I write a great many monsters: the Paranormal City narrative universe alone has given the Muse plenty of room to be creative on that front. I’ve never seriously sat down to ask what, if anything, all those creatures say about the person writing them. Here goes, with tongue at least partially in cheek.
They’re Rarely Evil for No Reason
As I will discuss in my next post, I struggle to write a villain or monster who’s simply malicious for the sake of it; there’s almost always a reason underneath, however twisted. I suspect that says something about how I view actual human behaviour. I don’t think most characters set out to be the villain in someone else’s story; they believe they are the hero of their own. I think they end up there for reasons that make a horrible kind of sense from inside their heads (if they have one, that is, head, I mean).
Some do it because of their nature (werewolves, for instance). Others have a conscious will to evil while simultaneously moaning about being a victim (the unnamed descendant of Frankenstein in Paranormal City). Some of the worst are totally human, making their evil even more understandable and less condonable (Frankenstein’s descendant, again).
They’re Funny, Even at Their Worst
Dark humour and horror sharing a roof in my work (Why Dark Humour and Horror Make Good Roommates) means even my most frightening creations tend to have a flicker of something almost likeable about them: a dry observation, an unexpectedly human moment of self-awareness. I think that probably says I find it hard to write anything, even a monster, as purely one thing. Everyone and everything, in my head, seems to need a bit of contradiction to feel real.
Antagonists who are evil for the sake of being evil are, in my mind, unbelievable. That's why I never liked Iago from Othello: he seemed malicious just for the sake of it, making him a caricature rather than a character. Saying that during my Further English Studies ‘O’-Levels helped get me a bad grade…!
They Show Up Uninvited
Almost none of my creatures are planned. They arrive the way everything does for a Pantser: unannounced, often fully formed, and definitely refusing to be edited down to something smaller than they want to be.
I suspect that says something about my relationship with control generally. I don’t have much of it over my own writing process, and somewhere along the way I stopped minding. I just let my Muse get on and do her thing.
They Cost Something
The monsters I’m proudest of always force the protagonist to give something up: safety, certainty, sometimes more. I think that reflects something I genuinely believe: that nothing worth surviving comes free, in fiction or otherwise.
In one as-yet-unpublished story, the irony is that the protagonist never realises he’s the monster he’s been hunting. And that the monster is being monstrous for a good cause!
So what do the monsters in my head say about me? Probably that I find people, and the things that aren’t quite people, a great deal more complicated, and a great deal funnier, than horror usually gives them credit for.