Why Vampire Books Rock
Vampirism in vampire books is a big deal. After all, it is the core, root, heart, blood, and soul of a vampire book. Without vampirism, vampire books would literally not exist. In order for a vampire to exist, it needs to have three core attributes: infection, hunger, and power. Without infection, there would be no vampire in the first place, without hunger, the vampire would be without his primary purpose of existence and without powers, the vampire would be boring and just another drug addict, only an addict of blood and vitae instead of convectional drugs.
Infection is the start of vampirism. There are all sorts of way you can tackle this. By far, the most common way is transfer during a bite, also often known as “the kiss.” This is by no means the only way, however. Also common is a ritual of some sort, such as in Vampire: The Requiem, wherein a “kindred” (fancy word for vampire) must go through significantly more than a bite. Of course, there are also all sorts of other methods, such as elixirs, spells, diseases, and curses, so don’t feel limited. There is no standard, “it has to be done this way,” infection.
However, there is a standard, “it has to be done this way,” aspect of the vampire: hunger. This hunger has to be, and always will be, blood or vitae (life essence) of a creature. How the vampire gets the blood/vitae can be changed (although it is normally through biting), but the requirement of hunger of blood/vitae is a core aspect to vampirism that cannot be changed. It has to be either blood or vitae; there is no way around this.
Vampires have perks and power. Nobody is interested in reading a book about someone’s need for blood/vitae. They’d just read a drug addict book if they wanted to read about addiction. No, vampires are interesting and read about because they have powers. Normally, this extends to bat form, sometimes magic, superhuman charisma, and brain-washing, but these can really be anything you want. There is no “standard vampire set of powers,” which makes this category the one you are most free to experiment in. Consequently, it’s also the hardest aspect of vampirism to write about, because of your number of options.
In closing, all three of these aspects tie together to form the interesting vampire we know today. It’s a synergy of distress (infection), conflict (hunger), and temptation (power). In fact, if one looks at vampirism without having prior knowledge of vampire books, one would see it is a perfect analogy of the setup of novels as a whole. In that way, vampirism is, at its core, the truest sense of the setup of a work of literature.
Vincent King has a thriving business writing online and enjoys reading vampire books in his downtime.
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