I've just been sent back to the drawing board with regards to a crucial part of my story's worldbuilding, and I'm starting to think I need a fresh perspective or two to help me out with how to fix this. Basic background: Story set in the 1990s where immortal humanoid mythical creatures, most prominently vampires and werewolves, secretly live amongst humanity. In order to stay alive and stay a secret in the modern world, they have generally banded together into small groups to support each other, and the story focuses on one of the very few "clans" where vampires and werewolves actually get along with each other and work together, pooling their strengths and covering each other's weaknesses for their survival. And for the entirety of the brainstorming process until literally less than an hour ago, I had this idea that one "branch" of this clan lived on a piece of private property owned by the clan leader, designed with plenty of outdoor and underground space to accommodate the needs of the town's 20-ish vampire, 20-ish werewolf, and 20-ish "other" residents. It was starting to seem like a fun and cool location... until I realized just how difficult it would be to set up a place where all of these people are living and not have it be incredibly suspicious. "Why is that place so selective about who gets to live there? Why doesn't it let outsiders look around? And why does the place seem to go under new management every 10-20 years, but the new owners always seem to use the property for extremely similar things?" I have this weird feeling that there's something I can say this place actually is in order to make people not feel the need to ask these questions, but at the moment (possibly due to frustration at having to go back to the drawing board with a fun idea) I can't think of one. Can anyone help me here?
What instantly comes to mind is the setup used in the movie The Howling—a private retreat deep in the woods in the Northwest I think, used for 'rehabilitation', that a doctor (who is the leader of the werewolves actually) sends people to to help recover from their traumas, but in reality it's a secret nest of werewolves.
Don’t sweat it. Your readers won’t care and neither should you. They’ll just be happy to read a vampire story that doesn’t suck (pun intended) for once. -MC
Hmmm. Interesting! My main concerns hearing this are that it doesn't sound like a long-term residence thing (the immortals generally stay in one community for as long as not looking older wouldn't be suspicious before moving on to a new place with a new identity) and that it probably would skew the residents' perception in the community. They don't stay there all the time, they're very much a part of the town they live in, they're just all gathered there so that they're generally in the same place in case something goes wrong or an outsider attacks them. If everyone who lives (or spends a lot of time) in that area had some kind of baggage attached to them like being in rehab, that might be unfortunate or even increase potential for people to get suspicious if they act too weird.
Immediate thought, may have holes in it—a retreat needs a permanent staff. Or rather than a retreat maybe a monastery or something similar. Lol, an unholy monastery. They could even make wine and sell it to local stores, with a delicious and mysterious red substance giving it that delectable flavor. But then why would they waste blood?
Just set it in Idaho. Vampires and Werewolves would be less unsettling than those crazy survivalist communes.
I've been thinking about your dilemma and believe the central issue is whether or you think the reader will maintain their "suspension of disbelief". My suggestion is that it's your job as the author to play around with this gift the reader has given you: "I know vampires and werewolves aren't real ... but what if...?" For example, if these vampires and werewolves produced goods or services that the community needed, or more, that the community's identity was founded on (for example stellar wine from a particular monastery as suggested), neighbours would turn a blind eye to any peculiarities and you could really play on this. The "wine" could even be some magic potion that causes this apathy; "Yeah, come to think of it, we do seem to lose a few youngins every year or so, but drink up" ... And don't overthink it. Readers read fiction to enjoy it and will overlook many logical flaws as long as a work's engaging. It's us writers who seem to over-analyse our babies, trying to figure out what colour underpants they should wear before we let them take a walk outside.
I agree. You shouldn't overthink it. If you're passionate about it, keep going and see where it leads. I'm sure you have read books from the same genres. I feel like most have large groups of werewolves and vampires and none of the human population seem to care or seem aware of them. Maybe just have them allowed to mingle and allow them the contribute to the community. People won't be as suspicious of that rather then have them isolate themselves. or they wont care. Maybe they'll assume they're some religious cult and keep their distance. or that predator vs prey feelings kick in and they won't want anything to do with those people and go about their business. This kind of reminds me of a story I started long time ago. You know back when Twilight movies were popular and all my peers had watched them. (Wow, that was a long time ago) (And I was not impressed) So I wrote a story. It was pretty much about a cursed town where the supernatural would be lured and trapped there while the humans could come and go. Do to the curse, the humans were also oblivious to the "monsters" living there among them. And then 'Once Upon a Time' became a thing and it was suspiciously similar to the story's plot. Freaked me out. For real, a cursed town with fairytale characters... You could go any direction. The possibilities are endless.
A thought that struck me, but I don't know the requirements of your story. There could be an enclave of strange people speaking a strange language, from some strange Eastern European country (perhaps one nobody has heard of?) that have their own strange religion and don't allow people into their area, and don't interact with the locals, and everybody likes it that way. perhaps their ancestors have been living there for centuries? Or take out the weird language etc and they just have a sort of Jonestown cult thing going on. @Megan-Leigh already sort of suggested this.
Actually I just realized, this is a lot like what Lovecraft did with Shadow Over Innsmouth (my favorite of his stories). Innsmouth is a very old town and the residents are extremely insular. People from neighboring cities, towns and villages etc avoid them because the people are weird looking, creepy, and unfriendly, and legend has it people who go into Innsmouth don't often return.There's a rather excellent movie about it called Dagon, where they changed the name of the town to Imboca for some reason, but it gets across the creepy vibe really well. Maybe that works a lot better in Victorian times than now, but if it's well written I think people would buy it (or maybe set it in the 70's or something, when everything wasn't heavily surveilled and networked).
I assume this story is set in the US? Honestly there are still civilizations in other countries to this day that still go about living to their standards and beliefs. I know this because I tried to research something better then a religious cult... Even America was founded on immigrants who stuck together in there own enclaves. Like for example, there's Little Italy, China Town, um...there's so many others but brain is failing me. There's the Amish. Mormons tend to group together as well? Indigenous people/Native Americans had to live in reservations... oh! You could set it as them living on a assumed government owned reservation type place...? I don't know... There's all sorts of plausible reasons people would live and group themselves together. Go with whatever would work in your world. Anyways Good luck!
A friend of mine actually suggested this earlier, with them basically living on a Native American reservation. I loved the idea because it already fit neatly into some worldbuilding I had already been working on. The Native American population is completely aware of the immortals due to the Columbian exchange plagues wiping out 90% of the Native American population and turning its immortal ratio from 1 in 100 to 1 in 10. As a result, and owing to the group's leader's centuries-long history with various Native American tribes, supporting them and doing what essentially amounts to political marriages a few centuries back, the main characters' clan basically has some property in a reservation where immortals openly live amongst humans, and they use this occasionally as one of the various places they move around between over the years to keep people from figuring out they're immortal.
We spend a lot of time on this forum dealing with questions about portraying various minorities without giving offense, and the conversations often go nowhere, but in this case I'll start it. I'd be leery of saying "The vampires are hiding openly among the Hopi" or whatever tribe comes to mind. I think you'd be a lot safer inventing a harmless minority religious sect, perhaps modeled on something like the Amish. You could even identify them as a "heretical" offshoot of an existing group. "Oh, those folks out at the ranch? They're Jacksonites. I heard they were Amish until like a hundred years ago or something and then there was a split over using waterwheels. Or was it windmills? Anyway, they pretty much keep to themselves, don't cause any trouble. I'd rather have them as neighbors than those survivalist nutters ripping off their damn machine guns at all hours of the night."
Is the concern that it's just gonna be way too much research to do justice, or that there's something inherently offensive about adding secret supernatural histories to minority groups? That's actually something I've been wrestling with in general, due to the fact that the main character's parents are like 500 years old and have been in America basically since the time of the colonies, meaning their backstory and hidden lives as immortals are going to almost inevitably entangle with a lot of historical racial tension.
Six of one, half dozen of the other. Depends on how far into your story you are, but if you add a Native American component it's going to flavor the rest of the story heavily. If you've already got your story together and are just figuring out where your characters live, making them connect to an existing culture and mythology means a lot of extra work and someone's always* going to say you got it wrong. The advantage of making them "Jacksonites" or whatever is you get to decide what a Jacksonite allegedly is with no worries about stepping on cultural toes as far as accuracy. On the other side, I'm just a bit leery of adding supernatural powers to anyone marginalized. There's often (not accusing you of this in any way) a lot of racism associated with things like witch doctors, voodoo, shamans and the like. But your story, your call, just not a track I would take (my villains are the members of the homeowner's association in a gated community, in league with rebel demons, trying to kick out a family who just doesn't have the right kind of image to live there ) *as an example, there is or was (can't find a cite, sorry) controversy among speakers of the Lakota language about whether the Native American characters in the film were speaking "properly" or if the male characters were using speech patterns associated with women. They worked pretty hard on that one and still managed to screw things up.
I'm still in the brainstorming process, and was already planning on having Native American characters (and particularly Native American mythical creatures), so this wasn't a last-minute patch-up, more a new idea for the setup of one part of the world and what to do with the first story arc. While avoiding doing anything I'm inevitably going to get wrong is tempting, there's also the issue of how exactly you get into the backstory of somebody who's lived through the entirety of the history of the United States without the Native Americans coming up. I almost feel like going out of my way to avoid anything awkward coming up would wind up being more offensive. As for the whole "shamans and voodoo" concern, the idea was more that their mythical creatures are real just like everyone else's are, and when the population was devastated by the Columbian exchange plagues, they decided to out themselves and openly coexist with their human counterparts as a matter of survival, putting the Native Americans in the unique position of actually knowing that immortals exist once the whole "don't let humans believe in us anymore" rules started being enforced in the more recent centuries. The Native American humans are still human and don't have any unique mystical powers other races don't have.
Let me not step on anyone's toes on this subject. I also see a lot on the lack of diversity in writing as well. Won't it be a good thing to branch out and write about someone different? Society today is a tad to sensitive (but I get it, there's been some bad history that's lead up to now) If you look into Native American mythology and folklore you're going to come across things that may have similar stories and beliefs that basically hint at supernatural creatures (shapeshifters, humanoid creatures who resemble vampires but not actually vampires). So I'd say its a totally workable idea. The only concern is you may have to be creative on the vampires. I don't think there's much about them, if so they were more spoke about as monsters to be feared rather then worshiped. (Who cares, its fiction, have fun with it) Fun fact: Stephenie Meyer (Twilight), based parts of her books on actual Quileute Indian mythology. And everything about the vampires was fictional (of course) You're writing fiction, its meant to be make believe and not 100% accurate. I'd say do some research, write your story the way you see fit, and have beta readers have a go at it, see what they think. There's always bound to be controversy on something we do or write about. It's a person's choice to pick and choose what they want to read. Everyone's going to want to have a say about it. (View the banned books list and the reasons they were banned in the first place) I could mention it to my cousins, who are Native American, and see how they feel about it. (And guess, one of them owns the entire Twilight saga both the books and movies) Have fun!
I'm totally in love with this idea. Agreed. The research is just as important as the story. Best to over write and edit later rather then under write and miss those important details.
Ah, my mistake, sorry. Somehow I got the impression that things were pretty well set and you were, as you put it, "patching up." My caution still stands, but a lot of my potential objections just melted away.
Make it a vampire museum over an abandoned subway tunnel. Then their visitors would always assume the guides were 'in character'. Sort of hiding in plain sight.
I think it's important early in the process to let your creativity go unhindered. Yes, you might write something culturally insensitive. But that can be fixed in editing. For now, you need to let the creative juices go unhindered, and write without fear. What did I say earlier? Oh yeah, don't sweat it.
Alrighty, let's get out that idea-spittin' brain -- warning, not all spitted ideas are going to be good. - it's a rehabilitation place for criminals re-integrating into society - drug rehab place - farm/agriculture college - Student research society - family home with very diverse family - writer's camp - artsy-fart society - hippie commune - philosophy ranch - lab that produces hazardous chemicals - guinea pig farm - horse-riding trauma therapy camp - ranch church - the local farmer's market society - a secluded area for producing electronic music/freestyle rap - low rent housing for the specially qualified -- like somehow the creatures powers are like disabilities, and only people with the "disability" can live there.
