I've been thinking about urban fantasy a lot lately. Specifically, the decisions that writers make about the setting and world that their story is set in. While I can't remember where I read this precisely, one authority in the genre talks about the decision that all urban fantasy writers need to make. How much does the wider world know about vampires and werewolves and things that cause a godawful ruckus in the night?
What particularly interests me is how writers introduce their reader to this world in the first few pages. There's nothing worse than the nauseating trope that has characters agonising over the discovery that vampires or zombies are real. Just accept it and move on with the story.
I looked back at a couple of books to see how writers do this, including Storm Front by Jim Butcher, Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris, Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey and Midnight Mass by F. Paul Wilson. I was determined to understand how each of these writers signalled genre and said, "Yes, dear readers, you are about to read a novel where vampires drive Toyotas, werewolves file tax returns and there are tentacled things waiting in the darkness to taste your fear."
In Storm Front, Butcher introduces his reader to the cynical Harry Dresden through a new mailman who laughs when he sees the sign 'Harry Dresden. Wizard' on the office door. "Spells and potions? Demons and incantations? Subtle and quick to anger?” he asks. What is great about this approach is that it deals with the matter humorously on the first page. Towards the end of the scene, Butcher writes simply: "My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. I’m a wizard. I work out of an office in midtown Chicago. As far as I know, I’m the only openly practicing professional wizard in the country. You can find me in the yellow pages, under ‘Wizards’. Believe it or not, I’m the only one there."
In Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris is perhaps more direct: "I'd been waiting for the vampire for years when he walked into the bar. Ever since vampires came out of the coffin (as they laughingly put it) four years ago, I'd hoped one would come to Bon Temps." BOOM! The story is off and racing. What I've always admired about Dead Until Dark is the conceit that vampires and werewolves have been revealed to the world, providing Harris to be wildly inventive about the implications of such a revelation to our world.
On the opening page of Sandman Slim, James Stark drops back into our world on flames, landing in a pile of garbage and trying desperately to extinguish the flames: "And wouldn't those black hearted bastards have laughed when I ended up right back in Hell after slipping so sweetly out the back door?" he muses. "Fuck 'em."
What do each of these examples have in common? These luminaries of the genre give their readers a knowing wink and assure them that, indeed, supernatural shenanigans are afoot. What's more they give an insight into their protagonist from the very first page: the frustration of Harry; the Sookie's small town fascination with the vampire; or Stark's hardboiled attitude.
Right from page one, these writers make promise about the story and their protagonist. The next five hundred pages or so are about delivering on that promise.