Creating a Fresh Version of a Paranormal Creature

QUESTION:  I write vampire novels.  It seems like creating a paranormal or fantasy race is almost like a catch 22. If you stray too far from the norm, readers dislike it, but if you stay too close to the norm, it is seen as a been-there, read that type of thing. What is the best advice you can give for making your race of creatures/humans/ etc. something believable, yet fresh?  

Study what other writers have done in fiction and media that is similar to what you want to do.

If you want an intelligent alien, think about the signature aliens in our popular culture.  What is it about Spock that attracts and fascinates us?  Or Dr. Who?  How about ET if you're looking for cute and cuddly?  

Or, if you want a scary alien, analyze the ones that scared you to death.  The alien in the movie of the same name?  The Daleks?  The Borg?  Why are they so scary?

When you find the core elements that push your and other readers' emotional buttons, then you have the key elements for your own race of beings.  That's far more important than building an extremely different race for your book.  The outer elements are only window dressing.

When you write one of these creatures as a viewpoint character, you must remember that the reader connects with the human elements of that character, not its difference.  Spock, for example, became so wildly popular because he was the outsider, the misunderstood one on the Enterprise. Viewers, many of whom considered themselves the outsider, connected with that element of Spock even though Spock never complained about being the outsider.

In other words, when your creature is the viewpoint character, write it as a person, not a monster.  Write visceral emotion when you are writing about monsters who aren’t viewpoint characters.  

For vampire novels, your biggest selling points are the voice of your main character, the intensity of your storytelling, and the level of your craft. Difference is further down on the importance scale so don’t let that be your only guide to what you write.  

Worldbuilding in Dialogue

QUESTION:  How do I use dialogue to explain worldbuilding?

If you want to use dialogue, you can sprinkle the information through a series of scenes so the reader gradually gets the information.

The method most writers use is what I call "inform the outsider.”  The outsider can be a newly turned vampire, the human love interest or ally, etc., and one of the vampires tells him/her about their history. 

Or one character can disagree with another one's version of the story so they argue about it while informing the reader. 

Or you could have one of the characters find a written history or story that's inserted into the story via dialogue.  That's the most awkward method.  

Or you can sprinkle in tiny bits of information in relation to what the characters are talking about so that the reader can add together the information to get the bigger picture.  Having the reader figure it out himself is far more enjoyable to him than having an info dump.  

One thing you need to consider is how important that element of worldbuilding is to the reader.  You may have a clever new form of vampire, but unless the reader absolutely must know how that came about or the story won't make sense, the reader needn't be told all that information.

How Different Should Your World Be?

QUESTION:  Here’s what I'm wondering as I'm setting up my “alternate earth.” If the reader’s suspension of disbelief is necessary to enjoy your writing, how do you know what kinds of things might be too much for your readers? Might pull them out of the story as they puzzle over why someplace that’s earth-yet-not-earth has *that*?

If your world has internal consistency and follows its own logic, most readers will accept that world.  Readers want to believe your world.  That's why they buy your story.

Things like dogs and cats and pine trees are just simple shorthand to make that world comfortable for the reader as well as making it easier for him to connect with it.  

If the reader has to learn everything from the names of the trees to the five different kinds of six-legged beasts of burden, and they really have nothing important to do with the story, he will be seriously put off.  Readers like comfortable, shorthand things like pine trees and horses.

Touches of the strange will liven up a scene to give it a sense of elsewhere, but there need only be touches.  In a scene where the hero and his friends stop at a staging inn to rest their horses and get a meal, you can have the usual things like the tavern, the stablehand, and the horses, but you can also mention a corral filled with hippogriffs who are fluttering their wings and snapping their beaks as one of the servants tosses them dead rabbits.

But detail for the sake of detail will delay the action and cause the problem you mention.  For example, the hero is walking through the woods, and a tree of living flame stops him in his tracks because of its beauty.  It begins to sing of the glory of the wind and the majesty of the rain.

The hero finally moves away and promptly forgets it, and it has nothing else to do with the story.

The reader will wait the whole novel for that scene to make some sense with the plot, but it never does so the reader gets angry.

If, however, that singing tree gives the hero a riddle he must understand to achieve his victory, then the scene is very important, indeed.  

Somewhere along the way, it would probably be best if the reader learns why the tree gave him that clue so the plot has some internal logic.

You also need to decide what your story is really about.  If it’s about the unusual political situation in this world, then most of the extra details and information should help focus on that.  If it’s about the world’s magic and how it is failing, then that’s where the details and the weirdness should be focused.  

Most of this boils down to not overwhelming your reader and avoiding info dumping to show off your incredlbie worldbuilding skills.  

Interlocking Questions

A work of fiction should be a series of interlocking questions.  Think of these questions as links in a chain that pulls the reader through each scene and through the novel.  

The questions within the book should be ongoing.  Before you answer one question the reader has, you should have several more set up so the reader doesn't say "oh, now I understand" and put down the book never to finish it.  

The questions can be action questions-- Will the heroine rescue the baby before it crawls into the well?  Will the hero kiss her now?

The questions can be character questions--  What happened to Mary that makes her so nervous around men?  Why does Jim hate Bill?

The questions can be setting questions-- What is beyond the next bend in the road?  Where is the dragon hiding?  Why does the lab have smoke in it?

The questions can be plot questions-- Will Tom rescue Pam from the burning building?  How will he do it?  What did the robber steal from the safety deposit box that the Mafia wants so much?

The questions can be minor questions which can be answered in a few pages-- Will Mary say yes when Jim asks her out?  

The questions can be major questions that take the whole book to answer-- Who killed Bill and why?  

Writing interlocking questions is a complicated dance between the writer and the reader.  The writer wants to give just enough information to involve the reader and urge her forward in the narrative, but not so much information that the reader becomes bored.

The reader sees the questions and their answers as clues and reading the story is a mystery she wants to solve for herself.  The reader not only wants to know what happens next, she also wants to make guesses at what will happen next and why.    

To see the power of interlocking questions, just consider the Harry Potter series.  These books were not only good individual reads full of interlocking questions, the interlocking questions extended through the series.  People talked about these questions, they puzzled over these questions, and they argued over these questions as each book came out.  

If JK Rowling had explained everything early on, the series would not have been so popular, and the readers would not have been so invested in the characters.  

How do you write interlocking questions?  

One trick is to think of yourself as the reader.  What will the reader want to know at that moment in the narrative?  What questions can you answer and what answers can be held back?  

When you are plotting your story out, you will be thinking about the who, what, when, where, and why of each event.  Decide what information from the Five W's the reader needs immediately, and what information can be seeded through the narrative as questions and answers.  

Every answer you give to an important narrative question should lead to more questions-- Jim couldn't possibly have killed Bill, but why has he confessed to the murder?  Could he be protecting someone else?  Who and why? (NOTE: The answers to these questions are in the examples above.)  

An excellent way to see how interlocking questions work is to study how a good author uses them.  

Pick a favorite author who really sucks you into their books and keeps you flipping the pages.  Go to the author's website and find the sample chapter or chapters of one of their books.  Print those pages, get the highlighter out, and mark every narrative question you find.  Notice how the small questions and the larger questions work together.  

Or you can pull out a favorite book from your keeper shelf and read it while paying attention to the interlocking questions.

During all this, remember that the writer and the reader have one important question foremost in their heads as they write and read-- What happens next?

A Very Vampire Christmas

With the traditional vampire, writers know vampires’ relationship to Christianity.  Crosses and Holy Water make them shriek and back away because vampires are demonic evil.  

These days, that’s not necessarily always true.  In Tanya Huff’s series about vampire Henry Fitzroy, he pals around with priests, carries a crucifix, and is the most religious of all the characters because he has seen true evil and wants to protect others from it.  

Charlaine Harris’ Stookie Stackhouse stories tosses in a bit of religion, mainly Stookie’s, in with the vampires and werewolves.  One of Harris’ short stories shares the name with this article as Viking vampire Eric tries to figure out Christmas so he can please his human girl friend.

Fictional monsters come in all shapes and kinds with a moral spectrum from light to dark and everywhere in between as it fits the story and the genre, and readers and writers are fine with that.

Then there’s stories based on the Greek and Norse mythologies.  Here’s where things have been getting weird with some writers.  Most of the Greek myth-based stories I’ve read have ignored Christianity and focused on the secular aspects of the characters. 

Or, in the case of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, people go to the afterlife they believe in.

However, some writers using the Norse stories have been making some strange choices.  I just finished a contemporary paranormal story where Norse gods were Catholic and celebrated Christmas!  

Then there’s a story where every warrior or strong soul, no matter their religion or ethnicity, are taken to Valhalla when they die so they can fight at Ragnorak which is the Norse Apocalypse.  This essentially denies the truth of any other religion.  

Does this mixing or ignoring of the most prominent current religions work?  Not for me because it was so shocking that it knocked me out of the story.  Your tolerance may vary.  

But it does pose a serious question you should ask in your worldbuilding.  How does contemporary religion and readers’ faith affect your story?