Kris Neri's Blog - Posts Tagged "magical-alienation"
So you want to inject the paranormal into your writing...
Crossing paranormal with other fictional categories — be they mystery, romance or general fiction — couldn’t get any hotter. But there are pitfalls those new to paranormal writing can easily fall into, which can doom a manuscript. Here are some tips to help you avoid those pitfalls:
1. The worst mistake newbies can make is thinking the supernatural elements are just tack-ons. The paranormal aspects must an integral part of the storyline. If you can imagine removing the magical elements, while telling the same story and having it turn out the same way — you’re not using it right.
2. Readers need to understand the rules governing the magical aspects of the world you’re depicting. You can explain those rules — and whatever consequences might result — either explicitly or by allowing the reader to absorb their essence by showing them at work. Most writers use a combination of both. Some can be accomplished by including a character that encounters the paranormal for the first time. The reader can learn how these rules function as the character does, and the reader can share her surprise.
3. You need to decide whether the magical aspects are known to the general populace of your world, or not. Either way works, but there is a built-in level of conflict if your paranormal beings have to struggle to hide their natures. In the Harry Potter novels, the muggles — non-paranormal beings — are generally unaware of the wizardry being performed in their midst, which provides lots of opportunities for conflict, as well as humor.
4. Characters who possess supernatural abilities must be seen using those abilities, or we need to know why not. For instance, Annabelle Haggerty, the Celtic goddess/FBI agent protagonist of my Magical Mystery, MAGICAL ALIENATION, needs to be careful how much magic she performs at the FBI, where she must hide her secret nature. But I once worked with a writing client who described her protagonist as telepathic with animals, yet the character never displayed any telepathy in her frustrating interactions with animals, until the three-quarter point of the novel, for no reason that was ever explained. That’s what you want to avoid doing.
5. Magical characters must still be real characters, as richly developed as those not possessing paranormal abilities, yet not be perfect beings, either. Your novel should contain challenging personal growth arcs for these characters, too, even if they also have some extraordinary abilities.
6. Just as everything comes together in the climax of any other novel, it must in a paranormal work. The solution your protagonist employs to meet her goal must rely on both her natural and supernatural abilities, to bring about a solution that works on both levels. She should also overcome her personal challenges, achieving personal growth as she achieves her story-objective.
7. Most importantly, even magical beings have to earn their successes. If you allow your protagonist to finalize the action in the climax with the effortless waving of a wand, or some solution not inherent within the storyline, you will lose your reader’s respect. If you change the magical rules you’ve already established to allow your character an effortless solution, you’ll also lose that reader. For the reader to continue to suspect disbelief, she must trust in the integrity of your novel. If you want to get around some generally accepted paranormal beliefs, find a realistic way to do it. In the TWILIGHT series, for example, Stephenie Meyer circumvented the belief that vampires can’t go out during the day without burning up by choosing a locale that’s heavily overcast.
Writing paranormal can be extra challenging because so much has to be integrated, and it must work equally well on multiple levels. But it’s great fun to write, and these tips should speed you on your way toward writing paranormal cross-category success.
Magical Alienation: A Samantha Brennan and Annabelle Haggerty Magical Mystery
1. The worst mistake newbies can make is thinking the supernatural elements are just tack-ons. The paranormal aspects must an integral part of the storyline. If you can imagine removing the magical elements, while telling the same story and having it turn out the same way — you’re not using it right.
2. Readers need to understand the rules governing the magical aspects of the world you’re depicting. You can explain those rules — and whatever consequences might result — either explicitly or by allowing the reader to absorb their essence by showing them at work. Most writers use a combination of both. Some can be accomplished by including a character that encounters the paranormal for the first time. The reader can learn how these rules function as the character does, and the reader can share her surprise.
3. You need to decide whether the magical aspects are known to the general populace of your world, or not. Either way works, but there is a built-in level of conflict if your paranormal beings have to struggle to hide their natures. In the Harry Potter novels, the muggles — non-paranormal beings — are generally unaware of the wizardry being performed in their midst, which provides lots of opportunities for conflict, as well as humor.
4. Characters who possess supernatural abilities must be seen using those abilities, or we need to know why not. For instance, Annabelle Haggerty, the Celtic goddess/FBI agent protagonist of my Magical Mystery, MAGICAL ALIENATION, needs to be careful how much magic she performs at the FBI, where she must hide her secret nature. But I once worked with a writing client who described her protagonist as telepathic with animals, yet the character never displayed any telepathy in her frustrating interactions with animals, until the three-quarter point of the novel, for no reason that was ever explained. That’s what you want to avoid doing.
5. Magical characters must still be real characters, as richly developed as those not possessing paranormal abilities, yet not be perfect beings, either. Your novel should contain challenging personal growth arcs for these characters, too, even if they also have some extraordinary abilities.
6. Just as everything comes together in the climax of any other novel, it must in a paranormal work. The solution your protagonist employs to meet her goal must rely on both her natural and supernatural abilities, to bring about a solution that works on both levels. She should also overcome her personal challenges, achieving personal growth as she achieves her story-objective.
7. Most importantly, even magical beings have to earn their successes. If you allow your protagonist to finalize the action in the climax with the effortless waving of a wand, or some solution not inherent within the storyline, you will lose your reader’s respect. If you change the magical rules you’ve already established to allow your character an effortless solution, you’ll also lose that reader. For the reader to continue to suspect disbelief, she must trust in the integrity of your novel. If you want to get around some generally accepted paranormal beliefs, find a realistic way to do it. In the TWILIGHT series, for example, Stephenie Meyer circumvented the belief that vampires can’t go out during the day without burning up by choosing a locale that’s heavily overcast.
Writing paranormal can be extra challenging because so much has to be integrated, and it must work equally well on multiple levels. But it’s great fun to write, and these tips should speed you on your way toward writing paranormal cross-category success.
Magical Alienation: A Samantha Brennan and Annabelle Haggerty Magical Mystery
Good news and good times
WAHOO!! I just learned that my latest Samantha Brennan & Annabelle Haggerty Magical Mystery, MAGICAL ALIENATION, has received a Lefty Award nomination for the Best Humorous Mystery of 2011, by the Left Coast Crime 2012 convention! I’m absolutely dancing on air. Writing isn’t about awards, it’s about doing the work we love. But it is exciting and rewarding when our readers and fellow writers choose our novels for special notice. Thanks to everyone who made this possible. Congratulations to Donna Andrews, Rita Lakin, Jess Lourey, Cindy Sample & John Vorhau, my fellow nominees.
The Lefty Award nomination for MAGICAL ALIENATION makes the Southern California tour I’ll be embarking on this week extra special. Not only will it be great to see my old friends, but really gratifying to share this milestone with them. You can see the tour dates and times here:
http://www.krisneri.com/appearances.html
Despite the long drive from Northern Arizona to Southern California, I’m really excited about this tour, not just because I’ll get to see old friends, but because it means I’m going home. Although where I live now is also home.
What exactly does “home” mean? I’ve heard it defined something like: “The place where, when you show up there, they have to take you in.” Boy, does that sound comforting. But it doesn’t apply to me. Though I spent most of my adult life in California, I have no living relatives there, nobody who has to take me in.
I know lots of people — all better heeled than I am — who own multiple houses, meaning multiple places are home for them. While I wish I could also afford to have homes in both locales, I’m not sure I would handle it as well as others I see. I suspect that when I was in one house, I would find myself needing the stuff I left behind in the other. The clothes, the books, the little touches that turn it from a generic shell to the much-loved surroundings of the ones who transformed that house into their very personal space. I guess it’s just as well that I don’t have that two-house problem after all.
I’m a Cancer, and we crabs tend to need our personal shells around us. We’re homebodies. I guess to me “home” translates into familiarity and comfort. A place that reflects all the things that define me, those things I can name and those that are indefinable even for me. Both the personal surroundings and the larger space in which I feel safe. Where everything I see reminds me of the good times I enjoyed there, and even the tough times I knew, which have helped shape me into the person I’ve become.
So, yes, Southern California will always feel like home to me. I know when familiar places come into view, I will feel an excited kinship again, as I do every time I return, no matter how long I’ve been away.
And I also know that when I return here to Arizona, when my car reaches the crest of Arizona’s 17 Freeway outside of Camp Verde, with the panorama of Sedona and the Verde Valley spread out before me, I will also feel that same sense of belonging.
It’s actually a pretty good thing, having multiple places that feel like home, even if I can’t fully explain what that means.
How about you? Where is home? What does that mean to you?
Magical Alienation: A Samantha Brennan and Annabelle Haggerty Magical Mystery
The Lefty Award nomination for MAGICAL ALIENATION makes the Southern California tour I’ll be embarking on this week extra special. Not only will it be great to see my old friends, but really gratifying to share this milestone with them. You can see the tour dates and times here:
http://www.krisneri.com/appearances.html
Despite the long drive from Northern Arizona to Southern California, I’m really excited about this tour, not just because I’ll get to see old friends, but because it means I’m going home. Although where I live now is also home.
What exactly does “home” mean? I’ve heard it defined something like: “The place where, when you show up there, they have to take you in.” Boy, does that sound comforting. But it doesn’t apply to me. Though I spent most of my adult life in California, I have no living relatives there, nobody who has to take me in.
I know lots of people — all better heeled than I am — who own multiple houses, meaning multiple places are home for them. While I wish I could also afford to have homes in both locales, I’m not sure I would handle it as well as others I see. I suspect that when I was in one house, I would find myself needing the stuff I left behind in the other. The clothes, the books, the little touches that turn it from a generic shell to the much-loved surroundings of the ones who transformed that house into their very personal space. I guess it’s just as well that I don’t have that two-house problem after all.
I’m a Cancer, and we crabs tend to need our personal shells around us. We’re homebodies. I guess to me “home” translates into familiarity and comfort. A place that reflects all the things that define me, those things I can name and those that are indefinable even for me. Both the personal surroundings and the larger space in which I feel safe. Where everything I see reminds me of the good times I enjoyed there, and even the tough times I knew, which have helped shape me into the person I’ve become.
So, yes, Southern California will always feel like home to me. I know when familiar places come into view, I will feel an excited kinship again, as I do every time I return, no matter how long I’ve been away.
And I also know that when I return here to Arizona, when my car reaches the crest of Arizona’s 17 Freeway outside of Camp Verde, with the panorama of Sedona and the Verde Valley spread out before me, I will also feel that same sense of belonging.
It’s actually a pretty good thing, having multiple places that feel like home, even if I can’t fully explain what that means.
How about you? Where is home? What does that mean to you?
Magical Alienation: A Samantha Brennan and Annabelle Haggerty Magical Mystery
