Writing the Paranormal Novel: Techniques and Exercises for Weaving Supernatural Elements Into Your Story. (24 page)

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:

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

I
n 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.

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 higher 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.