Introducing supernatural element

Sounds interesting. There have been plenty of books with supernatural elements that may or may not be explicit in the text. I'm thinking specifically of The Turn of the Screw. I don't know how much you want to foreground this aspect of your book, if it's meant to be a true surprise. On the other hand, there should be some support for it, especially if it's going to come late and potentially re-contextualize the entire story. The most important thing is to ask questions. Are ghosts in this world common? What impact does this knowledge of them have on society? Are those impacts something you can go without explaining for 75% of your story, or are they such that the world is organized in manifestly different ways that can't escape the notice of your narrator?

I tend to write very realistic contemporary worlds with a supernatural element. I just released one where the supernatural beings don't make an appearance until very late in the tale, and are not even mentioned until halfway through the book. There is certainly some light foreshadowing that things are not all as they seem, but the actual element isn't even mentioned in the first half.

I was also worried about how this would go, but the book has been, by far, my most popular book to date. Reviews have been mostly positive, and not one person so far has complained about the supernatural element not showing up until later.

However, it's clear in the blurb that there is a supernatural element, and then there's foreshadowing.

My best advice is to get a bit of foreshadowing in there and make sure the blurb is clear. You don't have to say there is a ghost specifically, just that things aren't quite what they seem. You want the reader to be surprised, not shocked right out of the story.

Hope that helps!

Clues and foreshadowing. I think you are right that you can't spring it on the reader, but not only that, you'd be missing a good opportunity to build intrigue and tension. If there are lots of little niggles, things which don't make sense and are suddenly explained by that character becoming a ghost, that's much stronger.

NealM said:

......The problem (maybe) is that this is revealed around the 70-75% mark. Nothing before it would suggest that the world of the story is the kind of world in which ghosts are real .....
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I'm considering forcing in some other supernaturalish bits (the characters use a Ouija board, talk to a psychic, etc.) just so it's not so out of the blue when it happens. Or, it's written in past tense first person told by a teenage girl. She's quite sassy and "breaks the fourth wall a lot" so it wouldn't be totally out there for her to just spoil it and flat out tell the reader right up front that there's gonna be a ghost in the story .........

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The first thing that comes to my mind when ghost reveals are mentioned is "Sixth Sense". Spoiler follows .
The MC there is a ghost, but that's revealed just before the movie ends. The rest of the movie did gave us the expectation to expect a ghost, but not that particular person. And if you rewatched the movie a second time, then you got to notice little details which, now that we knew he was a ghost, made perfect sense. But when watching the movie the first time, without knowing MC was a ghost, those little details also made sense, although we thought they meant something different. And that was the brilliance of it. It all fits neatly together. So, it's fine to introduce your ghost whenever. As long as it all makes sense when somebody decides to re-read the book again. There was no Ouija there, and there was no psychic. Nobody was trying to prove ghosts exists (more like the opposite).

Now ghosts being pretty real for many people, it's very easy to assume they might pop up in any story. As long as there is a reason for that person to be a ghost. What does it change? What's the difference from them being a real person? There must be something. Say, if you write Little Red Riding Hood where the wolf is a ghost, it doesn't change any of the story - he eats Grandma, tries to eat Hood, then is killed off by a huntsman, end of story, no change, no point in him being ghost. Unless.... there is something else his ghostness adds to the story. Even if Hood broke the fourth wall on page one and told us there will be a ghost in the story, there still have to be something extra that ghost brings along to the plot.

NealM said:

I may or may not have a problem. My current WIP is a real world (not fantasy) YA novel, however one of the characters turns out to be a ghost (though the novel is not a "ghost story" per se). The problem (maybe) is that this is revealed around the 70-75% mark. Nothing before it would suggest that the world of the story is the kind of world in which ghosts are real and interact with people. My concern is that this is too late in the story to introduce something like that and will end up jarring the reader.

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Yes that would piss me off personally. I'm struggling with something similar in mine, in that there are supernatural aspects that aren't meant to dominate. I started my first scene with a supernatural element, but enough reason for the reader to doubt (then I added two more scenes before that )

I would definitely suggest you at least give the reader a reason to believe something supernatural could happen, even if it's unspecified.

NealM said:

Or, it's written in past tense first person told by a teenage girl. She's quite sassy and "breaks the fourth wall a lot" so it wouldn't be totally out there for her to just spoil it and flat out tell the reader right up front that there's gonna be a ghost in the story (although I'd prefer for it to be a surprise).

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This may work well, especially if you give the reader reasons to believe she is unreliable, so even though you told the reader, they still may not expect it or take it at face value. Then again, if she's too unreliable, they maybe still won't believe it when you get there.

The first thing that came to mind for me was "From Dusk till Dawn."

MAJOR Spoilers incoming:

The first half of the movie is a crime movies, a couple of bank robbers making a getaway and kidnapping some people in the process. Halfway through the film they stop at a bar... and the bar is full of vampires. The entire story takes a right-turn into the supernatural with no warning whatsoever (they MAY be foreshadowing, I've only seen the film once and that was a while ago, but if there was, I sure didn't catch it on the first viewing).

Not knowing what was coming, it took me a moment to reoriente my brain into "vampire movie" mode, but once I did, I was able to roll with it and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the film, so it's definitely possible to successfully add supernatural elements late in the game. In fact, the film exceled in an area where a lot of horror films fall short... making the victim characters interesting in their own right. Look a the "cabin in the woods" genre of horror films. Generally the introductory scenes revolve around a car full of young, pretty people on their way to have a nice vacation/party. Character development is frequently limited to which one brought the weed/beer, which ones are going to have sex, and which one is uptight, with possibly a dork thrown in for good measure. The result is a cast of characters that's interchangeable with half the other films in the genre. I'm not knocking them. I love me a good "scary cabin" movie, but when the plot is "fun vacation interrupted," and the audience is going, 'Ok, ok. We know most of these characters are gonna die anyway, so quit wasting time with "character development," and get to the good stuff," there's only so much a writer can do.

"From Dusk till Dawn," completely bucks that trend. You really care about the victims, and seeing them go from being kidnapped by murderious bank robbers to fighting vampires, well, it reminds me of that youtube video of the baby water buffalo that gets grabbed by some lions, and while he's struggling to escape THAT, a croc grabs him too and plays tug of war with the lions. You really root for the little guy.

I guess what I'm getting at is that the late introduction can be a great thing if you do it right, and it might give you the opportunity to play with the story in ways that wouldn't be possible otherwise.

Tazlima said:

The first thing that came to mind for me was "From Dusk till Dawn."

MAJOR Spoilers incoming:

The first half of the movie is a crime movies, a couple of bank robbers making a getaway and kidnapping some people in the process. Halfway through the film they stop at a bar... and the bar is full of vampires. The entire story takes a right-turn into the supernatural with no warning whatsoever

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Yeah, but that movie had many other things that kept the audience intrigued. Like, Handsome George! Big explosions! Bright colours! It was a spectacle so enchanting, by the time the vampires sowed up the audience had forgotten how the movie started Besides, I'd watch two hours of Handsome George walking down a street, never caring about plot, never mind plot holes! I think the point here is, keep your reader entertained enough so they won't start asking questions, like, what are these vampires doing in a bank robber movie? "From Dusk till Dawn" leaves you breathless all the way through. It's weird but it's wonderful, so who cares about the weird. On a stricter note, it was an adventure movie, about two interesting characters who walked into interesting situations. One of the interesting situations just happened to be vampires. They could have been just regular bar fights and gangsters, or wild tigers, and the movie wouldn't change much. The plot was "tough guys having an adventure", so the audience had some sort of expectations that way.

NealM said:

I actually did think of the Sixth Sense myself, but the difference is the Sixth Sense is a ghost story right from the start. Sure, we don't know that a certain character is a ghost, but there's ghosts all up and down that movie from the opening scene. My story would be more like the movie The Breakfast Club but it turns out at the end that Molly Ringwald is a ghost.

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Does making the character a ghost change the story? Is it the whole reason for the story (even if that's not apparent right away)? Or is it just an incidental fact? Because if nothing changes in the story except that your character turns out to be a ghost, then what it is the point? I mean, if it's really true that it wouldn't be any different from randomly declaring Ringwold's character to be a ghost, then I don't know why you're doing it.

NealM said:

No, it definitely matters. The whole story hinges on it. The Ringwald example was just to clarify that my story is not a ghost story like Sixth Sense but more of a teen dramedy like Breakfast Club. Until the reveal of course.

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In that case, think foreshadowing and clues. But they can't be obvious, except in hindsight.

One of the best parts of the video game, Red Dead Redemption, was a series of side missions involving a "stranger" who knows more about the main character than should be possible, and who sends him on morality-based missions to prove what kind of man he is. There's strong implication that the stranger is something supernatural.

Personally, I love those little flares in otherwise contemporary stories. Especially when it's not 100% clear if something supernatural did happen.

NealM said:

My story would be more like the movie The Breakfast Club but it turns out at the end that Molly Ringwald is a ghost.

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I actually like that story idea, quite a bit. It would all depend on your technique for carrying it off.

caw

Novel that instantly springs to mind is Liar by Justine Larbalestier. That's a YA with a supernatural twist at the end. It wasn't marketed as supernatural and you get no hint that it is until the end part -- probably a good place to start (and a very good book!). I also thought of Evernight by Claudia Gray, also YA supernatural. This was more obviously a supernatural, but she managed to hide the supernatural identity of the MC until about midway and it was a huge (and effective) twist.

As for your novel, my first thought would be that you'd have to write the thing out to see how it plays to readers. If you need to fold in hints of the supernatural in future edits that shouldn't mean an overhaul of the book. Solutions to your problem may present themselves as you write along, since you're aware it may be jarring. I would go with it for now. It's worth a try.

If the ghost only interacts with your MC, without moving actual objects and under circumstances where no-one else notices, and then it's revealed that she's been talking to a ghost/voice in her head/figment of her imagination, then it's suitably vague and unreliable-narratorlike.
If the ghost is 3D, solid and totally interactive with the living world, and everyone in it, then how does it differ from an actual person?
In the first case, the reader can go back and check that, no, he didn't speak to anyone else, and he might be a ghost, or he might just be her way of handling his death.

NealM said:

Yup, I thought of this as well. It's a great example. But it took a genius like Tarantino to pull it off. I'm as confident as any writer, I guess, but this is Tarantino we're talking about. Still, it gives me something to strive for.

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Tarantino wrote the script, Rodriguez directed. And that's key. Because Rodriguez has made a career out of giving no f*cks about whether his films fit into a specific box. Sometimes the instinct to "make it all make sense" is your worst enemy. Sometimes you just need to write the story and let the reader follow along whether they are anticipating what's coming or not.

(I do agree that foreshadowing is a good tool here. And there are probably ways you could drop hints that not everything is as normal as it seems before you get to the reveal. But you might need to write out the first draft and then go back and see where you can tweak things a little more, rather than trying to figure it all out as you go.)

I'm in the camp that says write it first and see how everything plays out.

Long term, though, there may be some issues with selling the book. While Rodriguez may not care about what box his movie fits into, I think that new writers may have to care quite a bit if they want to get an agent and publish.

Since I haven't gone through the publishing part of writing, I'll just share my concerns as questions to anyone that knows.

If you market the book as real world fiction, won't the appearance of a ghost turn off real world fiction readers?

If you market the book as paranormal, won't paranormal readers get impatient with no hint of the paranormal for the first three quarters of the book?

Maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about, and execution would be the deciding factor either way.

I ran into this very same problem with my novel, 'A Forbidden Cure," It was a straight forward political thriller until I introduced a spiritual/fantasy element halfway through the book. It wasn't crucial to the plot and I considered removing many it times, I ended up leaving it in, deciding that the very fact that it seemed so out of place had its own rewards...