Categories
On writing

Unrealistic urban fantasy: the vampire who never grows up

When you write a novel the basic premise must be believable, or otherwise you lose the reader. It only takes one major flaw to lose the reader.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about story logic lately. Barrain has at least one flaw where I know we can potentially lose readers at the beginning of the novel, and that is in the language (another blog on this soon). But we’re not the only ones who do it.

Vampire novels are big at the moment. Everyone seems to be reading them; everyone seems to be writing them. They are popular in both adult and young-adult fiction.

Werewolves are popular too.

One young-adult story idea that seems to crop up a lot is the 12-15 year old who got turned into a vampire or a werewolf a 100 years ago. The story revolves around how these ‘children’ fit into normal school life of today.

Leaving aside the impracticalities of vampires attending a day school, what is the obvious flaw in a story like this?

These ‘children’ are 100 years old.

They will not have the same angst and dramas of the average 12-15 year old. They are long past that.

I have come across three stories (unpublished) in the last two months that base their whole premise on this exact scenario.

‘Six year old’ Claudia, from Anne Rice’s Interview With a Vampire, is probably a more realistic representation of what someone like this would be like, at least, the bad guy version of someone like this, anyway.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *