Using Facts to Ground Our Fantasy

This blog is the first in a series about paranormal worldbuilding.

Ms. Melissa and I are writing a paranormal romance with a mystery plot.

Paranormal fantasies include supernatural creatures or humans with magical abilities, but the setting is ordinary. Usually it’s the contemporary world we live in. Examples of paranormal fantasies include YA classics like Harry Potter and Twilight and television shows like Supernatural, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Stranger Things. 

The fantasy elements in these stories are embedded in the “real world". Perhaps because of this, the misconception exists that worldbuilding in paranormal fantasies is easier or less necessary.

Not true. Clumsy worldbuilding in paranormal fiction can make it more difficult for readers to suspend disbelief. Weak worldbuilding prevents readers from investing in the core what if of the story. What if vampires attended high school? What if evil scientists turned children into invincible beings? What if you could travel by steam locomotive to a magical boarding school? Well-executed worldbuilding convinces readers that the outlandish what if premise is not only possible, but credible.

One strategy Ms. Melissa and I use when fantasy worldbuilding is meticulous research about the “real world”. While this may sound counter-intuitive, using factual information about settings, past events, or forensics to inform rules of magic or the behavior of imaginary creatures doesn’t make your paranormal fantasy less creative; it makes it more believable.

Here are some examples from our current work in progress.

We’re writing about forest shifters–people who can turn into bobcats and bears, rabbits and wolves. One set of characters is a family of foxes. In researching Red Foxes, we discovered that fox families are largely matriarchal, with the alpha female determining social rank, family dispersal, and travel patterns. When Ms. Melissa and I learned this unexpected information, we decided to incorporate it into our narrative, making our shifter fox family matriarchal as well. We created the character of a stately and formidable grandmother and established her as the primary heir and decision-maker of her family.

Another example involves the unique scent-detecting abilities of dogs and wolves. Common folk wisdom had us believing that humans can evade dogs and eliminate scent trails by running through water, but research revealed this wasn’t true. A dog or wolf’s sense of smell is so powerful, they can even track scents under water. In fact, the presence of water in the form of damp earth or puddles preserves scent and makes it easier for dogs to track prey.

When writing one of the chase scenes in our story, this fact presented a problem for us. Should we go with the prevailing folk wisdom and have our humans evade shifters by heading for a river, or should we lean into verisimilitude? After some discussion, we decided to follow the science, which placed a new constraint on our narrative. Now the only way a human could escape a shifter pursuer would be by getting into a vehicle and rapidly removing their scent from the scene. This means that head starts matter, speed is important, and falsely relying on folk wisdom would imperil our humans, not save them.

Including a high level of factual accuracy in paranormal fantasy helps convince readers that a secret society of supernatural beings really could co-exist alongside ordinary humanity. The factual detail explains how that intersection would be possible, making the worldbuilding believable.

Using facts to ground our fantasy has been an effective strategy for us. Whenever our supernatural elements begin to feel vague or far-fetched, we retreat and do a little research. Inevitably we stumble upon an interesting fact to ground our fantasy. Even if the new detail changes the direction of our story, we lean into it. Because it’s the facts that make the fantasy credible.

If you’re a paranormal fiction writer, what strategies do you use to create convincing fantasy worlds?

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