The Perks of Being a Vampire

I'm thinking about writing a vampire novel.

At the moment I'm in between projects. The Camp NaNos are over for the year, and NaNoWriMo proper isn't until November. What’s a wayward writer to do?

I'm not sure if I should just start writing something now, or start planning for November. I think that an undertaking like this is going to take some preparation. For me, this involves charts. Tables, technically. Spreadsheets?

I said to myself, "Self, wouldn’t it be great if there was a list comparing all the vampire folklore?" It would be great, and there is a list (Thanks, wikipedia). I copied all the relevant information into Excel so I could do… nerdy Excel things. I'm not going to get into that.

You might ask yourself, "Why would you need a chart of what everyone else has done? Why not make up your own thing?" Well, I'm glad you asked. See, there's a lot of vampire mythology, and everyone does it a little different. Does sunlight kill them or not? What about stakes, garlic, crosses, or holy water? There are a lot of factors to consider. It's all very mix and match. How are vampires created? Are they immortal? Are they super fast? Can they fly?

The chart is so that I can get an idea of the possibilities. I want to be able to pick and choose from a smorgasbord of fiction and folklore. I want to take a little from the things that I know and love, and hopefully turn them into something new and cool.

"But vampires are so overdone these days!" You might cry, shaking your fist at your screen. So? I write what I want to write, and right now, it involves vampires. I don't know the plot, and I don't know the characters, and I don't know when I'm actually going to write this thing. But I'll get to that.

This is all a part of writing I tend to gloss over: research. I don't do a lot of research, and I'll tell you why. If, for instance, I'm writing a historical story and I need to learn more about a time period, I'll find all this information and discover all this stuff, and then it's so hard to figure out what matters, and how to work in all the stuff I need without sounding like an essay. Mostly I just look up random facts, and learn things like how to tie a noose or the behavior of severed arteries. 

But this, well, this is part research, part fantasy world-building (which I'm also not great at, but this would be good practice). The details don't have to be exact. It's more inspiration than information (I need that on a t-shirt).

Okay, it's late, and there's a weird anime going on in the background that's making it very hard to concentrate. See you Friday.