How to make readers fall in love with your paranormal characters

by Tina Gerow 

Everyone who reads paranormal loves all the non human characters.  After all, vamps, shifters and all the rest are characters who draw us in and keep us there.  But they aren’t just humans with fangs or fur.  If their ‘species’ isn’t an integral part of their character, your reader will not suspend disbelief long enough to fall in love with them. 

 

One of the best ways to do this is to use all five senses in “building” the rules of your characters etc.  

 

Let’s start with using the five senses.  I can see the puzzled expressions now.  But Tina, how the heck do I use the five senses to build paranormal characters??  Well, it’s not as hard as you think, and it’s a lot more fun than it sounds!

 

Do things taste different to them because of what they are? How does blood taste to a vamp or flesh to a werewolf?  Does your succubus not eat chocolate because since she was “turned” it now tastes like rotten fish?  Does your Elvin character have a weakness for Orange Crush but now that he’s passed puberty, the only thing that tastes like his favorite drink is anti-freeze, but that gives him heartburn?  This fun, quirky stuff will make for interesting scenes and interactions with other characters as well as make these characters more distinctive and fun for readers to remember! 

Describe how it feels for fur to sprout all over your body when you shift – maybe it tuckles?  Or makes them itch?.  Or how it feels for Gargoyles to change from stone to flesh and back again – a cold rush over the skin like in my Maiden series?  Or just a heavy heat or even a ripping, burning pain?  When a ghost appears or disappears does it make a sound?  Leave a certain smell in the air?  What do a dragon’s scales feel like?  How about an Incubus’ hair – maybe it looks really soft and smells like vanilla but feels slimy when you touch it?

 

Describe all of these vividly so the reader can imagine BEING THERE!  What senses you use and how you use them are up to you, but let the reader in on it so they can experience everything with your characters!  Readers love to be IN on stuff!!  I know I do when I’m reading!

 

That’s really the secret!  If your reader feels like THEY are getting to actually live the story along with your characters or even live your story AS your characters they will be so sucked into the your world you created that they will want to visit time and time again!

 

Now get out there and write some amazing FF&P books because I’m running low and want to read them all!!

 

More About Tina Gerow

Tina Gerow is a multi published, award winning author under two pen names who is basically a slacker ex band director with an outgoing personality and an overactive imagination that she’s put to work as a writer for the safety of herself and others :)

You can visit me at www.tinagerow.com (OR www.cassieryan.com for some extra steam)  and on Facebook as Tina Gerow   and on Twitter with user name @tinagerow.

I hope you will join my class titled
SETTING IN PARANORMAL

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Fantasy-Futuristic & Paranormal Romance Writers This One Week class starts August 19, 2013 
For more information click HERE