Vampire Plots: or Writing the Vampire Story and Essay

Settings, descriptions, characters, themes, plots, oh my. What a lot to think about when writing an essay about a vampire story/poem/film. What a lot to think about then writing the work that is later going to be dissected by some student somewhere. Yes, they are flip sides of the same coins. But first, for my own students, the analysis part. How do you recognize if the work is being pushed by the plot or the character? Ask yourself the following:

• Is the character driven to drink the victim’s blood in a certain place because the writer needs it to occur there? (And are we to think the narrative vampire had personal volition in its choice of local?)

• Does a letter with an explanation that bears specific information that is utterly necessary to the continuation of the story arrive just at the right time to keep the story going?

• Is it a one shot deal, or is the vampire going to continue to appear in its specific story/poem/film again?

• Just how important are the foibles of the character? To leave my genre, think Adrian Monk (TV) -- is the plot simply a screen for his OCD characteristics and his detecting greatness to shine against? (Hint - YES! The plots change every week with totally different story-lines, while he remains the constant.)

Let’s be organized about this, and after reading it, write a short paragraph summarizing the plot. Boil it down to the essentials.

• Female vampire is planted (arrives?)at a Castle so that she can dine on the local innocents who have taken her in. After initial success bleeding the young female peasants dry, the landlord/father gets on to the fact that there is a vampire in the area, and he tries to prevent his daughter becoming one of the victims. The General (a previous victim of the scam) arrives just in time to tell them who the vampire is. Then the Baron who knows how to kill the vampire arrives just in time to have the vampire killed. Carmilla is killed, and the family lives quite contentedly from then on.

There are a lot of other things going on here in terms of the Gothic romantic setting, the word choice that sets the tone, the great descriptions of the life-like qualities of the vampire and how she keeps her coffin, but remember we are talking plot – so all of those have to serve the plot as we have set it up. Unless you are writing a dissertation, leave it at that.

Here are a series of questions, in no particular order, to get you thinking about what you might want in your essay.

• How does the setting in a remote, foreign location serve the plot? I would argue that it does, since if the vampire did too much rampaging in one location, it might be traced back to her, as the rampaging eventually is.

• How does the mysterious arrival of Carmilla, and the lack of any known authoritative background for her, allow the plot to move in different ways than it could were more known about her by the characters within the story? Remember that they don’t even know her real name, only what she chooses to tell them. How does the arrival of the General’s letter that his ward has died influence the characters and allow the plot to go forth? How does Carmilla’s dislike for Christianity and all its implements impact the plot? You get the idea.

• ”Carmilla” was written as a story. There was never, one can guess, any intent to revisit it later, so Fenu was free to kill the title character off. Neither Carmilla nor Laura, the Baron nor the General, were ever going to be required to reappear in a later episode nor serial. So, how does this authorial freedom influence the plot?

• How important are the characterizations of the characters within the story? Who gets flesh and who is a cut-out? Carmilla, as the vampire, obviously needs to be / have more character, but how does this need drive plot choices? Where are they subservient to them?

As a teacher, I am looking for more than a plot summary (unless I ask specifically for a summary). And a quick aside warning, if I ask for a summary that is longer page count-wise than the piece being summarized, I am asking for a summary analysis. Different skill.

So you have the basics for writing your essay about the plot driving the characters. You will need to come up with some sort of thesis for the essay. Some sort of clever title. Choose a focal point to discuss since depth usually matters more than breadth. A few suggestions come immediately to mind:

Title: Stranger Danger: A Cautionary Tale

Focus: Vampires in literature usually must be invited into ones home. Then I would focus on the myriad ways the invitation to Carmilla to stay backfired on everyone in the district. Even eventually on Carmilla. But the original invitation was central to plot progression.

Writer

• The letter from nowhere from people who have never been mentioned, and never enter the picture.

• The sudden entrance of the narrative voice. Generally try to not have to address the audience. You have asked them to suspend reality to enter the world you have created. When you suddenly address them, it breaks this agreement.

• Long monologues. Most audiences don’t have that much attention span and don’t want to listen to one person go on for hours at a time.

• I, personally, resent the overly convoluted plots. My brain and life work linearly. One directional. Unless you can manage to make me care for a whole bunch of extra people, why do I need/want to have their plot entwined in the central plot? Depending upon length, of course, this one can work.

Sorry I don’t have more to say about writing plot centered work. I lean towards the academic end of things.