The Do's and Don'ts of Writing Paranormal

Quite often I have people ask me about the psychic fiction stories that I write and if the character’s experiences are similar to my own. Because I am a Clairvoyant Advisor and work in this field daily, my experiences definitely play a part in the experiences of my characters. I try to take it one step further than just relaying an experience or giving the character one that is similar to mine. I approach each paranormal situation by also showing how it feels when it happens. When I was learning how psychic abilities work, there were a lot of emotions that went along with each experience. I’m very skeptical by nature so some made me feel unsure of myself and my abilities, some made me question my sanity, others gave me joy and many were downright scary. As I learned about my abilities and when new ones would happen it was a challenge to understand what it was, why it was happening, how it happened and why me?

In my writing I try to show my characters feeling these same emotions as they come to grips with their abilities and understand how to use them. If a character already understands their abilities I try to show them using them in a manner that is accurate with what a real psychic would experience based on myself. An example of this is my heroine in Paradise Designs from the Beneath A Christmas Moon Anthology. She comes from a family of psychics but she isn’t willing to accept the abilities that come to her naturally because of fear. Once Tara understands how her gifts can help someone on the other side, she pushes through her fear to do what she can to help. This is part of her spiritual growth. It’s difficult for her and is a tremendous struggle but the feelings Tara experiences afterwards make it all worthwhile.

So what are the do’s and don’ts of writing paranormal? Well, I think it depends on the subgenre that you’re writing in. For instance, if you’re writing about shape-shifters (which I do in my Valentine’s Day release, Talgorian Prophecy), werewolves or vampires then you can build your fictional world in the way you want it to be. In my own experience I’ve never met a shape-shifter, werewolf or vampire so to me that part is totally fictional. That’s not to say that someone else hasn’t met one but it hasn’t been my experience. I think that if you create your world, set up rules in said world, and then follow them then that is acceptable. In psychic fiction, which is when a character has psychic abilities, I feel it is important to show psychic abilities as accurately as possible. There are a lot of fraudulent psychics in the real world, who give those of us who are truly trying to help others by using our abilities, a bad name.

Because I’ve dealt with people who don’t believe in psychics or the paranormal, and had those people make rude comments and look down on me because of them, I believe that readers should see psychics portrayed as they really are instead of how society thinks of them. If a paranormal book shows ghosts and the author hasn’t ever seen a ghost in real life, then they should do research and speak to people who have in order to make it as real as possible to the reader. Just because a book is fiction doesn’t mean that we, as authors, shouldn’t portray things as accurately as possible. I mean, who wants to read a historical romance that has all of the historical facts wrong? I sure don’t. Reader’s are quick to pick up on these kinds of errors as incorrect.

With the paranormal there is such a wide variety of experiences that happen that I think authors should use what they know, their own experiences or what they can glean from others who have been involved with the paranormal or psychic abilities when doing their research. If I had to write a list it would look something like this:

DO...

1.Make the paranormal aspects of your book as accurate as possible.

2.Create your world and stick to the rules that’s you’ve created for said world to keep consistency in your book.

3.Your research.

4.Consider that the type of paranormal experiences which can happen is widely varied and seek more than one possible way to explore the paranormal.

5.Give emotions as well as what happens during the paranormal event to make it real to the reader.

DON’T...

1.Make your psychic a flake who’s too stupid to live. In real life people tend to hold that impression as valid when it’s not always true so give the real psychics a break by presenting psychics accurately.

2.Create a world and then allow your characters to do something outside of that world’s perimeters.

3.Give characters who are in a contemporary setting abilities that are impossible. For instance, if you’re writing about a psychic don’t have them shooting laser beams out of their eyes. Now, if this is a fantasy where you’ve created a world where laser beams out of the eyes is acceptable or if you’re writing about a super hero – that’s different and would be fine. But if not, try to stick to things that humans can actually do.

4.Think that the paranormal isn’t possible. Hold some kind of belief in what you’re writing. I think the worst statement I’ve ever heard an author make was that they write paranormal but they didn’t believe any of it was actually possible. I had to wonder why anyone would do that? Author’s jump on the bandwagon of the next hot theme quite often but regardless of what that theme is – hold some kind of belief in it.

5.Make the experiences that your characters have laughable. If you’ve never seen a ghost and are writing about ghosts think of how you’d really feel if that happened to you. Would it be funny? Or would you be stuck in your shoes unable to move? I’m all for comedy but make it fit with the characters and situations happening in the book.

There you have it. This is how I approach psychic fiction and the paranormal in my books. I hope it’s been helpful in understanding how a real psychic thinks when it comes to writing about these topics. Then again, this is only my opinion and your psychic or paranormal experiences may be different than mine. Thanks for having Eden, Karen and myself here today. I’m looking forward to talking with you!

Smiles,
Melissa Alvarez/Ariana Dupré