“There are more things in heaven and Earth, than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Doug.”

That’s a line from my teen comedy, Keggers Can’t Be Choosers, and what I meant by that is that it’s deeply human to believe in a world that exists outside our own.

We all have different experiences with faith. Fans of the channel include devout Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists and even a few Zoroastrians. I never considered myself a believer until one day, when I was fourteen, I started hearing voices from beyond. In my childhood, I never trusted religion, probably because my parents weren’t religious, and also because I caught my father in bed with two separate nuns.

But these voices seemed so real and I couldn’t explain where they were coming from. They told me that I should help the less fortunate. But instead of volunteering at a homeless shelter or donating to the Red Cross, they said I should mail a vial of my own blood to a medical center in Louisville, Kentucky. I asked why I couldn’t just donate blood at a blood drive like anyone else, but they said people under eighteen weren’t allowed to do that and that young blood has special healing properties that the ruling class doesn’t want regular people to know about.

Well of course it turned out, after a visit from officials with the postal service, that the voices I was hearing weren’t those of a higher power but instead the older son of my step mom who managed to sneak a radio transmitter into our bedroom and was trying to see what he could convince me to do.

And even though that incident convinced me that God almost certainly doesn’t exist, I still can’t forget the momentary excitement I felt when I thought I had discovered a world beyond normal human perception.

Man vs the Supernatural conflicts might work well because they are so primal. After all, humans had to make up stories to explain all the crazy shit that happens in nature that we couldn’t explain. And these stories also make for great David and Goliath tales, where regular humans face off against seemingly invincible ghosts, demons and monsters. Anyone who’s ever tried to cancel a gym membership, or had to convince their second wife that her new husband is wrong for her even though he’s somehow getting more handsome as he grays at the temples, will respond strongly to these types of stories.

We’ll hope we’re not praying to the wrong God on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

~

Tip One – Let the Mystery Be

Just like visiting an underground sex club, the conflict is much more effective when you don’t really know what is happening or why. I don’t necessarily want to know why demons exist, just like I don’t want to know why the noises of the person on the other side of the glory hole sound oddly familiar, like perhaps your agent pretending to be a woman.

Of course you can’t go the other way, either. You can’t be so vague that it’s not even clear what force your characters are fighting against. In my novel, At Death’s Vestibule, the protagonist loses his job, his family and his friends, but can’t really pinpoint why this is happening. Critics said the novel was basically incomprehensible and that it read like a cry for help, but not from a person you’d actually bother saving. In fairness, I wrote this book quickly after Cindy left me, and at that point in my life it just seemed like vague forces of fate were working against me, though looking back it was probably my clingyness and my forcing Cindy to write down the name of every man she spoke to throughout the day on the fridge notepad.

Tip Two – Balance Belief and Skepticism

You can write a story where all characters are aware of supernatural elements, sure, but unless you’re writing high fantasy, some characters will always have to grapple with their preexisting beliefs or insist there must be a logical explanation. As a writer, a lot of the fun can come from which characters decide to blame their dad’s death on monsters and which insist that autoerotic asphyxiation is not that uncommon.

And it’s very relatable. When D&E Publishing offices burned down, I wanted to blame it on demons, even though in doing so I likely wouldn’t get an insurance payout and would have to declare bankruptcy. My third wife insisted that it was obviously caused by illegally siphoning electricity from a neighboring building and that I was only using the demon excuse to absolve myself legally. Eventually, a Twitter poll proved her mostly right.

Tip Three – Ultimately, it’s the human element we care about

Beyond skepticism, a supernatural conflict can be a great way to explore some of the deepest parts of the human psyche. If a character is given everything they wanted by a genie, how will they react? Will they succumb to their worst nature, as in The Picture of Dorian Gray, or will they, like the protagonist in my novel Out of the Bottle, simply try to set the record for having sex with the most women.

In any case, you should remember that your supernatural forces are second to the choices your characters make. Let me tell you an interesting story from real life that illustrates this. About seven years ago, D&E Publishing was looking to publish the work of an unknown author who just showed up to our offices unannounced one day. Normally, that’s a no-no in the publishing industry, but we were a very small company and hadn’t scored any big-name authors at the time. The author was affable and I would describe him as Gypsy-looking but I won’t because I don’t want to get cancelled.

Anyway, rumor spread the office that the book was cursed. First of all, the line editor I assigned to the novel died in a car accident when his breaks failed. Our sensitivity reader had a childhood friend die of an overdose. Then, a month later one of the team I put in charge of marketing the book got chlamydia. Suddenly, my whole staff refused to have anything to do with the book. Instead, I had to find freelancers to finish the rest of the work before publication. But it was interesting to see all of the different reactions. Some staff members told their families to move. My business partner started checking his car for car bombs. Almost everyone got screened for chlamydia. But I stayed skeptical, and the only real long-lasting curse was the lack of cash the book brought in.