5 Tips for Adding Otherworldly Elements Into Your Novel
Fiction is infinite. Sure, real life is neat, and it’s the place where we creators come up with all our wild creations, but fiction lets you reach beyond the real.
Or at least, that’s the goal. Sometimes breaking through the skin of reality isn’t easy. When I worked on my most recent novel, Cruel Angels Past Sundown, the main task was to write a horror story set in the old west. But the more I thought on it, the weirder I wanted it, more otherworldly, and that meant breaking down the fantastic and making it work with this real-life setting.
So, let’s get unrealistic for a minute. We have plenty of reality anyway. Here are a few tips for adding otherworldly elements into your book.
#1: Consider Your Otherworldly Starting Scale
Things change as you tell a story, but it’s good to know how big of otherworldliness you want starting out. With a blatantly otherworldly fictional world like in a fantasy or sci-fi setting, you’ll probably want to make that clear from the get-go. But if the world is more secretly otherworldly, then it can help to introduce elements one at a time. For example, in Cruel Angels Past Sundown, Annette Klein is working on her ranch when she spots the strange figure of Saber approaching. She doesn’t recognize this as otherworldly yet, but the reader knows something’s up.
Whatever the case, it’s important to consider this ASAP. Not only does it matter for your sense of otherworldly scale, but it’s also about familiarizing yourself with your story.
#2: Whose Problem Is This?
“Know your character” sounds obvious. Much of writing stories at all stems from writing people. But when adding otherworldly elements, it’s important also to ask, how do these characters feel about it? In my previous example, with Saber approaching Annette’s ranch, her and her husband’s initial bewilderment and kindness expresses both who they are as characters and their response of the otherworldly. They only panic when Saber becomes violent.
But they could’ve panicked right away! Or deflected with humor, or been confused. Later, Annette’s anger keeps her grounded against otherworldly elements. Story shapes character, but character also shapes story, and otherworldly elements are only going to increase that back-and-forth influence.
Your characters, your elements, your story. Think about who they are, and how they’re most likely to behave when facing the otherworldly.
#3: Know Your Source (or Make a Date to Get to Know It)
So you have your starting scale and an idea of how characters might react (though they might surprise you; they get crafty). But what’s the source of the otherworldly elements? The why? You might know before you get started, which is fantastic. Maybe your story is mysterious and the source is the answer. Or maybe you have some odd scene you want to include, or is even the seed that started this whole project, and you’re not sure why it’s there yet, but you want it. That’s wonderful—wanting a thing to exist in a story is enough reason to write it.
But eventually, you’ll probably want to know the cause, too, even if you never reveal it to the readers. The first draft of Cruel Angels Past Sundown’s first chapter began without me knowing any reasons. I wrote it standalone, clueless to why Saber fed off Annette’s husband, or why Balthazar pursues her to the ranch and beyond. I only knew they were what I wanted. It was afterward that I started wondering at the cause, figuring out the reasons tied to a heavenly source, and then more of the story bloomed.
So you don’t have to know right away, but you’ll want to figure it out. Especially for this next tip.
#4: Be Consistent to Your Pretend Reality
Otherworldly elements aren’t real, which makes it all the more important they feel believable on at least their own terms. Consistency goes a big way toward helping the reader with that.
I couldn’t proceed with Cruel Angels Past Sundown easily on just the bizarre circumstances of the first chapter, but once I understood the heavenly source behind events of the first chapter, I kept further strangeness bound to that source. Why is Saber pregnant? Why is Balthazar after her? After Annette? What’s that light in his eyes? That eye in the sky? Every aspect ties consistently to the same rules.
The last thing a reader wants is to feel like they’re playing Calvinball with the author. Think about what ties your elements together, and what new consequences can spring from them. That will be important for this last part as well.
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#5: Go Bigger, Go Deeper
Let’s call this the culmination of all these tips. Starting scale, character reaction influencing how this goes, the source, being consistent with that source—that’s all a firm foundation, giving you freedom to escalate, both surprising the reader while still making sense to them.
Personally, as a writer and reader, I love escalation! How big can it get? How deep? In Cruel Angels Past Sundown, Balthazar Wilcox taps an angelic power by quoting scripture a few chapters into the book, in a way that threatens only one person. Shortly after, Balthazar does it again, at length, and the new effect threatens everyone around him. When a few chapters later, the characters pursuing him hear him quoting scripture, they—and the readers—are bracing for what must be his worst miracle yet.
Think about how you can break down and escalate an otherworldly element in your story so that it’s more a path than a rocket ship. The more consistent to source, and the more it dances back and forth with your characters, the more you can get away with.
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