I've been writing for a good few years now, and I've been lucky enough to have many people give me tips and tricks over that time. Each chapter will be a separate article about various points of writing, be it insights into how I tackle things like...
There are many vampires out there in fiction who seem to simply be clones of one another. Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing, when you find lots of characters of a similar ilk, it is often because that's what people like to watch and read. However, for a great vampire, as with any other great protagonist or antagonist, they have to be memorable and a little different.
A lot of this can be achieved by character, but that's not the aspect I want to talk about today. What I want to look at is vampire traits. In the western tradition we tend to think fangs, drinking blood and coffins, but this is a very limited view.
The first thing we all have to understand with vampires is:
There are no hard and fast rules!
Some people seem to think vampires have to fit a certain mould - they really, really don't. Vampires come from folklore and there are as many different vampires out there in mythology as there are fish in the sea. And what is absolutely wonderful about fiction is that we can mix and match to our heart's content.
Check out WattpadVampires for lots and lots of information on the different species of vampire floating around.
What Kind of Vampire?
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One of the first questions we have to ask is, what makes our character a vampire. A vampire is a parasitic lifeform, living off other beings, but there are many options as to what it is they consume:
