More genres and tropes: Paranormal

Last week it was science fiction. This week: the paranormal.

A “trope,” not to be confused with nor transformed into a cliché, is an element a reader expects as a characteristic of a genre (such as magical creatures or talismans in a fantasy story).  A cliché, on the other hand, occurs when you take a trope too far (rich-boy-loves-poor-girl romance, for example). The material difference is what fresh, new characters, settings, or magical canon you bring to a familiar element.
Tropes noted here are for reference and guidance only.  And the “possible conflicts” are just suggestions as well.

Paranormal: So much of the paranormal is rooted in mythology and folklore and varies from culture to culture and from one historic time period to another. You may need to do some research before attempting to write a story involving paranormal beings.

Possible tropes: Mundane setting with unusual beings such as ghosts, demons, shapeshifters, vampires, witches or wizards, werewolves.  The shapeshifter could be your kids' science teacher; your boss might have magical powers.


--Vampires:  Numerous origin stories. Ancient Egyptians took baths in blood and ancient Romans would rush to the floor of the Coliseum to drink the blood of the dying gladiators, so blood has long been mistaken for health food and beauty treatment. Transylvanian origins have a little to do with Vlad the Impaler, who drank his victims' blood, but also with the fact that the soil in that area is very alkaline, making for slow decomposition of dead bodies. When the graves were dug up to make room for more dead, the bodies were remarkably well-preserved. Undereducated, superstitious people undoubtedly invented stories to explain these finds. There are also stories of incubi and succubi, demons who stole people's sexual energy, and while loosely tied to vampire lore, they remain a separate creepy story.

Legend and folklore has been completely turned around in the last two centuries, beginning with John Polidori’s short story “The Vampyr” (1819)-- most likely the first story giving vampires a handsome face and form and undoubtedly the first to employ the sexual metaphor trope.Before Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) presented to a larger audience the idea of the urbane, handsome, seductive man-beast, "Vampyres" were the subject of penny dreadfuls throughout the 19th century. The most notable of these is Varney the Vampire: Or, The Feast of Blood, written in the 1840's by James Malcolm Rymer. Excuse me for a "giggle moment" here, as the name Varney suggests to me some kind of shotgun-toting redneck.

Inevitable evolution in the 20th century gave us vampires that shimmer or sparkle in sunlight, feast on animal blood, only drink small amounts from volunteering humans without killing them, or have been “cursed” with human souls and thereby forced to feel remorse for the lives they took.  Stephenie Meyer did not “invent” sensitive, shimmery vampires with consciences.  For that we have Anne Rice to thank. Vampires and half-vampires are increasingly cast as vigilantes by Hollywood in such movie series as "Blade" and "Underworld." ETA: November 23, 2011. Being neither a fan or a conoisseur of vampire literature, I had no idea such a book as J. S. LeFanu's 1872 Carmilla even existed. It contains what is probably the first girl-on-girl vamping. It is downloadable for free from Project Gutenberg.

--Werewolves:  Half-man-half-wolf, only come out once a month during a full moon, were once human but were attacked by a werewolf and are now man-beasts themselves. Werewolf lore has not changed much in literature and popular culture. That is, until some shapeshifting Native Americans who have wolfiness in their genetic code and don’t have to wait for a full moon to get their wolfy on were featured in the Twilight series. An individual bitten by a Queleute shapeshifter wolf doesn't turn. Whatever the origin, you again have the trope of "beware the beast within the man."

--The history of rivalry and even war between vampire and werewolf is a long and convoluted one and recently fueled by Hollywood in movies such as the "Underworld" series.

--Ghosts: The ghost has unfinished business and is enlisting the help of a human to help them finish it. The ghost may be trying to get revenge, clear his or her name, or solve his or her own murder. Ghosts often appear to children, who are generally trusting enough to roll with the flow and help the ghost get closure. The lonely spectral inhabitant of an abandoned warehouse or an apartment in an old building may simply be looking for friends as she drifts between dimensions.

--Demons: Because of their special abilities, they can be enlisted to work for mob bosses, grant wishes or help humans fulfill their revenge fantasies. Some are malevolent, some fairly benign.  Recent popular culture has cast sensitive demons who run karaoke bars and can see people’s futures, such as Lorne from the “Angel” television series, who left the music-less dimension in which he was born because he could not turn off the music he heard in his head. Demons are more likely to have come from alternate realities than other paranormal entities.

--Magical folk: Witches, wizards, faeries and all their possible incarnations. Endless possibilities here too, depending upon which culture's folklore you decide to base them upon. Again, I suggest doing research to help inform your canon.


--Zombies are still pretty much mindless flesh-eaters, with one major change over the past two or three decades: They used to be part of a hive mind, with some evil genius controlling them. This trope is less common, and zombies are more autonomous now. Apparently people are more capable of being evil on their own than they used to be and don't need to be part of an evil corporation or government anymore.

--Depending upon which paranormal figures populate your story, a common trope is that an author will compare the supposedly soulless personage with the actions of human ones who supposedly have souls. We've all encountered these: the vicious coworker, the unfeeling neighbor, the intolerant family member, the megalomaniacal political figure, and wondered how someone could be so inhuman and lacking in compassion. We spend the entire book / movie / TV show / expecting them to reveal themselves as some soulless beast, only to discover that one who has a soul doesn't necessarily consider it an obligation to behave decently toward their fellow humans.

--Thanks to the relatively new science of psychology, we realize that all these stories can be viewed as manifestations of the Id coming out to play. We are exploring the darkness, the violence, the predator that exists in every human being, so it should come as no surprise that authors are trying to "humanize" and make multifaceted characters of creatures that used to be considered monsters. Nowadays, a vampire, a ghost, or a werewolf is a hapless victim of circumstance and can choose to give in to their monsterness or try to live a more mundane, or even altruistic, lifestyle. Shapeshifters and magical folk are presented as victims of heredity, more like an ethnicity than a curse. Somebody in your family tree had the genetic material, and your powers are somehow part of your destiny.

Your paranormal story will require a “Passage of discovery” scene for the humans (“Holy crap!  Vampires/ ghosts/ werewolves/ demons are real!”).  The “passage of discovery” can be an implied one, which may have taken place before the story begins—in other words, a world where vampires/ shapeshifters/ demons/ whatevers and humans attend high school together or have adjoining cubicles in the corporate cage.

Then there's paranormal romance. Human girl falls in love with mysterious, handsome boy and finds out he's a vampire or a werewolf (again, beware the beast within the man and that whole sexual metaphor thingie). Or they're from rival alternate realities. Do they get their happy ending? Romeo and Juliet didn't. Buffy and Angel didn't either. But Bella and Edward did. And more and more often in popular literature, the two overcome their obstacles in the tradition of "love conquers all." Careful that you don't make this a cliché.

Most common conflicts: any combination of the four, but mostly person vs. person, person vs. self, and person vs. society.