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

by Harper, Steven

  Roffcale's letters smelled of dried blood and very cheap cologne. I pulled in his scent while my fingertips brushed over the clumsy lines of his reform school script. He was young and passionate. He poured himself into each word with absurd intensity. With every letter he set down, he fell in love and was overwhelmed with rage …. Roffcale stacked cliché upon cliché until they achieved a staggering tower of artless adoration.

  The passage is heavy with metaphor and is fairly typical of Hale's writing style throughout the book — except when it comes to fights. Then her style shifts somewhat:

  [Scott-Beck's] hand crushed brutally around mine. I slashed my free hand up and drove my long nails into the flesh of his throat. His skin was like horsehide. My claws barely cut into it.

  In an instant, Scott-Beck stepped aside and twisted my hand violently. Cracking pain burst through my arm as a bone in my wrist snapped. He twisted my hand farther and I stumbled on my feet, dropping to one knee.

  Only one bit of figurative language here — a simile — and the wording is punchier than her descriptive sections. The paragraphs are shorter as well. All of this adds to the faster feel of combat. Hale still manages to preserve her overall style, but the action and combat sections move faster than the other scenes, as they should.

  MAGIC WANDS AND MAGIC WARS

  Supernatural fights can introduce a dozen impossible things before combat, and they completely change the picture. Pitting a guy with a gun against a witch with a wand gets tricky — how do you know which one would go off first? Would the spell fly faster, or the bullet? Could the guy dodge the spell after he fired the gun?

  Really, once you introduce a purely supernatural element into a fight, the result comes down to exactly what you decide the story needs. If the story requires spells to outspeed bullets, then so it must be. If the story requires the guy to dodge the spell, then so he must. However, as we saw in chapter seven, you must always remain consistent with it. Once you decree magic to be faster than bullets, you can't renege two chapters later.

  THE NECESSITY OF SCENES

  Every scene in a novel must have a reason to exist. Each scene must move the story forward, develop character in a specific direction, or give the reader specific information — and it's best if you combine these functions. Unnecessary scenes slow your pacing and hurt even a leisurely novel.

  There's also a practical reason for writing shorter. A longer novel takes up more pages to print. More pages means more paper, and more paper drives up the cost of the book. (We're talking about print novels here, as opposed to electronically published books.) Publishers like to keep the cost to the reader as low as possible, especially with new authors. The idea is that readers view new authors with suspicion — they have no way of knowing whether they'll like this unknown entity's fiction or not. If the book's price is high, readers are unlikely to overcome their suspicion and buy the book. If the book's price is low, readers are more willing to take the risk. Shorter, less expensive books are therefore more likely to get a green light for a new author, so you'll want brevity over length.

  When my editor returned that novel manuscript to me with 40,000 words to cut, I went though every single scene and asked myself, does this scene really need to appear? Can it be cut? If not, can it be shortened? Combined with another scene? Ask yourself the same questions.

  One thing to remember is that you don't need to explain everything. You can imply certain things and let the reader fill in the rest. Some time ago I was critiquing Cindy Spencer Pape's manuscript for The Gaslight Chronicles, which was a paranormal work in progress at the time, but has since been published. During this read-through, I came across a set of scenes that I thought could be condensed. In the first scene, Merrick, the male protagonist, is dealing unsuccessfully with a group of magically talented street urchins whom he'd more or less adopted. In the second scene, Merrick's aunt, who knows the situation, spends considerable time convincing a governess named Caroline to come and interview at the house. In the third scene, Caroline leans back in the carriage, wondering what this strange man and his street urchin children will be like.

  I mentioned that the second scene could be cut. It didn't really do anything except show the reader how Caroline is persuaded to interview with Merrick. All Pape needed to do was show the children running wild through the house and end with something crashing to the floor. Merrick turns to his aunt and whimpers, “I think I need a governess.” The aunt replies, “I know just the one.” And then we jump to Caroline in her carriage. We don't need to see the persuasion scene — Caroline's presence in the carriage implies it for us — and removing it trims unnecessary wordage from the novel. Pape agreed and cut the scene.

  This isn't to say that every scene needs to be cut or shortened. My editor put on the chopping block several scenes from my book that I insisted should stay, and I did keep them even as I cut several others. Just as in life, moderation is the key in fiction. You can't cut everything, but what you can cut, you probably should.

  CHAPTER 11: Language and Dialogue

  A character from Louisiana doesn't speak the same way as a character from London, and a character from three dimensions over won't sound like a native to this world. And imagine the slang that might spring up if elves publicly showed up and made themselves at home in Detroit. Introducing supernatural elements to a book naturally changes the way the characters speak and will likely have a significant impact on the narration. This chapter examines those issues in detail.

  THE IMPORTANCE OF DIALOGUE

  Human conversation grabs the mental ear — it's a chance to eavesdrop on something fascinating — and it's the reason dialogue remains the main thing readers want in a book. In fact, dialogue is one of the stronger opening hooks you can use.

  Dialogue performs a number of functions. It moves action forward by telling the reader what's going on. It sneaks in exposition. And most importantly, it tells the reader what your character is like.

  ESTABLISHING CHARACTER

  Everyone has his own speech patterns. This means no two people talk alike, not even ones from the same part of the country. Part of it is upbringing, but part of it is also outlook. People's ideas and attitudes shape the way they speak. Someone who expects the worst will choose different words than someone who expects the best.

  All your characters should be differentiated by dialogue, whether they're ordinary people or supernatural ones. If you can reassign the dialogue in a given scene to another character without changing any of the words, it means you haven't done your job well.

  Dialogue differences can be very overt. Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black use wildly different forms of dialogue among their fairy characters in The Spiderwick Chronicles books. Thimbletack the brownie speaks in rhyming couplets. In The Seeing Stone, Jared meets a caged hobgoblin named Hogsqueal, and the difference between the ways the two characters speak shows clearly:

  “You're not very chicken-beaked for a nib-head,” the hobgoblin grumbled. “I'm in [this cage] for letting out one of the cats. See, I like cats, and not just 'cause they're tasty, which they are, no mistake. But they got these eyes that are an awful lot like mine, and this one was real little, not much meat there. And she had this sweet little mewl.” The goblin looked lost in his memory, then abruptly looked back at Jared. “So enough about that. Let me out.”

  “And what about your teeth? Do you eat babies or what?” Jared had not found the goblin's story very reassuring.

  “What is this, an interrogation?” Hogsqueal groused.

  “I'm letting you out already.” Jared came closer and started to cut the complicated knots on the cage. “But I want to know about your teeth.”

  The differences between Jared's and Hogsqueal's dialogue stand out sharply. Hogsqueal's word choices have a New Jersey flavor to them with some invented fairy slang (chicken-beaked and nib-head) mixed in. DiTerlizzi and Black are going for humor here, since no one would expect a fairy to talk like a New York cab driver, and the resulting dialog
ue very quickly paints a picture of a crude but crafty creature. We also learn that Hogsqueal likes to eat cats. Jared is meant to be a nine-year-old boy who could be from anywhere in the country (since the books don't get specific in their setting), so his dialogue is free of regional dialect.

  Christopher Moore's characters in A Dirty Job speak differently from one another as well, though the difference is subtler. Here, Charlie is talking to Mr. Fresh about what it means to be Death — or a death.

  Mr. Fresh shrugged. “… Surely you've noticed that no one sees you when you're out to get a soul vessel.”

  “I've never gone out to get a soul vessel.”

  “Yes, you have, and you will, at least you should be. You need to get with the program, Mr. Asher.”

  “Yeah, so you said. So you're — uh — we're invisible when we're out getting these soul vessels?”

  “Not invisible, so to speak, it's just that no one sees us. You can go right into people's homes, and they'll never notice you standing right beside them, but if you speak to someone on the street, they'll see you …”

  “So that's how you got to be a — what do they call us?”

  “Death Merchants.”

  “Get out. Really?”

  Here, Moore doesn't even need to tell us who's talking. Partly it's that he gives us a cue up front when he writes that Mr. Fresh shrugged and then slips in a cue when Fresh addresses Charlie as “Mr. Asher,” but mostly it's the dialogue itself. Fresh has a more formal, polished mode of speaking. Later we learn he can drop it and speak much more informally — the polished dialogue is part of an image he tries to project. His attitude affects his dialogue. Meanwhile, Charlie's dialogue is peppered with fits and starts. He also uses yeah whereas Fresh uses yes. The differences are subtle but clear. You certainly couldn't put Charlie's words into another character's mouth without serious changes.

  EXERCISE

  Read the following dialogue.

  Evan strode into the dark room and flung back the curtains. “How much did you pay for this place?”

  “Enough.” Abby set her suitcase on the threadbare carpet and glanced around the tiny cottage's living room. “Come on, it was a steal and you know it. It has a fireplace.”

  “We only get a week together. I just wanted it to be someplace nice. Romantic. Not a … well, not here.”

  “There's romantic and there's romantic,” Abby said. “The place isn't important. We are.”

  “I know. I do. I'm just worried.” Evan checked his smart phone. “Six days, fifteen hours, and forty-two minutes before full moon. You know what happens then.”

  Now rewrite it in two different ways, changing only the words of the dialogue, not the interstitial material. You may not change the overall intent of the dialogue, only the wording.

  CHANGE #1

  Evan is furious — but not with Abby. (Perhaps he's overt and straight-forward, or maybe he shows his anger through sarcasm, or maybe has another method.) Abby is on a hair-trigger herself but is trying to hold it together.

  Also, Abby and Evan should speak differently from one another. Differentiate their dialogue choices in some way. Perhaps they're from different regions, or even different countries.

  CHANGE #2

  Evan is frightened of Abby. Abby is in control of this relationship and knows it. Continue to differentiate their word choices.

  Now pick the version you like best and add several more dialogue exchanges.

  WRITING GOOD DIALOGUE

  Every year when we begin the Shakespeare unit, my ninth graders take one look at the dialogue and inevitably ask, “Did people really talk that way back then?” And my inevitable answer is “No way.”

  Characters in books, plays, movies, and TV shows don't talk at all like people in real life. Dialogue for real people is full of stammers, stutters, and verbal clutter such as like, as in “He was, like, no way, and I'm like, yeah we are.” Real people ramble when they speak and natter over details no one cares about: “The bus was rushing straight toward me, and I didn't know what to do. I remember that it was Tuesday because my oldest has his lessons on Tuesdays, and I was taking his clarinet to him because he'd forgotten it again. The boy would forget his head if it wasn't attached. So anyway, the bus …” Yeah. Real people rarely say anything worth putting into a book — not without heavy editing, anyway.

  But here's the thing — a lot of people think they speak well. They don't notice the annoying verbal clutter, the rambling, the number of times they say um, or the fact that they start every other sentence with You know. So when they read or hear dialogue that doesn't have any of that stuff in it, it sounds good and natural to them.

  Good dialogue sounds natural without being the slightest bit natural. It's all part of that illusion of reality you're creating. There are a number of ways to create realistic-sounding dialogue, even for unrealistic characters, and a number of traps to avoid.

  SPEECH TICS

  All of us have little verbal tics we use when we speak. As noted above, we end our sentences in yeah? or say Goodness me! a lot or misuse the word literally, as in My boss will literally kill me if I'm late again. Our problem is we use these tics too often, and they would become annoying on the printed page.

  You can and should assign speech tics to your characters. The key is to use them sparingly, as in no more than once or twice per scene. You want to give the flavor of a speech tic without annoying the readers with it.

  Supernatural characters can have their own otherworldly speech tics. We already saw Hogsqueal's odd slang in The Spiderwick Chronicles. Gina, the fashionista vampire in Lucienne Diver's Vamped, has a number of teenage girl speech tics, including the words like and totally. In chapter four, Gina says, “What I mean is, we're, like, beyond the law. Renegades, right? No reflection, so probably no image left behind on pesky security cameras.” The word like doesn't appear again in dialogue for the rest of the chapter — or in the next. Gina's dialogue retains the flavor of teenage dialect without actually being teenage dialect, and it gets the idea across in print very nicely.

  In a more extreme example, Dobby, the house elf from J.K. Rowling's books, avoids pronouns for himself and other people, referring to himself as Dobby instead of I. He also addresses Harry in third person indirectly and by his full name Harry Potter. In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, for example, Dobby says, “Dobby has come to protect Harry Potter, to warn him, even if he does have to shut his ears in the oven door later … Harry Potter must not go back to Hogwarts.” This speech tic makes Dobby's dialogue quite distinctive and, as I said, a little extreme, but Rowling gets away with it because Dobby is an extreme character. She wisely avoids this with her main characters.

  SUPERNATURAL SWEARING

  Okay, this one can be a delicate topic, but it needs addressing. Some novels have explicit swearing in them, and some don't. Which it is depends on what the author has decided is appropriate for the audience. If your book doesn't use swear words, you can safely skip this section.

  In English, swearing revolves around two things: bodily functions and religion. Other languages have other standards for swearing. In China, it's a dreadful insult to call someone a turtle, for example. Swearing is based on the forbidden — in English-speaking cultures we're not allowed to say our swear words because the concepts they're based on are considered impolite, disgusting, or profane.

  This gets tricky when you have a character from another culture, say from the other side of a mystic gate. What if that culture treats sex as a public act but drinking is considered private, and even a little shameful? The tricky part isn't creating the swearwords, actually — the tricky part is getting away with having a character who stubs his toe and yelps, “Drink!”It can be done. You just have to use it consistently and have other characters react appropriately, forcing your reader to accept it.

  One way to create new swearwords is to leave the powerful ones alone but create mild ones for your culture. Oh my God or just God are common mild swearwords i
n our culture (though they used to be much more powerful), and a number of paranormal books have characters swear in the plural, saying Oh my Gods or Gods, or mentioning deities by name instead.

  Finally, in a supernatural setting, swearing might have consequences that go beyond social censure. Not that long ago, people were reluctant to mention the devil's name in case calling it out got his attention. (“Speak of the devil, and he is like to appear.”) The ancient Greeks were equally reluctant to call on the death god Hades for the same reason. J.K. Rowling's characters dislike saying the name of the dread wizard Voldemort aloud, and everyone reacts as if it were a dreadful swearword. And in a world where magic or the gods are real, swearing might create real consequences. In The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White (which is high fantasy but still worth mentioning here), Merlin experiences a moment of frustration toward young Arthur and shouts, “Castor and Pollux blow me to Bermuda!” He instantly vanishes and reappears a moment later, hair and robe wildly disheveled. When Arthur asks what happened, Merlin only replies, “Let that be a lesson to you not to swear.”

  SOUNDING REALISTIC

  Conversation has a natural rhythm, a give-and-take that's not always easy to capture perfectly on paper. Your dialogue should always sound natural. One of the best ways to see if it does is to read it aloud to yourself. Does it sound natural? Could an actor say it on a TV show and sound normal? If not, go back and revise. Try saying the words aloud first and write them down second. Become a one-writer show. You'll need some privacy — or a lack of concern for what others think of you — but you might like the results. However, this rule applies more to human characters who live in our world.