Things you'd like to see in a Vampire novel.

[armageddonman]

I prefer my vampires to be disgusting, cannibalistic monsters rather than romantic leads.

This.

I very much enjoyed the vampires from 30 Days of Night (the comic, not the movie).

Also, Stephen King's take on vampires was very creepy.

Seriously, Anne Rice has ruined vampires for good.

 

[Morrigan]

The best vampire novel is GRRM's Fevre Dream. Read that for inspiration, I say. Also The Skin Trade is a very neat werewolf story by him.

The closer the vampire story is to the original Dracula, Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, or Fevre Dream, the better. The further away the vampire story is to Anne Rice, Twilight, Dracula 2000 and the Underworld movies, the better. More horror, less breasts romance please.

 

[Earthborn]

It needs some sort of explanation for what causes vampires to be invisible in mirrors. Perhaps a sort of skeptical take on vampires: they turn out to be all in the protagonists head instead of existing for real. That might also be an explanation for why they don't appear during the day; the protagonist is only afraid of them at night.

If you chose to write about "real" vampires, there needs to be some sort of explanation why the vampires specifically need human and can't survive perfectly well on pigs' or cows' blood, which would make the story decidedly less scary. You probably even need an explanation why they need blood at all, because it doesn't make a whole lot of biological sense that an organism can only feed on blood.

 

[Morrigan]

^ Don't listen to the above. First, your vampires don't need to be invisible in mirrors nor burn in daylight: requiring blood for sustenance is pretty much the only common thread to all vampire lore, the rest is optional, you can pick and choose what you like. And since it's fantasy/horror, you don't need to explain anything like that if you don't want to.

I like the Legacy of Kain vampire best, myself: requires blood (duh), is weakened (but not killed!) by sunlight (though still stronger than a normal human), can temporarily turn into bat/wolf/mist, is harmed by water (even rain or snow) and cannot cross bodies of water unless in bat or mist form, stronger on full moons, garlic and crosses have no effect whatsoever, they look inhuman (but can use illusion spells to disguise themselves temporarily), and there's nothing about the mirror silliness. Of course a lot of those things are like that for the gameplay elements rather than story, but I still like these choices a lot. It makes a badass but still vulnerable vampire.

 

[bjornart]

Here's what I don't want: Retractable fangs, fangs that are incisors (f- you True Blood!), scientific explanations for vampires. I don't want to hear virus, mutation, alien death ray, mad scientist, or similar. There's no scientific explanation possible for being undead. Just let them be magical and leave it at that.

 

[Brian-M]

Here's what I don't want: Retractable fangs, fangs that are incisors (f- you True Blood!), scientific explanations for vampires. I don't want to hear virus, mutation, alien death ray, mad scientist, or similar. There's no scientific explanation possible for being undead. Just let them be magical and leave it at that.

The virus thing works for OK for zombies, it's almost plausible, sort of keeping them alive in near-death with most of their brain functions shut down. But I agree it doesn't work for vampires.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Maybe they could make a good one this time?

The odds seem to be against it.

It's hard to see how parody could go much further than "Pride & Prejudice & Zombies" http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2009-07-21-jane-austen-zombies-vampires_N.htm though as usual where the supernatural is concerned , Pratchett has written the book- even hinting at a devilishly complex relationship between Lady Margolotta and Vetinari, not forgetting arch Paparazzo Otto Shriek.

 

[Aepervius]

What I want in a vampire novel :
* vampire need blood only, nothing else is real (mirror, sunlight etc...)
* a chilling description how a single vampire, contaminate a small group, then the infection ramp up and the whole earth is filled with vampire, no exception

Might already have been done though.

 

[Brian-M]

It's hard to see how parody could go much further than "Pride & Prejudice & Zombies"

I started reading that one, but just didn't find it interesting. The zombies didn't improve the story at all.

Maybe others in the "series" might be better, like "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters" or "Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter". But I doubt it.

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

Fat, hick vampires who live in mobiles homes and spend all their money on cheap junk from Walmart, nudie bars, booze, and fishing equipment. They are all middle-aged, white guys who are racists (although they publicly say they aren’t). They spend all of their time sitting around drinking beer and complaining about politics, the weather, atheists, communists, homosexuals, and how they never have any money or fresh human blood. They could kill the non-white people for their blood, but the only blood they deem suitable to drink is from all-American white people. But they are lazy, so they just drink blood from a butcher shop, except during hunting and fishing season when they go on a road trip and bag their tag limit of hunters and fisherman and steal their hunting and fishing equipment, which they fence through a pawn shop that they collectively own.

 

[Elizabeth I]

If you must, could you avoid the whole sex thing and make it a story about a very alien mutation?

Roger Zelazny did it (not a whole book, but a chapter in a book, and not alien, but a mutation), This Immortal.

A full-on, no holds barred, free-wheeling parody of everything that makes the current generation of the gothic vampire novel the utter laughingstock that it has become.

I think Terry Pratchett came pretty close with Carpe Jugulum.

What would I like to see in a vampire novel? A crusader who vows to wipe out every author of vampire novels in the world - and succeeds.

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

Or….

A guy gets bitten by another guy who claims to be a vampire and tells the guy that he is now a vampire too. The guy is a skeptic so he doesn’t believe him. He starts getting pale and feeling sick. He go to the doctor. The usual tests don’t show anything. But eventually they discover that he has a newly discovered blood disease that is exasperated by high levels of vitamin D and diallyl sulphides, It is a communicable disease that is only transmitted when an infected person’s blood comes in direct contact with another person’s blood stream. It can only be cured by introducing blood into his system. So he has to have nearly constant blood transfusions. Then a large pharmaceutical company develops a product that he can eat so that he doesn’t have to be hooked up to an IV all the time. They could not reduce it to a pill, so it is sort of a blood meatloaf. It doesn’t taste very good. So the guy learns how to cook and incorporate the product into his tasty dishes. He opens up a chain of successful restaurants that cater to “vampires” and gets his own show on the Food network.

I seem to be writing my own stories now. I’ll stop.

 

[ShadowSot]

One thing I always enjoy is seeing a character who becomes infected and slowly degenerates, fighting it the entire way.
Not like in the Dawn of the Dead series, where a character dies and then comes back as a zombie.
I read one story a while back where a fellow is bitten by a zombie, and succumbs to the infection over a few days.
It was describes as feeling similar to hypothermia and rabies, with the person's body slowly shutting down, while their behavior becoming more and more erratic.
Even after the person died they would retain their characteristics for a little bit, as their brain started to succumb to lack of oxygen. The process that cause the zombiefication delayed the normal time it would take, instead of just a few minutes, ti could be dragged out for hours or days.

Seriously, Anne Rice has ruined vampires for good.

Started well before Anne Rice.
Looking back at 1936.
Or, for that matter, how about Bela Lugosi, who's name unfortunately will now be shared with that livin cardboard character from that one book series.

 

[Fnord]

The virus thing works for OK for zombies, it's almost plausible, sort of keeping them alive in near-death with most of their brain functions shut down. But I agree it doesn't work for vampires.

At least two strains of the same virus might be involved. The V1N1-ZMBY strain that keeps the entire body barely animated after death, and the rarer V1N2-VMPR strain that not only keeps the entire body animated after death, but also makes the body stronger, faster and more resilient against adverse environments. In both cases, the only substance that can be assimilated for nourishment is blood and/or flesh from the same species.

Then there is the V1N3-IMRT strain, which is what the scientists were trying for in the first place - an immortality virus that keeps its 'victims' in perfect health indefinitely, requiring only the occasional transfusion to 'remind' the virus what human DNA really looks like. Unfortunately, only a few hundred or so people received this virus before those infected with the previous strains brought human progress to a standstill, resulting in a "Viro-Punk" society, with the vampire slave-lords at the top, ordinary humanity in the middle, and zombies prowling the streets, slums and sewers. The immortals, however, want no part of any of this, and have formed their own secret society to try to (a) survive, and (b) find a cure for the V1 virus, as long as the cure has no effect on themselves.

I'm sure that ample boobage references can be included in there somewhere.

 

[Moon-Spinner]

I agree with some of the previous posts:

A vampire DOES cast shadows and DOES reflect in the mirror. After all, he/she is still made of the same flesh and bone that they had in life.

A vampire can go out in the day, but night is usually a better time for them to do their dastardly deeds, and according to lore, night is the traditional time for them to come out of their graves.

The whole "Stake In The Heart" thing has gotten misrepresented over the past century too. It was derived form the belief that criminals and unholy people would come back to life after death, so they would nail the corpse to the bottom of the coffin (with a very large nail or stake), so that when the corpse came back to life it could not get out of the coffin, and thus would starve to "Death".

Also, they would behead the corpses to prevent it from coming back form the dead (which may be the ONLY way to truly kill a vampire!).

I would also eliminate religious symbols warding off vampires, along with the "Vampire can't enter your house until it's invited" thing.

I think the best thing to do is to read about vampire lore form very old books, ones that haven't been influenced by the past hundred years of novels and Hollywood. I have an encyclopedia set that's over a hundred years old, and it was very eye opening what the origins of vampire lore were about.

 

[Big Les]

What do I want to see in vampire fiction? How about some chuffing vampires? Foofy vampires, animalistic vampires etc, all fine and good, but I want some actual blood-drinking revenants.

To this end, you absolutely must get hold of this book;

http://www.amazon.com/Vampires-Burial-Death-Folklore-Reality/dp/0300048599

 

[Aepervius]

I love the fat chubby hick vampire idea from devil advocate.

Might not be easy to market though. Much easier the sexy male teenager vampire to sell to audience (unless you are making a comedy sitcom).

 

[Lucian]

What do I want to see in vampire fiction? How about some chuffing vampires? Foofy vampires, animalistic vampires etc, all fine and good, but I want some actual blood-drinking revenants.

To this end, you absolutely must get hold of this book;

http://www.amazon.com/Vampires-Burial-Death-Folklore-Reality/dp/0300048599

Oh, piddle, I wanted to suggest that book. Well, there's also J. Gordon Melton's The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead, The Vampire Casebook, ed. by Alan Dundes, Dom Augustine Calmet's Treatise on Vampires and Revenants, tr. by Henry Christmas, and Montague Summers' vampire books, sold under a variety of names.

 

[Vortigern99]

Fun thread! I, too, am writing a vampire novel, though it's set in Stoker's unique world, so I'm beholden to all of the elements of vampire lore which he opted to include, and which are now famous as a result of his monstrous (hee) success.

To answer the thread question, then: good writing and engaging characters. That's all you need. The rest of it is just window dressing for the flavors of the time.

 

[Bikewer]

I was going to say some sort of rational explanation for the phenomenon as well, but Whitley Strieber already did that in The Hunger (made a decent movie, too...).
The vampires are an example of parallel evolution; they are not human. They mimic humans and live among us, and can to some degree "turn" humans who can gain long life thereby. The humans are still mortal, however.