Writing the Paranormal Novel: Techniques and Exercises for Weaving Supernatural Elements Into Your Story. (23 page)

Unlike many other antagonists, the Jilted One may not necessarily want to kill the protagonist. She may settle for humiliation or the loss of the protagonist's powers or even the death of someone close to the protagonist. In some ways, this makes her even more dangerous. Looking all the way back to Greek mythology, we can find the Jilted One in King Menelaus, who declared a decade-long war on Troy solely to pry his beautiful wife from the arms of that idiot Paris.

The One-Upper wants more — more power, more money, more toys. Enough is never enough. Each conquest is nothing more than a stepping-stone to the next one. The One-Upper oft en controls vast resources or magical power, which gives him a tremendous advantage when it comes to persuading people to work for him, or corrupting them into it.

This character is tricky to write. One-Uppers exist all over the place in the real world — any number of politicians and businesspeople fit the mold — but in fiction it's easy to let them fall into caricature. Be sure you know
why
your One-Upper is so obsessed with having more. (Actually, you should know why
any
antagonist wants
anything
, but it's especially true in this case.) Perhaps he's actually insecure and afraid of losing everything because of certain events in his upbringing. Or perhaps his mother was a relentless perfectionist who never let anything he did be good enough. Count Magpyr from Terry Pratchett's
Carpe Jugulum
is one example of a One-Upper, and so is the White Witch from C.S. Lewis's
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
.

The Lunatic has gone cuckoo bananas. Perhaps she was born, or perhaps she was made. In any case, she doesn't respond to pain or fear or love the way normal humans do, and her goals seem to make no sense. As a result, the heroes never know what she'll do next. Yet, in the end, every move she makes turns out to have a careful reason.

This is a difficult antagonist to handle well, and it requires a fair amount of research. You can't really throw a bunch of random, nasty behavior together and get a workable Lunatic antagonist — many of your readers know too much about psychology and mental health, and they'll call you on it. Instead, you'll need to find a psychological diagnosis, learn how people with that particular affliction think, and work that into the character. You can take some literary license. In fact, you'll have to — very few truly insane people would be functional enough to give a supernatural protagonist much trouble.

Also remember that while the Lunatic's actions might look loopy to everyone else, they make complete sense to
her
. This means you, the author, need to know why she's scared of butter, why she won't use the Internet on Sundays, and why she's obsessed with making zombie black cats.

A subset of this antagonist is the Raving Lunatic, the one who's gone completely round the bend. Werewolves do this every month, and some vampires do it if they get hungry enough.

Victor Frankenstein from Mary Shelley's famous novel arguably fits this type of antagonist. Jack Torrance from Stephen King's
The Shining
starts out as a Regular Joe protagonist and ends as a Lunatic antagonist.

The Selfish One has some kind of personal problem and will do anything to solve it. Nothing and nobody else matters. If people have to die, so be it. If he has to ruin lives, that's fine, too. Many vampire antagonists fall into this category — the juicy need to feed rules all, and they don't care who gets hurt in the process. Some Selfish antagonists are seeking something in particular — immortality, a long-lost love, a cure — and woe to anyone who stands in their way. Or perhaps the protagonist holds the key to what the Selfish One wants, which automatically draws the two together.

The fun of writing a Selfish antagonist is that he starts off as eminently believable. We're all born with a certain amount of selfishness. Crank it up a little, add some magic, and you have a delicious supernatural opponent. Count Dracula is, of course, the preeminent Selfish antagonist, and Fay Harper from Mercedes Lackey's
Jinx High
was built from the same mold.

She's your friend, fighting by your side to destroy the Destroyer, one-up the One-Upper, and show the Misguided One the error of her ways. Just when everything looks its worst, you discover that she's been feeding information to the enemy all along. Then she guts you from behind.

The Betrayer comes in several flavors. One kind lies from the outset, making friends with the hero for the sole purpose of waiting for the perfect moment to insert that knife. Another kind truly starts off as a friend but becomes secretly corrupted by the antagonist, who hands her the knife with a wink and a grin. A third type doesn't want to play Judas but is forced into it because the antagonist has kidnapped her sister or cornered the market on the herb that keeps her alive or threatened to feed her son's soul to ravenous ghosts if she refuses to obey — or tells the protagonist what's going on.

Betrayers provide a wonderful plot twist and a great emotional punch, especially if the betrayer is — or seems to be — romantically involved with the protagonist. However, you have to set up a Betrayer with care. To be fair to the reader, you need to weave small clues about the Betrayer's intent into the narrative before the betrayal so the reader can be surprised but also mentally add, “And why didn't I see that coming?” Finding the balance between gentle whisper and a bullhorn isn't easy, though, and a fair number of authors abandon the idea altogether, choosing instead to rely on dramatic irony instead. The reader becomes aware early on that the Betrayer is quietly working against the clueless protagonist, and the reader gets sweaty palms hoping the main character will figure everything out in time — or that the Betrayer might have a last-minute change of heart. Luke Castellan from Rick Riordan's
The Lightning Thief
and Edmund Pevensie from Lewis's
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
are both Betrayers.

The Dark Lord or Lady moves from the shadows. His reach extends to the far corners of the world, and his many minions do his bidding without hesitation. His vast powers are often nebulous, left unexplained or undefined. Many Dark Lords operate in secrecy — the protagonist may encounter several layers of minions before realizing the Dark Lord even exists.

Dark Lords are tricky, from a writer's perspective. They inevitably invite comparison to Sauron from Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy or Lord Voldemort from the Harry Potter series. It's also difficult to come up with plausible reasons why the Dark Lord doesn't simply send an overwhelming force of minions to destroy the protagonist once and for all. On the plus side, the nature of a Dark Lord makes him intrinsically scary and automatically a difficult challenge for the protagonist. Stephen King used the Dark Lord antagonist when he created the Crimson King, who appears in several of his novels and short stories.

Destroy one agent, and two more take its place. The Hydra Organization has enormous resources, can field an infinite number of agents, and won't rest until the protagonist has been captured or killed. It can tap phones, hack computers, track credit cards, and insert agents almost anywhere. Some Hydra Organizations are “alphabet” groups like the FBI, CIA, or NSA. Others are secret societies with occult leanings like the Illuminati or the Masons. And yet others include groups of vampire clans, werewolf packs, or circles of sorcerers. A Hydra Organization may have as its leader another antagonist such as a Dark Lord or a One-Upper. The Unseelie Court from Emma Bull's
War for the Oaks
is a supernatural Hydra Organization, as are the General Oblation Board and the Magisterium from Philip Pullman's
The Golden Compass
and its sequels.

As with protagonists, you can combine some of these archetypal traits when creating your antagonist. There's no reason you can't have a Lunatic Dark Lady or a Selfish Betrayer. Just be sure you give her as much thought and care as you give your protagonist.

The rest of your characters are called the
supporting cast
. Some will be
major characters
, people who show up quite a lot, and you'll need to develop them just as fully as the protagonist. Minor characters, called
spear carriers
in theater, don't need much development. The cab driver who gives your protagonist directions can do it without a full life story, but your protagonist's love interest definitely needs one. Full development will guide you when your characters meet and interact, and character interaction is one of the factors that make a book fascinating.

Character names must be chosen carefully. The name is the first thing a reader (and an editor) will see when the character appears, and that name creates a mental picture.
Frederick
creates a different mental image than
Freddie
, and the image
Bess
projects diverges quite a lot from the one projected by
Elizabeth
.

Naming characters in a paranormal novel can carry a few extra difficulties. Some, or even all, of your characters might come from another culture or another world, meaning you might be creating their names from scratch. It's easy to wind up with something that comes across as unintentionally silly or that's overused, which is why we need to take a closer look at the process.

Even characters who live in modern America and Europe need carefully chosen names. Everyone knows the trick of buying a baby name book or going to baby name sites for ideas. A few other tips:

For male characters, names with a
J
or a
K
in them (Justin, Kevin, Jake) tend to sound action-oriented and totally way cool. As a result, they've become overused in both the real world and the fictional world.
Jake
shows up in a lot of books, for example. Try avoiding these unless you're really wedded to the name
Kirk
or
Jason
.

Most baby name books list each name's meaning, and I admit it's great fun to pour over such lists to see who among friends and relatives has a name with a meaning that actually fits his or her personality. The temptation is to choose character names that reflect the person's personality, too. You're writing about a guy who takes charge of any situation, so you spend half an hour looking through the baby name book until you discover the name
Derek
, which means “ruler of the people.” Perfect! My advice? Don't bother. The vast majority of your readers won't make the connection, and the ones who do will probably figure the whole thing is a coincidence. It's wasted time.

When you choose a name, say it aloud two or three times and see if it works.
Elizabeth Brown
works well, but
Chris Simonson
is a little awkward. Names that end in S are problematic as well.
Dennis
seems a perfectly serviceable name until you give him, say, a sword or anything else that begins with an
S. Dennis's sword
may be grammatically correct, but it looks odd, and the phrase interrupts the flow of words on the page. For the same reason, avoid surnames that start with the letter that ends the first name. Say
Les Stiles
and
Bev Victor
aloud and you'll see what I mean.

While we're on the subject of letters, make sure your characters' names start with different ones. It confuses the reader if your characters are named Kevin, Kelly, Ken, and Kyle. Avoid.

Some authors try too hard with character names. Thorne, Cade, and Hunter may seem pretty cool and exotic when you're writing them down, but they ultimately come across as outlandishly ridiculous, especially if all three names appear in the same book. As a rule, you can get away with one exotic or weird name per novel (unless your characters come from another world).

Finally, make the character's gender clear in the name. Yes,
Kyle
and
Sam
can be female names, but the shift takes serious mental adjustment on behalf of the reader, and you don't want that. The same goes for an drogynous names like
Chris, Drew,
and
Dakota
. A name should help establish an image in the reader's head, and an androgynous name only clouds that process.

Notice that these are all guidelines more than rules. If you break them, be sure you're doing it on purpose. If you name the men in your book Justin, Jake, and Jeremy, make it part of the plot. Maybe they're triplets. If your protagonist is a woman named Kyle, part of her character should be a certain amount of weariness toward people who assume she's a man.

Characters from other worlds may well need otherworldly names. (If your world is a close analog to Earth, then you may end up using Earthlike names.) Create them carefully. Your characters may be otherworldly, but your readers live on Earth. You don't want to choose names that bring your reader's eyes to a screeching halt in mid-sentence. Let's take a second to look at ways to create workable, off -Earth names.

One place to get inspiration is foreign language names, especially ones from non-Western cultures. Look at names from China, Africa, and India. Smoosh them together and mix them around to see what you get.

Another place to look is the ancient patronymic method. In Cyrillic languages, you add -
vich
to the end of a name to mean
son of
, and that becomes a man's last name, so
Mikhail Sergeievich
means
Mikhail, son of Sergei
. Similarly, in old Ireland,
mac
meant
son of (macDonald)
and
nic
meant
daughter of.
There's no reason you can't create a similar system.