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

by Harper, Steven

  LET YOUR CHARACTERS TALK TO YOU THROUGH THE COMPUTER

  Pretend you're the character and start typing in that character's voice, even if your novel is going to be in third person. Don't worry about developing the story yet — just let the character ramble at you while you write down what you hear. (And don't fret if you find yourself talking back, either. A number of my writer friends do it, as do I. In fact, you'd might be surprised at how many professional authors sit in little rooms talking to people who don't exist.) Write letters, journal entries, trial transcripts, sessions with the character's therapist, or what the character says aloud when no one is listening. You might develop a voice by becoming someone else for a while.

  EXPERIMENT

  Go there. Do that. Be silly. Be stupid. Be florid. Be pretentious. You won't know what it looks like until you write it down. No one will see it except you, so why should you care if your second-grade niece could probably have done better? Every bit might be dreadful, or one of the experiments might turn up something worth keeping — but you'll never know unless you give yourself the freedom to try it.

  SAVE EVERYTHING

  Never, ever throw anything away. Early notes, character sketches, the material you generate doing any of the above — keep every word. I can't count the number of times I've gone back through old material on a work in progress and realized I'd overlooked something good, whether it was an idea, a turn of phrase, or a bit of characterization. Ultimately, it all contributes to voice, so keep it.

  CHANGE THE POINT OF VIEW

  If the writing seems dull or stale, try a shift in the viewpoint. If it's first person, change it to third and let you, the author, speak. If it's third person, change it to first and let the character speak. See what impact it has on the story — and on your voice.

  You can also try shifting to a different character's point of view. Since every character has a different way of seeing the world and a different voice, try writing the same scene through the eyes of two different characters. Make sure the voice is different, and see which one you like better.

  WRITE WHAT YOU REALLY WANT TO WRITE

  Write the themes you really want to explore. The stuff that gets under your skin, or makes you giddy, or pisses you off. Too many new writers try to gauge the market and only write what they think is commercial so they can break in. This is usually a bad idea — the book produced by this kind of thinking will probably be dull and lackluster. Don't dance around what you really want to say, and don't worry what your family or friends or co-workers will think about your book. Should anyone ask why you wrote such a thing, you can say, “Hey, I wrote a book. What did you do last summer?”

  If you need to, switch genres. If you don't think that relationships can have happy endings, don't try to write a paranormal romance. If you secretly think everything will come out all right in the end in real life, what are you doing trying to write horror? Figure out what idea revs your motor and then build a story around it. The emotional response from you, the writer, will stimulate voice — and engage the reader.

  PART IV: BANISHING THE BOOK

  CHAPTER 14: The Reality

  Even the most high-flown paranormal novel has to deal with the real world eventually. We need to get that book out the door and into the hands of someone who will publish it. There are a number of points and pitfalls in the process to examine.

  Years ago when I started writing novels, you hit up editors with a proposal package that included a twenty-page synopsis and the first three chapters. If you were lucky, the editor wrote back and said, “Send me the full manuscript,” which you did. If you were really lucky, the editor called you to say, “I want to buy your book.” You thanked the editor profusely, hung up the phone, and hunted madly for an agent.

  Things have changed.

  Before we go any further, I'm assuming you've finished your first novel. You've done the first draft, second draft, more rewrites, and a final polish, and your book is ready to go. This is a requirement before you can send anything out because it's pretty much a given that no editor will offer a contract to a first-timer who doesn't have a full manuscript yet, and no agent will offer to represent one, either. There's a simple reason for this — no matter how strong your initial proposal may be, the editor or agent has no way of knowing if you have the staying power to finish the whole thing. A lot of new authors — in fact, the vast majority of them — never complete a book. (This means that actually finishing a novel puts you ahead of 90 percent of everyone else, so once you finish, you're allowed a few moments of self-congratulation.)

  Once your book is the best you can make it, you're not going to submit it quite yet. First, you need to put together a short treatment.

  HOW TO TREAT A TREATMENT

  Computers and the Internet have largely destroyed the twenty-page synopsis. Word processing made the physical act of writing much easier, and people who wouldn't have the patience for it before are now producing 100,000 words. And they all want to send them out. Editors and agents are inundated with more submissions than ever. Couple that with massive layoffs in publishing that require everyone in the business to do the work of three people, and your average editor has much less time for reading. Treatments have become much more common as a result.

  A treatment consists of three to five double-spaced pages. It sketches out in broad terms what happens in your book. Think of it as an expanded version of the back-cover blurb. You don't have much room, so you need to hit the ground running. It might begin:

  Life is conspiring against Henry Bayfield. His ex-wife has filed for sole custody of their daughter, he was recently bitten by a were-wolf, and the guy in front of him at the bank has just pulled a gun. As the customers dive for cover, Henry fingers the gun in his own pocket and wonders why be bothered to get up this morning.

  You'll notice the total lack of explanation about who Henry Bayfield is. It's death to start with something like Henry Bayfield is a new werewolf with a nasty ex-wife. Instead, a treatment focuses on what the character does, as in the above example.

  As the treatment progresses, you'll have to condense greatly:

  … Henry barely escapes the bank, but now the SPCA is hounding him. Some time later, he meets Farrah Finn, an old high school flame who seems ready to reignite. They hide out together in a series of bad motels while dodging the SPCA and the hit men sent by Henry's ex-wife, and their relationship deepens …

  The ending can be done in broad terms as well:

  … In the end, as the hit men close in, Henry is forced to choose between Farrah, his daughter, and his new feelings of self-worth.

  In three to five pages, you don't have much room to explain symbolism, theme, or character development. That's the way it goes. Focus on the main plot points and count on the sample pages to draw the editor in.

  SAMPLE PAGES

  You'll need to send a certain amount of your manuscript as a sample to showcase how fantastic your book is. Usually this consists of the first three chapters or so, but in case your chapters are extra short or long — or you don't use chapters — we're looking at the first fifty or sixty pages, or about 15,000 words.

  Here's a big tip: End your sample chapters in some kind of cliffh anger. You don't have to leave your protagonist dangling over a pit of lava, but try to end with something that makes the reader naturally want to continue. You could leave off in mid-dialogue, or with something interesting just about to happen. The goal is for you to make the reader try to turn the page and be annoyed that there's nothing left to turn. If you get that reaction, you're likely to get a request for the full manuscript.

  Format your sample manuscript as follows:

  Double-space it. Don't use 1.5 spacing to save paper or space. Double-spacing makes your manuscript easy to read for people who read all day. 1.5 spacing will put the reader in a cranky mood, and that's the last thing you want.

  Put a 1″ margin all around the page. Be careful — some word processing programs have a 1½″ margin as
a default, so check.

  The only acceptable fonts are Courier (or Courier New) and Times New Roman. That's it. Some people will go so far as to claim that Courier is the One True Font. I've never heard of anyone getting rejected because they used Times New Roman (I use it myself), but I have heard of plenty of people who got rejected because they used Arial, Verdana, or Love Potion Number 9. Don't use them. Editors hate Arial because a 1, j, l, and i all look alike. They hate other fonts because they're flat-out hard to read.

  To indicate italicized text, you should underline. Bolded text should be done in bold.

  In the upper left corner of the first page, put your real name. Under that, put your address. Under that, put your phone number. Under that, your e-mail address. It doesn't matter whether this particular section is double-spaced or not.

  Space down a couple times. In the center of the line and in all capitals goes THE TITLE OF THE BOOK. Beneath that in normal text goes the word “by” and your name — or your pen name, if you're using one, as in “by Steven Harper.”

  Skip another line, then start your sample pages.

  In the upper right corner of every page except the first goes a header with the following information: Last name/Part of Book Title/page number. An example looks like this: Harper/ Paranormal Novel/12. The page number goes at the top of the page in case someone drops your manuscript and accidentally mixes up the pages. It's easier to reorder loose pages when the numbers are at the top.

  Do not bind, clip, staple, or otherwise fasten your manuscript in any way. Editors and agents don't want to fold pages over a staple.

  Use the same format for your treatment.

  Now that everything is formatted and ready to go, you're actually going to hold off on submitting it. Save it on your computer, but don't print it out yet. Why? Because not all agents or editors will want to see the whole thing. Set it aside — we're going to figure out who might want to read it.

  FINDING SOMEONE TO SUBMIT TO

  At one time, few agents read unsolicited manuscripts. (Unsolicited = one they didn't ask for.) Then came the Great Anthrax Scare. Remember those days? Two people got anthrax packages in the mail post-9/11, and the FBI told us to be suspicious of strange packages. The odds that any of us would actually receive anthrax were worse than winning a multistate lottery, but never mind — we needed to be scared.

  One group that regularly receives strange packages by mail is (was) book publishers. Aspiring authors sent them boxes and padded envelopes every single day. Claiming to be fearful of employee safety, nearly all publishers announced their editors would no longer accept unsolicited manuscripts.

  A few weeks later, the anthrax scare died down. The FBI said the mail was safe. But mysteriously, editors didn't resume reading unsolicited manuscripts. With amazing deft ness, they foisted that little chore onto agents, who became the new gatekeepers to publishing.

  Pre-anthrax, you submitted to an editor first, got an offer, and then found an agent. Nowadays things have largely reversed themselves — you submit to agents, find one who'll represent you, and then get an offer from a publisher. This is not a hard-and-fast rule, though. A few publishers still accept unsolicited manuscripts, and you can submit to them, too.

  The question is, how do you find an editor or an agent?

  AGENTS

  One way to find an agent is through the Association of Authors' Representatives. As of this writing, their Web site can be found at http://aaron-line.org. A great feature of their site is a search function that lets you hunt agents by what sort of material they represent. You can type in urban fantasy or vampire or YA fantasy and it'll generate a list of agents who handle that genre, along with their contact information. You don't have to be an AAR member to use their site.

  All members of the AAR have to conform to certain business practices. They don't charge reading fees, they don't charge commissions in advance, and so on. AAR agents aren't necessarily good agents, but they're more likely to be honest agents. Many AAR agents have their own Web sites, so you can check to see if they're taking submissions, what format they want, what sort of stuff they do and don't want to see, and so on. Always, always check the agent's Web page if she has one and follow her submission instructions to the letter.

  Another place to look is among authors. Authors will sometimes mention their agents' names in acknowledgments or on their Web sites. If your genre and/or writing style is similar to a particular author's, search around and see if you can figure out who the author's agent is — you might be a good fit. Don't ask the author for an introduction, though. That's a social no-no unless you and the author are already good friends and/or the author has reason to think his agent might be interested.

  PUBLISHERS AND EDITORS

  A few publishers still take unsolicited manuscripts. A quick way to figure out who might take your novel is to examine your own bookshelf — most authors write the sort of thing they like to read. Grab three or four books similar to yours. By similar I mean “in the same genre and style.” Lots of publishers put out vampire books, but is yours a horror novel, a vampire romance, a vampire historical, an urban vampire, vampire humor, or what? You wouldn't want to send a vampire horror novel to Harlequin, for example, even though Harlequin publishes vampire stories; Harlequin wants vampire romance. When you have a handful of books similar to yours, check the inside cover or the spine to see who the publisher is. Warm up your Internet browser and hit their Web site. Somewhere on their site, they might have a contact us or submissions or author information link that will lead you to information on how and where to send a submission. You can also just check publisher Web sites cold and see if they take submissions.

  If you strike gold, make sure you get the name of a specific person to send the manuscript to. In cases where no name is listed on the site, you're allowed to call the publisher's office to ask. You won't talk to the editor anyway — you'll talk to a secretary or assistant: “Hi! Your Web site says you accept unsolicited manuscripts, and I wanted to know the name and title of the person I can send one to.” You want a name because nameless manuscripts go to the bottom of the mailroom pile, while named manuscripts are more likely to hit a specific person's desk.

  The publisher's Web site will also list what genres they accept and whether or not they take (or prefer) electronic submissions, as opposed to print ones.

  Once you have your list of potential agents and editors, you start the query process.

  QUERIES

  For agents and editors, the query process is much the same, though for simplicity's sake, I'm going to talk as if you're hunting down an agent. If you've gone through the steps above, you've already checked each one's Web site and you know what they want to see. The vast majority will want a query letter first.

  Query letters are shorter than treatments. You describe your book and introduce yourself; the agent can decide whether the project is worth pursuing. Query letters save everyone time. The agent can read a dozen queries in the time it takes to go over a single synopsis, and queries are a handy way to weed out inappropriate material. See, overeager authors hit up the wrong agents all the time, and agents who don't handle science fiction and clearly say so on their Web sites still end up fielding manuscripts with hyperspace in them. Query letters let agents weed that stuff out faster.

  A query letter follows standard business letter format. After the “Dear Ms. Smith” greeting, plunge right in with a one-or two-paragraph description of the book. This is back-cover blurb stuff, and you want to hook the agent's interest right away. Don't start by introducing yourself. That's dull and boring, and the agent wants to see if you can grab an audience. Introductions don't grab anyone.

  In the next paragraph, explain why you're sending the query to this particular agent. See, you always want to tailor the query letter to the agent so the agent knows you're not just mass-blasting queries (even though you probably are — it keeps up a polite fiction). You can say you found the agent's Web page and figured the agent mig
ht be interested. Or if you know the agent represents a particular author whose fiction is similar to yours, you can say, “I like what you've done for Mercedes Lackey's career and thought you might be interested in my work as well” or “I really enjoy your client Esther Friesner's books, and I write in a similar vein.” If you met the agent at a conference or convention, now's the time to bring that up. (“It was a pleasure meeting you at MegaCon last month. We talked about my book after the ‘Where Have All the Dragons Gone?' panel, and you gave me your card.”)

  In the final paragraph, give info about yourself: “By way of introduction, my short stories have appeared in …” If you have no writing credits or anything about yourself that relates directly to your book, skip this part. The agent doesn't care that you live in a tree house or that your dog is named Mr. Wuzzles. It's okay if you don't have any short story credits. Really. Time was that magazines were considered the training ground for novelists, and short story sales were just about the only way to get anyone to look at your novel, but once again times have changed. Agents only care how good your writing is now, not how good it was last year.