: Re: Is it bad to suddenly introduce another element to your fantasy world a good ways into the story? I'm writing a novel with many POVs, and this is a very flexible story. It started out with

@Sarah872

Vote Up Vote Down

This raises an alarm bell for me. The reason is that magical creatures aren't just scenery. They have a psychological and archetypal dimension --they carry certain thematic resonance along with them. If your book isn't built around vampire themes, and if they aren't foreshadowed, then introducing them late in the book might be a symptom of thematic incoherence.

As hinted at above, there are ways around this. If the story already has themes that are resonant with vampires --parasitism, creepy sexuality, blood --then the late introduction of an actual vampire may feel entirely right and appropriate. Or, if the existence of vampires is foreshadowed early, that could also work. But dumping a vampire in late with neither of these things in place smacks of either desperation or self-indulgence.

This last point is just personal prejudice, but for me as a reader, late introduction of a new first-person POV (vampire or not!) is something that would almost always cause me to abandon a book entirely. I dislike multiple first-person POV anyway, and when it is introduced late, it completely ruins my immersion. (You didn't specify first-person, so this may not apply).

(0)

Login to post a comment!