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

by Harper, Steven

  Most baby name books list each name's meaning, and I admit it's great fun to pour over such lists to see who among friends and relatives has a name with a meaning that actually fits his or her personality. The temptation is to choose character names that reflect the person's personality, too. You're writing about a guy who takes charge of any situation, so you spend half an hour looking through the baby name book until you discover the name Derek, which means “ruler of the people.” Perfect! My advice? Don't bother. The vast majority of your readers won't make the connection, and the ones who do will probably figure the whole thing is a coincidence. It's wasted time.

  When you choose a name, say it aloud two or three times and see if it works. Elizabeth Brown works well, but Chris Simonson is a little awkward. Names that end in S are problematic as well. Dennis seems a perfectly serviceable name until you give him, say, a sword or anything else that begins with an S. Dennis's sword may be grammatically correct, but it looks odd, and the phrase interrupts the flow of words on the page. For the same reason, avoid surnames that start with the letter that ends the first name. Say Les Stiles and Bev Victor aloud and you'll see what I mean.

  While we're on the subject of letters, make sure your characters' names start with different ones. It confuses the reader if your characters are named Kevin, Kelly, Ken, and Kyle. Avoid.

  Some authors try too hard with character names. Thorne, Cade, and Hunter may seem pretty cool and exotic when you're writing them down, but they ultimately come across as outlandishly ridiculous, especially if all three names appear in the same book. As a rule, you can get away with one exotic or weird name per novel (unless your characters come from another world).

  Finally, make the character's gender clear in the name. Yes, Kyle and Sam can be female names, but the shift takes serious mental adjustment on behalf of the reader, and you don't want that. The same goes for an drogynous names like Chris, Drew, and Dakota. A name should help establish an image in the reader's head, and an androgynous name only clouds that process.

  Notice that these are all guidelines more than rules. If you break them, be sure you're doing it on purpose. If you name the men in your book Justin, Jake, and Jeremy, make it part of the plot. Maybe they're triplets. If your protagonist is a woman named Kyle, part of her character should be a certain amount of weariness toward people who assume she's a man.

  OTHERWORLDLY NAMES

  Characters from other worlds may well need otherworldly names. (If your world is a close analog to Earth, then you may end up using Earthlike names.) Create them carefully. Your characters may be otherworldly, but your readers live on Earth. You don't want to choose names that bring your reader's eyes to a screeching halt in mid-sentence. Let's take a second to look at ways to create workable, off -Earth names.

  One place to get inspiration is foreign language names, especially ones from non-Western cultures. Look at names from China, Africa, and India. Smoosh them together and mix them around to see what you get.

  Another place to look is the ancient patronymic method. In Cyrillic languages, you add -vich to the end of a name to mean son of, and that becomes a man's last name, so Mikhail Sergeievich means Mikhail, son of Sergei. Similarly, in old Ireland, mac meant son of (macDonald) and nic meant daughter of. There's no reason you can't create a similar system.

  Nicknames and epithets are another place to look. A redheaded guy might become known as Eric the Red, while his tall daughter might be Wanda Loftus. The family that moved here from Derry might be known as the Derry family, and that young man who guards the gate between worlds might just be known as Warden.

  You can also simply string vowels and consonants together until you get something that seems workable. However, be sure to say the name out loud a few times to ensure you haven't accidentally made a joke. An elven warrior named Tompis from the land of Green might look good on paper, but if you say the names out loud once or twice, the weaknesses become apparent. Reading names out loud will also check for easy pronounceability, a characteristic all names should share.

  Avoid names with odd letter combinations. English readers don't know what to do with ii or qk or iy. Hell, half the time we don't know what to do with gh and ei. And forget about non-English letters like ä, ç, or õ. Readers won't look at the name Kôjïq and say, “How creatively exotic!”They'll look at it and think, “How the heck do you say that? Is the whole book like this? Maybe I should read something else.”

  Assume that readers will mentally insert standard English pronunciation when they see your names. English readers who see ch simply won't think of the German or Scottish throat-clearing noise, for example. If you absolutely must use a non-English pronunciation to a name, be sure to tell the readers:

  I shook her hand and my mouth went dry.

  “I'm Pete.” “You can call me Lucia.” She pronounced her name with a chin the middle. Sexy as hell.

  Finally, avoid the Apostrophe of Doom. For some reason, a number of writers decided that sprinkling apostrophes over a bunch of names would make them really neat. This resulted in the creation of names like K'Panna and Le'mann'tua and Hos'e'he'd the Do'of'u's. In English, apostrophes indicate ownership (Norman's armor) or that something was left out (can't). When an apostrophe shows up that performs neither function, English readers stumble. We can't help it. You don't want your readers to stumble.

  CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

  EXERCISE #1

  Do a Web search on “common job interview questions” and use the results to create a list of ten interview questions. Then answer them for your character, using your character's words.

  EXERCISE #2

  Write a letter from your character to you as if the character were an old-fashioned pen pal. The character should introduce himself thoroughly in his own words. (I use this one quite a lot with characters who won't “talk” to me while I'm writing.)

  EXERCISE #3

  Write down three facts about your character that won't appear in the book.

  EXERCISE #4

  Answer the following questions in detail: If your character could go back in time and change one thing about her past, what would it be? What happened? Why would she choose this event? What change would she want to make?

  CHAPTER 7: Magic and the Superhero

  In chapter six of your book, the heroine learns how to heal her own wounds — which means that bullet wound you're planning for chapter seven suddenly doesn't mean much. And in a wonderful moment of angst, your hero overcame a mental block in chapter nine. Now he can send his thoughts to the heroine from anywhere on the planet — except you were planning to have the Dark Lady kidnap him, tricking the heroine into thinking he's dead. Now what?

  No worries! This is fiction, and there's always a fix. In this chapter, we'll deal with supernatural powers and the unique difficulties they create for plot and characterization.

  CREEPING

  Superpowers are cool to write about and fun to read about, so why not give your heroine just one more? Or boost the ones she has? Trouble is, this line of thinking leads to a mega-protagonist who can do too much, which means you'll have to create an even more powerful antagonist to provide a challenge, but to win your heroine will have to become even stronger yet, leading you to create an even more powerful protagonist, who forces the heroine to become stronger …

  Yeah.

  This problem is called “superhero creep.” It's plagued comic books for decades, and has more recently invaded paranormal novels. When Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman in 1932, he could leap really high, lift a car, and stop bullets. By the 1980s, he had a whole mess of vision powers, super breath, flight, total invulnerability to everything but kryptonite and magic, and the ability to move faster than light. Each successive writer made him a little more powerful, and a little more, and a little more. As a result, his villains had to become more powerful, too. He graduated from fighting street thugs and wife abusers to fighting world-wrecking monsters with names like Doomsday. His powers crept up h
igher and higher until the writers couldn't find anything to challenge him anymore and they killed him off in 1992, only to bring him back after great public outcry.

  Terry Pratchett ran into the exact same problem with Granny Weatherwax, an immensely popular witch who appears as the protagonist in several of his Discworld books. One of her abilities is the power to “borrow.” Her mind leaves her body and slips into an animal so she can see and hear what it does. In Equal Rites, her first appearance, Granny is already pretty good at it. By Lords and Ladies, her fourth book, she is able to borrow the collective mind of an entire beehive, something no witch has ever done, in order to face down the evil Queen of Elves. By Carpe Jugulum, her sixth appearance, she can put her mind into inanimate objects. Between this and other powers she's developed, Granny has become the most powerful witch in history. So what's left for her to do? Pratchett, ever the humorist, makes fun of this problem in an early scene of Jugulum by making Granny feel a certain amount of ennui because the world lacks challenge — until an entire clan of vampires shows up. Carpe Jugulum has to date been Granny's final appearance as a protagonist, and she's been relegated to supporting cast in other Discworld books, quite possibly because finding a challenge for the most powerful witch in all of history is more trouble than it's worth, especially since Pratchett has a number of other characters he can explore instead.

  Superhero creep in novels usually happens because the writer doesn't anticipate the hero becoming all that popular. By the time the character's popularity has entrenched itself, the author has committed to a pattern of one-upmanship, always trying to outdo what came before. The first bad guy was going to wipe out a town, so the new bad guy will wipe out the country. This means the next bad guy has to threaten the whole world, and the one after that has to take on the entire universe. Whew! How can you follow that?

  (By now you've probably figured out that this problem largely shows up in series books, and you're likely working on your first novel. How much do you need to worry about this? Plenty. First, it never hurts to plan ahead. Second, paranormal books lend themselves to series, and if you sell one, it's quite possible the editor will say, “What else you got?” So start planning now.)

  One way to avoid superhero creep is to set a ceiling for yourself. Decide in advance what powers your protagonist will start out with and what powers she'll develop. If your main character starts off with some weak mental powers that give her unexpected flashes of the future and the ability to tell something about the owner of any object she picks up, figure out exactly how far you want take that. Will these powers develop into a fullblown ability to look into the future? The power to control people through the objects they touch? In which book will each of these powers develop? The more you have planned out, the more control you'll have over your long-term story and the less creep you'll have.

  Another way to avoid creeping is to make a new power temporary. Once the situation that requires it has ended, the power vanishes, taking superhero creep with it. This takes a little finagling, though. For example:Lawrence has been blocking his own potential, refusing to tap his birthright power of Light. But in the climactic scene, Martina dies and Lawrence pushes past his own limits to bring her back from the dead. When it's over, Lawrence learns that resurrection is forbidden and he won't be allowed to do it again. The power is gone — and the author doesn't have to worry about explaining in future books why Lawrence doesn't resurrect other people, ones whom the author needs to stay dead. No superhero creep. The drawback with this approach is that if you do it more than once or twice, readers will twig what's going on and get justifiably annoyed with you. Use this method sparingly.

  You can also flatly refuse to increase your character's power level. Amanda will never progress beyond future flashes and a bit of object reading, and that's it. Lawrence will have to live with minor healing powers, nothing more. Avoid the creep by refusing to go there, and work on other areas of character development instead.

  THE NEED FOR LIMITS

  Supernatural powers must come with limits. Without them, your characters turn into omnipotent walking weapons fairly quickly. Even gods in ancient myths have their limitations. Besides, setting limits creates conflict, and conflict creates story. All characters need something to struggle against, and limitations on their abilities provide just that.

  Limits also prevent them from becoming Mary Sue or Gary Stu (see chapter 76).

  This requirement, oddly, applies more heavily to protagonists than to antagonists. Supernatural antagonists are almost always more powerful than protagonists in order to keep the protagonist on his toes — a weaker antagonist isn't much of a challenge, and an equal antagonist only has a fifty-fifty chance of creating suspense. Antagonists therefore tend to have fewer limits. Note that I said fewer instead of no, however. An omnipotent antagonist isn't much fun, either — it's hard to explain why he simply doesn't wipe out the hero with a wave of his tentacle.

  There are a number of ways to limit supernatural powers. Let's take a look at a few.

  EXHAUSTION

  Using supernatural power sucks up serious energy, and it makes the character tired. Or hungry. Or both. The more magic the character uses, the worse it gets. Eventually her powers stop working until the character has the chance to rest and/or eat. Drain things too far with something spectacular, and the character can send herself into a coma, or even die. Vampires oft en suffer from this one — the more power they use, the hungrier for blood they get.

  This is a good one because it allows the author to drag a character through the mud and then throw everything she has into one final, self-sacrificing push to stop the antagonist. You can also scale back this limit as the character becomes more powerful. Just watch out for that superhero creep.

  YIKES!

  The character's ability only kicks in (or always kicks in) when he's startled or excited or otherwise upset. This one is a favorite among authors who create characters with mental powers. It's nicely inconvenient for powerful abilities like telekinesis (moving objects with your mind), pyrokinesis (setting stuff on fire), and teleportation (jumping instantly from place to place), but it works for other abilities, too. Not only does the character have to learn how to use the power, he also has to learn self-control so his dog doesn't pop to the North Pole every time he has a bad day.

  Characters with this limitation oft en spend a fair amount of time working to overcome it or control the power — and when they do, watch out! Unless you remove the problem fairly early, this limitation is oft en best for a protagonist who you know will only appear once. Otherwise, you'll continually juggle flying dishes or end up with an enormously powerful character in later books.

  ONLY WHEN …

  Some characters can use their powers only under certain conditions: when the moon is full, after dark, when the sun shines on them, when they're drenched in blood, when they're singing a particular tune. Folklore is full of limitations like these, so if you get stuck, do some research.

  The wonderful part about this limit is the chance for suspense. Will the sun rise (or set) in time for the character's power to kick in? Will she be able to remove the gag so she can sing? Will her outstretched fingers reach the sunbeam before the goons notice? This one is also less prone to creepage.

  THREE TIMES

  The character can only use a particular power a certain number of times. Or there's a time limit on the power — it'll only work for so long. After that, the power stops working for a specific amount of time, or even forever. Wishes work like this, oft en coming in sets of three. Other powers might just need to “recharge.”

  The advantage of this one comes from added suspense similar to the previous “Only When” category, and from the author being able to force the character to operate without his supernatural power and find creative ways to resolve the conflict.

  YOU CAN'T …

  The character can't use her powers for certain actions, either due to a vow or because the source of the power won't allow
it. A healer, for example, might have sworn to use her power to help, never to harm, or perhaps the source of her healing power has made it clear that if she ever does use her power to harm, she'll lose it or pay some other dreadful price. Or perhaps it's simply impossible to use the power for anything but its intended effect.

  This can create a bit of wonderful conflict — if faced with an extreme situation, will the character break away from the requirements or stay true to it?

  POWER CORRUPTS

  The more the character indulges in the power, the more it corrupts him. This problem tempts many vampires — drinking blood makes them powerful, but killing people weakens their connection to humanity. The same goes for characters who summon dark gods, demons, or other nether powers.

  This limitation creates some powerful conflict, but it's hard to carry it past more than two or three books. A character can teeter on the edge of corruption only for so long. Then it gets repetitious.

  PAY THE PIPER

  The paranormal carries a price. The character might have to pay in blood every time she casts a spell, or kill something, or do a return favor for a higher (or lower) power, or anything else you can think of. The more power you want, the more you pay. Good guys pay the price themselves; bad guys make others pay for them.

  This limitation, the notion of the sacrifice, flows through a lot of paranormal literature and is as old as human civilization. It works well — there's only so much one person can give, and the bad guys, who can make others pay, gain a nice advantage over the protagonist.