Let’s look at some submission guidelines for a few short story magazines, shall we?
“There are lots of other sites for that, also if you write vampire stories or prefer slasher type stories, this is not the place for you.”
- Golden Visions Magazine
“I am not looking for run of the mill vampire stories or dry poetry that no one but the author can understand or enjoy…”
- Niteblade Fantasy and Horror Magazine
“And please, no vampires unless your story is completely unique. The same goes for ghosts and serial killers.”
- Tabard Inn Magazine
There’s a bit of a trend here. Vampires are old hat, apparently; yesterday’s horror. People have seen Van Helsing, Interview with a Vampire, any and all manner of Buffy derivatives, and have read Dracula, Dracula Origin, The New Annotated Dracula, etc. The idea has been done to death.
Why does this matter? Dammit, if I want to write a vampire story, why is it immediately treated like second-rate fan fiction before it’s even read? Well, it has to do with human demand. I could go on for awhile about this, but Richard K. Morgan articulates the problem so much better than I. Here’s what he says about it.
“Take vampires. Once the twin font of terror (as we shrank from the threat they posed to our lives and immortal souls) and wonder (as we contemplated the idea of eternal life), they now get the shit kicked out of them on a weekly basis by a petite teenage black belt in karate and valleyspeak irony. Anne Rice’s Vampire Lestat, once himself a wondrous and terrifying figure, tracks the mystery of vampire origin back across time and space with the cool aplomb of an undead Indiana Jones and then, worst of all possible scenarios, solves the damn thing. Disaster! After that, no amount of cataclysmic confrontation between the various vampire characters can mask the enormous letdown of the Unknowable becoming abruptly, nakedly and rather prosaically Known. We’re left with Blade I and II (and for all I know, III to IX), and slaughter no gorier than you’d find on the average human battlefield. The wonder is gone, and so is the fear. Yeah, yeah, bloodsucking fiends. Yawn.
“…Your chances as an SF/F writer of sending a chill up your reader’s spine are subject to an inexorable law of diminishing returns and a market flooded with repetitive product. Giant killer insects? Seen it. Skeletal killer robots? Seen it. Scaly lizard aliens. Seen it. OK, invisible scaly lizard aliens. Yeah, yeah, that too. Corpses re-animated by a chemical pollutant and/or shadowy corporate/military interests. Seen it. Alien intelligences that take over humans through a variety of insidious processes and- SEEN it! Aliens who abduct much loved family members with the help of shadowy government conspira- Come on, you’re not trying.
To sidestep a moment, take a look at Alien. Why was the first one so scary? Well because you never saw the damn thing until near the end of the movie. You saw evidence of the monster of course, knew exactly what it was capable of, but it seldom steps in front of the camera. Once it does, though, it’s a great moment in horror film history, but the cat’s out of the bag. The amount of face time the monster has goes up about 100-fold in the second movie because you can’t use the same trick twice.
That’s why vampires are a tough sell. They’ve lost their mystique.
So how to get around this? Well, if you took the right approach to writing in the first place, this would never be an issue. You want to read a good vampire story? Read Olalla by Robert Louis Stevenson.
What’s it about, you ask? Well in the story, a guy stays at a creepy house in the mountains, where vampires live. Yes I know, that sounds like the very stereotype of a crap vampire story. But the story’s not about that; that’s merely the premise. The theme is something else entirely, and it has little to do with vampires. Look into it, you won’t be disappointed.
A sci-fi or fantasy story has unrealistic elements, sure, but any good story will be about the characters, the human element. If you take that approach, you can write about whatever you want – vampire truckers in space trying to unmask a government conspiracy involving aliens, if that’s your thing – and you’ll always have a shot at writing something of quality. Again, I defer to Mr. Morgan.
