No Creatures Needed

(or, anything They can do in, We can do in better)

The darkened sky shifts as the breeze kicks up, switching dry leaves about the roots of the sprawling tree. But–there! Lurking back behind its trunk, where the shadows thicken, crouches…

a zombie?

a vampire?

or is “simply” a man with a knife more thrilling?

 

Some of my best friends are vampire books, yes, and don’t get me started on the odyssey that is Buffy. A monster can be such a personal way to frame the dangers in a story, whether it’s something we’re supposed to run from, fight, or learn to trust and fight beside. And they each come with their own language of tips and symbolism: you know what the full moon means, or that spotting one modern zombie could mean half the world’s already infected.

Except, a part of me just sees the missed opportunity.

It’s not putting the paranormal in the story that bothers me; I love a good spell. But to put in a completely supernatural creature usually turns into a kind of back-and-fill process. The writer gets the quick thrills of using a known icon, then they usually shift around to show us where this monster’s different from what’s gone before, and how that variation makes the story stronger. But… why start so far back from where the story wants to be?

Doesn’t the word “monster” mean something different, not-human at all?

And, don’t most monster stories really come around to showing us the human side of the creature?

It goes back to the classic Bela Lugosi days, and before. The monsters that stay with us are always the ones that made us feel a little sorry for them, for how they might be horrifying but they’re almost sure to be alone… or else we fear them even more because their evil’s something we see in all of us.

Let’s take an example here. Classic scene: after a night of murders by some unknown threat, a suffering man looks into the mirror and sees…

remnants of werewolf fur fading from his face?

or, his hands covered with innocent blood?

Our first man’s shocked because so much of his life’s been taken out of his control by one bite. Our second scene, it works best if we can follow a whole chain of pressures and mistakes that brought him there and tangle what he can do next–

And that’s what I want to fill up the story with.

The human choices, not the monster’s destiny. If a villain has hypnotic influence, let it have an extra grip on the heroine because he’s offering her revenge on her enemies, not because he’s tasted her blood. Let people struggle and sweat to gain their abilities or dig themselves into their hole, and know they’re still human enough to turn their lives around afterward–if they’re lucky.

Most writers who do this take a step further and don’t use the paranormal at all, of course. Hannibal Lecter didn’t need anything but his wits to get into Clarice’s head, and you can always find fans who say that a “pure” thriller or action story is more intense than one that wants us to accept anything Extra. I can’t argue with the theory.

But, I’ll still be back watching that tree, working out how someone makes those shadows wrap tighter as the people hunt each other, and just who’s on whose side… but for reasons we could all have lived through.

 

 

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