can transport you to a wildly different, fascinating new world is all but irresistible. The most famous of stories in this category of supernatural elements is C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia series, in which various children find their way from 1940s England into the magical world of Narnia. Peter Straub and Stephen King flip Jack Sawyer back and forth between our world and the Territories in The Talisman. We all know about Dorothy's tornado in L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Alice's rabbit hole. You could also argue that any number of time-travel romances use this idea.

  When the author uses this element, a character from our world steps through a gateway or is otherwise transpor
ted into another world, and the reader gets to come along. The character spends a certain amount of time figuring out where she is, how this strange new world works, and why she's there. Usually some sort of goal appears — defeat the villain, rescue someone important, restore order, etc. Toward the end, a major element of suspense arises: How will the character return home? Perhaps the gate only opens at certain times or under certain conditions, or the character needs a certain object to open the gate. Sometimes the suspense arises because the character has found romance or made close friends or otherwise found happiness in the new world, but the gate to the old one will close soon forever. Which world does she truly want?

  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.

  BECOMING AN ARCHITECT

  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.

  CHAPTER 3: The Paranormal at Large

  Nothing 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 h
ave 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.

  SECRET VS. SUNLIGHT

  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.

  THE SECRET SUPERNATURAL

  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.