Rules for Writing Vampires
Number 1: They do not sparkle
Listen, I have a lot of nerve telling people how to write about vampires properly. I mean, in the first place, vampires aren’t real. And, as I lamented in a recent Medium post, I’m not a published author (yet) (and yes, my first unpublished novel has vampires and lycans in it, the latter being my novel’s name for werewolves).
But since Bram Stoker birthed Count Dracula, several other writers have created vampires in his image, and I contend other literary vampires that don’t follow at least some of these conventions are simply… not vampires.*
They Come Out at Night
This is the number one rule of being a vampire. They cannot be active during the day.
Look, vamps are nearly invincible, immortal beings. They are faster and stronger than humans, they are utterly bewitching, and therefore, vampires that can roam about during the day taking other people to lunch would simply take over the world.
They only are active at night because the sun will kill them. Even if it’s not sunny, per se, they are not able to be awake, even if they want to be (see: The Vampire Lestat).
They sure as fuck do not move around the world pretending to be high school students, and hide from the sun because they turn into sparklevampires when it hits them directly.
If you need an immortal protagonist that takes the other main character out to lunch, then create an immortal being who can take other characters out to lunch. Call him a Highlander, whatever, but if he’s out and about during the actual day, he’s not a vampire. And if you insist on him being a vampire, I’m sorry, I can’t read your book. (It’s fine, you have a Netflix deal, this is just my opinion and isn’t going to affect your bottom line.)
What’s for Dinner
Speaking of lunch, vampires need blood to survive. Can they eat or drink other things? I’m willing to allow it, I suppose, especially things like meat and wine. But ultimately, a vamp is going to have a tap a vein — someone else’s vein, to be clear — in order to continue to live. Human blood is ideal, pig or deer blood will do in a pinch; I suppose a vampire can survive on rats and cats if pressed to the limit. Young vampires need to drink more than older vampires, and ancient vampires probably don’t need to consume much at all.
Charlaine Harris had a unique way of solving this problem and allowing vampires and humans (and other supernatural creatures) to interact. I rather admire her solution, if not every single one of her vampire novels. (The first few are better than the last… five.)
Yes, They Can Have Sex
Allegorically and metaphorically, vampires are all about sex. Teeth penetrating skin is the stand-in for… well, you know. Highly erotic, irresistible, seductive, that’s how vampires roll. If a human gets a vampire’s attention, it’s likely he or she will pursue and seek to consummate.
An argument can be made that vampire feeding is a metaphor for rape, but I would argue that due to the rule that vampires need to be explicitly invited into a house (another rule that is occasionally broken), vampire feeding is all about consent. Harris, again, makes this quite explicit in her True Blood series, and Anne Rice had vampires who asked more than once for permission to feed, and/or turn their victim. (Stephen King’s vampires are a touch more ruthless.) (I don’t know about Stephenie Meyer vampires because, to be honest, when I got to the part about sparkling, I threw the book across the room.)
Join the Club
In most works, a person becomes a vampire in one of two ways. In some fiction, it’s enough to get bitten. The bite spreads vampire germs, and a few days later, you wake up (at night!) as one of the undead.
The more complicated way to become a vampire is to be fed on, to the point of almost dying. Then the vampire opens one of their veins and feeds the person the blood. Voila: person is now a vampire.
Weaknesses
The sun (obviously). Stake through the heart, and/or cut off the head. One should wait until the vampire is asleep to attempt these methods, unless one is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Fire. Occasionally, and with true conviction, holy water or a crucifix will repel the undead. Garlic popularly wards off vampires for some reason, but doesn’t kill them. Starvation can weaken them, although the older a vamp is, the less they need to eat to survive.
I am willing to give authors and other creatives a lot of leeway in their fictional characters when they are vampires. Josh Cronin, who never uses the word “vampire”, created an army of mindless creatures who nearly destroyed the world in his Passage trilogy.
But you know what those creatures couldn’t withstand? Sunlight.
* This article is not meant to be an exhaustive list of every vampire, author who writes about vampires, or vampire novel/series out there. But I’m always looking for a good book, so if you have one about undead bloodsuckers you want to advocate for, leave it in the comments.
