Top 10 Tips for Grabbing the Paranormal Readers’ Attention
First appeared as a Guest Blog: Top 10 Tips for Grabbing the Paranormal Readers’ Attention by Shereen Vedam at the Paranormalists
via Bewitching Tours
1. Tie into readers’ emotions about your story’s setting. Abbie Grimshaw, in Death Takes a Detour, reflects my fascination with graveyards. It’s where she befriends a ghost, which sets her on her path to claim her destiny.
2. Delight the readers with a bit of history. History and mythology are a rich mine of information to be plundered, not only in your own country, but from all around the world. One of my favourite discoveries was Mama D’leau from Trinidadian mythology. In Death Swipes Right, she’s transported to Kent, England, given a new backstory, and set free to torment my characters.
3. Make it personal. Whatever story you’re writing, it has to be personal to the main character. In When the Magic Comes, a cozy epic fantasy mystery, Kennard, our hero, is desperate to prove his father wrong about magic, and the readers might sympathize with this familiar feeling of wanting to prove yourself worthy.
4. Don’t break the rules. Especially not if you created them. People relate to restrictions. They live with them every day of their lives. So, place some boundaries around your magic, your creatures, and your world. When your character slams into one, your reader might not only relate, but sympathize.
5. Readers love familiarity! This is why they buy long series and follow the same characters from book to book, and setting to setting. In When the Magic Comes, I built a whole university, which will be the playground for many of the stories in the series. You look forward to going home for Christmas until you discover a dragon’s moved into your family’s shed.
6. Tease the reader. Readers like the thrill of discovery. The wonder of suspecting something and waiting for the big reveal. In When the Magic Comes, when someone burns one of Kennard’s students in a fountain, it’s just the very first clue of many about who might be behind this unusual crime.
7. Entertain the reader with multiple plot lines. This is a favourite ploy of soap operas. It’s why they have so many loyal followers, year after year. I still love to watch Days of Our Lives. We can also do this by giving every character, even minor ones, a goal, motivation, and conflict. Then weave these conflicts into each other, so at the end, they all connect and resolve at a big wedding or funeral.
8. Unravel characters as if you’re peeling an onion. Not every secret about our characters has to be given to the reader in the first chapter. Save some for later chapters. It keeps the character and the story fresh and ever enlightening.
9. Show the reader the meaning behind the magic. Not everyone will react the same way to the same event. When Kennard’s dragonet comes to protect him against his sister, he’s proud of her and touched at her wanting to defend him, while the strange and dangerous-looking creature horrifies his sister. Same magical event, two different viewpoints, and it gives Tala, the dragonet, so much depth of character.
10. Have fun as a writer and enjoy your “characters” as you would your family, and so will your readers. Let a dragon break some magical “wind.” Remember, not all characters are the perfect size, shape, or have impeccable manners.
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