Writing popular fiction

to the street below where he ends up with his head twisted clear around on his shoulders, so it's staring behind him (Blatty's
The Exorcist
).
    This presents a major problem for the writer: whether to show the hero's final disaster on or off stage. If, being cornered by the foul-breathed and grave-rank vampire, the hero must clearly die, should the bloody bite and bloodsucking be viewed by the reader in gory detail, or subtly suggested? The answer: subtly suggested, more often than not. Having spent pages to build the reader into a frenzy of suspense—and dark fantasy relies on
anticipation
of the encounter between hero and villain, rather than the actual physical encounter itself—it is nearly always impossible to make the climactic confrontation between good and evil as terrifying as the reader, himself, has imagined it. The understatement, here, is more valuable than anywhere else in category fiction.
    It is less effective to write:
And then there was no more room to run. The great banquet hall lay behind the vampire, the double doors back there where Roger could not get to them without first running the fanged gauntlet. He had but a corner, a cubby of cold stone, with no weapon, no hope. The Count approached, grinning, his two longest teeth protruding over his lips, his eyes aflame, both hands raised with his cloak flowing out around him like a piece of the darkest night. As he touched Roger, Roger seemed terrorized into immobility by those white, icy fingers. Then, the Count pushed the man's head to the side and went quickly for the jugular, his razored teeth slashing flesh, drawing blood which ceased to flow as his hollowed fangs sucked it down. The sound of this inhuman feast—obscenely loud, slobbering—was the only sound in the banquet hall-other than the feeble, guttural whimpers Roger managed to give out with.
    than it is to write:
And then there was no more room to run. The great banquet hall lay behind the vampire, the double doors back there where Roger could not get to them without first running the fanged gauntlet. He had but a corner now, a cubby of cold stone, with no weapon, no hope. Mesmerized by the Count's inhuman stare, his bloodshot eyes, Roger thought he should lower his gaze, should look out for those wicked teeth. But he could not. He couldn't look at them until it was too late, until they glistened with his own blood.
    When selecting a non-human creature that will serve as the antagonist within your story—be it vampire, werewolf, ancient god, demon, ghost, ghoul, or monster of your own creation—you must apply the same conscientious thought to him as you would to a human character. Furthermore, if your beast is not of your own manufacture, you should research its history as well as you can. This will not prove easy, but there are two ways you can learn the mythos of, say, the vampire. First, you can haunt a couple of libraries,
perusing as many books on the occult and the history of myths as you can find. Second, and far easier, you can read other novels which concern vampires. For example, once you have read Stoker's
Dracula
you will know that vampires avoid sunlight because it can kill them, are otherwise immortal unless a wooden stake is driven through their hearts, are repelled by crucifixes, have a great revulsion to garlic and wild onion, and hundreds of other details.
    Last of all, in dark fantasy (as against other fantasy), even if your hero does not perish, even if the supernatural creature is destroyed, a mood of still-existent evil must fill the last scene, a sense of undying forces waiting for their next chance to do evil. In this manner, a reader is left satisfied with the solution of the immediate story but aware that an ultimate victory has not been won. Readers of dark fantasy enjoy this lingering uneasiness, as is evidenced by
The Exorcist
and
Rosemary's Baby
. In the first, though the child is no longer possessed in the end, the ultimate war against Hell is yet to be waged. In the second, though Rosemary's terror is abated after the baby's birth and after she accepts her role as the anti-Madonna, the evil is very, very much alive.
    Considering the consequences of the dark fantasy story—a horrible death for someone and maybe for the hero himself; confrontation with pure evil; lingering evil in the end, so that no one triumphs completely—you might wonder what would motivate a character to become involved with this sort of thing in the first place. I believe you