Writing Monsters: How to Craft Believably Terrifying Creatures to Enhance Your Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction by Philip Athans

Author:Philip Athans [Athans, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2014-08-06T22:00:00+00:00

RULES FOR CREATION

Richard Baker’s personal rule of thumb is that a good monster needs “an offense, a defense, and a utility feature.

“Offense is obvious—what’s it going to do to you? Claw you to pieces? Stick you with a proboscis and suck out your insides? Feast on your psyche? Ideally it should be a fate that fills the reader or viewer with visceral dread. Defense means simply, why is it hard to kill? Monsters shouldn’t be a problem you can solve easily with whatever firearm happens to be handy. It could be there are a lot of the monsters, and you’re likely to run out of bullets before you deal with them all. Finally, utility means something not directly related to killing or surviving that adds interesting story elements. For example, the Blair Witch marks her territory with disturbing little stick figures and makes people stand in the corner before she kills them. Vampires can’t enter a home without being invited. That sort of thing.”

It’s hardly a coincidence that Richard Baker spends a lot of his time designing role-playing games (RPGs) like Dungeons & Dragons and the upcoming Primeval Thule campaign setting. In order to provide a consistent play experience, RPG monsters have to be expressed with a set of game terms. This can help very clearly define what a monster can and can’t do, but just because there’s a set of game rules around a creature doesn’t necessarily make it plausible. The maker of that monster still has to have a solid story purpose in mind. The monster, for instance, has to make sense coming from that specific alien environment, and so on. You can pick up some valuable tips and a whole lot of inspiration from the various role-playing games.

Take, for example, the Star-thing of Nheb from Primeval Thule.1

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