Writing from a 'Monstrous' Perspective.

[The Holy Drunk]

I'm currently writing a novel/novella, mainly as an exercise.

Anyway, its a Lovecraftian-ish tale set in 1659, just before the Restoration. Its consists of an occultist trying to raise an eldritch abomination on Earth. To this end he tricks an extreme sect of the Fifth Monarchy Men (millenarians who believed Jesus would come to Earth and create a Kingdom of Saints), who help him gather various tomes and other McGuffins believing he will summon Christ for them.

The 'hero' is a Cromwellian Witch-finder trying to stop them and there's also a royalist Captain who has come home incognito, keen to bring justice to the Witch-finder what with the republic collapsing and all.

I mention this because my idea was to have three points of view in the story; the Witch-finder, the Captain and the Occultist.

However the more I've developed the story and characters the more I'm put off writing from the Occultist's perspective. Namely because his motivations are, despite my efforts to give him depth, pretty thin (Raise *Cthulhu! Ftagn!) and also I'm starting to see him as effectively a vessel for the Big Bad, barely human. I feel writing from his point of view would be tiresome, give the plot and 'mystery' away, or both.

I feel there must be a POV from the Antagonist's perspective (or near him/it) namely so the reader knows what the hell is going on. A friend suggested I make the leader of the Fifth Monarchy Men, who is fooled by the Occultist a 'participant' but I'm not sure since he's basically a patsy.

So I ask you, what would you fine folks do? Can such an alien character be a POV in the story, is the FM Man a good alternative or is their another way that could work?

Any thoughts would be seriously appreciated.

 

[Ivanya]

The first, and perhaps most unoriginal idea which pops into my mind would be to have the occultist start off innocent, a man simply intrigued but not actually brave enough to experiment, whom your eldritch abomination, throughout the novel, finds a way to infest. Cue internal struggles for self-control, terror, the inevitable slip into madness.

Perhaps more interesting, might be to have the occultist actually be some eldritch minion faking a human form and living amongst humans from the get go. It could be written as a determined predator, hating its current, fleshy confines, and intelligently aware that there is the threat of something coming to prevent its work.

You're right though, you do need to be careful to avoid it seeming as if this character is an undeveloped character, so it might be better to skip the chapters and stick to small scenes where others observe him, rather than having it be from his point of view.

 

[Jonathan C]

FM man sounds like a good idea. Even if he's a patsy he could work, and if that bothers you you can work around this by, for instance, making him sceptical of the Occultist, the only sane man as it were, and maybe after a certain point he starts working against them and / or gets locked up, and then perhaps helps the heroes or gets killed off, depending on your preference. Or create a new character who is linked to them somehow, like a friend or relative of one of the cultists who is trying to convince them this is all crazy.

Though it is possible to do a villainous POV well, even if the villain in question is a monster or a lunatic, but it seems a lot of writers find that challenging given how rare it is (they are usually either given only a handful of POV's- which you could try out-, or they are contrasted with even worse characters who are often the real villains, which obviously wouldn't work here).

Thomas Harris, of Hannibal Lecter fame, managed to pull off the alien POV with the serial killers in the first two books (they were human, of course, but they were so messed up they might as well not have been); the villain of Red Dragon might be a good place to look as he believed that he was the Devil in another life and his thoughts reflected that, referring to himself as what he was becoming (though of course it was pretty dark, disturbing stuff we're talking about here). Another thing about that novel is that this villain didn't become a POV character until about halfway through, after a powerful introduction when he kills one character.

You could also give him a dark or sympathetic backstory, and some reason for why he wants to raise this unholy thing, like losing someone he cared about or having a terrible life, that eventually morphed into misanthropy or a general disgust with the world, and gradually he becomes less human as the abomination takes hold so the voice of his POV changes over the course of the story.

Just a few random thoughts.

 

[The Holy Drunk]

Thanks guys!

I actually have Red Dragon lying in a pile of to-be-read books so I'll definitely jump on that.

The idea of him being took over is one I'm keen on but it would be tricky.

A friend has just this minute has given me another take on the occultist. What if he is a crazed messiah figure who thinks the voice slowly dominating him is Jesus/God/the Angels when in fact its 'The Evil' doing it, playing a trickster god angle?

This period in English history was rife with doomsday cults, hell its could be less an organised conspiracy than a crusade, the messiah figure drawing in downtrodden peasants while the 'voice' oversees the gathering of necessary items.

 

[ralphkern]

It's been a long time since i read lovecraft, but i do recall that a lot of the 'horror' side of it came from the ambiguity of not quite knowing what the motivations etc were. Sometimes the MC couldnt even look at them without going mad.

I find the worse kind of 'horror' is one that cant be reasoned with, it cant be negotiated with, it wants something, and that something may well be a slow painful death for YOU.

maybe leave enough clues around for the reader to get an idea of the antagonist, but thats it?

Just an alternative

 

[Boneman]

Just finished reading The Red Knight by Miles Cameron, and jolly good it is, too. Worth looking at, because he handles multiple pov very well, and he has a character who is spoken to by an Angel, (therefore the character KNOWS he's doing God's work) which turns out to be not quite what he expected...

 

[Mirannan]

The World of Darkness RPG setting, specifically the Vampire rules, do quite a good job of this. To them, humans are little more than cattle - admittedly, potentially dangerous ones.