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Over the past few years, I’ve read a number of articles and watched several videos in which other writers talk about the benefits of either traditional or self-publishing. And though I see reasons for both, I’ve been committed to traditional publishing.

Then early last year, I finished my first work of fiction and sent it out to beta readers. They had comments and suggestions – none of them drastic – but were overwhelmingly positive about the book. One even told me that if I self publish, “she’ll kill me.” I understood what she meant: it’s a solid piece of writing. Though the self-publishing market is changing and this is no longer universally true, many of us still associate it with lesser-quality works.

I made my revisions to the work and then set about querying agents. If you’ve ever been in the querying game, you know what it’s like. A lot of silence and a lot of empty rejections (“this work isn’t a good fit for me”). There has been some interest too – several requests for further portions of the manuscript – but none of which have panned out so far.

One agent’s comment was both positive and negative. She loved my writing, but my current book looks too much like another work she’s currently representing. Instead, she asked to see any subsequent books that I write.

I could go on and on, but the process ended up being the catalyst that caused me to rethink the self-publishing industry. So much so that even though I haven’t queried all that many agents yet, I’ve changed my mind about how I want to release this book.

I’ll tell you my three main reasons.

1. The Elephant in the Room: Marketing

If you’re like me, you have no desire to spend any time marketing your book. You want to spend each minute of each day, wrapped in that blissful writer world in your head – parsing out language, crafting characters, building worlds. You want to let someone else – the publishing house – worry about notifying reviewers and newspapers about your upcoming book. You want them to set up book signings, to fine tune your cover design and to help you with editing.

However, over the last decade, I’ve heard more and more writers (and agents) talking about the fact that unless you’re an established A-list writer – the Stephen Kings of the writing world – publishing houses will spend very little money marketing your book. But still, I wanted them to take care of this for me. If only so that I don’t have to do it.

Which is ridiculous.

I finally faced that fact (and accepted it) from listening to a writer and YouTuber, Jenna Moreci. She’s self-published, does quite well, and has no interest in sharing her profits with the publishing industry. One thing she has pointed out on more than one occasion is that the information you need to market – what you need to do and how – is out there on the internet. Anyone can learn what that is and follow it.

Besides which, she has a business degree and can certainly handle the marketing. This was something I could no longer deny. I also have a business degree – two of them. And although my focus in the business world was always Finance, to say that I can’t figure out how to manage my own book’s marketing is absurd. (I also have a very loving marketing-writing-friend who gives me wonderful advice.)

If you’re not an A-list writer [yet] like me, it’s more likely that we will spend more time and money marketing our books than the traditional industry would. Which means more potential sales and a better chance for success.

All that to say that, even though I don’t want to spend time marketing, my book will probably be better positioned if I do it myself. And I can figure it out.

2. The Value of Time

One of the greatest eye-openers in the querying process has been the incredible amount of time wasted. While I’ve been querying, my book has gone nowhere. On top of that, the industry estimates that even if you do sign with a publishing house, it’ll be approximately 18-24 months from the date of signing until your book hits the market.

In the long run, if you’re writing book after book, this isn’t such a big deal. After all, every year or so, the publishers release another of your past books. So, while it’s a huge hurdle at the beginning of a writing career, I am willing to concede that it shouldn’t be the only factor in a decision to self-publish.

However, there are two other time considerations that have given me pause.

The first is very personal: when I’m in limbo (waiting to sign with a publisher) I struggle to move forward with other writing projects. I lose momentum when I’m querying and waiting to hear back, to know the status of my book’s future. That may not be the case for you, but for me this waiting period is causing me to waste a lot of writing time that could be focused on subsequent books.

The second is universal: publishers control how long a book remains in print. I’ve heard this for years, but it only struck me with full force recently. Sometimes the publishing industry decides to no longer print a book or to discontinue a series of books even though some readers love the book.

If your book doesn’t garner the number of sales that they deem to be necessary, or they don’t like the extent to which your series of books is selling, they can cut you off. And usually you cannot re-publish the book(s) on your own or self-publish the rest of the series that the industry refuses to publish. Because they own the book(s). You don’t.

I want my books to remain in the market as long as I choose. Potentially indefinitely, regardless of the sales figures.

3. Content Control

And lastly, the publishing industry determines what will and will not be in your books. This is of supreme importance to me. If you don’t notice trends, or know any industry insiders, you may not realize that the industry, like many, has an agenda. There are certain subjects that are pushed; others that are taboo. This is true across the board.

I know a very well-written author with over thirty traditionally-published works in the Christian publishing industry. I asked her why she quit the traditional industry. She said that they were requiring that she include sexually explicit content in her thrillers. She refused.

To some extent, I don’t mind certain types of material if it makes sense in the novel – if it contributes to the story in such a way that the story is better off. But I absolutely refuse to be told what my work should say or which agendas it should push. I’m the author. I love advice, but at the end of the day, this is my story. I want to tell it the way I want it told.

In self-publishing, writers are free to write whatever they want and readers are free to find the types of literary material that best suit their preferences.

The Self-Publishing Road

Now that I’ve decided to go this route with my book, I’m actually very excited about it. But part of my commitment is based on the understanding that I intend to treat my book as the publishing industry would. By that, I mean that I intend to have a specific release date (October 2023) and deadlines for every aspect of the process. That also means that my books need to be of the highest possible quality, with professional editing and formatting so that they show their best face to the world.

I may not be able to spend as much money as the industry would on a top release, but I can do virtually all of the same things that they would and I can almost certainly put more money into the release than they would be willing to for a debut novel.

If you’re in a similar situation, I encourage you to consider what you’re willing to do to make your novel succeed. If you’re able and willing to take on the upfront costs and work, it may be more beneficial to you if you self-publish. If that’s the case, here’s a link to a sample timeline that you can use as you move through the self-publishing process.

Regardless of your specific route though, I wish you all the best! Let me know about your journey and what you’re learning in the process.

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Of course, this isn’t a blog post about Jack Nicholson, fun as that might be. However, whereas I’d usually shun the movie in favor of the book, in his case, he embodies the literary character of Jack Torrance so well that if it helps to get hold of the character, by all means, at least see the movie.

[Note: King notoriously hated everything about Kubrick’s movie, but if you’ve read the book, it’s clear that Jack Torrance and Jack Nicholson are basically the same person. You can read about King’s response here, but the warmth that King claims is missing from the movie is also missing from the pages of the book. Despite King’s intentions, Jack Torrance is a cold, harsh man with no redeeming qualities. We’ll get into that more below!]

Overview

On the surface, this is a story about desperation and last chances. Jack Torrance has been fired from his private school teaching job due to an altercation with a student. He’s an English teacher and a writer on the side, with little money in the bank. So when a new job comes up as the winter caretaker of an upscale inn located in the remote mountains of Colorado, he uproots his wife and son and settles in for a long winter at the Overlook Hotel.

But it isn’t long before Jack, Wendy and little Danny discover that they aren’t the only guests locked in for the season. The only problem is that the other guests – all of them long dead – want Jack and Danny to join them.

Theme

The story is complicated, as you might have guessed, by an ability (or liability) that Jack and Danny possess – something King calls, the shining. It’s a form of communication and perception between certain people, living or dead, who also have this gift. It’s also a sort of imperfect precognition.

Call it telepathy on steroids. (As a side note: if you’ve read The Institute, one of King’s most recent works, released in 2020, you’ll notice that he revisits this type of ability in a fresh way in that book…clearly King has a thing for this kind of mental tendency.)

What’s clever is that King uses two characters with the same gift and shows their very different responses to it. Both Jack and Danny are frightened by the gift itself and what they are able to perceive. However, Jack is hardened throughout the book by his perception of the dead around him due to his desperation. The dead use the gift to prey upon his self-centeredness, his ego and his latent anger to goad him into serving their purposes.

Just the opposite is true of Danny. He’s a sweet boy, gentle and sensitive. As the gift grows in him, he becomes increasingly empathetic towards his parents whose thoughts he perceives and Dick Hallorann, the mentor figure with whom he shares an especially close connection.

Kubrick stated that the theme of the movie is “there’s something inherently wrong with the human personality. There’s an evil side to it.”

Of course that’s in there. But the theme of the book is much deeper and it’s Danny who embodies it so well. In him readers see that the ability to connect with others more deeply, to know them in truth [something the shining portrays] should make us more responsible and compassionate. It should strengthen our ties to one another.

Poor Danny, who’s only five years old at the time of the story, takes on a maturity and a burden for his family that no child should have to bear. But it’s notable for that very reason. What shouldn’t exist in a child becomes a striking example of how this kind of knowledge should affect a person.

Jack Torrance

But then there’s Jack. I found King’s objections to the movie somewhat baffling. He speaks about Jack Torrance is if he sees a level of compassion in him that readers don’t. And I’m sure he does.

However, what makes it to the page is that Jack is volatile and violent. From the beginning of the story, readers learn two things about him: he assaulted his son so violently that he broke his arm, and he severely injures one of his former pupils. Jack had cut the student, George Hatfield, from the debate team due to his stutter, and George had accused Jack of setting the timer ahead so that he didn’t have the time to finish his debate. In response, George cut Jack’s tires and Jack then beat him so severely that he nearly died.

Later we learn that Jack did set the timer ahead. So he’s a nasty liar who treats people unfairly.

All of this makes Jack a very interesting main character. He comes to the story deeply flawed, so flawed that the shining becomes more of a liability for him. It exposes him, preys on his weaknesses, leaves him feeling vulnerable and disconnected from humanity – even his own family.

I wouldn’t change a thing about this character. Jack is a great example of what the shining – a gift that exaggerates the truth – does to someone who has such an evil character. But the fact that King thinks of him as warm surprises me to the point of humor.

Is it Gothic?

In this story we have a number of Gothic tropes: isolation, a haunted hotel, madness, and stormy weather. But is this a Gothic story?

The theme deals with the effect of a psychological ability (the shining) – a deeper knowledge or awareness of others – on the emotional and relational state of the person possessing the gift. That’s a particularly irrational theme – one we can’t prove empirically.

Further, each of the Gothic tropes works to support the theme. The isolation emphasizes the deep internal, psychological nature of this exploration. The haunted hotel is something of a manifestation of the shining itself, testing the gifted one to see his response and resilience to different types of knowledge. The madness that consumes Jack is a deeper form of this testing and his failure to resist its siren call. And the stormy weather is a reflection of the internal battle each of these characters faces at the Overlook.

Thus, I would definitely call this a Gothic novel.

Conclusion

The Shining is an interesting book but it has a strange feel about it, especially for those who read much of King’s more recent work. I like a lot of his writing, but I don’t love this book. It’s a good example of modern Gothic work, but it has an ugliness about it: the hotel itself, the family dynamics, the character of Jack are all presented as dismal and hopeless. This casts a dark cloud over the novel.

Some Gothic readers will like this one. However, I prefer my Gothic books to be a mixture of beauty and darkness. This one is just dark.

That said, it’s still worth reading and it isn’t a terribly long book. If you haven’t read it already, add it to your winter reading list.

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This week I thought we’d do something different from our usual dive into Gothic book reviews or the intricacies of writing. I thought we’d talk about the one thing that all writers – all artists, even – have in common: self-doubt. I have yet to meet any writer who doesn’t suffer from this one to some extent. And yet, self-doubt and our comparisons of our work to that of other writers can be debilitating. It can shut down all of our creative capacity, ruining our ability to bring our gift to the world.

What’s to be done about it?

I worked through this lately as I’ve had my own encounter with this monster. I’ll tell you what I came away with and I promise you that it’s something that is helping me. So, while I can’t guarantee that it’ll help you, I’m certainly going to try.

Faulty Comparisons

First, it’s damn near impossible to compare experience levels between any two writers. Because it isn’t merely an issue of time. I’ve written since early childhood, but – for a number of good and bad reasons – I also went through decades during which I did no creative writing.

But even if every writer had the same solid twenty or thirty or forty years of writing, we’ve each applied ourselves to different projects. We’ve sat under different mentors (in person or virtually). We’ve pressed ourselves in different directions.

I’ve striven to perfect the Gothic (and Horror and Dark Fantasy) novel and hopefully will continue to do so until I can no longer writer. Some of my writing friends love Middle Grade or Young Adult literature. These genres are extremely different. They require different types of writing ability and they assess writers’ abilities in different ways than another genre might.

Even worse, it’s sometimes the case that we look at an established writer – let’s use George R.R. Martin as an example – and compare our work to his. We forget that he may have been writing for a lot longer than we have. The same is true for debut novels. Not long ago, I read a work by a debut author: The Girls in the Stilt House by Kelly Mustian. It blew me away. But we have to be careful there as well. This may be Ms. Mustian’s debut novel, but she has still been writing for a long time.

The variables are never identical. Thus, it’s impossible [and pointless] to compare ourselves to another writer. At the end of the day, there will always be someone out there who is a better writer. And someone who is worse. If we want to write, we have to write as ourselves.

However, what helps me the most when I find myself doing this is to attempt to pinpoint what it is about that writer’s work that inspires me. Don’t use blanket self-condemnation. Instead, be specific.

Is it the writer’s ability to craft long-lasting suspense? Is it her effortless, subtext-laden dialogue? Find that thing and study it. Look up writing craft books or articles that address that subject. Look for excellent examples in other writers’ work. Learn to identify different ways that it has been done well and practice incorporating that into your own writing. That way, other writers become a community from which we, as fellow artists, can share our talents and learn from own another… rather than a marathon in which only one person emerges as the winner.

Permission to Grow

Which brings me to point number two. We have to cut ourselves some slack. I tend to be very ambitious. I’m an idealist. I have huge goals and I push myself fairly hard. What’s the hardest thing about all of these?

Executing today with the skills that I have today.

My ability right now will never be the ability that I want to have in fifteen or forty years. It can’t be. And worse (in my own mind) it’ll never live up to my idealism. I can’t create the flawless novel that I demand of myself. And I probably will never be able to.

But I can work towards it. I can’t have the ability that I’d like to have in fifteen years if I don’t start working on it now. At the same time, I can celebrate what I am creating now. It might not be what I want it to be, but it’s better than what I created last year. And the year before. Not to mention ten or twenty years ago.

There’s nothing like looking for signs of our own progress and celebrating these to remind ourselves that we’re growing as artists. This sounds obvious, but sometimes idealism is so paralyzing that I hesitate to create let alone show it to the world. There’s nothing like forcing ourselves to work at our art, to see how much we’ve learned and gained simply by virtue of practice, maturity, and a whole lot of prolific reading.

Understand Why You Write

This third one seems strange, but it helps me the most. In the press to create, to perform, to perfect, it can be very easy to measure my progress by what others think of my writing. Or what it gains – whether that’s money or some other benefit. It can be very easy to forget the purpose of it all.

Why am I writing? Why did I start in the first place?

Did you start writing because you stories in your mind that you can’t bear not to write down? Do you have something to say to the world – something that your soul struggled, perhaps still struggles with; something that you have to impart to others in a similar situation? I know of a woman who lived through domestic abuse. She writes stories partly because she loves to write and partly because she longs to encourage other women.

Did you love the challenge of story structure? Do you see fully-formed characters in your mind? Characters who are so rich and complex that they have to make it to the page? Do you long to explore relationships, or political machinations, or different stages of life through the lives of your characters?

What excites you?

What life would you have crafted for yourself if you could have? (With a healthy dose of conflict, of course.) Is it a Fantasy one in which you must challenge a corrupt ruling class? Is it Mystery that allows you to bring justice to characters who might never see it in real life? Is it a Romance in which you can explore what a healthy, thriving relationship would look like in different time periods or scenarios?

For me, when I feel crippled by self-doubt and comparisons, I have to step back and ask myself that very question: why do I write? And then I have to take my mind [to the extent possible] back to the place where I wrote as a child. A place where I wrote simply for the joy of it, with no thought for how others would receive it or how successful it might be.

That’s not to say that our audiences don’t matter or that we don’t all want to make a living from our art. But an inordinate focus on these things can be paralyzing. And at the end of the day, if we truly love to write, if we know why, if we focus our writing on what moves us most, all of these other things will fall into a proper perspective.

Conclusion

If you’re suffering from self-doubt or comparisons to other writers, I feel for you. We’ve all been there, or are there now. Each of us has also been a fledgling writer, an awkward one with stilted dialogue, talking-head settings, or purple prose. But if we love to write we won’t give up. We won’t stop putting our work out somewhere, if only in our grandmother’s inbox, for feedback and help so that we can continue to grow and learn.

Don’t give up! You can do it.

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“The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window,” Lewis said. He shot Ben a glance from under his heavy brow.

“That’s impossible,” Ben held a book in his hand, turning it over. He squinted up at their property caretaker. “You said they were all dead.”

Lewis dug his crowbar into a piece of decking that appeared to be solid and pried it loose. The underside was a mess of spongy, rotten wood. Fresh boards lay stacked to his side. “Yes, they were, but she wasn’t. She was left.”

“But how?”

“Like these boards.” Lewis tapped one with his hammer. It rang out, clean and solid, the sound echoing over the surface of the lake. He tapped another, the sound lost, absorbed in pulpy fiber. He dug the crowbar into its side and peeled it away. Underneath, the wood was wet and dark, crawling with beetles. “My deck’s the same way. Until you test it you don’t know that the rotten part is there, eating away at what is good.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“He’s just like his father,” Ben’s mother strode down to the water and stood, her hands on her hips, assessing the evening. The sun edged towards the trees on the far shore, its reflection lighting the water in streaks of orange and red. Behind her, Ben’s older sister, Maddie dropped into an Adirondack chair beside the shore.

“I’ll have to finish this dock in a few days,” Lewis said. “Call if you need anything before then. You know where to find me.” He gestured across the lake to where a light glimmered behind a cluster of trees.

His mother glanced at him but didn’t respond. “Ben, get your suit on. I want to get in a swim this evening.” She turned and headed back up to the cabin.

Ben looked out at the water and shivered though the day was still uncharacteristically warm.

“Planning on taking her out?” Lewis nodded towards the little Sunfish sailboat that bobbed beside the dock, ready for use.

“He doesn’t even like the water,” Maddie swung up from the chair. “He spends all of his time reading Dad’s sailing book. And no time actually sailing.”

“That’s not true!” Ben exclaimed, his face flushed. But the memory of looking down into the water, seeing things moving – fish and weeds and something else, something he couldn’t quite make out – crawled into his gut and spread like ice water.

“You’ve been out, what, twice? Three times in the month that we’ve been here?” Maddie jeered at him and turned to follow their mother back to the cabin.

“It was too windy.”

“Well, some days are like that,” Lewis admitted. “But then again, it’s impossible to learn to sail without any wind.” From across the lake, Ben could see a similar small sailboat resting at the dock outside Lewis’s cabin. The caretaker rose and took up his tools. “If you love sailing, keep at it. Nothing beats experience.”

Ben nodded and shot a quick look at his boat, its sails deflated.

—

A half hour later, they made their way down to the water. The sun had receded behind the trees on the opposite shore, limning them in crimson. The air was still and heavy.

His mother waded in until the water rose to her hips and then arced over the surface and dove under. Ben watched her rise and swim out towards the far end of the bay.

“Such a show off,” Maddie said, stepping into the water. “C’mon loser.” She ran several feet, the water splashing up around her and then dove into their mother’s wake. Ben stood on the shore, waiting until she surfaced at the swim float’s ladder.

He took a deep breath and tip-toed into the water, ignoring its cold underbelly. “Just weeds,” he whispered. “And some fish. Small fish.”

As soon as he was in up to his waist, he pressed off the weedy, rocky bottom and paddled across the surface of the water.

“Took you long enough,” Maddie called where she lay, sprawled out on the float’s rough mesh surface. “If you’re serious about sailing, you’re going to have to get used to being in the water.”

“Sailors aren’t in the water. They’re on the water.”

“Yeah. Until they capsize. Or fall overboard.”

“Dad never fell overboard.”

“You’re not Dad.”

Ben treaded water, turning in a circle, drifting away from the float. A cold tendril wound around him and then left, leaving a faint chill in its wake. He looked around, his thin arms bobbing on the surface. In the distance he could see the silhouette of his mother as she cut through the water, her practiced stroke refined from years of competitive swimming in her youth. Maddie still sat on the swim float, leaning back on her arms, her face inscrutable in the gloam.

He drew in his breath and leaned back, picturing himself as a boat, immune to the unseen depths, at home there, his sails unfurled, picking up the wind, always on the surface. But his senses were drawn back to the water. The slippery feel of it against his skin; the faint smell of fish and wet, warm earth; the soft whoosh it made as he pulled his arms into his body and then cast them back out. Both his parents were water lovers – his mother a champion swimmer, his father a seasoned sailor. Maddie tolerated it. But for him…

The water beneath him pressed him to the side, the surface rocking as something passed by. Something large. Ben sat up, his legs dangling down into a pocket of cold. His toes brushed against something firm, fleshy. He pulled them up, his breath catching in his throat. Around him the water rippled and then slowed, settling to a glassy smooth surface that reflected the scudding clouds and emerging starlight above. He exhaled, his chest loosening, his fists unclenching.

Cold fingers grasped his ankle and pulled him under. Heavy water, thick with minerals filled his mouth. His flooded sinuses burned. He flailed. Casting about for anything to hold, to grasp. Nothing. He kicked and thrashed against it and then, finally, curled his body down to tear at the hand that held him.

It released him and he clawed his way up, breaking through the surface, vomiting water, a coughing spasm seizing his body, sending aching pain down his arms and legs. In the distance he could hear his mother calling to him. He could see Maddie standing on the float, looking in his direction. He turned and swam as hard as possible for the shore.

—

“We would have seen someone,” Maddie insisted.

Ben sat at the kitchen counter wrapped in a towel, his throat sore, his hands wrapped around a mug of tea. He buried his thoughts in the smell of chamomile, lemon and honey.

His mother just shook her head. She turned back to the stove where oil sparked and sizzled as she dropped a pile of chopped vegetables into a pan.

Ben didn’t respond. They didn’t want believe him. He could see that. He took a sip of tea and looked up at his mother as she stirred. Her arms flashed in the cabin’s warm lighting. Twisting right and left, stirring in a circle, rubbing her hands on the front of her sweatshirt.

There they were. Red scratches on her wrist. He looked up and caught her watching him. “You cut yourself,” he said, glancing at her arm.

“Yes. Swam too close to the rocks.”

At the far end of their property, the land jutted upwards in a rocky crag that looked out over the lake. It wasn’t terribly high, but the submerged base was a mess of boulders and rocks that kept it from being a local diving point. She had been swimming near there. He’d seen her there shortly before he went under. And immediately after.

Still.

He nodded and took another sip. She turned back to the stove.

—

The next morning, he wheeled his BMX bike back down the long, dirt drive to the cabin, past white pines and maples. He had risen early and ridden the lake road that encircled Bear Lake. From his family’s cabin, tucked just inside a bay that made up the bear’s front paw, it was roughly halfway around the lake to Lewis’s cabin in the arch of the bear’s back.

It was always a quiet lake, no motors allowed other than small fishing motors, but as he passed the lake homes, they seemed quieter than usual. The lights in most were dark, the yards and drives – when visible through the trees – devoid of cars or people. Around him, a breeze shook the aspens, filling the air with the sound of rain.

Lewis’s house was dark, his Jeep missing from the driveway. For several minutes, Ben stood beside the front porch, staring at the door, his shoulders slumped, his feet heavy. Then he took a deep breath, picked up the bike from the pine-needled ground, and rode back the way he had come.

By the time he returned, he remembered the book. When Maddie found him, he had spread out a beach towel on the repaired section of the dock, a plastic bag of Atomic Fireballs beside him, his eyebrows gathered in concentration.

“Wow, must be good,” she said, her flip flops slapping on the wood. She bent over to read the cover upside down. “Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature. Good Lord, Benny. I know you’re smart, but…”

“Lewis loaned it to me.” The words came out around the sucking sound of the fireball in his mouth.

“Hmm.” She dropped onto the corner of his towel. She fell silent for a minute though he could feel her looking at him. “You think there was really someone or something out there?”

“Yeah. It pulled me under.” He didn’t tell her any more than that. All of his suspicions. She just nodded. After a minute he forgot she was there, lost in trying to understand Jung’s theory. It was too much for him. He wished he was older, not twelve. That he knew what to think about what had happened in the lake.

When Maddie spoke again, he jumped. “You want to go out sailing later? I’ll go with you.”

“You hate sailing.”

“So do you.”

Her expression was open. No sign of mocking or pranking. He shrugged. “I guess.”

“You know, Dad’s a jerk. He wouldn’t have left if he wasn’t.”

He didn’t respond. Just looked from her to the lake. When he looked back, she was gone.

—

Late that night, Ben and Maddie huddled beneath a basswood tree two properties over from their own. They’d waited until they heard the sound of their mother softly snoring. Then they had slipped out the door.

“I don’t know what to think,” Maddie said, still panting from the adrenaline.

“I swear they were there last night!” Ben glared at her, his expression so typically inscrutable was fierce, impassioned.

“I believe you. I do. Especially now.”

The scratches that Ben had seen on his mother the night before – sharp red lines just above her wrist – were gone. Her skin showed no scabbing, no scars, no white lines, no marks of any kind. As if they had never existed.

“I remember you asking her about them. I didn’t see them. But I heard you,” Maddie said. “And now the boat. I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

After lunch they had untied the Sunfish and crawled into the tiny cockpit. Ben had skippered the boat under a strong breeze, his fear drawing the line in tighter and tighter until the boat heeled at a dangerous angle and threatened to capsize. Every thought of his had focused on the depths below him. Of lakes that stretched down hundreds or even thousands of feet. Of sharks that swam upstream into fresh water and were found hundreds of miles from the ocean.

When Maddie finally grabbed the line out of his hand and released it, the boat immediately righted, coasting to a drift, the sail flapping loosely. But by then they were hundreds of feet from shore. From that angle, everything looked foreign, remote, as if their cabin could be in any direction. Worse, an inch of water stood in the bottom of the footwell, creeping up over the tops of their feet.

At the memory, Ben could feel his vision closing in, a cold tremor passing through his chest and across his back. The drain on the back of the boat, a drain that he had checked before lunch, was open. The plug nowhere to be found.

He’d managed to steer them back towards shore, but by the time they neared the closest property, the hull was dangerously low. Water sloshed over the top and into the footwell, compounding the problem. In the end they had had to jump into the water and pull the boat the remaining one hundred feet to the shore and beach it there. They’d made their way across land to the lake road where they had found an address and reoriented themselves.

By the time they’d returned home, it was nearly dinner time. They were both shaken. Ben’s body trembled, his breath came in fast, shallow intakes. Their mother said nothing. They told her nothing. If she noticed that the sailboat was gone, she didn’t mention it.

“If we’d gone any further. If we hadn’t stopped so soon…” Maddie started to say.

She didn’t need to finish it. It was a large lake. They could have been stranded, their boat sunken beneath them. They could have drowned. Ben shuddered at the thought.

“But Mom?” Maddie asked.

“I don’t know. The scratches were there. Now they’re gone,” he repeated. “I can’t figure it out, but it has something to do with it. I know it.”

“But why? Mom doesn’t hate us.”

“No. I don’t think so,” Ben agreed, although some part of him reached out as if seeking for something. Something just beyond his reach.

“What do we do?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“This thing…monster…seems to be after you most of all.”

That’s true, he thought. Maddie shouldn’t have been on the boat. She never had been in the past. And she hadn’t been pulled under the water.

“We need to know who’s doing this. But how…” His mind raced. “I have an idea.”

An hour later, they tiptoed down the creaking cellar stairs, the heavy yellow flashlight clutched in Ben’s hand. Cobwebs hung overhead. Thick black spiders and leggy brown speckled ones perched in the corners. Watching them.

Before they reached the bottom, something scurried out of sight, frantic scratching and a pointed tail darting from the corner of their eyes. It’s like another world down here. A bad one, Ben thought. His mind drifted back to the book Lewis had given him. The book and the cellar had something in common, something he couldn’t pin point yet.

They found the Camcorder on a rickety shelf beside a fishing tackle box. Both were covered in dust. Ben grabbed it and shook it frantically, picturing millions of crawling insects covering his body.

“Hey, don’t kill it,” Maddie said, grabbing it out of his hand. “We need that.” She paused and looked at him. “Now what do we do?”

Ben shrugged. “Set up a trap.”

—

It took almost two weeks before they found what they were looking for.

After Lewis had hauled the Sunfish home and replaced the drain plug, they tried setting up the camera outside, hidden in the bushes, aimed at the dock. Days passed. Ben took the boat out several times, never far from the shore and only after checking it over carefully. Nothing happened.

He moved the camera behind an artificial plant on the screened-in porch where he often spent the hot afternoon hours reading and listening to his Walkman. Two days later, he stumbled into breakfast, pulled the Rice Krispies down from the cabinet, and poured himself a bowl of cereal. It wasn’t until he’d poured the milk and raised the spoon to his mouth that he saw something move. When he dropped the spoon, he discovered that the cereal was crawling with maggots. Bile rose in his throat, gagging him. He vomited stomach acid until the blood vessels in his face and eyes burst, leaving him looking wan and diseased.

He moved the camera to the kitchen, hiding it behind a cluster of kitschy lake-themed tchotchkes. Several days later, he set out for his tree fort in the side yard. The ladder hung where it always had, its base resting on the soil, its top secured to the entrance into the fort. He made it nearly to the top before the steps, their nails pried loose, gave out beneath him.

He gripped the wood rails, his body crashing down, slipping on the lower steps until he hit a step and bounced off, rolling onto the ground. His knees were scraped, his ankle twisted. Maddie spent over an hour picking the splinters out of his hands.

But then he veered off course and struck gold.

Rather than moving the camera to the yard overlooking the fort, he picked a random place. An obvious one. His bedroom.

He propped its bulky frame behind his GI Joe figures on the shelves that his father had built into a recessed section of the wall. Next to his series of Hardy Boy novels. Though the picture was partly obscured, he could make out most of what happened in the room.

Four nights later, he lay on his bed, trying to read a Spiderman comic – Revenge of the Sinister Six. His body felt weary, battered. His hands still bore the scrapes from the splinters. Parts of his face, especially around his eyes, still looked spotted, sickly.

But outside a chorus of crickets and frogs and the occasional hoot of an owl, soothed his burdened mind. His bedside lamp – a kitschy, camp-style one with two scouts standing before a canvas tent – flickered lightly. The night air, redolent with the scent of pine, wafted into the room. His eyes grew heavy. He drifted into a deep sleep.

Sometime later, his eyes jerked open. The room was dark. But he felt someone there – a presence hovering in the darkness – filling the space with his knowledge of it. Its awareness of him. Before he could reach out and turn on the light, a rush of air pressed him back. Hands gripped his throat, pinning him to the bed.

The blood rushed to his cheeks and into his eyes, filling his vision with a red cast. He pummeled the arms, scratched at the hands, beat the sides of what held him. He dug his back into the mattress. Lifted his legs to kick and shove. It did no good. Whatever held him was too strong.

A lightness filled his mind, disorienting, otherworldly. He clutched at the table beside him. A glass fell to the floor, shattering. Books careened off the edge, hitting the wall. His hand opened. Clutching. Grasping. Finally, he took hold of it. The lamp. He tensed his muscles and swung the heavy base. Ripping the cord from the wall. Slamming it into his assailant’s head.

The hands loosened around his throat. Enough for him to gasp for air. He swung the lamp again. And Again. He could hear the carved wood meeting bone.

In the distance he heard the cabin coming awake. Saw a faint light in the hallway. The silhouette of the figure that had choked him turned, paused for a moment and then rushed from the room. Less than a minute later his mother and Maddie clustered around the bed, patting his back as he choked and coughed, smoothing back his sweat-drenched hair, holding his trembling body.

He let them. The smashed lamp lay on the floor. Red finger marks still stood out on the skin around his neck. His windpipe felt bruised, sore. His head ached. But he knew he had what he needed.

—

As soon as their mother went back to bed, Ben checked the clock. Only three o’clock. He and Maddie crept out of the house and biked around the lake to Lewis’s cabin. The caretaker opened the front door in a thick blue and gray striped terry robe. His face bore the shocked look of a wild animal face-to-face with its own reflection.

“We need to talk to you,” Ben said, his face resolute.

They inserted the video into the VHS and waited. A grainy image appeared on the Panasonic. Ben’s bedroom. He fast-forwarded the video, pausing when he fell asleep, pausing again when a figure slipped into his room and turned out the light.

“It’s Mom,” Maddie said.

But then the figure left the room. They could see Ben asleep, the comic book lying beside him on the bed. They fast-forwarded again.

“Wait! There!” Maddie pointed at the screen.

Ben backed it up. A figure had entered the room. Had crept over to the bed and stood there. Watching him. For minutes it waited. Ben’s skin crawled. Then it moved forward. Leaned over him. Gripped his throat. The sensation filled his body again as he watched, sending waves of pain through his back, his shoulders, his head.

When it ended, Ben looked at Lewis’s ashen face. He looked back, drew a sharp intake of breath. “Wow.”

None of them said what they all knew – from the back, the figure looked like their mom.

“Wait. There’s more,” Maddie said.

“What?” Ben asked.

“We came in the room. Mom and I.” Her voice wavered. “Where’s that?”

He hit the Play button. A light came on in the hallway, filling the screen with an ethereal glow. The figure turned towards the door, its face passing within view of the camera. Ben gasped. Hit Pause.

It was his mom. On the side of her head where he’d struck her, her hair looked matted, wet in the grainy image. Her words filled his memory. He’s just like his father. A man she despised. Resented.

“Keep going,” Maddie urged.

He hit Play again. She flashed out of the screen. And then they were there. Maddie. And Mom. But this time her hair was dry. Her arms bore no scratches. Her body showed no sign of any physical fight.

“It’s her. And it isn’t her,” Ben whispered.

Lewis leaned back and covered his mouth with his hand. He looked down at them, his eyes wide. Then he cleared his throat. “Did you read the book I gave you?”

—

“So she’s…what?” Ben stared at him, incredulous.

Lewis shook his head. “It isn’t so much that she is something. It’s that something within your mom has risen up and is in the process of taking over.”

“What does that mean?” Maddie asked.

“Jung argued that there’s a dark nature within each person. That this side – a shadow self – can’t be ignored. To do so is potentially disastrous. In her case, it appears to be. It’s consuming her. Consuming the part of her that you know. Becoming the dominant aspect of her persona.”

“Then what?” Ben asked. “What’s left?”

Lewis blinked and looked away before answering. “If it’s addressed early enough, it can be controlled. If not…the shadow is all that’s left.”

“Like the deck boards,” Ben said. “Rot spreading from within.”

Lewis nodded. “Yes. In her case, the self has already splintered. Both are walking, breathing, living per se as separate beings. At this point, she couldn’t control her shadow even if she knew that it existed.”

Ben gathered his direction at once. “So we’ll have to…”

“Yes. At this point, the only way to stop it is to kill it.”

—

A solid thump sounded from the front door.

Lewis pulled a small revolver from a drawer and led them away from the family room, into a windowless pantry. “It’s not surprising that she’d appear now,” Lewis explained. “Darkness conceals shadows. Gives them a place to hide. We can’t see them, so we forget that they lurk there, attached to us, following our every move.

“We’ll have to hit her where her pride is the greatest. That’s her weakest point. The only spot that’s likely to kill.”

Ben nodded, his stomach sick. His heart pounded, filling his ears. His fingers trembled, restless. Behind him, Maddie crouched, her body radiating heat.

The door shook with the sound of a fist pounding. They waited, their breathing loud in the preternatural stillness.

A crack shook the air. Splintering. The sound of glass falling onto the tile floor.

“Quick. Follow me.” Lewis led them out the back door, into the night. They slipped from bush to tree, slinking in the shadows, watching the house for movement. Nothing.

Suddenly shadows leapt in the night. Lewis shoved Ben and Maddie aside. They fell, rolling, down a small ravine. Above them, the gun cracked, splitting the silence. A flash of light. Maddie collided with Ben and slid to a stop in a muddy creek. “Ugh,” he said, his ribs aching from the fall. 

They could hear Lewis gasping, grunting. Another shot rang out. They looked up and saw him struggling. And then another crack. This time bone. The sound of a neck breaking. Then he went down.

The shadow of their mother looked down, saw them, sprinted forward.

“Run!” Maddie screamed.

They flew down the creek, their feet sliding on the mossy stones. Behind them Ben heard a rush of wind. The sound that he had heard in his room. A sob quavered in his throat.

The creek spilled out into the lake. Lewis’s little sailboat stood there. And beside it, on the dock, his crowbar amidst his own pile of new decking. Ben knew what he needed to do.

He ran through the water and reached up, gripping the crowbar. Maddie tore the loosened line free. They both scrambled into the boat. Ben gripped the tiller, pulled the mainsheet taut and waited.

 “Come on! Please. Please. Come on!” He gripped the sheet harder. For a moment nothing happened. And then a gust caught, the sail snapped full and the boat took off. Behind them, he heard the sound of splashing, of someone cutting through the water. Someone fast. An expert swimmer.

The boat sailed out at least a hundred feet or more. The wind was good, but not strong enough to gain a lead on what pursued them. A crunch sounded in the water. The bow rocked. The stern pivoted. The tiller shook in Ben’s hand. Another crunch. The tiller shot out of his grip. The boat turned, the sails losing the wind. The boom swung wide, smacking him. Nearly knocking him out of the boat. He ducked and reached out for the tiller. Grasped it in the darkness. Pulled it near. The boat slowed.

Another crunch sounded, followed by a terrible crack.

“The rudder,” Maddie yelled.

He looked back to see the rudder broken, torn away from the boat. The shadow of his mother clung to the boat, panting, pulling herself towards them. Her hand reached out. Ben gasped, his mind blank, fear filling his vision. And reticence. My mother, he thought.

But then the moonlight shifted. He saw her hair matted with dried blood. Her arms and hands covered with scratches. Maddie screamed. It grabbed her, pulled her overboard. She flailed in the water, her hands slapping at the shadow being. Ben shook himself and pulled out his pocketknife. Cut the knot at the end of the mainsheet. It came free from the blocks. Flapped in the night air. He reached for it. Held it fast. With the other hand he grabbed for the crowbar.

He drew back and then drove it into the hull. Again. And again. Water rose around his feet. Then he dropped the crowbar and looped the line. Tied a slip knot. Took a deep breath, pushing down all fear, and dove towards the creature. His arms encircled her in one final embrace. The line fell around her neck. He pulled hard, tightening the knot, choking her.

“Kick hard!” He screamed to Maddie.

For a minute the shadow turned, reached for him. Her nails scraped his face. And then she sputtered, pulled under, her arms waving, frantic.

Ben lunged away from her and swam for the shore. Stroke after stroke devoid of thought. Behind him, he heard the suction of the water pulling the boat down. And the shadow of their mother with it. Near the shore he turned and treaded water, looking out over the lake, empty save for the ripples on the surface.

—

They sat against the back step into the ambulance, headlights lighting the night, heavy blankets wrapped around them. The police had taken their statements. Ben avoided looking towards the yard where a group crouched, photographing the body of his mentor and friend.

Over the next few days, teams drug the lake, bringing up the battered sailboat and the crowbar. The severed mainsheet hung off of the boom, its knotted circle empty. Ben’s mother was never found. Neither was her shadow. Some say that she crawled in from her watery grave. That she lurks in the shadows, moving from cabin to cabin. Hungry.

There are many tropes that we think of in Gothic writing. Haunted houses and isolation and ghosts might immediately come to mind. But how many of us consider various forms of mental illness? It might surprise you to discover that this type of character is used very frequently – in many genres, not just Gothic writing. Here are just a few examples:

• Victor Frankenstein – in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Rachel Watson in The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
• Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
• Jack Torrance in The Shining by Stephen King
• Amy Dunne in Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
• Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• Teddy Daniels in Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
• Merricat Blackwood and Uncle Julian in We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
• The unnamed protagonist in Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

And there are so many more. If these are the types of characters you enjoy, here’s a list of 257 books featuring mentally ill characters that I found at Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/19822.Best_Mentally_Ill_Characters

Note: It’s safe to proceed! There are NO plot spoilers ahead.

Types of Mental Impairment

If you’ve read a number of books with these types of characters, or you’re aware of the books (and movies) that I mentioned above, you probably already know that these characters show a broad range of different types of mental illness or impairment.

• Victor Frankenstein could be argued to have monomania, bipolar disorder, or paranoid schizophrenia
• Rachel Watson is an extreme alcoholic – extreme because she’s suffering from severe blackouts
• Heathcliff is tormented by his grief and seems to be both narcissistic and bipolar
• Jack Torrance has an ability to see and communicate with the dead (“the shining”), which drives him to a point of severe psychosis and schizophrenia
• Amy Dunne is a narcissist and psychopath (what’s currently referred to as “antisocial personality disorder”)
• Holden Caulfield has depression and PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder)
• Teddy Daniels has a delusional disorder
• Merricat Blackwood is a sociopath who may have paranoid schizophrenia (depending on how you read the novel), and Uncle Julian has dementia and a repression disorder
• The unnamed protagonist in Fight Club has a dissociative identity disorder

The point is that there are many different conditions that we could classify as a mental impairment, so your options are extensive.

Furthermore, many of these are best-selling novels and even blockbuster movies, which says a lot about the popularity and usefulness of this type of character. However, there are several different ways that these are used and each one serves a different purpose in the story.

Note #1: Each of these forms of impairment contributes to the plot, character and theme in their respective novel. However, each one swings more to one or the other of these. (And/or I’m using them as an example of only one for our purposes here.) So keep in mind as we’re looking at them that when I use one as an example of thematic support or a plot contrivance, I’m not saying that they aren’t contributing to the other aspects of the story as well.

Note #2: Please know that I’m not making light of any mental illness or other debilitating condition. However, these types of character ailments are often very useful in writing as we try to put forth various themes for our readers.

Plot

The plot is the most basic component of any story. It’s the surface story – what happens to the main character and how he either overcomes or fails when confronted with a conflict. But sometimes the plot we’re writing requires mental illness, meaning that the story hinges on the character’s impairment and would fall apart without it.

I can think of many examples of this. In fact, most of the stories we’ll talk about under character and theme are also in this category. However, they go a step further in their use of the mental illness, so we’ll save our discussion of them for those sections.

Rachel Watson in The Girl on the Train – in this story, Rachel witnesses a murder. But she can’t remember anything about it because she suffered an alcoholic blackout during the event. The entire rest of the story is her investigation into both her neighbors (whom she watches from the train) and her own precarious mental state. Of course, there’s a lot more that happens here. Rachel has effectively quit her life and is living as an observer of others. At the start of the novel, she’s in a really bad place and needs to find her way back to functional adulthood. But without her blackout, the entire story wouldn’t exist. She would remember who murdered whom and why.

The Unnamed Protagonist in Fight Club – Ahh, Fight Club. I have fond memories of the first time I saw this and one scene in particular (you’ll know it if you’ve seen it). I’ll try not to give too much away here, but suffice it to say that the main character has a very extreme mental illness. There would be no story whatsoever without this illness. And I mean no story. Sorry, that’s all I can give you. Trust me. At least watch the movie.

Jack Torrance in The Shining – Jack seems like a nice guy at first. Sort of. But it isn’t long before readers see glimpses of another Jack. One who is violent and potentially dangerous. In this story, Jack takes a caretaker’s position over the winter off-season at an isolated hotel in the mountains of Colorado. He moves into the vacant hotel with his wife and son, Wendy and Danny, and plans to work on his latest writing project – a play – while overseeing the work on the inn.

But Jack and Danny have a special mental condition which King terms the shining, a state in which a person can see and communicate with the dead. (The person can also communicate with other living people telepathically, particularly those who also have the shining and thus are able to receive the message.) The story centers on this condition and how it affects the lives of Jack and Danny…not in good ways, FYI. Thus, without this mental state, there would be no story.

Character

In other stories, a mental impairment or illness plays a stronger role in rounding out a character. By that I mean that the story might have been able to happen the same (or in a roughly similar) way without the illness, but we wouldn’t have the very unique character that we do because of it. The following are a few examples of this situation:

Merricat in We’ve Always Lived in the Castle – If you’ve read my blog for awhile, you know that Merricat is, hands down, my favorite protagonist in all of literary history. She isn’t the most universally likeable, but she’s unbelievably fascinating. And from the first paragraph of the book, it’s clear that she’s not right in the head. Here’s a look at that notable paragraph:

My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.

p.1

It gives me tingles. There’s so much in there. If you want to read my book review of this one, you can find it here. If you read the book (novella, really), you’ll discover that what happens [possibly] could have happened if Merricat were mentally typical. But it wouldn’t be interesting. All of the nuance and character depth comes through because she’s severely mentally ill. Jackson uses this very atypical character to grab the reader’s attention and put her in a state of unease. That way readers are ready to receive her theme about the collective versus the individual. I wrote about the benefits of having uneasy readers here.

Amy Dunne in Gone Girl – Amy is another fascinating character. At face value, she seems pretty normal. At the beginning of the novel, we read excerpts from her diary because she’s missing. And as in most missing person cases, the suspicion falls on the surviving spouse. Did her husband kill her, as many are claiming? Or is there something else a foot here?

As with Merricat above, this story could technically occur if Amy wasn’t mentally ill. But she is and that’s what makes this story so much more interesting. It isn’t long before readers begin to wonder what’s true and what isn’t. Is Amy telling us something through her diary? Or is she omitting more than she’s telling? That’s where this book shines: in Amy’s character.

Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights – Heathcliff is brash. He’s abusive. He’s vengeful. But have you ever considered that he’s mentally ill? When Heathcliff comes home from his time abroad (I’ll leave it to you to discover why), we see clear signs of narcissism in him. But what’s more interesting is the madness that he descends into at the end of the book.

Readers see glimpses of it in the beginning of the story, before the narrator tells the tale of her childhood experiences with the Linton and Earnshaw families. But when she wraps up the tale, we see more of his mental illness – a madness that stems from Heathcliff’s grief. And though he’s vicious and vindictive and all of the things I said above, readers feel for him because of that grief and the love that he has for Catherine. His mental illness is what makes him such a compelling and sympathizable character.

Theme

And then lastly, there are mental impairments that link very tightly to the theme. So tightly that the story wouldn’t have the same underlying message without them. I’ll tread lightly with these because discussing the themes, particularly in the first two, would give away too much of the story.

Uncle Julian in We’ve Always Lived in the Castle – there’s another character with a mental illness in Jackson’s brilliant novella. It’s Uncle Julian, the oft-overlooked character who’s suffering and near death. Some claim that he has dementia, but it’s more likely that the preceding events in the story have left his mind less than whole.

But the most interesting aspect of his mental condition is that he has repressed a great deal of his memories surrounding the night that the family died. And there’s a reason for that. I won’t give it away if you haven’t read the book, but suffice it to say that it demonstrates Jackson’s sympathy for what happened. If you want to read about that in more [plot-spoiling] detail, you can find it under the Repressed Memories section in my book review here.

Teddy Daniels in Shutter Island – At the beginning of the story, U.S. Marshall Teddy and his new partner, Chuck, arrive at an island where a psychiatric hospital houses the criminally insane. They’re there to investigate the disappearance of one of the inmates. But as the story unravels, readers suspect that there’s more going on. That perhaps Teddy’s version of the story isn’t entirely true.

Which is, of course, the case. Teddy is severely delusional. But he’s delusional because Lehane is making a point about reality versus fantasy and which is better. The answer isn’t as simple as it seems. (If you’re looking for the theme that Lehane is asking in this work, the movie version captures it well in Teddy’s last comment. Or I discuss it briefly here.)

Victor Frankenstein in Frankenstein – Victor is a medical student. But what captures his attention is the possibility of regeneration. After all, he lost his mother as a young man and his grief over that event has overshadowed his concern for the living. The theme of this book is a simple but profound one: what are the consequences of man attempting to play God?

Victor’s mental condition – his monomania for sure – ties into this. Some have argued that he is actually paranoid schizophrenic. That the monster is nothing but a visible symbol of himself. There’s an argument to be made there. In either case, the more he attempts to bring the dead back to life, the more he descends into madness, leaving a wake of destruction. Thus illustrating Shelley’s point.

Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye – and last, but not least, there’s Holden, our perennial, angst-ridden, depressed teenager. But Holden isn’t just struggling with puberty. He’s living in the shadow of the loss of his brother Allie. His consistent attempts – and failures – to connect with any of the other characters, highlight the extent to which he is unable to replace what he lost.

The theme of this book is Holden’s desire – and inability – to protect the innocent, especially children. He wants to be the one who catches children as they run through a field of rye, before they fall off of a cliff to their death. It’s this desperation that Salinger reflects in Holden’s anxiety and depression. The story couldn’t make this point without the mental illness from which Holden suffers.

Conclusion

These are rich. Each of these examples adds so much to the plot, character depth or thematic exploration, if not all of the above. These stories wouldn’t be the same – perhaps wouldn’t exist at all – if not for the mental illness or other impairment of the characters. That makes mental impairment an invaluable trope in many genres, including the Gothic one.

If you’ve ever written using a character with some mental abnormality, or you have a favorite book with one, let me know. I’d love to hear about your experiences with this trope.

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As a child I wrote a number of short stories. In fact, that was pretty much all I wrote. Writing a novel wasn’t even a consideration because of the length and complexity involved. (Of course, I thought that my stories were books.) But if you had asked me about a month ago, I would have said that I don’t write short stories.

Which, in a contemporary context, is true. All of my writing projects are books or series of books. In recent years, I’ve avoided short stories because they take my time and attention away from those other projects. That is, until I entered another writing contest, this time one that required a short story. Suddenly, all of my recent and past history went out the window and I found myself researching and learning how to write a really good short story.

Because, truth be told, a short story is both very similar and very different from a novel.

1. The Overall Structure – Short stories share the same general plotting structure as novels, but in a much more condensed format. Sounds obvious, but some writers may be inclined to ignore structure and instead focus on a very impactful snapshot of events in a character’s life. That can be a great thing, but it’s not a short story. A short story has a rise and fall of action with a beginning a middle and a conclusion.

On the other hand, it can be easy to go into a short story thinking that you can fit all of the novel beats in there. (I’ve tried that.) It doesn’t work. Unless the short story is closer to a novella, giving all of your typical plot points enough room to breathe – no matter how tightly you write them – can be virtually impossible.

For a short story, I recommend a structure that looks like the following:

¹ The word count is based on a 5,000 word story. Notice that the first quarter of the story – the opening scene and catalyst (at the 25% mark) – should be about 1,250 words (25% of 5,000 words). If your opening scene is shorter – more like 750 words – you have up to about 500 words to work with for the catalyst and vice versa.

² Characterization means that you need to show an action or dialogue from each character that shows readers what type of person that character is. Given the space constraints in a short story, you’ll have to do all of this very quickly so it’s best to pick a scene that gives readers a deep look at all of the characters in one interaction.

2. Condensed Action – The table above looks a lot like the layout for a novel. But notice what’s missing. There are no pinch points. These are the points in a novel that break up the two halves of Act 2. At or around the 37% (halfway between the beginning of Act 2 and the Midpoint) and 62% (halfway between the Midpoint and the beginning of Act 3) point in the book, writers show actions that demonstrate the ferocity of the antagonist.

We raise the stakes and show how much the protagonist has to lose. We show what is against him and how formidable that enemy is.

There’s usually no room for that in a short story. BUT that doesn’t mean it’s truly gone. Rather, we have to bake it into the other plot points. Instead of having a separate plot point to show this, roll it into the 25%, 50% and 75% points in the story. Have those points do more than they would in a novel.

In a short story we also have to be very, very tight. For instance, notice the word counts above. Those equate to no more than 1-4 pages for each portion of the story.

Double spaced.

That’s very little real estate to work with, so everything has to pull double or triple duty. I’ll give you an example.

In a horror story I wrote (for the contest I mentioned above), a young boy is at his family’s lake house for the summer. Much of the story centers on the lake itself and on him as a budding sailor. Therefore, the Opening Scene is set outside, at the dock beside the lake. The mood is dark – the property caretaker is telling the boy the tail end of a scary story.

His mother and sister make an appearance and, though they say little, their actions tell a lot. The mother is dismissive, aloof, independent, and self-centered. The sister is mocking and yet perceptive.

The boy responds in ways that identify him as skeptical, analytical and ambitious. I show both what he wants – to learn to sail – through a couple of comments about the sailboat docked there, and why this is a terrible fit for him. I accomplish the latter by showing his fear of the water, his sister’s comment that he hates it, and her additional comment that he does more reading of his dad’s sailing book than he does actual sailing.

This tells readers a lot. Clearly the dad is absent. The boy is consumed with his dad’s book (a symbolic reference to his attempts to be like his dad), but sailing itself is very obviously a terrible fit for him. Still, sailing will play a role in this portion of his life…but in ways that he doesn’t intend or expect.

Notice that within just over 500 words, I accomplished all of this. That’s hard to do. But possible.(Notice that my opening scene was shorter than what I’ve recommended above so that I had room for a slightly longer Catalyst scene.)

3. Subplots & Subtext – Subplots are going to be very, very hard, if not impossible in a short story. I would omit them completely from your first few drafts and, if you find a way to hint at one in a subsequent draft, you can add it in later. Otherwise you risk muddying the main plot which is already lean enough.

Subtext, on the other hand, should be your modus operandi. When space is tight, every bit of dialogue and action should do more than move the plot forward. It should also tell us something about character and theme.

For example, in the story above there’s a point at which the older sister tells her brother that she’ll go sailing with him. This section reads like this:

[brother]: “You hate sailing.”

[sister]: “So do you.”

Her expression was open. No sign of mocking or pranking. He shrugged. “I guess [you can come sailing with me].”

[sister]: “You know, Dad’s a jerk. He wouldn’t have left if he wasn’t.”

He didn’t respond. Just looked from her to the lake. When he looked back, she was gone.

There’s a lot of subtext in there. On the surface it looks like they’re just sharing a mutual hatred of sailing, but what else do we see?

1. His sister sees through him and knows that he doesn’t like sailing, but is clinging to the memory of their father.
2. She also sees that their dad wasn’t a good person, something the younger brother either can’t or refuses to admit.
3. This tells readers that he’s deceiving himself by holding to a belief that isn’t true and isn’t helping him. (It isn’t leading him to be his best self…rather than a mirror image of their father.)
4. The sister, who usually would be mocking him or playing pranks on him (what he’s looking for in her expression) is, underneath it all, actually very selfless and caring.

That’s a lot of meaning in a tiny space. Which is absolutely essential in a short story.

While it would be ideal if a novel were this concise and on-point (and it’s certainly something I shoot for), a short story can’t afford not to be. To have a really impactful and meaningful short story, it can’t just be a shorter snapshot of the characters. It has to boil the entire essence of the story down to brief sketches of description and dialogue that show readers everything in 5% – 10% of the space of a novel.

4. Story Timespan – There’s a lot of variation when it comes to how much time a short story covers in the life (or lives) of the character(s). Some short stories cover a few minutes or only a day. Others span years or decades.

But the choices as to how to accomplish this have to be very intentional. Because my story above is a horror story and horror stories generally show a progression of events as the monster pursues the protagonist, I chose to work with a short window of time. Rather than merely a few days, I skipped ahead in one section, highlighting some things the protagonist did that resulted in failed outcomes. Still, the entire story spanned merely 2-3 weeks in the characters’ lives. And the sections with action comprised no more than 2-3 days.

That was hard for me. I love subtext and tight writing (though I’m always improving), but I also love lyrical language and very immersive settings. To accomplish these latter two things, I usually need a lot of space. A lot more than I have in a short story.

I originally started the story where the novel would begin – at the start of summer when the family arrives at the lake house. Instead, I fast-forwarded a month to early July and threw in a few references to the young boy’s attempts to improve his sailing. That allowed me to skip much of the lead up that would have taken too much time. In a novel, the catalyst scene would have happened closer to their arrival, but I had no room for that so I moved it to the beginning of the short story’s timeline.

And of course I had to cut out much of the antagonist’s actions against the young boy. There just isn’t room for a lengthy series of action scenes and reaction sequels. Rather, I chose the hardest hitting one in each section and focused on that. The only exception was what I mentioned above when I said that I referenced a few actions he tried and what resulted from them.

That also meant that sometimes I had to tell about something that happened after the fact. That meant that the action took less space, but I was still able to dramatize a portion of it to give the readers a taste for what had happened. That felt awkward at first, and it certainly isn’t my preference, but I managed to work it out so that everything flowed smoothly.

5. Character Arcs & Backstory – In a short story, you still want to have some character growth. You still want to show why the character thinks he wants what he wants at the beginning and why the antagonist is doing whatever it is she’s doing. But to do that well, you’ll want to bake it into the subtext (which pulls double or triple duty for you…saving space), and you’ll want to choose only the most significant things to include.

For example, in my story above, the young boy makes a very characteristic [skeptical and scientific] comment to the property caretaker at the beginning of the story. His mom walks by at just that point and says, “He’s just like his father.” Now, this kind of comment can be taken so many different ways, but in the context I establish and given the mother’s other actions, it’s clear that it’s not a compliment. It’s also clear that she hates his father. (And as we mentioned before, the son is trying his darnedest – for his own reasons – to be just like his dad.) Which sets up an immediate conflict between the mother and son.

We know why she hates her kids’ father in one sentence. That’s in the comment that the sister, Maddie, made above: “You know, Dad’s a jerk. He wouldn’t have left if he wasn’t.” He left them and the mother is resentful.

Conclusion

We could spend years analyzing the short story, but the key to take away is that the entire essence of the story – as if you had had the space to write it as a novel – needs to be there, but it has to be so incredibly tight that you portray it in only a fraction of the space.

It’s hard to do. But it’s so impactful when it works.

And for me, there’s one other benefit to writing short stories – the most important one from my perspective.

The short story is like a boot camp for writing a novel. I’ve learned so much in the process of working on the story that I mentioned here. All of these types of elements – the double- and triple-hitting dialogue, subtext and description can and often should spill over into a novel. The ability to cut everything but the bare essentials is invaluable. And even with more space, knowing how to show action in either shorter or longer ways is a phenomenal skill. And it’s much harder than it sounds. It takes practice until it reads smoothly and does all of the things that each section of the story needs to do. Then, with a larger word count, the story can do all of these things in an even richer and more successful way than it would have otherwise.

Let me know about your experience reading or writing short stories. What have you seen or learned in the process – good or bad?

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I’ve loved reading horror since my best friend in middle school introduced me to Stephen King, Dean Koontz and John Saul. The books spoke to me in a way that most other adult books (save for some Gothic ones) didn’t. At that point, if you had asked me why, I would have said that I like the intensity and the frequent emphasis on the supernatural. The monsters in Horror are something more than just a vengeful person. They represent something much deeper, something that I wouldn’t have been able to articulate at that age.

But for some reason I never wrote horror save for one horroresque short story in college.

Then recently, two things collided. The first was a new writing contest that I decided to enter. This time it’s a Campfire Ghost story. It has to be a horror short story between 600 and 5,000 words. It appealed to me so I started working on an idea I had.

The second was an article that I encountered about personality types and writing (or reading) preferences. I’m a huge fan of personality typing for a lot of reasons, but usually from a Myers-Briggs perspective. I’ve never liked the Enneagram as much, although I do know my type – 5w4. If that means nothing to you, a 5 type is usually someone like an INTJ (my Myers-Briggs typing) who is an introverted intuitive person; someone who naturally picks up underlying meaning, especially with respect to trends or patterns, over long periods of time. A 5 with a 4 wing is a more creative, artistic version of a pure 5. [That’s the short description. It’s really much more complicated – more so than we need for this article.]

In this article, Judith Searle paired each of the Enneagram types with a genre of literature. I read through it, intrigued, but not expecting anything in particular. When I finally arrived at the section on 5s, she said that a 5 type person is naturally drawn to…you guessed it, horror.

I was stunned. If I could have fallen off of my seat, I might have.

And she explained why this is the case:

Five stories are basically survival stories; the Five protagonist survives through her intelligence and coolheadedness.

Searle, J. Story Genres & Enneagram Types. 1998. https://www.judithsearle.com/story-genres-enneagram-types. referenced June 2022.

That hit me like a load of books. Horror ones. I had never considered the fact that horror is essentially an intellectual survival story. Survival, sure. But she’s right. There’s always an element of problem-solving in any horror story. She uses an example from a horror-science fiction story, the 1979 movie, Alien, with Sigourney Weaver. As the alien presences infiltrate and destroy her fellow astronauts, Weaver is forced to find a way to out-smart the alien in order to escape and survive.

That’s true in Summer of Night by Dan Simmons, Salem’s Lot by Stephen King and Swan Song by Robert McCammon. In each case the protagonists have to find a way to outwit a formidable and seemingly insurmountable adversary.

[If you’re asking how this is different from a Thriller, she addresses that indirectly. She points out that Thrillers are about who is trustworthy. This appeals to Enneagram 6 types who are predominantly focused on survival and loyalty. The use of allies in these books will either prove (through their steadfast support) or disprove (through their betrayal) the idea that others can be trusted.]

I loved this article and found Ms. Searle’s insights to be profound. However, I would add to her assessment of Horror and 5/ INTJ types.

Horror & The Intangible

There is a natural overlap between Horror and Gothic writing, but not in the way that most people think of it. It isn’t the dark ambiance or the supposed evil (which usually isn’t what the books are promoting) that makes them similar. It’s the use of a trope that makes the theme tangible.

In Horror writing according to Jessica Brody, there are three essential elements: a monster, a sin and a house (which may be a metaphorical house, but must be some kind of confined situation or place). What’s most interesting is that the monster should be a tangible manifestation of the sin in the story. That means that whatever failing the protagonist is hiding, or has been done to him or her (or mankind) takes on a life of its own in the form of the story’s monster.

In Swan Song, McCammon presents a landscape of horror after the detonation of nuclear weapons on U.S. soil. In the aftermath, a number of characters struggle to survive. Some are benevolent people who want to help others and restore the world to place of mutual benefit to all. Others are self-centered and vicious, wanting only to take everything for themselves at any cost.

Of course, this is tied to the theme of the story. It was the greed of those at the top of the world that precipitated the nuclear disaster. That’s the sin that the characters are left to contend with throughout the tale. But McCammon doesn’t leave it as an abstract idea. Rather, he uses those very vicious characters I mentioned to exemplify that fact.

Colonel Macklin and Roland Croninger are two of the lead monsters. They rape, loot, steal and murder. They take advantage of everyone and everything they encounter in order to benefit themselves. When their faces grow masks and then crack open, their character is on full display as grotesque forms that barely reflect any humanity. But these two, as horrible as they are, are nothing but a tangible representation of the greed that is at the heart of the nuclear war that others began.

This is akin to Gothic writing in which authors use the tropes to make an irrational theme tangible. My point is that in both Horror and Gothic writing, there’s a very intangible thematic element that lies beneath the surface. It’s something that can’t be perceived through the five senses. It’s deeply intuitive. The sort of deep intuition that appeals to an INTJ or Enneagram type 5.

So it isn’t just the problem-solving ability of the protagonist that makes a Horror story so appealing to these types of people. It’s also that underlying meaning that their intuition picks up and relishes.

Conclusion

I’m thriving as I craft this horror short story. So much so that I might try writing it (and some other ideas) into Horror novels. There’s just something about them that suits me so well. If you’re also a 5 type or an INTJ, you might consider reading more horror and trying to write it as well. And if you are one of these types and already enjoy and write horror novels, let me know. I’d love to check out your books.

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Recently, I joined the Vocal community of writers. It’s a platform that allows writers of all genres (including non-fiction) to put out content and share it with others. I didn’t know about the community until I saw a Fantasy Fiction challenge that appealed to me. The contest required all writers to submit the first chapter (between 600 and 5,000 words) of a Fantasy story, beginning with the first sentence:

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.

I entered the challenge and ended up being a runner up! I was thrilled, especially since I had such a fun time doing it. Since I’m also working on some big blog ideas for all of you, I thought that this week I’d share my entry in the contest

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There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. They came in fishing boats, in merchant vessels, in the backs of wagons, on horseback, on foot. They came dressed as farmers and millers and blacksmiths. They came slowly, patiently. They looked like you. They looked like me. We thought that they were allies, friends, family. By the time we knew the truth, it was too late.

Seven Years Earlier

Calum lay below three decks, hidden in the bowels of the ship, his bedroll concealed behind a row of barrels. Only one knew he was there, lurking in the shadows – the First Mate whose eyes had widened at the jangle of the gold pouch, his duplicity predictable.

From his makeshift bunk, day and night, Calum heard the heavy sloshing of spermaceti, the blood of the sea, rolling within the barrels as the ship crested the waves and fell, bound northeast from the outer islands to the coast of Meriden. Days of idleness pressed down on him, driving away sleep, leaving his mind open to swirling black memories. The hammering of fists on a door, the iron clanging of boots on stone, the screaming of the girl smothered, drowned. He placed a hand out to keep the thoughts at bay, feeling the rough wood shell of the vessel. And just beyond it, the weight of the sea pressing into the hull of the ship.

He shifted, the hard floor unyielding beneath him. It was the middle of the night, hours from dawn, but he wouldn’t sleep. He sat up, feeling about in the humid darkness for the lantern. The light flared up, revealing the wealth housed there in oak and iron. Worth more than gold and silver. Worth more than most towns. And, to those who owned it, worth more than the lives of most men.

They were nearly to Meriden, he had overheard a sailor say just the prior day. It was worth the risk. He passed down the long rows of barrels, stepping wide, holding his balance as the ship creaked and keeled to one side. The stairs rose up through the crews’ quarters. The space lay hushed, filled with the sound of men snoring, others rustling about in the dark, changing or unchanging before or after their shift.

“Midnight. Or three,” he thought. “Most likely midnight.” A heavy warmth still radiated up from the deck, mingling with the suffocating scent of unwashed bodies and the foul exhalations of hundreds of foggy, rancid breaths. By three a cold ribbon of air would snake down through the decks, carrying the salt smell of the sea, the tang of storm clouds, the sour-sweet smell of the seagulls’ droppings that the swabbies scrubbed from the deck above.

He rose to the main deck, gulping clean night air, pressing down the bile that rose in his throat. There were no stars, only hazy moonlight filtering through the darting cloud cover. Several men stood watch in the stern, clustered about the wheel. They looked towards him, surprised at one who arrived off-shift in the dead of the night. He made his way to the railing and leaned out as if to vomit. The wind buffeted his eardrums, rocking his vision. He wiped his dry lips against the wool sleeve of his coat and turned away from the wind, making his way away from them, towards the forecastle.

A young boy sat at the edge of the deck wrapping lines, a heap of them beside him, some frayed and loose. He looked up, his mouth open, a silent question formed on his lips. Calum nodded to him and sidestepped the piles.

“Ahumari must be sore bitter tonight.” The boy hopped to his feet in one motion, his work forgotten.

Calum groaned inside and lengthened his stride. Behind him he heard the patter of the boy’s slight form, barely audible over the rising wind. As if in response, the mast swung slightly, the sails above him adjusting and catching the wind with a slap as the sailors righted their course.

“The men say that she’s always hungry, looking for the wicked. That she feeds on evil. She’ll take the whole ship down just to claim him.”

He snorted. “They’re toying with you, boy.” But his stomach clenched and he gripped the railing to steady himself.

“Taak.”

“What?”

“That’s what they call me. On account of my doing so much of it.” The boy grinned wide, a missing tooth marking his guileless smile.

“Yes, I see.”

“They say she knows the souls of all men. She stirs up the wind to gather the smells of them to herself. That’s how she knows.”

“Fairy stories.”

“No. Marek said that an evil person smells different. Sweet. You might think he’d smell rotten, but he doesn’t. He smells sweet. Do you know why?”

Calum sighed and stopped. “Why’s that?”

Taak grinned, pleased to have a captive audience. “A foul smell would drive men away, would sicken the stomachs of women, would warn children to run. But not a sweet one. The sweetest smell lures others. It disguises the evil that waits to destroy them.”

Calum leaned forward and made a show of sniffing the air. “I don’t know. You smell awfully sweet to me.”

Taak laughed, his round face turned up, his snub nose twitching. “Not me. I stink. I haven’t bathed in weeks. I’m as pure as the spring rain.”

Darkness filled Calum’s thoughts. “Is the spring rain pure?” he muttered.

“Of course…”

“You there!” They turned as a broad sailor, leaning contrary to the keeling ship, plodded towards them.

“Sepharam. Worst bastard on the ship,” Taak whispered.

The man drew near and clopped the boy across the head. “Back to work. Or I’ll throw you overboard.”

He wouldn’t do it, Calum knew. His type was all bluster. The kind of man who brought his mother flowers on the first day of the week and slipped chunks of meat to a small, shaggy dog under the table.

“I asked him to help me,” Calum stepped forward, meeting the man’s gaze. “He’s just doing as he’s told.”

“Not as I told him. Get on with you.” Sepharam said. Calum watched the man huff as Taak ducked and scurried back to the lines, rubbing the back of his head.

“Little better than a rat in lard. If it wasn’t for his mother, Cap’n would never tolerate him.”

Calum looked over the man’s shoulder, watching the sky blackening behind them, the man’s face dwindling into shadow. Ahumari, the boy had said. Sea legends. He’d heard similar ones near the wharves when he had been a boy. In his land, sailors believed that it was Thaden who ruled the waters, churning the sea to confound the plans of men. Most of the inland folk, his own people, dismissed such tales. Still, he shivered and drew his coat closer around him.

He looked at the man’s cap, pulled low over his ears, tied under his chin, and wished that he had had the time to acquire something similar. But the stores had all been closed for the night. Only the wharf had teemed with life – rats and whores and men – when he had stolen aboard The Huntress, following in the shadow of the First Mate.

The sailor stuffed his hands in his pockets, looked off into the rise and fall of the dark sea as if it bore some answer to a riddle he had long pondered. Looked back at Calum. “Don’t recall seeing you.”

“It’s a big ship.” Calum leaned out over the railing again and looked aft, ignoring the onset of vertigo, blinking hard to clear his head and looking again. Behind them a shadow grew out of the menacing clouds. A waterspout. A trick of the darkness. A ship. He couldn’t be certain.

“I suppose. What shift they have you on?” Calum saw a flash of suspicion in his eyes that the man worked to conceal.

“Storage.” It was the easiest to defend. The men who worked in the belly of the ship. Who caught the heavy swinging barrels as the men above lowered them down on ropes. Who then stowed them in neat rows. Hour upon hour of back-breaking work in the heat of the sweltering, airless cavern. A job that none wanted, that all were quick to overlook and avoid. They were the men no one minded too closely, fearful that their proximity would render others subject to just such a task.

Still, the man’s gaze flicked over Calum’s apparel, hardly the heavy woven pants and short coat of a man accustomed to working storage.

A shape rushed towards them from aft, leaning as he ran, a man comfortable with the high sea. “Something comes.” He pointed behind Sepharam, drawing his attention to the lurking mist in the distance. “Ahumari.”

Sepharam scowled. “Ahumari my ass. I’ll be glad to be docked and away from this lot. Never seen such a flock of superstitious men in my life.”

“But Marek…”

“Sea witches and charms. If that old man hasn’t infected the lot of you. Get back to your post,” he roared. The young sailor turned and raced back to the aft deck where a small crowd had gathered. “And the sails unmanned.” He turned back to Calum. “Storage? Who you answer to?”

Calum balked, his mouth dry. He didn’t even know the First Mate’s name. A blowing rain picked up around them. He licked his lips, grateful for the moisture.

“As I suspected.” Sepharam gripped him by the arm, overshadowing him by at least four or five inches. His fingers clenched harder, pulling him back towards the others. “You’re coming with me.”

There was nowhere to run. Below him were the decks, easily searched. Calum looked behind him, out beyond the bowsprit. They drew near the inner islands, low hulking masses in the water, like the backs of great sea beasts. One tower rose from the outermost point, a speck of flame marking the point where the land met the sea.

And beyond those, across an expanse of water, sheltered by the barrier islands, the craggy cliffs of Meriden rose into the sky. Monstrous walls carved into a city, speckled with light even at night. Calum gasped as the man dragged him across the deck. He looked back again.

He had heard of it. The gateway to Eleryon. A natural fortress no army could breach. But he hadn’t dreamed that it would be so large, so overshadowing even at such a distance. He felt himself shrink beneath it, felt its eternal eye on him, watching him draw near, assessing his worth, and finding him deficient.

He tripped on a roll of sailcloth and nearly fell. The man hauled him up, shoved him forward to where a group of sailors waited, looking from him to the growing mass behind them. “Watch him. Don’t let him out of your sight.” Sepharam rubbed his hands as if eager to be clear of him.

“It’s a ship,” one said. “Marauders.”

“It isn’t,” another shook his head.

“Ahumari,” several muttered until Sepharam scowled at them.

Two of the sailors held Calum fast between them, their grips firm but distracted. He followed their gaze. Moonlight scuttled behind the clouds, a faint luminescence that puddled like dying candlelight swallowed by muddy water. They held their breaths, peering into the darkness. A collective gasp rose as the clouds broke, casting silver light down through the rain, illuminating the three-masted silhouette of a ship bearing down on them.

“Shit.” Sepharam stamped his foot, peeled off his cap and ran one broad hand through his ruddy hair. “Can’t we go any faster?”

The man at the wheel glanced at him and back at the light tower before them. “I’ll try, but he’s lighter. Twelve-hundred barrels lighter.” His jaw tensed, squaring the corners of his long, angular face.

“Ah, damn. Damn it. We’re nearly there. Haul ass!” Sepharam pointed to another sailor. “You. All hands on deck. Now!”

The man froze and then ran, scurrying for the stairs down into the lower decks. Calum looked back. The ship came, rapidly gaining on them. There was no way they’d make it. He looked at the other men. They knew it.

Sepharam looked to the man at the wheel. “I’m going to wake the Captain.” He looked at the others, frozen in disbelief. “Move it! Arm the cannons.” Then he turned and took off at an ambling run.

“We’ll be outgunned,” one of the sailors said. The others ignored him. “Outgunned,” he repeated, his face ashen in the waxing moonlight.

“We’re close to shore,” Calum gestured to the light in the distance before them. “Relatively.”

The two on either side of Calum looked down at him as if they had forgotten him.

“Why? You want to swim?” one asked. “Cause that’s the only way out of this. All this oil, we’re a floating powder keg. Doesn’t matter how many shots we get off. One good one into the hold and we’ll light up like a torch.”

“That’s enough of that shit,” an older man growled. “No marauder would want to light us up. No sense in burning money.”

“Unless it’s Ahumari,” someone said. “She cares nothing for the wealth of men.”

Several men crowded around. One of them pointed at Calum. “I bet it’s him. No trouble at all until he appeared.”

Voices rose in confusion around him.

“He’s the one she’s after.”

“Throw him overboard.”

“Evil earns its just reward.”

“Seph said not to let him out of our sight.”

“Seph doesn’t believe. He’s as much to blame.”

“But he doesn’t even smell sweet.” Calum looked down to see Taak’s upturned face, his hair plastered to his head in thick strands. Several laughed.

“That’s ridiculous boy. No man can perceive the soul like she can.”

“But Marek said…”

Calum looked past them. The ship was nearly within firing reach. His mind turned. Before them the hulking islands grew larger, their backs like the backs of great tortoises rising out of the water. He could make it.

“She must have him before she destroys us all,” someone said.

“Throw me overboard,” Calum said. “Save yourselves.”

“No,” Taak whispered, his face crestfallen.

“But Seph said to keep a close watch…”

“Ahumari,” several nodded.

“You heard him.” A man reached out to take hold of Calum.

Just then a boom shook the air. Seconds later, a crash and the sound of splintering wood filled the air. Men dropped in terror. The ship rocked violently, the mast swinging wildly above them, the sails catching and then losing the wind. The deck rolled, heaving men in all directions. Calum soared above the surface and landed hard, his leg catching on an iron line that anchored an oil pot to the deck. A crack reverberated through his body. He clenched his teeth and cried out in pain. The ship rocked, rolling him to the far side of the deck.

Another boom sounded. Below him the ship moaned. Around him, men ran and crawled, some shouting orders, others praying under their breaths. Calum reached up and took hold of the railing, its wood gleaming, unmarred still. He stared at it in wonder that it would be so untouched by the violence that erupted around it.

He pulled himself up, rolled onto the railing and dropped. He hit the water below with a rapid intake of breath as the cold froze his limbs and searing pain jolted his leg. Waves of agony radiated up through his hip, into his chest and down his arms to his fingers. His body clenched and then grew still, surrendered to the power of the waves. It was easy. Easy not to fight it, he thought, as the darkness covered him.

Safe to Proceed: No Plot Spoilers Ahead!

Overview

After her crippling loss and subsequent divorce, what Charlie thinks she needs is to get away from her life in the New York/Connecticut area. When a dream about a young boy in a boat coincides with a job offer from her editor, she jumps at the opportunity. He wants her to go down to the Evangeline estate in Louisiana and write a true-crime novel about a thirty-year unsolved mystery: the disappearance of five-year-old Gabriel Deveau.

Once there, Charlie falls into a web of family secrets and intrigue. The evidence in the case is conflicting – some of it points to an insider, but the family and staff have no motive. However, she soon discovers that the family members are lying to one another about several things. To confound all of this, a landscape designer from Texas is also staying at the estate at the behest of the Deveau matriarch. When he pursues a romantic relationship with Charlie, she doesn’t know what to think of this man whose southern ways are so different from her northern ones.

As Charlie learns more about the family and the people who work[ed] the estate both now and when Gabriel disappeared, she discovers that rather than leaving her pain behind, she is now hedged into a place where she has to face what she hasn’t been able to accept in the past. All of her questions about what she, as a mother, could have and should have been able to do to prevent her child’s death, assail her and, ultimately bring her healing.

In many ways, this is a story about atonement: the price that must be paid in order to atone for one’s failures.

Themes & Tropes

This story deals heavily with motherhood – on the part of both Charlie Cates and Hettie Deveau, who also lost a son. The primary theme is the extent to which a mother will sacrifice herself for her child. The way that Young approaches this – in retrospect – allows for a more comprehensive look at the subject.

She also includes several traditionally Southern Gothic themes and corresponding tropes.

1. The Old South vs. the New South – this is typified by the Evangeline estate, which highlights the past and stands out in stark contrast against the modern era.
2. Repression – in Southern Gothic writing, economic or racial repression is often presented as an undercurrent beneath the idyllic southern reputation. In the case of this work, Young presents that repression as a sexual one and uses one of the characters in the novel as the manifestation of that repression.
3. Anxiety – the eldest Deveau son, Andre, represents the Southern Gothic theme of anxiety. Historically, this anxiety paralleled the South’s loss of its sense of identity after the Civil War. Young takes this idea and casts it on Andre, a man who’s struggling with his place in the family in light of his mother’s looming death.

Criticism

There have been some who have criticized Young’s characterization of the South. Native Southerners have commented in reviews that her portrayal of Louisiana is flawed and that her protagonist’s [very negative] perspective of the South is insulting.

I have a mixed perspective on that one. First, not being from the South, although I lived there for a time, I can appreciate the fact that a northerner probably isn’t going to portray that region as accurately as it deserves. As a writer who sometimes writes about places I’ve never lived, I can sympathize with the writer. However, as a reader, who also reads about places I’ve never lived, I can sympathize with the southern readers. I give her credit in that the writing comes across as a serious attempt to paint a realistic picture of the region. And a number of readers who commented that the regional details were less than accurate also said that they still loved the story. So take that as you will.

Second, as I read [with the knowledge of that criticism], I was torn as to what the writer intended. It’s one thing to say that the dialect and other Louisiana-specific details weren’t as authentic as they should have been. It’s another to say that the protagonist was wrong to have a cynical, northern attitude about the South. Protagonists are supposed to have flaws. They’re supposed to come to the table – like all humans – with certain prejudices and incorrect assumptions. Charlie certainly does.

At first I was a bit put-off by her character. She has a very supercilious, urban-provincial attitude that New York is the only civilized place in the world (or at least one of very few). I’ve lived in a lot of areas, some of them large urban centers, but many of them otherwise. I don’t care for big cities and I don’t care for that attitude. However, I read with the assumption that Young gave Charlie that personality intending it to read as a personality flaw. And the book’s ending supports that. I won’t give it away for you, but Charlie changes dramatically by the end – not in ways that are unrealistic, but in ways that contradict her former arrogance about New York. Thus, I’m willing to believe that Young wasn’t trying to demean the South, but was rather trying to point out a northern view of the South that’s incorrect, or at least incomplete.

Conclusion

As I mentioned, I was a very unsure about this book at the beginning. Charlie’s character was a bit much for me and the writing didn’t speak to me the way that some writing does.

However, I ended up enjoying the story and appreciating the solid plotting that went into the book. There were also several twists, one in particular, that a faint portion of my brain suspected…but there were enough red herrings that I really didn’t know what would happen. All in all, Young did a good job of pulling together a solid tale. And yes, I would recommend it.

If you’ve read it, let me know your perspective on the book.

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Most Gothic connoisseurs know that the helpless heroine was at one point a dominant trope within Gothic literature. The genre’s first recognized work – The Castle of Otranto – featured a princess, Isabella, pitted against her conniving and wicked soon-to-be father-in-law, Manfred. Without the help of friar Jerome and a noble-hearted peasant, Theodore, she would never have made it out from under Manfred’s clutches.

In Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff imprisons and controls both Isabella Linton and Catherine Linton [Cathy #2]. In Dracula, the titular villain sets his sights on Mina Murray, who must rely upon the valiant efforts of four young Englishmen to save her. In The Turn of the Screw, the unnamed governess is surrounded by ghosts and wicked children, her understanding of these things shrouded by secrecy. She can do nothing to save the children from what has already claimed them.

But what about in contemporary Gothic writing?

It might be easy to assume that the helpless heroine is gone or that when she appears in a Gothic-seeming work like Twilight, she is no longer accepted or enjoyed by modern readers. But the truth is that she is alive and well. She makes an appearance in many modern Gothic works, but in a fresh and different way than she did in the past.

[I dealt with this subject in a slightly different way in the following post: Helpless Female Characters Readers Love. In that post I focused on the helpless heroine in general. In this post I focus on her appearance in modern writing and the specific ways that she responds to her helplessness.]

The helpless heroine trope is utilized very strongly in the following three works, in very different ways: The Queen of the Damned (1988) by Anne Rice, The Little Stranger (2009) by Sarah Waters and Mexican Gothic (2020) by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Each of these is an excellent example of how to write the modern helpless heroine.

The Intrepid Seeker

Our first example is Jesse Reeves from The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice. Jesse questions things. Everything. She’s constantly seeking the hidden truths around her. Thus it isn’t long before she uncovers the fact that she’s surrounded by vampires. This magnifies the tension in the story because readers suspect the truth long before Jesse knows it. And of course, readers know that Jesse is helpless against these undead beings.

That doesn’t stop Jesse though. Even after she knows what she’s facing, she continues moving into danger…because she has to uncover the truth at any cost. Jesse isn’t foolishly choosing a new course of action that will lead her into danger. Rather, she’s following up on the research that she had committed to complete for the Talamasca. Readers relate to this because she’s willing to continue on in what she’s doing without waiting for someone to bail her out of danger.

Instead of seeing her as foolhardy, this behavior gives readers a view into Jesse’s diligence and faithfulness. She doesn’t flinch from doing the hard [and dangerous] work that she said she would do. And yes, she will need some form of strength or aid outside of herself. As a human, she is unable to battle legions of vampires. In that way, Jesse is more like a traditionally helpless heroine. However, she doesn’t stand by waiting for that aid before acting.

This is a great example of a helpless heroine who presses aside her own fear, despite the danger, and continues working at what she is determined to accomplish.

The Quiet Pillar of Strength

Caroline Ayres in The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters is an example of a more classic helpless heroine…but with a surprising twist. If you’ve never read this book, Waters’ Gothic tale is one of the most classic-feeling works in the modern Gothic genre that I’ve ever encountered. I covered this book in a recent post about the uncanny, a subject which she very deftly and subtly explores in this novel. You can find it here.

At the onset of the story, Dr. Faraday comes to Hundreds Hall, an English estate with which he was acquainted as a child. He uses the family’s circumstances to forge a friendship with Caroline, a young woman who seems to be nothing but gentle, well-bred gentility. As the story progresses, readers feel a rising anxiety for Caroline as her world unravels around her.

Her beloved dog, a mild-mannered Labrador, bites a young girl and must be put down. Her brother is assailed by strange happenings and is accused of being insane. Her mother grows weaker and ill due to the strange happenings around them and the financial difficulties they face.

One of Waters’ most brilliant abilities is that of imbuing a character with a trait without ever voicing it or even explicitly demonstrating that it exists. Readers know that something is awry in Dr. Faraday’s intentions. We know that he’s greedy and grasping even though she never tells us and his actions are quite subtle. We see Caroline quietly playing into his hands, accepting his unromantic and ill-timed offer of marriage. We assume that she is oblivious to his true nature. And we see how helpless she is in the face of her desperate circumstances.

But she isn’t oblivious. And she has one weapon left in her arsenal. It’s a subtle one. A quiet one. Caroline doesn’t fire back at the doctor with any amount of aggression. Instead, she simply thwarts what he intends to gain. He has to go through her in order to have all of the wealth and social-standing that would come from being the master of Hundreds Hall. So she closes the door, figuratively. [I’ll let you read it and discover exactly what she does. It isn’t really the point of the book. This isn’t a mystery to be solved, or a thriller to be evaded, but I still won’t give it away.]

I’d call this type of helpless heroine the one who allows the hardships to happen to her until the very end when she calmly locks the door. She does both of these things at a loss to herself, which is why she waits until the end to pull out the only card she is able to play. However, she does have a card up her sleeve. This is a form of helplessness that gives the heroine one sacrificial way out of danger.

The Defiant Debutante

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia features a young debutante, Noemí Taboada, who receives a letter from her cousin that she’s being held as a prisoner in her husband’s family home. Of course Noemí goes to the house high in the Mexican hill country to investigate. Because she’s headstrong and defiant.

Once there, she discovers that her cousin was telling the truth and that now they’re both prisoners. But unlike her cousin, Noemí is strong. Her circumstances render her helpless, but her character doesn’t. She’s going to probe the house and her brother-in-law’s family history until she understands what’s happening there. And then she’s going to oppose it. With or without any help from anyone.

This is a shade different from Jesse Reeves in The Queen of the Damned. Jesse is also committed to uncovering the truth and she is fearless, but she isn’t going to wage war against any vampires on her own. For Jesse, the truth is the end goal. For Noemí, vanquishing the enemy is the end goal.

Noemí is the kind of helpless heroine who’s a fighter regardless of whether she has any power or tools with which she can defeat the antagonist. She doesn’t have the strength to win on her own – she is helpless – but she keeps on trying, pushing against the boundaries of her adversary.

Conclusion

The one thing that each of these women does is act. That’s something that we covered in my prior post about powerless female characters [powerless to change their circumstances]. But hopefully these three specific examples give you some inspiration about how to craft relatable helpless heroines.

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