Writing the Paranormal Novel: Techniques and Exercises for Weaving Supernatural Elements Into Your Story. (37 page)

There are a number of ways to indicate who said what, and since fiction writers spend a lot of time with dialogue, few mechanical aspects of writing generate more heated discussions. Let's take a little look at what's going on.

The little bits like “he howled” and “she murmured” that writers sneak into dialogue are called speech tags. The most common one of these is “said,” as in
“Close the door before the werewolf gets through,” Norman said
. There are a bunch of others:
growled, murmured, yelled, whispered, roared
, and so on.

For some reason, the speech tag said is much maligned. I once attended a writing seminar in which the instructor told the attendees that good writers never, ever use said. “It's boring, it's pedestrian, and it shows lack of imagination,” he said.

Oops. Did I just use
said
?

And did you notice? Probably not. There's really nothing wrong with using
said
as a speech tag. It's quiet, it's innocuous, and it doesn't call attention to itself. There are really only two rules about using said in dialogue.

First, you don't want to
over
use it. If you use
said
for every single speech tag, you'll call attention to it by accident. Use it twice, maybe three times if you're stuck, and then avoid it for a bit before going back to it.

Second, you want to avoid
modifying
it, especially with an -
ly
adverb. Tags like
he said softly
are weak, and you're better off replacing it with something more specific such as he
murmured
or
he whispered
. Besides, -
ly
speech tags are prone to
Tom Swifties
. Tom Swift was a science fiction hero of the pulp era, and the books were written quickly, with little editing. It became a joke among readers to spot such lines as “
Cut the rope!” Tom said sharply
, which were unintentionally funny and became known as Tom Swifties. So avoid
saidly
speech tags, but feel free to use
said
by itself in moderation (he said authoritatively).

Another way to indicate who's speaking is to use blocking within the same paragraph. Rules of grammar require a new paragraph every time you get a new speaker, so the identity of the speaker is easy to discern:
Tanya slammed the door and leaned against it. “I think we're fine.”
We know Tanya is the speaker, since the dialogue comes in the same paragraph as her action. However, you have to be careful that only one person acts in the paragraph. Otherwise you can get confusion.
Norman pressed an ear to the wood. Tanya joined him. “What do you hear?”
In this case, either Norman or Tanya could be speaking, and you want to avoid such problems.

A third way is to let the dialogue run its course without any speech tags once you've established the back-and-forth pattern of the speakers. If the reader will know who the speaker is, there's no need for the author to interrupt for a reminder:

Just make sure there are enough cues that we don't lose track of who's speaking. Drop in a speech tag every now and then to remind us, as the above example does.

Paranormal novels that use a modern setting with modern characters naturally lean toward modern language. YA authors especially want to use up-to-the-moment words and phrases so they can identify characters with their audiences. The big question is: How far should you go?

When it comes to recent slang, you
have
to know what you're doing. If you aren't a member of the group who uses the slang, you need to
sound
like you are. Teenage readers especially will spot fake slang users faster than Holden Caulfield can finger a phony, and you'll instantly lose all credibility with your audience if you make a mistake. So if you don't have an absolutely sure hand with current slang, avoid it.

Another problem with current slang is that it dates your novel. You might be good with the idea that your book is firmly set in a particular year or decade, especially if you're writing an historical novel, or your story surrounds a famous event, such as a particular presidential election or the start of the Gulf War.

However, if your book is set in a timeless present (as most modernday books try to be), you want to avoid anything that could date your book, including current slang.

Some slang has become eternal, and you can definitely use it without worry. Words like
yeah, okay,
and cool have been part of the American scene for so long, many people have forgotten they're slang.

Ranadar the elf drops into our world from his own. He's never visited this world before, and his culture has never crossed our own. How does he communicate?

This is kind of tricky. Realistically, Ranadar shouldn't be able to speak or understand English. Even gestures are culturally based. In America, we ask if someone wants to eat by miming a plate with one hand and scooping a handful of invisible food toward our mouths with the other. But in China, people mime a bowl with one hand and over it they waggle two fingers from the other hand — chopsticks. Would Ranadar, who grew up on another world entirely, understand either one? There's also the mirror image of this — the character from our world who goes to another world. The language should be nothing like English, or whatever the character speaks.

This causes major story problems. Your character will have to spend enormous amounts of time just learning to communicate in order to get the story going. Unless your book is about exactly this problem, you probably don't want to deal with it. Fortunately, you have a number of solutions available to you. One is simple, long-standing tradition. Authors since Homer have ignored differences in language and just got on with the story. (It doesn't seem likely that citizens of Troy, situated on the western coast of what's now Turkey, spoke the exact same language as the Spartans in the middle of mainland Greece, but that doesn't stop Paris from falling in love with Helen, and Homer didn't bother to stick in a translator.)

You can also slip in a magical solution. A spell or magical object might allow for instant translation or understanding. Or the transition from one world to the next might create an automatic understanding of the new language. You
are
allowed to do a little hand-waving here — most readers want the story and characters to move along.

Some authors like to create bits of language — or even the entire thing. The gold standard for this, of course, is J.R.R. Tolkien, who created over a dozen languages for his books. Richard Adams created a language for rabbits for
Watership Down
(which has definite supernatural elements) so successfully that when Bigwig faces down General Woundwort and snarls,
“Silflay hraka, u embleer rah”
at the climax, the reader has no trouble understanding him.

If you don't want to go quite that far for your werewolves or pixies, you can create pieces of a language — words or phrases that the character can use now and then to remind the reader that the speaker thinks in a language other than English. Again, you'll want to look to other languages for inspiration. If you just throw together some vowels and consonants and substitute them for English word-for-word, it'll come across as stilted and silly. Different languages have different word order and rules for grammar, which should show up in a language you create.

On the other hand, you don't want to create eye-twisting, impossible words for your readers, either. Some African languages use a sort of clicking sound that English speakers can't re-create, not even to write — the official western character for it is an exclamation mark. Creating a language with words like
tqigl!maf
might be fun for the author, but it turns readers away. Balance creativity with the reader's ability to keep up.

Y
ou've crafted the characterization, developed the dialogue, and worried about the world building. You've spent hours, days, weeks, and months at the keyboard, and now you have a first draft. Hooray!

Now the revisions begin.

The revision process ranges from painful slog to fascinating revisit, depending on the writer — and the novel. Revision is an enormous topic, one that could fill an entire book of its own. But paranormal novels have specific challenges, and we'll examine a few here.

Some ideas apply to novels of all stripes when you're going back over your stuff. This list isn't comprehensive, but it touches on some ideas that may not have occurred to you.

You may feel a terrible temptation to start revisions the moment you've finished the first draft. Don't give in. The material is too fresh, too green. You need to forget what you've written — at least partially — to give yourself a new perspective for revisions. Set the work aside for a few weeks. Don't look at any part of your book, not even your favorite bits. The mistakes will stand out better once time has allowed you step back and look at the material from a distance.

Very few people can keep everything in their heads, and most authors scribble notes to themselves about their characters, worlds, and plotlines. But as the book progresses and you get to know everyone and everything more intimately, you probably stopped checking your notes. Here's the thing: A hundred thousand words later, you've probably modified a few things on the fly or dropped some old ideas. Check your original concepts and see if there's anything you intended to do that fell by the wayside — or that could be worked into a sequel.

Smart authors keep everything. You never know when an old version of a story will turn out to be useful — or might unexpectedly become your only surviving backup. When you start revising, take a moment to save your first draft in another computer folder. If you remove a scene or cut a character or slice out a subplot, keep that material in a separate file, too. Paranormal novels oft en spawn sequels, and cut material is great fodder for future story ideas.

I've already mentioned why shorter is better, yet new writers tend to write long. It's not a bad idea to cut, especially during the final polish. If a scene doesn't need to be there, cut it. Where you used ten words, use nine. The technical word for this is
tightening
, and it makes your book a much better read.

There's no magic number for drafts. Hell, in the age of computers, it's hard to know what a draft is. You finished chapter six, then changed a few sentences in it before going on to chapter seven. Is that a new draft ?

The answer: Who cares? The only draft that matters is the final one, the one that you show to an editor or agent.

However, at some point, you do have to say, “I'm done.” You can't spend your time with endless rewriting and polishing. If you've gone over it six or seven times, ask yourself if you're really rewriting, or putting off sending it out for fear of being rejected.

Some rewriting challenges are specific to paranormal books. Let's take some time to examine a few.

During the writing, it's quite likely your concept of magic and the structure of the world you built shifted from your original concept. This is good — ideas need to grow and change organically. However, changes mean the magic you're using in chapter twenty may be rather different than the magic you started with in chapter one, and I've harped on keeping your magic and your world consistent so your readers will come along with you. During the revisions, make sure your magic and your world remain consistent from beginning to end.

Double-check your characters. As we mentioned in chapter six, supernatural characters oft en have odd names, so make sure you keep them the same. While you're writing those early draft s, it's very easy to accidentally change the spelling of an odd name, or change it on purpose and then fail to catch all the incidences.