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Book Review: The Turn of The Screw

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Beware: Plot Spoilers Ahead!

What’s more evil than a story in which a couple of demonic ghosts haunt two young children? One in which the children are active and willing participants. Children who have grown to love and embrace the evil they’ve witnessed.

If you’re looking for a Gothic story full of mystery and depth, in which many questions are never answered and the act of exploring them leads down into dark labyrinths, look no further than Henry James’s novella, The Turn of the Screw.

Synopsis

The story is about a governess who is hired to care for two orphaned children – Miles and Flora – who live in their Uncle’s country house in England. As soon as the governess arrives, she discovers that something is amiss with the two children. Their actions are often furtive and range from curious to openly malevolent. The governess, the book’s protagonist sets out to uncover the source of the two children’s strange behavior and to save them from whatever forces are acting against them.

But in this ghost story, the children are the true antagonists. She soon discovers that they have no desire to be saved and are eager to hold her at bay, keeping her in a state of ignorance. Rather, they seek out and encourage the presence of the two ghosts whose intentions are unquestionably nefarious.

The Theme

In this novella, James examines the loss of innocence and the extent to which adults intentionally or unintentionally act as a destructive force in the lives of children.

In conjunction with this theme, he uses at least four Gothic tropes: ghosts, unexplained deaths, isolation, and orphans.

Gothic Tropes

Ghosts: The story features two ghosts – those of the prior governess (Miss Jessel) and gardener (Peter Quint), who, in life, had been engaged in a romantic relationship. The new governess eventually discovers that when they were living at the country house, these two individuals knowingly exposed the children to and caused them to participate in their sexual activity. They made no attempt to save or preserve the children’s innocence and instead, were active contributors to its loss.

Unexplained Deaths: Miss Jessel and Peter Quint both died mysteriously. He supposedly died from a slip-and-fall accident on an icy walkway, which seems unlikely for a relatively young man. James leaves the readers to speculate as to how he may have actually died.

Miss Jessel’s death is unknown. It is implied that she may have committed suicide, but James never supplies a motive other than what the reader might speculate. As a ghost, she comes to the children, telling them that she wants them to join her in hell. The deaths of these characters mirrors an inexplicable loss such as the loss of innocence in childhood. And Miss Jessel’s overt comments are consistent with the theme in that she is a destructive force in the children’s lives.

At the end of the book, the little boy, Miles, dies unexpectedly, which is perfectly in keeping with the theme. There is much speculation as to why or how the boy dies. However, I believe that the most likely interpretation is that it is the new governess who killed him. This answer parallels the theme the most closely – that despite her desire and attempts to save the children and preserve their innocence, she is the ultimate cause of their destruction.

Isolation: This story features a strong sense of isolation. The children are isolated by virtue of their status as orphans, which we’ll address in a moment, but the governess is also isolated. The children are actively attempting to hide their doings from her so that she must struggle to uncover the truth on her own. The Uncle is irascible and indifferent to her anxiety. The housekeeper is kind but largely ignorant, although she does share some of the history of the family. This leaves the governess isolated both mentally and emotionally. She must struggle through the theme’s question on her own. In the book, this mirrors the emotional response we should have to the children’s loss of innocence. Her loneliness mirrors their tragically enlightened state.

Orphans: While the orphaning of children is not necessarily a classic Gothic trope, it acts as one in The Turn of the Screw. In the story, they are orphaned in one sense or another by several different parties. First, their parents died, leaving them unprotected from external [potentially evil] influences such as those from Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. Second, their Uncle, a man who should have stepped in and played this role in their parents’ absence, has no interest in their lives and is, at best, nothing but a distant benefactor. He has orphaned them simply by virtue of his absence in their lives. And last, but not least, Miss Jessel and Peter Quint orphaned these children in a figurative sense by actively subjecting them to activities that are inappropriate for children and which destroyed their innocence.

All of these tropes mirror the theme’s exploration of the role that adults play in failing to guard against or overtly causing a child’s loss of innocence.

Is the book really Gothic?

First let’s look at the theme. It’s definitely irrational. The extent to which even the most well-intentioned adults cannot save children from a loss of innocence and instead, by virtue of their own failings, further this inevitable loss, is a spiritual question. A question of the transference of dark enlightenment. It’s a theme that we can all understand and yet it can’t be proven empirically.

And second, let’s examine the use of the tropes. The ghosts are specific to the theme, in particular to the loss of the children’s innocence. They are the most direct evidence of the role adults play in that loss. The unexplained deaths are not general as they might be in a horror story, but are specific to those who either directly caused the loss of innocence or to Miles, who was the new governess’s principle focus. Because of that, they are highly specific to the theme and the governess’s exploration of it. And lastly, the sense of isolation (for the governess or for the orphaned children) is not meant to heighten fear or drag a secret sin out into the open as it would be in the Horror genre. Rather, James uses this isolation to cause the reader to feel the weight of their loss of innocence. Thus, the tropes all exist to support the Gothic theme.

To summarize: yes, I would say that The Turn of the Screw is absolutely Gothic, traditionally Gothic in every sense – the irrational theme, the use of supportive, Gothic tropes, and even the subtle and growing undertone of terror are consistently Gothic.

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What is Gothic Literature?

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The Gothic genre is one of the most misunderstood genres in all of literature. I’ve seen and heard just about every misconception – including the idea that Gothic and Horror are the same, Gothic writing is evil, Gothic literature is about the paranormal, Gothic books are “dark” (whatever that means) and every other false idea out there. And the truth is made more confusing by fact that Gothic literature sometimes includes some or all of the above. But it doesn’t have to, because those aren’t the definition of what makes something Gothic.

To be fair, there was a time in my life when I didn’t know anything about the genre. I didn’t even know that the first adult book I had come to love – Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier – was in the Gothic genre. My English teacher had assigned the book. I began reading it and, almost instantly, fell into the deep well of dark Romanticism and spine-tingling pleasure that is Gothic literature.

As I grew, I read just about every book I could find. I loved the Horror genre as well, but I found myself particularly drawn to certain types of books: Wuthering Heights, The Turn of the Screw, and Jane Eyre, among so many others. Eventually I learned enough to know that much of what I loved most was in the Gothic genre.

But the conundrum came when I tried to define the genre. What is Gothic literature? Trying to research the subject is a long journey into superficiality. Many people seem to love the genre, but few can articulate what defines a Gothic novel beyond the tropes themselves. And it makes sense. Gothic writing is very compelling largely because it is so deep, because its themes are generally transcendent, sometimes even numinous. But that fact – what makes this genre so appealing – also makes it harder to qualify.

Regardless, after reading and studying it for several decades, I’m going to attempt to do just that.

But first, let’s clear up the most prevalent misconception about Gothic writing: that its the Gothic tropes that make a book Gothic.

Misconception: Gothic tropes are what makes a book Gothic.

Gothic tropes are awesome. They’re the things that I want to see when I read a Gothic novel, at least on the surface. They’re the things like:

  • A crumbling estate or castle
  • Characters who are insane or otherwise mentally ill
  • Dark and stormy, or gloomy weather
  • A helpless heroine
  • Terror, or dread
  • Melodrama
  • Sometimes elements of romance
  • Family secrets
  • Supernatural elements – ghosts, werewolves, vampires, etc.
  • Forlorn landscapes
  • Isolation

There are a lot more, of course. And most Gothic writing incorporates at least one or two of these elements. Mr. Rochester keeps his mad wife in the attic, Heathcliff wanders the desolate moors, the ghost of Peter Quint haunts the new governess in The Turn of the Screw.

And I love all of these things. I love a dark and stormy atmosphere and lots of dark subterfuge. But if those things alone make a book Gothic then we have a problem. Because there are plenty of Gothic works that use few if any Gothic tropes.

If you’ve read Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, or We’ve Always Lived in the Castle, books that are also categorized as Gothic, you may have noticed that most of the stereotypical Gothic tropes are absent from her writing. So what makes it Gothic?

How about The Picture of Dorian Gray? Oscar Wilde employs a strong sense of terror, but besides that, it’s hard to argue that any of the traditional Gothic elements are present. The main character can’t even rightly be said to be mentally ill. If anything, he’s tormented by a self-inflicted weight of guilt. Then why is that book described as Gothic?

What about Poe? Have you ever read his poem, The Raven? It’s one of the most recognizably Gothic works. Many lovers of the Gothic genre think of The Raven and Gothic as synonymous. The poem is beautiful. And tragic. And emotionally gripping. But there’s nothing horrifying about it. There’s no madness. No dark crimes. No intrigue. No family secrets. Just a man haunted by the sadness he carries after losing his beloved Lenore. It’s a poem about loss and the shadow it casts over us.

Given the preponderance of evidence to the contrary, Gothic literature must be something so much more than barren, foggy landscapes and locked doors and dark predilections. 

So then, what is it?

History of Gothic Literature

To answer that question, we need to start with a quick history lesson. The first work of Gothic literature is generally considered to be The Castle of Otranto, written by Horace Walpole in 1764. Like many firsts, it’s horribly awkward. But it broke ground in the genre and it paved the way for all of the subsequent works that we have today.

But what predicated the book? What was going on in the world at that time? Because that’s the very answer that will help us understand what is truly Gothic. And what isn’t.

Walpole wrote his book during the height of the Age of Reason. If you know much about philosophy, you know that the Age of Reason, among other things, promoted the belief that nothing can be said to be true if it can’t be proved through reason and/or empirically, meaning through the five senses. So, if you can’t touch it, see it, taste it, etc. it can’t be true. Therefore, the Age of Reason was extremely disdainful of any spirituality of any kind. For obvious reasons. If your God can’t be reasoned to exist, your beliefs can’t be true.

The same can be said to be true of a lot of psychological conditions.

Into the midst of that climate, Walpole ushered in the Gothic genre. A genre that deals with what some scholars call “the irrational.” The word “irrational” stems from the Latin words “in” meaning “not” and “rationalis” meaning “rational” or “able to be reasoned.” So, with respect to Gothic writing, “irrational” means those things that can’t be reasoned. Within the Gothic genre, we find a rebuttal to the Age of Reason.

The Age of Reason said, if it can’t be reasoned or known empirically, it doesn’t exist. Gothic literature says, there are spiritual and psychological truths that we can’t see or touch. What makes a book Gothic is that it features an irrational theme – themes that are generally spiritual and/or psychological in nature.

Examples

For example, consider the theme of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, that explores the dangers of playing God and how destructive that can be. Or Salem’s Lot by Stephen King. In that book, King demonstrates that the characters who prevail over evil are those who are willing to acknowledge that evil exists, whereas those who try to ignore it are destroyed by that evil. Consider The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty, which presents a horrifying case that God, the Devil and evil do exist and that we would be unwise to discredit the power of any of the above. Or look at Shirley Jackson’s books – like We Have Always Lived in the Castle – that deal with the evils of the collective against the individual.

In all of these, we can see irrational themes, those that can’t be reasoned. Themes that are spiritual or psychological in nature.

The Gothic tropes that we mentioned earlier – things like crumbling old houses, isolation and family secrets – exist to support and clarify those themes. In subsequent posts, we’ll examine many examples of how these tropes are used. For instance, we’ll talk about the kinds of themes that vampires have been used to demonstrate. Or how and why we might use terror versus horror to support a Gothic theme. Or why and when dark and stormy weather has been used.

But those things aren’t the reason the book is Gothic. They’re just the supporting actors on the Gothic stage. The book is Gothic if it contains a Gothic theme, an irrational one. Stay tuned for a lot more examples.

 

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Should Your Villain Have a Sidekick?

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I love villains. Sometimes I love to watch them attempt to succeed, despite their very nefarious intentions. And sometimes I love to hate them. I want to see them fail. But regardless of my feelings for a specific villain, what I want to see most is complexity.

It’s something that we talk about a lot in the writing community – writing antagonists (and protagonists for that matter) who aren’t one-sided. The 100% good guy versus the 100% bad guy just doesn’t fly in the modern era. Our generation knows that no one is that cut and dry. There are skeletons in closets and ill intentions to one degree or another in just about any human character.

But one of the best ways to add complexity to the villain is to give him or her a sidekick.

I learned this while writing my most recent novel and the things that I incorporated made the story so much richer. The protagonist is a young Bavarian girl. The antagonist is her grandmother. As my protagonist delves into the history of her family, she uncovers a dark web of conspiracy with her grandmother at the center of it.

But her grandmother has her own reasons.

I wanted to show that, to portray her as someone who is doing what she can to support the ends that she believes are best. To do that most efficiently and effectively, I gave her a manservant, Berend. The son of her father’s manservant, the two of them grew up together as playmates and close confidantes.

There are several things that this villain-sidekick accomplishes.

Backstory/ Motives

In the case of my story, because of their deeply intertwined history, this villain-sidekick has a unique view of the antagonist. One that none of the other characters has. He has known the antagonist for the longest period of time – since childhood. He’s known her at different life stages. He knows what she used to be like before she became the person she is today. He knows parts of her story that she hasn’t told anyone else in the family, especially her daughter-in-law and granddaughter.

This made it easier to introduce the antagonist’s backstory. Whether you do this through subtext or through multiple points of view (I used both), readers still gain a new and complex viewpoint into the villain’s world. He is able to speak to the antagonist’s motives, the very things that she’s not willing to admit even to herself.

It also gives the antagonist a chance to voice some of that herself. The things that she wouldn’t say to the protagonist – because, of course, she would oppose the antagonist’s actions – she’ll say to her sidekick. They’re in it together.

Increased Tension

This increases the tension as well. When the villain has a sidekick, the villain himself is more fearsome. Now it’s not just the single antagonist who’s opposed to the protagonist. My protagonist has to overcome her grandmother, her grandmother’s sidekick, and her grandmother’s sidekick’s sidekick. The stakes are higher. The victory harder to win.

In addition, the villain-sidekick often adds a different facet to the opposing force.

Consider Game of Thrones. In Martin’s books he uses the two Clegane brothers – Gregor and Sandor – to support Tywin Lannister. Though Tywin is wholly evil and ruthless, these two fearsome characters add two additional dimensions to his antagonism. While Tywin plots the demise of others from his throne, Gregor and Sandor are free to go out on the rampage. Tywin is the brain while they are the brawn.

Because of the added dimensions of evil, the antagonist force as a whole feels that much more insurmountable.

Relatability

A villain-sidekick also demonstrates sympathy for the villain that readers are unlikely to witness from any other character. In my novel, Berend sympathizes with the antagonist. He knows why she’s doing what she’s doing. He even disapproves of some of it and tells her so. But he also sees her as a person in a way that those who oppose her do not.

I can explain this best with a quick illustration.

In the past, I worked in public accounting. At one firm we had a client who intimidated all of my colleagues, including the owner of the accounting firm. This client was one of several owners of a trading company. Traders tend to be taller than average, especially back in the day when trading was almost exclusively conducted on the exchange floor. Height was an extreme advantage since a tall person could get the attention of other traders faster than a shorter person could.

This guy was very tall and fairly broad. So, he was a physically intimidating person. But what made him most intimidating was that he made no attempt at pleasantries. Ever. No smiling at people. No small chat. Rather, his mannerisms were very brusque.

At the time, I was the newest member of the team, so they turned him over to me. Fortunately I don’t intimidate very easily. But what really opened my eyes to him was when I met with him one day and, during our meeting, he took a personal call from his wife. During the conversation, his two year old jumped on the phone.

My client’s tone of voice shifted instantly. To hear this very formidable man suddenly talking gently, calling the child, sweetie, was such a radically different view into who he is. I almost laughed. From then on, my tone warmed towards him. And his tone warmed towards me.

That’s what your villain-sidekick can accomplish. Through this character, readers see another side to the antagonist. They see a person who sympathizes with and maybe even loves this character.

If you’ve done a great job of setting up the villain, readers will still believe that the antagonist should fail and the protagonist should succeed. But the antagonist will appear that much more nuanced and realistic. Ironically, this often this makes her that much more despicable. Well-rounded characters are easier to love and easier to hate.

I’ve found that adding a villain-sidekick makes a story that much more interesting.

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Write in Order to Exorcise Your Demons

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One of the things I love most is when I discover a writer whose writing appeals to me so much that I want to read everything they’ve written. And one of the side effects of doing that is that I usually see a trend emerging in that writer’s writing. There’s some theme or question that they’re exploring in everything they create. It may morph and take on different shades of meaning as their works progress, but it’s still there. The question. Or as I’m referring to it here, their demon.

It’s that thing that haunts the writer. They hash it out from every angle, exploring the nuances of the issue until, hopefully, they can find a way to understand it.

So what is it?

It could be anything, of course. The demon is as unique as each writer. For Shirley Jackson it was the constant isolation and ostracism that she felt from the New England village where her husband taught. She wrote about it as a violent tendency that established groups have towards outsiders. And as a psychological imbalance that left her feeling unsettled and displaced.

Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles are essentially a chronicling of her own journey to understand her faith (and sometimes a lack thereof). Outside of the Gothic realm, Steinbeck and Dickens were distraught about the injustices suffered by the poor.

Some writers are haunted by a family dynamic that left them scarred and which colors everything they see and do. Others see the human tendency for violence and write about it as an impending doom that we can’t escape. Others question the rights of different groups of people or the balance of power in the world.

You can see how these demons can take any shape or size. The point of this post isn’t to identify the ghosts that haunt other writers, as fun as that is. It’s to ask, what is mine? What is yours?

As a writer, what is that one question that you carry with you, that won’t leave you alone?

That’s what you and I should be writing. And yes, it requires a lot of vulnerability. But that’s what will have the greatest impact on readers.

I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, but this weekend I was camping with some friends and around the campfire, over a couple of bourbons 🙂 we asked ourselves that very thing.

So, how do we uncover our demon? I can think of a few ways that would help to pin it down.

Look at Your Hot Buttons

Typically, we think of a “hot button” as something that sets us off, or angers us the most. But in this case, think of it as anything that consistently triggers an intense emotional response in you. What makes you the most afraid? Or the angriest? Or the saddest?

Dig deeper, past the snakes and office politics and animal rescue videos. Look for perpetual triggers. Look for the most intense response. Look for the thing that affects you so deeply that you’re afraid to write about it. Maybe it feels the most vulnerable, or the most volatile – as if you can’t even handle the issue without losing control of your emotions.

That’s the thing you’re looking for.

Look at Your Past

I have a friend who often writes about domestic abuse because that’s her story. Not that she was abused, but that she prevailed. She was in a bad place in the past and she found her way out of that. She wants to give that hope to others who are going through something similar.

Perhaps you’ve believed a lie about yourself, something that your family, or other influential figures taught you. This may take you back to your childhood. Is there something that you’re carrying? Something that haunts your current decisions and relationships? Something that still tries to tell you who you are?

That’s the thing you’re looking for.

Look at Your Mistakes

Is there something you do…over and over and over again. Other than brushing your teeth. Maybe you consistently sabotage relationships because you believe that you aren’t worth loving. Maybe you superimpose your own feelings onto others so that you constantly second-guess their motives and assume the worst of them. Maybe you’re self-destructive.

That’s the thing you’re looking for.

Ask Yourself Why

When you find that something, dig into the why’s. And it’s ok not to know for sure. The key is to ask yourself what the answer could be. What might be the root.

If you’re self-destructive, dig into why that is. Are you looking to escape something? Do you hate yourself, and if so, why? Is there something that you’re afraid to face?

If you’re sabotaging relationships, is it because of something you’ve experienced – a betrayal, or a disappointment – that left you certain that no relationship will ever last.

Write It

Then take that thing and work it into your writing. Write it from every angle you can find. Turn it over and explore it until, hopefully, you find healing from it. Until it leaves you free and clean from its influence.

That’s the writing that makes the deepest impression on me. That’s what stays with me as a reader. Because it isn’t just an adventure to find the hidden stone, or a mystery to solve. It’s a deep, soul-wrenching exploration of the kinds of questions that plague us all.

Give the world the truest version of yourself.

 

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How Gothic Writing Makes the B-Plot Tangible

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When you think of Gothic writing, you might be inclined to picture ghosts and undead beings rising from the grave. Perhaps you think of insane wives in the attic, tormented souls haunting the heathlands, or decaying houses driving their inhabitants mad.

These are some of the best parts of Gothic writing, but what makes them so great is that they point to the underlying B-plot. They bring that hidden meaning to life. The writers used them to make the story’s theme clearer to readers.

How? That’s what we’re talking about today.

Last week I wrote a post, Using Your Secondary Characters Wisely. In it, I mentioned that I had run into some difficulties in the early stages of my current manuscript. The plot was a great one but it still felt flat. One thing I did to solve the problem was to revisit my plans for the secondary characters and to flesh out how they could demonstrate the theme from other angles. That filled out the story a great bit.

But something was still missing.

I figured it out. My B-plot was still hidden, still symbolic. Because it wasn’t tangible, it didn’t have the power that Gothic stories should have.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term B-plot, that’s just a reference to the underlying meaning of the story. The A-plot is your overarching one. The B-plot is the thematic one. I’ll give you an example.

Let’s say you want to write a story about a twelve-year-old boy whose family has uprooted him and moved to a new community. Perhaps they used to live in Boston, where he loved Red Sox games and had lots of friends in his school and in his baseball league. The family moves to upstate New York where he feels isolated. The kids seem strange, the country is quiet and sparsely populated, the house is an old farmhouse unlike his brownstone back in Boston. He’s out of his element.

On the surface, he’s trying to find his way in a new school, with a new baseball team, in which the dynamics are all different, and with his newfound awareness of girls. That’s your A-story, the principle plot.

But underneath it all, you want to tell a story about this boy’s fear that this new environment will change who he is. He wants to hold onto his Boston identity. And he’s not sure he wants to be an adult; he’d rather stay in the comfortable place of perpetual childhood. He’s afraid of becoming someone different. That’s your B-story, the thematic truth you’re exploring.

However you write this story, it could be very interesting. But if you want it to be a Gothic story – and it definitely has the thematic makings of one – what you want to do is make the B-story tangible.

How?

Well, what would represent unwanted change? Change that comes with a lot of fear and consequences? Vampires, for one.

Vampires introduce the idea of being altered in ways that are permanent and potentially disastrous. No more sunshine, no more community, society, life-as-we-know-it. They come with a connotation of thrilling danger, but also fear.

One way this could play out is that your character moves to upstate New York, senses that the other kids are strange and then, part way through the book, discovers that the area is rife with vampires. The kids who seems so different to him are actually the undead.

And they want him to join them.

Do you see how this could bring the B-story to life in a way that’s both exciting and also visceral. The readers feel the truth more intensely through the presence of this added element. It’s not just a vampire story, it’s a story in which the vampires represent everything this boy is struggling to accept. Puberty, a new environment, a different culture.

That’s what Gothic tropes should do. They should elucidate and enhance the theme.

Once I remembered that and worked it out, my story took on a well-rounded life of its own. It’s no longer flat. Now I just need to finish writing it. 🙂 Hopefully this will help you too.

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Use Your Secondary Characters Wisely

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If you’ve ever written something – a book, or short story, or screenplay – and felt like it wasn’t the world’s most interesting story, or maybe it was a great idea, but it just felt…well, flat…the problem may have been your secondary characters.

I just dealt with this very issue while working on the first draft of my current book. I had the entire plot outlined and had written somewhere around 15% of the draft before I realized that something was wrong. Now, to give myself some credit, this story is very different from what I’ve written before, so I assumed that it would feel different to write. But when I sat back and analyzed the situation, I realized two different things were wrong with the story.

One was the extent to which I was making the B-story manifest in Gothic tropes. I’ll tell you all about that in another post. The other was a problem with the secondary characters. When I worked through both of these, I sat back and found myself face-to-face with a story that’s incredibly robust. And so, so, so much better than what I had before…which had been a pretty great story idea to start with.

I’ll tell you how I fixed these things and hopefully what I learned will help you in some way.

I should have known better. I just finished a novel that I love and one of the many things I learned while writing that one was that in order to demonstrate the theme to its fullest extent, it needs to show up in all of the primary and at least most of the secondary characters.

What I mean by that is that if you’re dealing with a theme, any theme, it should play out in several different ways in the novel. Not just through the actions of the main character. Let’s say your theme is:

We carry the ghosts of our past relationships and there’s no way to escape them.

Ok. Fun theme. Obviously this is going to evidence itself in the main character’s story. Perhaps he is in a new relationship with someone. Everything is going well – better than it ever has with anyone. But as this relationship progresses, his former girlfriend haunts him. Not literally, although that would be awesome.

At first, everything his new partner does reminds him of her. When she chews her food, he sees his former girlfriend. When she walks, he’s reminded of the other one. It escalates and soon he no longer hears what his new girlfriend is saying. He hears only what he remembers the former one saying, or what he knows she would do or say in each situation. It escalates more and soon he’s seeing his former girlfriend everywhere he goes. Even when he’s alone. He’s becoming unhinged.

On the surface, you already have a great story concept. But it can be a million times better by using the secondary characters.

Who’s the antagonist here? Well, in one sense it’s his own mind. His inability to move past the prior relationship is threatening the current one. But you’ve probably introduced some other, more tangible antagonist as well. Perhaps it’s his mother. Mothers make great antagonists. Especially in the case of a young man in a relationship.

She doesn’t like the new girlfriend. She was – maybe still is – best friends with his last girlfriend. The one who’s haunting him. His mother is constantly comparing the two and finding the new girlfriend lacking. Maybe she’s even trying to reunite him with his former flame, or attempting to sabotage the new relationship. In that respect, she’s an opposing force in his current relationship. Why is she doing this? Maybe the new girlfriend reminds her of her mother, the main character’s grandmother, a woman who was controlling and demeaning in every way possible. That’s the ghost she’s still carrying.

But what about his friends? Let’s say he has a best friend and maybe another close friend. The three of them go way back. If you’re going to demonstrate the theme really well, you should show how it plays out in the lives of these other two characters as well. But in different ways.

Perhaps one of them is divorced. His wife has full custody of their kids. The alimony and child support are a constant stress on his life, not to mention the emotional strain of not seeing his kids very often. In that sense, those relationships are a ghost he can’t escape and doesn’t entirely want to.

How about the other friend? Let’s say she contracted HIV years ago from a man who lied to her and cheated on her. She’s carrying the scars of that relationship – physically and emotionally. Now she’s in a relationship with a woman and is trying to find in her everything that she could never find in a man. In many ways, the pain of her past is affecting her current relationship. It’s a constant struggle for them.

Do you see it? Through these other characters, we’re fleshing out the different ways that a past relationship haunts a person. The mother’s haunted by her mother. The one friend by his ex-wife and children. The other friend by her cheating ex who left her with a life-long illness.

Now the plot needs to work so that all of these threads come together and build up the main character’s journey to be free from the ghost of his prior girlfriend. But I think you get the point. Once you have the theme working from several different angles, the story will automatically feel full and interesting.

And that’s exactly what I had intended to do early in this current manuscript, but when I started writing, it wasn’t there. The other threads had fallen out and there were holes in the tapestry – motives that felt nebulous, conversations that felt more like empty words than like well-crafted subtext.

Once I worked those threads back in, I was able to pull the manuscript together in new and vastly-improved ways. As I said before, I also had to work out the manifestation of the B-plot in Gothic tropes. But we’ll talk about that in the next post! 🙂

 

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Hope & The Negative Character Arc

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The book I’m currently writing features a dominantly negative character arc. If you’ve never tried such a thing, a negative arc is essentially the opposite of the traditional character arc. Instead of beginning at a bad point and overcoming flaws to become a better version of themself, in a negative arc, the character begins at one point and then becomes progressively more wicked or disillusioned. They leave one lie behind and either embrace a discouraging truth or a greater lie.

Why would anyone write such a thing? In my case, I’m trying to say something about the inherent monstrosity that we all possess. And the way(s) that we can leave that part of us behind to become something better. Thus, my theme requires a negative character arc – one in which I demonstrate how easy it is, over time, to embrace the darkest parts of our hearts and allow those parts to overtake us.

Negative character arcs have been done before. Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte and The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde are both negative character arcs in Gothic literature.

In one sense, the structure itself is terribly different, which is a new and different process for me. If you’re looking for help with that, I recommend K.M. Weiland’s series on structuring negative character arcs:

The Three Types of Negative Character Arcs

Writing Negative Arcs – Act I

Writing Negative Arcs – Act II

Writing Negative Arcs – Act III

But in addition to that, someone essentially asked me, how can you write a book with a tragic ending and not depress readers?

I had to think about that. Unless your goal is to leave readers in a negative frame of mind – which is not my objective – it’s a crucial question. I think the answer is that in presenting the character’s descent, we, as writers, must also demonstrate how that descent could have been avoided. That may simply be implied, but readers should be able to see how we can all learn from the negative character and do differently.

Let’s use Wuthering Heights as an example and look at a few ways that the positive can be seen in Heathcliff’s downward spiral.

Warning: Plot Spoilers Ahead!!

Lack of Inevitability

Heathcliff was the adopted brother of Catherine and Hindley Earnshaw. When their father brought the orphan boy home one day, his actions brought to light the selfish and cruel nature of both of the Earnshaw children. Over time, readers see how unwelcome and inhospitable the family is towards Heathcliff.

(Hollywood would have you believe that this is a love story…and there is one in there, but it’s a very dark and destructive love story. One we’ll visit in more detail in a book review in the near future. All that to say, put aside your notions of this being a positive love story for now.)

From the very beginning, it’s clear that this poor child has simply passed from one bad state (orphanhood) to another (a family who, at least in part, doesn’t want him). In these circumstances, Bronte is setting up the initial reasons why Heathcliff chooses to become hateful and vindictive. That’s important. Readers need to see what the character uses as a rationale for his negative arc.

But…his descent can’t be a foregone conclusion. If Heathcliff hadn’t had any other choices, if he had to become evil, had to lose his mind and die loveless and alone, the story would have been depressing rather than instructive and insightful.

Instead, Bronte showed several instances in which Heathcliff could have chosen differently. For example, when Catherine realizes that she was wrong about Heathcliff and befriends him, it’s only Hindley who still dislikes him. Heathcliff could have accepted the truth – that the boy’s hatred for him was a byproduct of his selfish and hateful nature. Instead, he used it to fuel his constant sense of inferiority and competition, resulting in a lifelong desire to destroy both Hindley and Hindley’s future child, Hareton.

Heathcliff ultimately left to become a gentleman, in order to prove to Catherine that he was worthy of her. When he came home and discovered that she had married Edgar Linton, he could have counted his blessings, realized how far he had come from being a homeless orphan, and built the best life for himself that he could. Instead, he used his new status as a means of destroying both himself and others.

That’s the point. In a negative character arc, the character uses his circumstances as an opportunity to move towards a more negative state of mind or even become overtly monstrous. But, if you’ve shown readers that the character didn’t have to do so, there’s an implicit positive statement in there. In every bad choice, indicate what could have been the case.

Good Amidst the Bad

On top of that, it’s crucial to show that there are good things in the character’s life. Heathcliff had the love and affection of Mr. Earnshaw before he died, the subsequent love of Catherine as a child and even after she married Edgar, and an education and economic success that he had gained for himself. He had a roof over his head and even servants to support him.

He had good things in his life.

This says something about him. A lot in fact. But it says something to readers as well. In Wuthering Heights, Bronte presents a tale of a man who chose to become obsessed with this family. It wasn’t enough for Hindley to leave him alone. Heathcliff had to destroy him. It wasn’t enough for Catherine to think the world of him and be his closest friend. She had to leave Edgar and be with him for all of eternity. And Heathcliff had to ruin Edgar’s sister to take revenge on him for marrying Catherine.

Heathcliff overlooked every good thing and saw only the bad.

When we show readers that our character has positive influences in his life, maybe even people who love him, or who would help him, a positive mirror image forms in the readers mind. Even if they aren’t consciously aware of it, or can’t articulate it, they can see the opposite in conjunction with the negative character arc.

Shadow Character

Lastly, Bronte incorporates something more overt to illustrate the good amidst the bad: a shadow character.

In Wuthering Heights, there are two. Hareton (Hindley’s son whom Heathcliff brought up to be as rough and uncultured as he had been as a boy) and Cathy (Catherine and Edgar’s daughter whom Heathcliff took prisoner and forced to marry his dying son, Linton). Though Heathcliff attempted to destroy both of them as revenge against the Earnshaws and the Lintons, after Heathcliff’s death, we see a mirror image of Catherine and Heathcliff as children.

In a crucial final image, Bronte shows Cathy teaching Hareton to read. It’s clear that the two are rapidly becoming close friends and future lovers. Readers see Heathcliff’s demise, but they also come away with this picture.

Cathy and Hareton are casting off the former abuse that Heathcliff dealt them, and are beginning a new chapter. One without revenge or hatred. Something that Heathcliff refused to do. In them, we see what Heathcliff could have overcome and the kind of healthy life he could have had.

Conclusion

I’ve loved Wuthering Heights since I was in high school, so much so that I try to re-read it almost every October. (It’s an October book in my mind.) But it’s only recently that I’ve been able to identify this mirror story. In a way, the negative character arc is one in which the overt story is negative, but the hidden story is positive. At the very least, it can be. If that’s what the writer wants to say.

This kind of story won’t appeal to everyone. For some people, the heavy cautionary tale is too weighty, too somber. However, if the legacy of Wuthering Heights is any indicator, there’s a large market for a negative character arc. The key is to show readers the positive alongside the negative in such a way that they can see the beauty amidst the darkness.

 

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When & How Much to Research

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A few weeks ago I spent a long weekend in the mountains of Montana with some writer friends. There’s something about the isolation from everyday life and the uninterrupted concentration on our craft that always generates interesting conversation. This time the subject that came up was research. All of us write under the umbrella of Fantasy albeit in very different ways. My Gothic writing is technically Fantasy, but looks very different from my friend’s middle-grade and young-adult epic Fantasy, which in turn looks very different from our other friend’s very magical adult Fantasy.

One of the women asked, so how much do you research? And when do you research? It spawned an interesting conversation. Is there a right answer? I doubt it. It’s almost certainly highly subjective, like the craft of writing itself. But I’ll share what I’ve been learning about my own process.

For several years, a story has been growing in my mind. It’s an extensive (probably 12 books or so) Dark Fantasy series. I’ve worked on it off and on since before I left the corporate world. Within the next one to two years, I hope to begin writing it. In the meantime, I’ve been writing stand-alone Gothic novels and am planning a Gothic trilogy that I should be able to start writing in January of 2022. All that to say that my research process differs substantially when it comes to these different types of writing. However, I’ve identified some commonalities across all of them.

Before I honed my research process, it looked something like this: I would pull out all of the world-building books, templates and websites. Then I would spend hours laboring over every element of the society – the history and political structures, the economic system of trade and industry, the religious beliefs, the magic system, etc. I realized that I had a problem when, one afternoon, it dawned on me that I had spent at least an hour or two reading articles about castrating male chickens.

There are no chickens in any of my books.

This happens to me (and maybe to you?) because I love research. I love to read. It’s part and parcel of the writer mind. We love to know how things work, where things came from, and what they mean. We like to layer our own symbolism on top of the research and use it to inspire readers. That’s great. But, in my case, it has the tendency to lead me down rabbit holes that, despite how interesting the poultry industry might be, can be a huge waste of time.

Since that eye-opening incident, I’ve developed a different process. I’m sure it will shift and develop over time, but this is what currently works for me.

Up Front/ Before the 1st Draft

In order to write a first draft, I need to know enough about the world of my characters so that the plot I write is complete. When I’m writing something Gothic that takes place in a real-world historical period, I need to understand the state of the world at that point. What were the stresses for the people in my characters’ shoes? Was there a looming regional/global conflict? A change in the power structure? Financial uncertainty?

If I’m writing something more speculative like epic or dark Fantasy, I need to know the big things: the current politics, the history of the people, the development of the culture(s), the magic system. But I probably only need to know these at a fairly high level. What qualifies as “high level” is a particularly subjective thing, but the key I ask myself is: what do I absolutely have to know in order to write a solid first draft?

You can probably see that I’ve restricted myself to the global elements. The biggest things that determine how the people live and interact with one another and their different systems (magic, political, economic). Do I need to know exactly which types of carriages were used at that point in time? Do I need to know what a living room is called in Vienna in 1880? No, not yet. I wait on those things for two very important reasons that I’ll get to in a minute.

During the Re-Writing Period

After the first draft, I begin the re-writing process. This is my favorite part of writing. I love to re-write! To me it’s like working on the greatest jigsaw puzzle on the planet. All of the pieces are on the table, they just need to be re-worked, fashioned into something that awes the reader. I’m not talking about editing. I’m talking about re-structuring the novel where the bones are misaligned and layering in foreshadowing, several layers of symbolism, nuanced subtext and a compelling subplot or two (or more). This is where a good story idea becomes something truly compelling.

During this process, especially in the early part of the revisions, I might cut whole scenes and add in new ones. Or I might change the setting in a scene to make it more thematically relevant and to increase the tension. Despite the fact that I’m a planner, sometimes things don’t play out on the page the way that I envisioned while outlining. The last thing I want to have done is to have spent hours (or more) researching an element of the story that I decide to cut.

Or worse, to feel tempted to keep something in the book that really should be cut because of all of that time spent researching.

That’s why I wait to research the localized, smaller elements of the story until later. Instead, I leave a general comment or even a bracketed notation that reminds me to fill in the details later. That way, when I’ve decided to keep those parts of the book, I know I’m not spending endless hours researching something unnecessary. (Though, it pains me to use the words research and unnecessary in the same sentence.)

This process accomplishes one other crucial thing for me. It helps me to maintain momentum while I’m writing the first draft. If you’re an over-thinker, like I am, it can be hard to allow yourself to just write. To pour the story out and not worry about whether the subtext is perfect. To do that, I keep the research to the bare minimum until later. (I also set very do-able but aggressive daily word count goals. The kinds of goals that give me just enough room to create great scenes without any room for overthinking.)

As I said, this process will almost certainly change as I grow as a writer, but it’s the best method I’ve found to date. Could I spend hours/ days/ years building the most elaborate world system? Of course, but that’s the point. I don’t want to spend years doing so, even though it’s terribly enjoyable. I want to tell a great story, in a world that feels rich to the readers. And then move on to the next great story that’s dying to be told…in a world without emasculated chickens.

 

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The Relatable Side of Horror

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When I was eleven or twelve years old, I discovered the writing of Stephen King, Dean Koontz and John Saul. To be fair, it was my childhood best friend who introduced me to these. We both loved everything about their writing… perhaps a strange obsession for a couple of tweens. What can I say? My first movie obsession was The Lost Boys. Shrug. 🙂

Something about the Horror genre resonates deeply. Except when it doesn’t.

Once in awhile I read or watch something marketed as Horror and it has all the makings of a great Horror story – haunted houses, vampires, corn fields – but I just can’t get into it. The villain pursues the main character(s) and there’s a lot of tension, but… well, to be honest, it bores me.

And I know why.

Jessica Brody said this particularly well in Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, so I’ll start with a quote from her book.

The prey that the monster is stalking (often our hero or heroes!) cannot be completely innocent. Someone is responsible for bringing the monster into being, invading the monster’s territory, or waking the monster up. And it’s usually either the hero, a counterpart of the hero, or even all of humanity who has committed this sin. Either way, this catastrophe is somehow our fault.

That resonated with me on a very deep level because it’s true. Horror is compelling because, like Gothic fiction, it deals with the things that we can’t prove. Things we can’t define empirically. It takes the intangible world – whether that’s a supernatural, spiritual one, or simply the hidden aspects of ourselves – and makes it tangible. Horror should run deep. It should tell a story about how the characters face their own flaws and learn to overcome them. But it does this in a more confrontational way than other genres do.

Think about it this way. Say you want to write a story about a family who moves into a new house only to find that it’s haunted. Yes, it’s been done before…a million times. And often it doesn’t work. I’ll show you why.

On one hand, the family buys or inherits the house, moves in, and is pursued by some ghost or demon for some reason. And there usually is a reason. But it’s very often divorced from the main characters. Perhaps the ghost was murdered in the house. The ghost is angry. Of course. He wants his own house. Why? Who the hell knows. Supposedly ghosts don’t like sharing real estate. The only hope is to help them find peace so they’ll move. Otherwise, your characters should start packing. Of course they won’t. They want the house too. So instead the ghost will chase, terrorize and generally attack them until someone wins.

I think you can see how boring that story is. Sure, the characters are flawed in some way. But the crucial point is: the antagonistic force is pursuing them arbitrarily, simply because they happened to choose the wrong home. The horror is unrelated to what’s going on within their own hearts. And when that’s the case, horror fails. There’s nothing about this story that has anything to do with me. Or any other reader. It’s not relatable.

Let’s try an alternate version.

Imagine a family with a couple and a school-age daughter. The couple have a rocky relationship. On the surface, readers can see that something’s off in the family. The mother-child relationship is strained. The mother-father relationship is cold. The father-child relationship is co-dependent to the point of being dysfunctional. Now, what might happen if the daughter begins to go mad and terrorize the family, especially the mother. Maybe the madness spills over and begins to affect the father, who also takes out his rage on the mother. Over time, readers discover that the mother tried to drown her daughter years ago, perhaps when she was an infant. She didn’t want the child. The father did. But her attempt to kill the child failed. There’s a lot of latent conflict there. It’s something that neither of them have dealt with. It’s that sin, that unresolved conflict that is manifest in the daughter’s – and later, the father’s – horrifying actions.

I think you can see how much more meaning the second story would have. And the possibilities are endless. Take any unresolved failing, any secret sin and give it legs. Let it take to the streets and terrorize those who refuse to face what they’ve done or who they are.

Then you’ll have the makings of a phenomenal Horror novel. One that speaks to people and causes us to think about the things that we haven’t addressed. The unreconciled areas of our own hearts that haunt us.

 

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Write What Haunts You

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One of the most frequent questions I receive is: where do your ideas come from? I suppose that to those who don’t craft 100,000 words into a cohesive story that says something about who we are as people, the idea of doing so probably seems daunting.

The truth is, like most authors, I see inspiration everywhere. I have a writing community made up of friends who send around regular prompts – a one-line idea based on which we each submit a short work of fiction. Sometimes these intrigue me more than I expect and I find myself sucked into the world of a character. A world and person that I long to explore.

Like all people, I have my own history of learning experiences, personal pain, and things that meant the most to me. I have dreams – the literal, nocturnal sort that come with all sorts of latent meaning. And many of these things spark a story idea in my mind.

But I don’t write most of them.

Why??

Because I’ve learned that the stories that I can craft into the most impactful fiction are the ones that come from a place of truth. They haunt me. And I welcome them to do so.

I’ll give you an example.

The book I just finished stemmed from a series of dreams that I had over several years. In each one, a girl would slip through a secret door or passage into a part of a house that no one else could access. In each case, she would explore her [sometimes very bizarre] surroundings. Sometimes she entered the secret areas because she was pursued by a malevolent person or entity. Sometimes she just wanted to hide away in a quiet place of solitude.

As is common in dreams, these meanderings never had any discernible plot or meaning. But I relished them. Something about the idea compelled me to learn more. At the time I was working on an extensive writing project that I still plan to complete in the future. However, these dreams wouldn’t leave me alone.

I began to ask questions: who is this girl? Why would she want to be in these secret places? I considered these things on both a plot level and a deeper, symbolic one. By that I mean – what surface story would require her to use secret passages in a house? And beneath it all, what are these passages to her? Are they something more – some part of her soul that she refuses to face? A past to which she is unreconciled? An aspect of her identity that she won’t admit? A secret guilt that she harbors? Maybe all of the above.

The answers came to me simply because I asked them to and because the story wanted to be written. By day and by night I felt it gestating within me. And that is, in my opinion, the best way to get to the story that you must write – ask it questions, but give it room to grow. Let the story come to you fully formed. Because if you’re meant to write it, it will reveal itself to you.

It will haunt you until you free it from the deep well of your soul.

 

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