In the novel I'm planning the MC is able to see Angels, but no one else can. I'm not sure how to manage her interactions with the Angels. At the start of the book she doesn't know that she is seeing angels or that no one else can see them, which makes it hard for her to talk to them unless no one else is around (because she'll look like a nutter). Later she knows she's seeing Angels, but again, I can't have her wandering around talking to herself. I want to have human characters in the story as well but am really battling to link the worlds together without my MC ending up as a go-between for the human and Angel interactions. I'm considering not involving other humans to avoid all this, but it just doesn't seem realisitc that someone would not have friends or intectact with other people. Hopefully that made some sense. Ideas?
I am glad to see that you are writing a story about angels, because I am on the same page you're on. My first novel "Manifestation" involves the main character with a guardian angel. He does not know that he is talking to his dead brother, who posts him as the guardian angel. When my main character came in his mom's house from California, he saw his brother (but his mom and the supporting characters did not see him), his mother knew that the main character's brother is dead. I made it to where his mother doesn't find him crazy, because when he went in, he had no idea that his brother got killed, so he shouted out his name after he saw him standing. This made his mom think that he is looking for him, because my main character hasn't seen his brother in seven years (his brother died 2 years before the MC moved back to his mother's house). Thus, she cried and did not want to reveal to him that his brother is dead. To keep the mysteries of your story hidden, and to keep your characters from thinking that the main character isn't talking to himself, it would be best for your supporting characters to know that the angel is dead. Do you see what I mean by this? Likewise, if your supporting characters doesn't have knowledge that someone is dead, it would be most likely that the person would think that your main character is talking to himself or being crazy. Another thing that I want to point out is that your main character should be unknowingly performing miracle actions on other characters instead of him talking to her/him. When the supporting characters see that he does something that reality cannot, they may have a little evidence that a guardian angel caused this, but they would not necessarily realize that he sees the angel.
Torchwood the fairies episode came to mind lol The one with the little girl that has friends in the trees? I have a character that isn't invisible as such but only two people see him for who he really is. Everyone else see's him as he wants them to see them. I just didn't mention it - I never described him his interaction told what I needed people to know about him.
Reggie your idea sounds interesting. My Angels are a bit different to yours, mine aren't dead humans, they're actual Angels, so totally separate beings. The one that's central to the story is actually the gaurdian of the MC's nemesis.
To some extent the angels could arrange to be around only when other people aren't, which would avoid (or at least defer) the problem. Sooner or later your protagonist has to learn that other people can't see the angels, though. One possibility is that the angels could explain it, but the protagonist would need a reason to believe them -- they would already have to have the idea that the angels were in some sense miraculous. The alternative seems to be as you have described, for the protagonist to converse with them in public and to realise that other people can't hear them. People might think the protagonist is mentally ill, but you could make those people strangers, irrelevant to the remainder of the story. Alternatively, if the discussion is in a public place in the here-and-now people probably /wouldn't/ think the protagonist at all strange. We are all used now to seeing people walking along apparently talking to themselves, because they're wearing bluetooth headsets connected to their mobile phones!
