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

by Harper, Steven

  Risky or challenging themes also abound: No one gets their dreams. Challenge authority. Religion promotes ignorance. Risky themes are harder to write about. They have the potential to make readers uncomfortable or angry — or maybe just challenge them to think. People remember them after they've put the book down. Risky themes also tend to stretch you, since they're harder to address, perhaps even uncomfortably so. If a theme drags you out of your own comfort zone a little and makes you think a little differently, you've created a risky theme — and you'll grow as a writer. For a real challenge, try writing about a theme that runs counter to what you believe.

  Taboo themes lie at the far end of the continuum. Abuse portrayed in positive terms. God is secretly evil. Racism is a good thing. And others even more explosive. These themes are difficult to handle — readers who enjoy being pushed or challenged may only go so far. They'll be distracted by how upset they are about your theme and not be thinking about how good the writing is. Editors know this and are oft en reluctant to buy explosive books from first-timers — or even established authors. Books with taboo themes that do get published can get quite a lot of attention, both positive and negative.

  In the end, your themes will outlive you. They're what touch people, move them, pull them into new places, and make them remember your story forever.

  WORKING WITH YOUR THEME

  Once you and your theme have been introduced to each other, it becomes a matter of working your theme into the story obviously enough so readers can pick up on it but not so heavily you seem to be working with a sledgehammer. There are a thousand ways to pull this off, some obvious and some more covert. Here, the best way to learn is by example. Read, read, read, and read some more. As I mentioned above, Octavia E. Butler's novel Fledgling deals with the relationship between vampire and prey. It also examines building communities out of nothing. Shori awakens at the beginning of the novel naked and suffering from amnesia. In other words, she has nothing at all, not even her own memory. She meets Wright Hamlin and from that base begins to build a community. Read the novel with that theme in mind to see how Butler does it.

  Ray Bradbury's classic and scary paranormal book Something Wicked This Way Comes deftly and darkly explores the conflicting fears and desires related to growing up — and growing old. It also looks at the power that belief and fear hold over the human mind and body and how to conquer both. There's also a parallel to Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie (sometimes known as Peter and Wendy), another paranormal novel worth reading in the original.

  Outside of the paranormal genre, I suggest looking at John Steinbeck. Of Mice and Men is a short read packed with theme and symbolism, and if you haven't looked at it since high school, now would be a good time to take a look at it again. Steinbeck weaves several themes into the novel: people trying to find their dreams, the consequences of giving up a dream, the idea that everyone is lonely, and that to be a real man, you need a full name and two hands (or perhaps that real men have two hands and a full name). He does all this and more in a compelling story that takes up less than 120 pages.

  VOICE

  Almost every set of submission guidelines from agents and editors says they're looking for authors with a strong voice, a unique voice, or a powerful voice. Guidelines for everything from thrillers to cookbooks mention the importance of voice. My own agent's Web page mentions original new voices. But none of them says exactly what that means.

  Voice is a little hard to pin down. It basically means how you write. It involves the words you choose and the rhythms you write in. It's how your writing sounds on the page. I know, I know — these descriptions actually sound a bit like writing style. Style is related to voice. Voice goes deeper. Voice is also the persona you put on when you start writing.

  When you put words on paper (yeah, yeah — or on computer screen; work with me here), you aren't really being you. You aren't showing the world your true face or personality, though glimmers of your true self will show through. Like an actor strolling onto the stage, you're adopting a different persona, one that combines elements of yourself with a bunch of stuff you've made up. This persona, this voice, is the one who tells the story.

  FIRST PERSON

  An author who writes in first person very naturally slips into a particular voice, since the main character speaks directly to the reader, and the main character will speak differently than the author. Let's compare three different first-person vampire novels. In The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice writes:

  I turned my back on it and let out a terrible roar. I felt its hands close on my shoulders like things forged of metal, and as I went into a last frenzy of struggling, it whipped me around so that its eyes were right before me, wide and dark, and the lips were closed yet still smiling, and then it bent down and I felt the prick of its teeth on my neck.

  Out of all the childhood tales, the old fables, the name came to me, like a drowned thing shooting to the surface of black water and breaking free in the light.

  “Vampire!” I gave one last frantic cry, shoving at the creature with all I had.

  Then there was silence. Stillness.

  Octavia E. Butler's vampire in Fledgling speaks very differently:

  I stared down at the bleeding marks I'd made on his hand, and suddenly I was unable to think about anything else. I ducked my head and licked away the blood, licked the wound I had made. He tensed, almost pulling his hand away. Then he stopped and seemed to relax. He let me take his hand between my own. I looked at him, saw him glancing at me, felt the car zigzag a little on the road.

  He frowned and pulled away from me, all the while looking uncertain, unhappy. I caught his hand again between mine and held it. I felt him try to pull away. He shook me, actually lifting me into the air a little, trying to get away from me, but I didn't let go. I licked at the blood welling up where my teeth had cut him.

  And the voice of Lucienne Diver's young vampire in Vamped plunges into a completely new direction:

  “You're right,” I said, thinking feverishly. “I do need a bite to eat. And I know just the thing.

  Based on how quickly [Bobby] stepped back, I'm pretty sure he thought I meant him, but that wasn't it. Mom and Dad had been big with the child-rearing clichés. When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade had been a favorite of theirs, and I guess it must have sunk in a little. All I needed was a place to shower and change, a stylist, a mani-pedi, and some skin cream and I'd be as good as new. I could even start my own entourage for touch-ups. Better than any mirror. I tried to believe it.

  Three vampires, three voices. Rice, writing as Lestat, uses an abundance of figurative language. Similes and metaphors dominate her work, competing with an abundance of adjectives. Her word choice leans toward florid. Butler, writing as Shori, uses a more spare, straightforward voice with little in the way of description and more focus on action. Shori speaks with more verbs than adjectives. Her words are plainer, leaner. Diver, writing as Gina, tends to speak in short, punchy bursts. Her clauses are short, and she avoids prepositional phrases that might lengthen her sentences, giving Gina a breathless voice appropriate to a teenaged fashionista.

  Did Diver think in those terms? I'm imagining her sitting at her key-board, brow furrowed, finger hovered over the Delete key. “Oops,” she mutters. “Used too many prepositional phrases in this section. Need to cut out a few.”

  I doubt it. More likely, Diver (and Rice and Butler) did her best to think like her main character, learn how to speak like her main character, and put her main character's words on paper. The words came out that way because Diver (and the others) knew her character so well, she could speak in the character's voice.

  A unique voice evolves from creating a unique viewpoint character and then getting to know the viewpoint character from the inside out. You know how some married couples can finish each other's sentences? That's the kind of relationship you need with your main character. That deep understanding will allow you to develop the voice.

  And no, you don't need to
have that understanding before you start writing. Your first draft is all about getting to know your main character (or characters). As you progress through the draft, your knowledge of the character will deepen and the voice will strengthen. Then, when you go back for revisions, you'll be able to catch inconsistencies and change what the character or narrator says so the voice becomes consistent.

  THIRD PERSON

  There's certainly a voice for third person novels, too. It's sometimes called the author voice or narrator voice. It's not that different from a first-person voice — the person is a narrator who's telling the story, and this narrator has a voice. The narrator may or may not be the author of the book. Usually it isn't. The narrator voice is oft en similar to the viewpoint character.

  Naomi Novik demonstrates a mastery of third-person voice in her Temeraire books. She uses two distinct narrator voices, one for the dragon Temeraire and one for Will Laurence. It's easy to tell them apart at a glance. This passage from Victory of Eagles comes from Temeraire's point of view. The young dragon has been imprisoned for treason:

  [Temeraire] was quite sure he and Laurence had done as they ought, in taking the cure to France, and no-one sensible could disagree; but just in case, Temeraire had steeled himself to meet with either disapproval or contempt, and he had worked out several very fine arguments in his defense. Most important, of course, it was just a cowardly, sneaking way of fighting; if the Government wished to beat Napoleon, they ought to fight directly, and not make his dragons sick to try to make him easy to defeat; as if British dragons could not beat French dragons, without cheating.

  Compare that to this passage a few pages later from the point of view of Will Laurence, imprisoned for the same crime:

  There had been no defense to make, and no comfort but the arid certainty that he had done as he ought; that he could have done nothing else. That was no comfort at all, but that it saved him from the pain of regret; he could not regret what he had done. He could not have let ten thousand dragons, most of them wholly uninvolved in the war, be murdered for his nation's advantage.

  In these two passages we have the same event told from two different points of view, and two different voices. The narrator who tells Temeraire's story speaks with Temeraire's voice, really. Novik injects a naïve arrogance into Temeraire's point of view. Temeraire also thinks about the cowardly sneakiness of using plague in warfare. Laurence, on the other hand, speaks with an older, more cynical voice. Novik — or Laurence — avoids self-congratulatory language, and his thoughts wander to the fact that he had done the right thing but was still going to pay for it. Temeraire is outraged at their situation where Laurence is resigned to it, and it shows in their individual voices.

  You don't have to switch voice whenever you switch point of view. However, different voices within the same book is one of those things that can distinguish a good book from a great one, or make it more memorable in the mind of an editor.

  I was going to say that switching voices in a book will always distinguish a good book from a great one, but really, plenty of authors maintain a single narrator voice throughout their work. Terry Pratchett's voice never wavers in any of his Discworld novels, no matter what character he's writing about, and the style of humor is distinctly his own. Philip Pullman also uses the same voice whether he's writing from Lyra's or Will's point of view in The Subtle Knife. The real key is to make your voice distinct, which we'll talk about in a moment.

  FIRST AND THIRD PERSON TOGETHER

  A few authors inject themselves directly into their books. They make it clear that they're telling a story by addressing the reader directly or using a narrator I. This usually shows up in books aimed at younger readers, since it creates the illusion that someone is telling the reader a story instead of the reader actually reading it. Edward Eager uses this type of voice in Half Magic:

  Katharine was the middle child, of docile disposition and a comfort to her mother. She knew she was a comfort, and docile, because she'd heard her mother say so. And the others knew she was too, by now, because ever since that day Katharine would keep boasting about it, until Jane declared she would utter a piercing shriek and fall over dead if she heard another word about it. This will give you some idea of what Jane and Katharine were like.

  Eager is talking to us. His voice is casual and uses the repetition common to oral storytellers. The last sentence clinches it — we're listening to a story, not reading.

  Eager addresses the reader rarely throughout the book: just oft en enough to remind us he's telling us a story, and not so oft en that his voice becomes intrusive.

  THE INVISIBLE NARRATOR

  One of the harder voices to pull off is the invisible narrator. Sometimes called transparent prose, this is an author voice that tries to fade into the background. It's kind of the opposite of the combination first and third person above — the author tries to disappear as much as possible.

  Brendan Mull uses this voice in Fablehaven, as we see here:

  Seth set the mug on the dresser. Taking a calming breath, he silently prayed that the tarantula would be gone and the fairy would be there. He slid the drawer open.

  A hideous little creature glared up from inside the jar. Baring pointy teeth, it hissed at him. Covered in brown leather skin, it stood taller than his middle finger. It was bald, with tattered ears, a narrow chest, a pot belly, and shriveled, spindly limbs. The lips were froglike, the eyes a glossy black, the nose a pair of slits above the mouth.

  “What did you do to the fairy?” Seth asked.

  Mull doesn't talk to the reader and doesn't adopt a particular point of view with his voice. He barely gets inside Seth's point of view, in fact, with only a single reference to what Seth is thinking or feeling. The advantage to this voice is that the narrator never gets in the way of the story. The disadvantage is that transparent voice can come across as dry. Writers who use it need to make up for the dryness by adding other color. Mull uses plenty of magic and action to keep his story moving so his readers don't notice the transparent voice.

  EXERCISE

  Take a passage from a book you love and change it into the voice of another book you love. You can't change the events — only the word choice. For example, take the opener of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and retell it as if Neil Gaiman had written it for The Graveyard Book instead. For a real challenge, use someone like Shakespeare or Christopher Marlowe as one of the authors. If you're part of a writers' group or have other friends you share your work with, read it aloud to them and see if they can guess which author you converted the voice to. In a group setting, you could pick one book that everyone has read and have everyone convert the voice to a different famous author. Read the pieces aloud and see if everyone can guess whom the “new” author is.

  EXERCISE

  Take your favorite third-person narrative and convert a scene to first person. How might George from Of Mice and Men tell the story? Or Lennie? How might Cinderella tell her own story? What might her voice sound like?

  KEEN ON VOICE

  As I said above, almost every agent or editor will say they're looking for fiction with a unique or interesting voice. Several say that a good voice will grab their eye above anything else. Why are they so keen on voice?

  The reason is that a unique or interesting or quirky voice can really make a book. In chapter five, I pointed out that the hero's quest is nearly ubiquitous in paranormal (and a lot of nonsupernatural) books. A lot of other elements crop up over and over again. Regardless of what twist you put on your vampires, they're still vampires. No matter what new element you introduce into your ghost story, it's still a ghost story. One thing that can be unique, regardless of the story type, is the author's voice. A fascinating voice can get the reader to overlook other problems, or even fail to notice things like clichés entirely. Remember back in chapter five when we talked about reasons editors buy clichés even when they claim they don't want any? A cool voice is another reason an editor will overlook clichés and buy
a book. The unique voice overcomes the tired clichés.

  So you really do want to work on creating and developing a fascinating author voice for your book. It's your main selling point.

  HOW TO FIND A VOICE

  There's no one way or formula to finding a voice. This process is mostly a matter of experimenting, playing around until you find something that clicks or makes sense to you or just hangs together in a way that sounds great. Here are some things you can do to find that voice. Some are exercises, some are techniques.

  LET YOURSELF WRITE BADLY

  Ray Bradbury, famous for both his supernatural and his science fiction work, once said that there are a million bad words in every writer — you just have to keep writing until they're all out of your system. So give yourself permission to write badly. Get those words down, even if they're crap. Don't judge what you've written yet. Keep going and see what you're going to say next. A voice will begin to emerge.

  WRITE FAST AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS

  Bull-rush your way forward. Pound those words out and don't look back. Write quickly, even if it's nonsensical. Don't edit (yet). Write like you're writing journal entries or a letters to a friend under deadline — no time to stop. Maybe some quirky turns of phrase will come flying out of your fingers and develop into the voice you're looking for. Or maybe a character will develop in an unexpected and interesting direction. In any case, save the editing for later and see what you can come up with now.