Read Online Writing the Paranormal Novel: Techniques and Exercises for Weaving Supernatural Elements Into Your Story. by Steven Harper - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Steven Harper
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instead of my more usual torn jeans and ancient T-shirt. Under my arm I carried a zippered leather folder.
You want to look nice when you're interviewing the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
When you enter the lobby of the McNamara Federal Building, all your stuff goes through an X-ray machine and you go through a metal detector. The guards are polite, friendly, and watchful. A creaky, shuddering elevator takes you upward, past the Treasury Department and the IRS, to the twenty-sixth floor and the FBI.
In the elevator foyer are posted pictures and descriptions of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted. Osama bin Laden still tops the list, in case you were curious. You have to pass through another metal detector to get into the reception area. This one doesn't give you the chance to empty your pockets, so your keys and change set off the alarm. (I rather suspect it's less for safety and more to alert the receptionists, who are behind bulletproof glass, to your presence.) I walked up to the bulletproof glass with a polite smile on my face and my card in my hand.
The things I do for research.
“But wait!” you say. “I'm writing a paranormal book. I'm making it all up. Why do I need to do research if it's all fake?”
Sorry — even the fake stuff is real. Terry Pratchett once teamed up with artist Stephen Briggs to create The Discworld Mapp , an atlas of Pratchett's famous Discworld. When the project came out, Pratchett was startled to learn that British bookstores had shelved it in the nonfiction section. Why? The stores maintained that although the thing was a map of a fictional place, it was nonetheless a real map. So it isn't all fake, and you must do research. Research can separate a good manuscript from a great one — and mean the difference between rejection and publication.
When you say research , most people think of a pale person sitting at a table paging through a stack of musty books with one hand and taking frantic notes with the other. Sometimes this is the case, and we'll talk about that. And there's also this Internet thing, which is supposedly putting books out of business. We'll talk about that, too. Books can't answer direct questions, though, and oft en as I'm paging through some dusty tome trying to find out just when the ground was broken on Ann Arbor's first cemetery, I find myself saying, “This is the sort of thing I could find out in less than ten seconds if I could just ask someone.” So we'll talk about that. And other resources, to boot.
THE IMPORTANCE OF RESEARCH EVEN IF YOU'RE MAKING IT ALL UP
First of all, when it comes to your world and your magic, you're not really making anything up. You're creating the illusion of reality, and that means you need a logical starting point, a real-world reason for the reader to start believing your illusion. If you make mistakes in your world building, knowledgeable readers will trip over them and be reminded that they're reading a story. You don't want them to remember they're reading a story. You want them to stay immersed in the book and forget that they're reading anything at all.
The more realistic you make the rest of your world, the more likely the reader will go along with the impossible elements. Become familiar with how a castle is constructed, say, and how people with swords really fight (as opposed to how they do it in most movies), and how to make bread in a commercial kitchen. Using real principles of bread baking and castle building and sword fighting lend verisimilitude to your world, even if you're adding magic to it. In other words, your supernatural baker may have magic to help him, but the whole process will feel more real to your reader if you use actual commercial baking as a starting point. And that means you have to look up how it's done.
Also, in a book set closer to home, you might want to use existing settings. Having your main character stroll down a real street in a real town and stop for a bagel at a real bakery adds extra
You want to look nice when you're interviewing the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
When you enter the lobby of the McNamara Federal Building, all your stuff goes through an X-ray machine and you go through a metal detector. The guards are polite, friendly, and watchful. A creaky, shuddering elevator takes you upward, past the Treasury Department and the IRS, to the twenty-sixth floor and the FBI.
In the elevator foyer are posted pictures and descriptions of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted. Osama bin Laden still tops the list, in case you were curious. You have to pass through another metal detector to get into the reception area. This one doesn't give you the chance to empty your pockets, so your keys and change set off the alarm. (I rather suspect it's less for safety and more to alert the receptionists, who are behind bulletproof glass, to your presence.) I walked up to the bulletproof glass with a polite smile on my face and my card in my hand.
The things I do for research.
“But wait!” you say. “I'm writing a paranormal book. I'm making it all up. Why do I need to do research if it's all fake?”
Sorry — even the fake stuff is real. Terry Pratchett once teamed up with artist Stephen Briggs to create The Discworld Mapp , an atlas of Pratchett's famous Discworld. When the project came out, Pratchett was startled to learn that British bookstores had shelved it in the nonfiction section. Why? The stores maintained that although the thing was a map of a fictional place, it was nonetheless a real map. So it isn't all fake, and you must do research. Research can separate a good manuscript from a great one — and mean the difference between rejection and publication.
When you say research , most people think of a pale person sitting at a table paging through a stack of musty books with one hand and taking frantic notes with the other. Sometimes this is the case, and we'll talk about that. And there's also this Internet thing, which is supposedly putting books out of business. We'll talk about that, too. Books can't answer direct questions, though, and oft en as I'm paging through some dusty tome trying to find out just when the ground was broken on Ann Arbor's first cemetery, I find myself saying, “This is the sort of thing I could find out in less than ten seconds if I could just ask someone.” So we'll talk about that. And other resources, to boot.
THE IMPORTANCE OF RESEARCH EVEN IF YOU'RE MAKING IT ALL UP
First of all, when it comes to your world and your magic, you're not really making anything up. You're creating the illusion of reality, and that means you need a logical starting point, a real-world reason for the reader to start believing your illusion. If you make mistakes in your world building, knowledgeable readers will trip over them and be reminded that they're reading a story. You don't want them to remember they're reading a story. You want them to stay immersed in the book and forget that they're reading anything at all.
The more realistic you make the rest of your world, the more likely the reader will go along with the impossible elements. Become familiar with how a castle is constructed, say, and how people with swords really fight (as opposed to how they do it in most movies), and how to make bread in a commercial kitchen. Using real principles of bread baking and castle building and sword fighting lend verisimilitude to your world, even if you're adding magic to it. In other words, your supernatural baker may have magic to help him, but the whole process will feel more real to your reader if you use actual commercial baking as a starting point. And that means you have to look up how it's done.
Also, in a book set closer to home, you might want to use existing settings. Having your main character stroll down a real street in a real town and stop for a bagel at a real bakery adds extra
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