Charlotte Lesemann

A Spoiler-Free Review

If you recall, early in 2023, I declared this the year of the vampire and set out to read ten different vampire novels. Of course these aren’t my first vampire novels. I’ve been a vampire fan for years—both on the written page and on the screen. However, I had seen a post on Twitter in which someone asked what people’s favorite vampire novels were. I scanned through it and saw a number of compelling options that I hadn’t read. Thus sparked the idea and here we are. Having finished, I’m going to give you a summary of my year of the vampire in review.

I’ve already reviewed Black Ambrosia and The Moth Diaries in detail—click on the titles to open those articles. You can expect to see more book-specific reviews in the near future, but here’s a fairly high-level, spoiler-free view of what I thought of all of them.

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

The story is very well written and surprised me in its ability to grab my attention and to maintain suspense throughout. Some readers will find this one depressing and Lindqvist’s depiction of the [I believe exaggerated] crime and depravity of Stockholm is shocking. It’s not a happy read or a vicarious stroll through the exciting world of vampires as some of the flashier vampire books such as Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Diaries are.

However, Lindqvist takes on some huge political and social issues such as transgenderism, bullying, urban development, and pedophilia. This is a weighty book with a strong sense of pacing. If you have a taste for vampires cast in relevant issues, this one is for you!

They Thirst by Robert McCammon

This book read like a lesser version of The Stand – an epic battle of good versus evil – but on a smaller, more localized scale. Some fans of the other tale report loving this one as well. I liked it well enough to recommend it. And I particularly loved his implicit denunciation of Los Angeles, whether tongue-in-cheek or not.

The Moth Diaries by Rachel Klein

I would recommend this book to anyone. If you’ve read some reviews likening this to Twilight, disregard them. The two have nothing in common other than teenage vampires. I enjoy a good Twilight viewing, but this is a book for those who like a riddle, who enjoy stories that don’t hand them everything and who love to plumb for hidden meaning.

If that’s you, start here. It’s a novella and is easy to delve into at any level of depth you prefer. Just know that there’s likely more than you see at first (or seventh) glance!

Black Ambrosia by Elizabeth Engstrom

This is not for those who have suffered trauma and/or are particularly sensitive. Though Engstrom leaves almost all of the truth and the dark details of Angelina’s story in the book’s negative space, it’s there. The sensitive will pick it up. However, for those who aren’t as sensitive, especially those who love psychology and psychologically-rich characters, this is the book for you!

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

The psychology is there to some extent but it seemed predictable and so much weaker than tales like Black Ambrosia which are so heavy and laden with meaning. However, this one isn’t as dark and potentially trauma-inducing [if you’re sensitive], so I can see why it’s favored by many. It’s an accessible look at what it would mean to be the last person alive and how much human interaction and connection humans need to thrive.

Fevre Dream by George R. R. Martin

You won’t find layer upon layer of meaning or deep wells of psychology, but you will find a well-crafted novel that’s true to Martin’s ability with both character and plot. This is a story I would recommend to a wider audience including both vampire and non-vampire lovers.

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

I was absolutely shocked by how much I loved this book. It was, by far, my favorite vampire book of the year! I don’t often read humor, hence the surprise, but I do love dark humor. Regardless, I had expected the story to be lighter and less intense than it is. How wrong was I?! It’s actually wonderfully intense and suspenseful, terrifying even, for prolonged periods.

It’s the story of a vampire, but it also isn’t. Hendrix keeps the vampire details light and the sense of a nefarious intruder high. I recommend this book to anyone who loves a thriller. It’s brilliantly executed, his approach the vampires is novel and relevant and his humor is pitch perfect. I’ve decided to read more of his work—everything I can find.

Fledgling by Octavia Butler

If I had read the one-star reviews I would have discovered this prior to reading. However, I typically avoid them since they tend to be full of plot spoilers. Needless to say, many other reviewers who did finish the book said that yes, it deals with race and discrimination. However, it’s also a very graphic tale of a ten-year-old having multiple sexual encounters with adults.

As one reviewer pointed out, Butler could have accomplished her discussion of race and discrimination with adult characters. The child sexualization was entirely unnecessary and thus points to another intention. I agree.

Carmilla by J. Sheridan LeFanu

This is the book that predated and inspired Dracula. It’s about the protagonist, Laura, who comes into contact with a vampiress, Carmilla, after a carriage accident brings the girl into her life. The two enter into something of an obsessive friendship all while Carmilla begins to wander by night and Laura grows weaker by day.

I went into the story thinking that I’d find it predictable and that I’d read it simply for the reference point. However, I truly enjoyed this one. It’s a lovely little tale primarily because the way in which LeFanu tells it is so evocative and endearing that it transports the reader to another [very enjoyable] time and place. It’s the setting and the style that make this story so worthwhile. I plan to revisit it periodically and would recommend it to any gothic reader.

My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due

Set in Miami, Jessica and David have the ideal marriage and a beautiful young daughter. However, when people around Jessica begin to die, she discovers that he is part of an Ethiopian sect of immortals and is over 400 years old. Members from this secret group come calling for David, demanding that he return to Ethiopia. However, this time he refuses to give up his wife and child and decides to go to forbidden lengths to keep them.

The book deals heavily with Jessica’s Christian faith since the author has juxtaposed it against David’s immortality—the loss of his soul and an eternity with God (though he doesn’t hold these beliefs). In many ways this is as philosophical and spiritual as Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. I liked this book very much. The character voices are well-executed and the plot is reasonably fast-paced. However, it won’t appeal to everyone. This one is for those who like heavy spiritual themes and are fans of books like Interview with the Vampire.

Conclusion

Whew! What a year. It was fun to have a theme to pursue and to have a common threadline in my reading list. I read a whole lot of other books, but what’s so interesting about these ten is how very different they each are. This is a wonderful example of how rich and nuanced the vampire trope can be and how many different ways an author can use it.

If you’ve read any of these or have other vampire novels that you love, let me know!

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How to Take Your Writing from Good to Great

There are so many skills that go into being a great writer: a strong and unique voice, an intuitive sense for pacing and sentence structure, a healthy knowledge of vocabulary, the ability to craft richly compelling characters, a vivid imagination and so many more. It would be easy to focus on these to the exclusion of what may be the most underrated and yet crucial writing skill: stamina.

Stay with me! I think you’ll see what I mean, why we all could use more of this skill and how to go about building this writing skill for yourself.

Writing is Rewriting

I’ve done my fair share of beta reading and far more than my share of reading for pleasure. I suspect that you probably have as well. Those of us who love to write do a lot of reading and we often do a lot of collaborating with other writers. I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that the difference between a book that’s awkward and amateurish and one that feels traditionally published (regardless of whether or not it is) is due to rewriting.

Those skills we mentioned before matter. We need to be able to craft novel stories with characters that readers love. We have to have a good sense for foreshadowing, tension and pacing. However, if we don’t know how to rewrite, none of that will matter. The story won’t come together. Authors such as Hemingway, E.B. White, Truman Capote and Roald Dahl have all reiterated the fact that there’s no such thing as a well-written book without extensive rewriting.

How to go about that is a subject I’ve already addressed from my own methodology. Find it here! In that post I address the [huge] difference between editing and rewriting. I then explain my process for rewriting. If you’re interested, I highly recommend checking it out. I learned this process as I worked though my own writing journey. It isn’t the only way to go, but it has helped me immensely.

When you read it, what you’ll probably notice though is that it sounds exhausting…because it is! Hence the essential skill that we all need to build: stamina.

Start Small

One thing that I’ve experienced and have heard from other authors, especially earlier in their writing careers, is to start with writing short stories.

I wrote a lot of short stories when I was in school, but in more recent years I’ve moved onto novels. However, one thing that has helped me a lot is to still write short stories on the side. I sometimes do that through writing contests. They provide me with a great prompt and a deadline and often fall outside of my own genre. That makes for great practice. In the process, I’ve noticed that my writing skill has improved dramatically.

It might surprise you to know that Ray Bradbury, a man who was known as a pantser—one who wrote by the seat of his pants, without an outline, began by writing short stories. He had a method. He would come up with an idea on Sunday, would write the first draft on Monday and then would write drafts two through six each day from Tuesday through Saturday. When he finished the last draft on Saturday he’d submit it. He did that every week of the year. That’s a lot of stamina!

Novel Off-Shoots

Another practice that can be invaluable in building this writing skill is to practice writing off-shoots of your novel. These can be things such as: writing a side story about the character that helps you to get into her head and understand her motivations better; taking a scene out of the novel and reworking it as a stand-alone snapshot until it’s as refined and clean as it can be; or writing a character’s backstory as a separate short story [or flash fiction] so that you have a more developed understanding of this and can write the character more convincingly.

These suggestions are often useful for the reasons mentioned above, however they also develop our (re)writing ability. Think of short stories or novel off-shoots as sprints.

When I ran cross-country in high school, my coach would often require us to run sprints. As a distance runner, this seemed like a silly waste of time. I valued the twelve-mile runs that seemed to do the most to build the stamina that I needed. However, the sprints always surprised me. I came away much faster and able to finish stronger because of them.

Break Up the Work

Lastly, after you’ve written your first draft and you’re ready to pursue the rewriting process, refrain from editing for grammar, spelling and punctuation. Trust me, it’s not time for that. You’ll just end up either wasting your time or settling for a lower-quality finished product.

Instead, I recommend dividing the rewriting process into layers. I start with the most foundational and build up towards the surface. That means that I start by considering things such as: is the plot complete (no holes), are all of the scenes in the right place, are some missing, or unnecessary, or redundant? Then I might move onto character development and voice. I talk about all of this in great detail in the article that I referenced earlier. Find it here.

The point is not to tell you what rewriting method will work for you. Rather, this type of method can keep you from becoming daunted by the overwhelming number of things that go into a novel, all of which need to be addressed in the rewriting process. It can also help you to develop the writing skill of stamina by giving you a roadmap to work through from the bones of the story to the final edit. As you navigate the many rewrites necessary to produce a beautiful, polished novel, you’ll discover your own method.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, how you go about a rewrite is up to you, but you won’t do it well without a lot of stamina. None of us do. Writing is hard, but at the end of the process, the sense of accomplishment is huge! I love reading my own stories. After all, I took the advice I heard and wrote the stories that I wanted to read.

But more than that, I rewrote them over and over, paying attention to the smallest details. I built up my stamina and plan to continue to do so for the rest of my career. Because stamina is the difference between good and great!

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Balancing the Intuitive Mind

November is my favorite month. There’s something mournful, quiet and introspective about this month. This time of the year fills so many authors with a desire to hunker down and fill page after page with our deepest understanding of who we are and what moves us. At the same time, its fleeting beauty reminds me of how easy it can be as an intuitive personality to miss the present moment in the world outside of our imagination. Lately I’ve been thinking about how we, as writers, can celebrate the present and find some balance.

Grasp the Season

Have you noticed that some writers seem to latch onto certain seasons? Elin Hilderbrand is almost synonymous with summer even though her books aren’t all set in the summer. Stephen King and Kristin Hannah have written numerous books set in the winter.

You and I don’t need to set all or even most of our books in one given season. However, there’s a lot to be said for writing a book that’s set in the season in which you’re writing [the first draft]. This works well for me since I tend to write in Fall and/or Winter, both of which feature well in Gothic literature.

This won’t work for everyone, and some of our books span multiple seasons. However, writing in the season I’m experiencing helps me to stop and take in what’s all around me.

Find Yourself

The most frequent writing question I receive is, “How do you come up with a story idea?” But the second is usually some iteration of: “Do you base your characters off of people you know?” or “Do you base the main character off of yourself?”

It makes sense. Most people sense something that I also contend is true: the best characters reflect pieces of ourselves. Perhaps it’s only a fraction of an emotional response to a life-altering situation, or a similar type of memory, but we write what we understand. And we understand things that we share if only at the most basic level—the emotion it evoked.

In each character that you write, ask yourself how you relate to this character. Does he have a similarly painful past? Is he struggling to overcome a hurdle that reminds you of what you felt at a difficult point in time? Do his core values mirror your own? Does he have a similar response to situations like being in crowds or feeling pressured to meet a deadline?

Whatever it may be, find a relatable point and pour yourself into every character you write. I think you’ll find that you work through a lot of your own struggles and come to understand yourself more deeply. And your characters will jump off of the page.

Write What’s Now

If you ask most writers, including myself, how they come up with story ideas, the most prevalent answer seems to be that we write what we encounter in our own lives. It may be a news story that sparks a question in our minds, or a comment that someone makes that we chew over and unpack, or a dream or personal experience. Writers work through real questions by building stories in which all of the characters have to face that question, make choices and determine what they believe about it.

For example, I’m currently working on my second book, The Monster of Vienna. It’s about a young boy who’s a violin prodigy in Vienna during the middle of the 19th century. The story came to me when I encountered two separate things:

1. Certain men including a friend’s husband who took the desire to be respected to an unhealthy level. For them it was no longer a desire, but something to be demanded and required.
2. Various news articles about people who commit violent acts, in which the journalists pointed to a bad experience in the person’s youth or a bullying incident in grade school. The assumption in many of these articles/ reports is that an experience, not the perpetrator, is always to blame when someone does something wrong.

I set out to write about monstrosity—about what causes a person to do horrific things. And I gave myself a large enough cast of characters to be able to examine the issue from a number of different viewpoints. Further, I deliberately crafted a main character who, although he has disappointments and challenges in life, has no definable trauma. Sure, others have disregarded him or even teased him. His life is realistic and relatable.

And yet, whereas others develop into solid, responsible adults, he becomes a monster…why?

That’s a question that we ask more and more frequently in our modern world. And it deserves an answer.

Real-Life Details

You may have noticed that the prior three examples are still very intuitive-focused. They’re deep and introspective. When we write about the autumn season, we’re still delving into what autumn means in the life of a person. Is it our attempt to grasp and hold onto the fleeting joys of our short time on this earth? Is it about the things that we take for granted that are here one day and gone the next?

In the other two, we dive into a deeper understanding of what we believe and who we are. We speak to the heart of challenging questions and experiences—what we believe about them and what we want others to consider and understand as they wade through similar questions.

So this last one is a bit of a sensory relief from those. And it’s simple: include something that you can also do in real life. If you’re love baking, or playing rugby or foraging for mushrooms, put that in your book. At the same time, make sure to get out (or stay in) and spend at least a little time actually doing those things. It’ll bring new color and a richer tone to your writing and it’ll ground you in the real world in a way that will help you to celebrate the present.

Conclusion

We’re writers. The writing process is intrinsically inward-focused. It’s a process that suits an intuitive mind. But most of us, like other people, could still use more balance in our lives. We could benefit from things that take us out of our heads. Just a little bit. Just enough to celebrate the present so that we can relish the best in life and then take that back into our writing.

Let me know what works for you? How do you find balance in life?

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A Look at 20 Popular Gothic Titles

Sometimes a title jumps out at you when you’re writing your book, or even beforehand. Such was the case for my second novel, The Monster of Vienna, which is currently in process. Other times, pulling a title out of the work is a desperate search for the lost city of Atlantis. Nothing seems to land in the right spot and and even your best sources of insight and advice come up empty-handed. What do you do then? How do you find that perfect title?

The short(est) answer is that the title should be a good summary of the theme—the purpose or meaning of the novel, but there are several ways to do this. We’ll look at twenty popular gothic titles to see how the authors chose that perfectly memorable caption. Though these are gothic examples, the principles below can apply to other genres as well.

The Titular Protagonist

When the story is heavily if not exclusively based on the character journey of the protagonist, the title should reflect that.

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë is a great example of this as the story is entirely based on the growth and development of the titular character.
• Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley is another. In this case, Shelley chose two titles—one a reference to the struggles and changes of Dr. Frankenstein; the other a more thematic allusion to Frankenstein’s war against death and his attempts to create human life.

The Antagonist

Other times, the story is primarily about the antagonist and the effect that character has on the protagonist. In that case, naming the story after the villain is entirely appropriate.

• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier tells the story of an unnamed protagonist and her internal war living in the perceived shadow of the titular antagonist.
• Readers have speculated about the meaning of Dracula by Bram Stoker, but the one thing that each of these interpretations share in common is that they center on the interpretation of Dracula’s character.
• The Woman in Black by Susan Hill is a ghost story. Arthur Kipps, a young solicitor, is haunted by the titular ghost, but at its heart, the novel is about the woman in black, what she suffered, and what suffering she, in turn, wreaks in the lives of those whom she encounters.
• Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice is the third story in her Vampire Chronicles. In this one, Rice traces the vampires’ history back to its origins—to the original queen of the damned. Hence the title is an aptly chosen reference to the story’s focus and purpose.

Mood/ Voice

Sometimes a story, especially a gothic one, is so emotionally driven and those emotions parallel the story’s theme so adeptly that the author chooses a title that highlights this fact. The following are three such examples.

• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë is both a reference to its principle setting (on a windy, “wuthering” hilltop) and to the tempestuous nature of the characters.
• The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón is a beautifully haunting tale of a boy who, in the wake of his mother’s death, sets out on a journey to uncover the fate of the lost works by his favorite author. It’s a story about the things and people that leave an indelible mark on us though they may and often will be lost to us.
• The Turn of the Screw by Henry James reflects the nature of story itself. The involvement of the two children, Miles and Flora, is what James refers to as the turn of the screw—the thing that takes a terrifying ghost story to a point of greater horror.

Style

Once in awhile it’s appropriate to reference the novel’s style. This is used very infrequently and only when the style or nature of the story is so contrary to reader expectations that it says something compelling about the nature of the novel.

• The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix is novel in concept, not because it’s southern gothic, which has a long-standing and respectable history, but because it’s funny. Yes, it’s [very well-executed] dark humor mixed with a southern gothic story and the title reflects that.
• Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is just that: a gothic story set in Mexico. It’s a new and intriguing idea, thus the simple title works to capture readers’ attention.

Story Element or Structure

In a number of instances, it’s some element of the story, or the structure itself that the author references in the title. These are only a fraction of a step away from being a direct thematic reference, however, there is clearly a distinction as you’ll see below.

• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson directly alludes to the duality of the titular character and the battle that he undergoes as his good nature both caters to and wars against his propensity for evil. This is thematic, but is written as if it were an investigation or a scientific inquiry, which suits the structure of the work.
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde references the portrait that Dorian commissions and which bears the face of his true nature—his unseen soul. The picture is crucial to understanding the story; without it the story is simply one of a playboy rather than a soul-searching philosophical question.
• Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice is just that. Rice has stated that she set out to write the book in order to explore the nature of the life of the vampire. Rather than simply being a villain without a backstory, she set out to ask what the vampire’s life and history meant to him. The book begins and ends with the interview and thus the title fits perfectly with her intentions.
• The Moth Diaries by Rachel Klein is told through the unnamed main character’s diary entries. Throughout the story a subtle thread refers back to the luna moth the protagonist witnessed with her father, the countless moths in Ernessa’s room, and the implied moth-like nature of the girls at the school. Like the moths, each is in a state of transformation.

Direct Thematic Reference

And lastly, but most importantly, there are the works that pull directly from the story’s thematic purpose—what the author is exploring. These are always very strong, often the best, choices for titles.

• The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters features Dr. Faraday, a country physician who begins to care for the family at Hundreds Hall, shortly before things go progressively awry. What (or who) the little stranger is would be a plot spoiler, so I won’t give it away. However, if you’re looking for more information on this story (with plot spoilers) along with my review of Waters’ use of the uncanny, see the following article: Stepping Into the Void: A Look at the Uncanny. Suffice it to say that the little stranger is the entire point of the story.
• Child of God by Cormac McCarthy tells the story of Lester Ballard, a man who devolves from the loss of his home in the first scene to a vagabond and gruesome murderer. But McCarthy’s dominant point is one of warning—Lester, like each of us, is also a child of God. We could very easily find ourselves in his shoes.
• We Have Always Lived in a Castle by Shirley Jackson seems like a cumbersome title, and yet I can’t think of a better one. It’s the story of Merricat and her sister Constance and their journey to insulate themselves, both literally and figuratively, as individuals in their home—a castle or fortress of sorts— from the hostile community beyond their front door.
• Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury has a carnival feel about it. It fits the voice, setting and plot of the story and yet the title is also an allusion to man’s fear of aging and death—the something wicked that comes for us all.
• ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King tells the tale of Jerusalem’s Lot, a town in Maine taken over by vampires. On the surface the title appears to be nothing but a place reference. However, the abbreviation of Jerusalem to ‘Salem (a clear reference to the witch trials in Massachusetts) and the double meaning of the word lot (“parcel of land” versus “destiny”) lead us in a different direction. This is a story with a strong spiritual meaning to it, like many of King’s works. The title hints that this is a story of good versus evil.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are a number of ways to title a book. However, some are more applicable than others. You’ll want to step back and assess which of these scenarios fits your manuscript most accurately and then brainstorm until something fits better than the others. It also helps to get feedback from beta readers and your editor. My editor was a great sounding board for my first novel, The Death of Clara Willenheim, and was able to confirm what fit best with the story.

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Your Fall Movie List

We’re halfway through October! Where I live, the weather has only very recently started showing the signs of fall—the orange maple trees a flame behind the veil of the cool, foggy mornings. It’s the season for cozy indoor activities: for making mulled wine and hot apple cider and curling up with a blanket and a great movie. And with that I give you my list of 10 of the best gothic movies for fall to inspire your cozy viewing.

The Interview with the Vampire

The Crow

Sleepy Hollow

Dark Shadows

The Village

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

The Addams Family

Hotel Transylvania

The Phantom of the Opera

The Lost Boys

Conclusion

There are so many others out there such as the original (1931) Dracula, Gaslight (1944) and Red Riding Hood (2011). Any of these will give you wonderful, gothic fall feels. Enjoy them over the next couple of months. Let me know which one is your favorite and why!

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Personality Types versus Genre Preferences

Lately my life has been crazy! If you don’t know, I live on a farm. It’s a small family [non-commercial] farm. We’re in the middle of harvesting all of the crops we planted this year. In addition to that, we preserve all of the fruit that grows on the trees and in our modest little vineyard. It’s wonderful, but it can be exhausting. All that to say, recently I haven’t been able to write every week. I didn’t want to stay away much longer, but I craved a lighter topic. Since I can feel the weather finally shifting into Autumn, I thought that it would be fun to examine what you should read based on your favorite season.

I’m basing this assessment on the stereotypical correlations between personality types and seasons. These assessments won’t be universally true, so take this all with a grain of salt, have fun with it and feel free to disagree!

Spring

If spring is your favorite season, you have something of a sanguine personality. Think of this as a sense of wonder and imagination that sees the possibility in all things. You understand that challenges and hardships come with life, but you want to focus on what can be learned, gained or enjoyed (when possible) in each situation. The spring personality wants a story that ends in an uplifting way and books that open their minds to new worlds.

Spring personalities love Fantasy tales, Folk stories and Fables, Romance including Romantic Comedies, and books in the Magical Realism genre.

These types of books include The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Anne of Green Gables, The Notebook and The Ten Thousand Doors of January. Look for books such as:

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

The Book of Hidden Things by Francesco Dimitri

The Accidental Beauty Queen by Teri Wilson

Summer

If summer is your favorite season, you have a lot of energy and love to both experience new things and share life with other people. Summer is often associated with the choleric personality—the determined person who’s an extroverted, determined, go-getter. You like to explore, to take the new road, to push yourself to new heights, to test your limits and to achieve big goals. From alfresco dinners to neighborhood block parties to group camping trips, for you life is an opportunity to gather with others and to share new adventures.

The summer personality would love emotive relationship-based novels whether these are lighter beach reads or deeper explorations of how people grow alongside one another. This personality would also love Comedies, Thrillers (all of them—political, legal, military, you name it), Action Adventure, Westerns and Science Fiction.

Books for this person include things such as Summer Sisters, Gone Girl, The Hunt for Red October, The Stand, Fahrenheit 451 and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Check out the following contemporary options:

Red Rising by Pierce Brown [the first in a six-part series]

Summer Island by Kristin Hannah

A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham

Autumn

If autumn is your favorite season, you have a deep-thinking, introspective personality. Fall personalities are often reflective and artistic. They understand the things that aren’t said, the subtext in action and dialogue. In fact, they thrive on looking for deeper meaning and unspoken truths. They possess an exceptionally high level of emotional intelligence and clearly see the motives behind people’s actions and words.

The autumn personality thrives on Literary Fiction with all of its deep exploration of truth and meaning. This person also loves Psychological Thrillers, Gothic, Horror and Suspense. Genres such as these are loaded with underlying meaning, hidden intentions and nuance—the sorts of things that appeal to the melancholic autumn soul.

These are books like The Haunting of Hill House, Rebecca, Summer of Night, Swan Song, And Then There Were None and The Remains of the Day.

The following are some newer options to add to your reading list.

Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney

If You Tell by Gregg Olsen

Graveyard of Lost Children by Katrina Monroe

Winter

If winter is your favorite season, you’re calm, emotionally consistent, controlled and dependable. You’re introverted and prefer to spend time alone or with a small group of close friends or family. You prefer a smaller amount of great depth in your life whether that’s relational, experiential or personal growth, over a shallower but broader range of these things. This personality craves comfort and things that feel good.

The winter person loves the Mystery genre (both traditional and cozy mysteries), heart-warming Romances, Historical Fiction and the Classics. These genres are each loaded with depth that’s [usually] more comforting than the autumn version of depth that can be unsettling.

These books include Little Women, The English Patient, All the Light We Cannot See, Shutter Island, The Name of the Rose and A Tale of Two Cities. If these are your cup of tea, try these as well:

At the Coffee Shop of Curiosities by Heather Webber

The Winemaker’s Wife by Kristin Harmel

The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan

Conclusion

These are simply a starting point. The key is to understand the heart of the person behind the season. Spring people long for the hopeful adventure and new worlds; summer people want to explore and conquer their world alongside other people; autumn people seek to understand hidden truth no matter how raw it may be; and winter people want comforting depth and complexity of both character and theme.

Look for books that fit these criteria and you should be off in the right direction.

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Who Are They and Why Do They Need to Be Nameless?

3 Examples

The three examples I can think of come from The Turn of the Screw (1898) by Henry James, Rebecca (1938) by Daphne du Maurier and The Moth Diaries (2002) by Rachel Klein.

Initial Thoughts

Reader Stand-in

At first, I thought that perhaps this unnamed protagonist is intended to reflect the universal reader. Hence her anonymity could suggest that we are to place ourselves in her shoes. I discarded that thought fairly quickly since I can think of so many books—many, if not most—in which the author expects the reader to step into the main character’s shoes.

For example, I’m fairly certain that we are meant to grasp the horror and implicit warning of stories like The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Scarlet Letter. We’re meant to sympathize with characters such as Jane Eyre and Louis de Pointe du Lac. We would be be apathetic beyond repair if we didn’t wander the moors with Heathcliff and the mountains with Lester Ballard, sharing in their struggles and tragic ends.

Yet, each of these has a name.

Theme

Secondly, I thought that perhaps it’s an issue of the theme. We could argue that some themes are more universally applicable and that these unnamed female Gothic protagonists reflect a theme that we’re to assume is a lesson for us. This is something of a sister argument to the reader stand-in one above. I discarded this as well since it’s so easily debunked.

Who can reject the dangers of eugenics in Mexican Gothic or of ignoring the existence of evil in Salem’s Lot as universal themes? We could say the same about Jackson’s exploration of the aggression of the collective against the individual [outsider] in We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Or Stoker’s portrayal in Dracula of the fears people have of immigrants’ effects on their culture.

Yet, each of these has a name.

Prejudice

And lastly, I [briefly] considered a male bias. The idea flashed through my mind like the spark of a fire—here one moment and gone the next. However, only one of the three books examined here is authored by a man; the other two are by women. Further, historically so much of gothic literature was written by men. And yet, nearly all of their female protagonists have a name.

The Helpless Heroine

Thus, I settled on what I believe to be the answer: the unnamed female Gothic protagonist is another means of portraying a very Gothic trope: that of the helpless heroine. That one fits in each of these works.

The Turn of the Screw

In The Turn of the Screw, the protagonist is a governess charged with two children who are communing with the spirits of the former governess and the head gardener, both of whom died under mysterious circumstances. Something about the children isn’t right. They bear a premature knowledge of evil and have wicked natures that suggest that their innocence is long-gone.

It’s an evil she struggles to understand and is helpless to overcome.

Rebecca

In du Maurier’s acclaimed novel, the protagonist spends much of the story in ignorance of who her husband, Maxim de Winter, really is and what his former wife, Rebecca, was like. But rather than acknowledging this, she has concocted a misconceived notion about this woman’s perfection and Maxim’s adoration of her. She walks through Manderley, the de Winter estate, under the oppressive weight of her own sense of inferiority and the shame she feels in her husband’s eyes.

Because she doesn’t have the truth, she lives under a lie she can hardly bear.

The Moth Diaries

Though the movie version of Klein’s brilliant novel features a protagonist by the name of Rachel, she is unnamed in the book. This works because the protagonist is struggling to understand reality versus fiction. A year prior, she came to her current boarding school in the wake of her father’s suicide (which she discovered), a loss that still weighs on her. Now she’s faced with a new resident, Ernessa, who hails from eastern Europe and seems for all intents and purposes, like a vampire.

She never eats or drinks, doesn’t sleep, walks into and out of windows high above the ground, and seems unnaturally immune to human emotion or even substances such as drugs. In addition, the protagonist’s closest friend, Lucy, is spending time with Ernessa and is growing simultaneously weaker and more sickly.

The main character’s questions about what is and is not real are compelling. Even more, the events surrounding her life are outside of her control.

Conclusion

Each of these protagonists is largely helpless in the face of her situation. That’s not to say that other female Gothic protagonists haven’t also been helpless or that the helpless heroine trope always suggests a nameless protagonist.

Rather, in these three cases, the authors have chosen to use an unnamed protagonist as part of their portrayal of a helpless female. It works. The lack of a name leaves her somewhat groundless, without a sense of identity or a way to anchor her perception of herself in the face of the storm around her. We the readers feel that.

And our readers can as well—yours and mine. If you write a book using a helpless heroine, consider the advantages of leaving her without a name. It might speak louder than having one would!

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And How to Harness Those Gains

If you’re like me, you have so many writing goals that you might feel as if your life is a never ending string of to-dos. After all, we’re artists. Our minds are constantly full of new story ideas that we can’t wait to put on the page. But if we’re so busy churning out the next story that we have no time for creative play, we might be losing out. It’s possible to do so much work that the quality of our creative endeavors goes down. When you discover the benefits of creative play, you’ll see why this is one thing we need to make time for.

The Benefits

Before we get into how we can foster creative play in our lives, let’s look at three of its greatest benefits to us as writers.

Creative Play Improves Our Brain Function

According to Luminis Health and many others, creative play isn’t just for children. Even though much of our brain function is developed between birth and our late twenties, there’s still room for growth well into our senior years. Studies show that adults who play continue to strengthen their minds by preventing memory problems, increasing productivity and building problem-solving skills.

Consider all of the inventive ways we write our characters into and out of desperate situations. Not to mention the complex worldbuilding and our understanding of linguistics, pacing, and tension that come into play every time we work on a story. We need our minds to be in tip-top shape. Creative play helps us produce higher quality work more efficiently.

Creative Play Exercises Our Creative Muscles

Maya Angelou once said, “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.“

Your creative soul contains more creative ideas than you can imagine. The key is to unlock them. One of the greatest benefits of creative play is its ability to silence our inner critic. Whereas that critic is crucial to our rewriting process, it’s death to the initial creation. When we play, we train our minds to relax and create without judgement.

Creative Play Opens Us to New Possibilities

Sometimes, when we’re so busy writing that we think we don’t have time to play, we don’t realize that we’re actually stuck in a rut. A rut we might call the status quo. It’s easy to keep on the same track and harder to leave the well-worn road for new creative vistas.

Creative play stops us and forces our minds to build new neural pathways. These new mental tracks strengthen our ability to think in ways we couldn’t before. Whether it’s an entirely different approach to character development or a fascinatingly novel story idea, creative play opens our minds to the uncharted course.

How to Go About It

If we want these things – a stronger mind, deeper well and broader creative abilities – we can benefit from creative play. But what is it? And how do we go about it?

What Is Creative Play

We should think about creative play as the act of creating something without any end in mind (other than the improved writing we hope to see after the fact). That means that we have no intended audience or economic gain that we’re pursuing. We aren’t trying to improve our home’s value or start a ceramics business although those things may be unintended and desirable consequences of our play. We aren’t learning an instrument because we long to apply to Juilliard.

We’re just playing. Imagine yourself as a young child faced with a room full of options: putty, paint brushes, mixed materials, fabric… you name it. The play begins and ends with your experience with the material and the interaction that your five senses have with it.

How to Pursue Creative Play

Choose a medium and set out to do something with it. There’s no pressure to create something grand or impressive. Simply take up a paintbrush or drawing pencils and create a scene; or build sculptures from clay or river rocks; or dabble in the kitchen with a new type of cuisine; or experiment with a new musical instrument.

I have found certain types of crafts that are creative but routine (like a Diamond Dotz kit) to be very helpful. Often, while doing the craft I find my mind problem solving or working through an aspect of the novel I’m writing.

Helpful Guidelines

That said, I have found several guidelines (not rules, just guidelines) to be helpful:

1. Set aside a little time weekly or daily if possible. The goal isn’t to spend all of our time playing, but rather to enhance our writing. If you have the benefit of being able to write full time or for several hours each day, try playing at something creative for 30 minutes beforehand. Set a timer, pick up your choice of medium and be free. Then set it down and return to your writing. If you can only write for an hour a day, find something like an adult coloring book or a puzzle that you can pick up for ten minutes and then put away. (I know… it’s hard to put it down.)
2. Try to mix it up and experiment with different types of play. For example, try drawing one day and building a miniature house the next. If you find that painting opens your creative well most effectively, pursue that the most, but don’t overlook the benefits of playing at something different on occasion. And don’t forget about other sensory experiences like an autumn walk to collect fall leaves for rubbings or picking wildflowers by a lake.
3. Pursue things that you love. Children are largely unrestrained. They don’t sit down to play at those things that think they should love. Or the things that they think others will find most interesting. Instead, they play at what interests them most. Allow yourself to be fascinated by things again, to find wonder and beauty in creative areas of life. Maybe you’re obsessed with hand painting miniature figurines. Perhaps you’re driven by the color and patterns in quilting. What excites you?
4. Be honest about what helps you the most. As I mentioned above, I’ve found certain crafts to be very helpful and others, not so much. If you go for a walk and come back to find your mind unfocused, perhaps that’s not something you should pursue as a creative catalyst. But if you spend the afternoon baking for a potluck and then discover that your creative juices are pouring out of you, that may be one useful avenue. (Your friends and relatives will love that!) Perhaps a healthy mix keeps your writing mind fresh.

Conclusion

What we’re really doing is quieting the responsible side of our brain that keeps telling us that we should check something else off the list; or that we should edit that character’s comments before moving on in the story; or that audiences don’t want to see that kind of story. We’re training our minds to open to the well of our experiences and deepest loves so that when we come back to our writing, we can tap into that well without hindrance.

Creative play is one of the means of doing that. Try it. Give yourself the freedom to create and to see the wonder of what really speaks to you. And let yourself explore both in your creative play and in the writing that it fosters.

And tell me how it works for you!

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The Similar & Different Ways Authors Portray Them

The results are in! Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve explored eighteen popular Gothic protagonists – eight males and ten females. I’ve highlighted their dominant character traits, both positive and negative. If you missed those posts, you can find them here and here. In this post we’re going to look at a summary of male versus female Gothic protagonists and how authors portray them in similar and different ways. Let the games begin.

Note that some of these traits such as Victor Frankenstein’s single-mindedness could be seen as either positive or negative depending on how the trait is applied. However, I’ve qualified them as either positive or negative based on how the authors have portrayed the trait in the context of the stories.

Summary – Male Protagonists

The Positive

Male characters are often intelligent or at least intellectually- adept in some area or other, enterprising and ambitious. Authors portrayed several as loyal, righteous/ upstanding/ virtuous, wise, protective and concerned for others. One – Lester Ballard – is childlike, which works well with the theme and is a startling juxtaposition to his violent tendencies. It isn’t uncommon to see a male Gothic figure described as bold and fierce as the vampire Lestat is. It’s less common though to see a gentle, compassionate soul such as Ben Mears in Salem’s Lot.

The Negative

On the opposite side of the equation, many of these male protagonists are obsessively single-minded, arrogant, stubborn, selfish, angry, violent and destructive. Some are amoral (though none as much as Dorian Gray), narcissistic, animalistic, frustrated, reckless and ill-tempered. Occasionally they’re also presented as dishonest, thieving, awkward, unattractive, impetuous, foolhardy, fearful or braggadocious.

Summary – Female Protagonists

But what about the females? It isn’t all rosy on the other side of the chromosome pair either, although the females certainly have their positive traits as well. We’ll start with those.

The Positive

Female Gothic protagonists are often committed to justice, unwilling to compromise their values, loyal, respectful of others, curious, intelligent and devoted to their faith (we’re looking at you Jane). Some are gentle, kind, likeable, clever, witty, quiet, supportive, thoughtful, hard-working, independent and strong. Others are courageous, witty, brave, determined, knowledgeable and socially competent.

The Negative

On the flip side, some are also strong-willed and outspoken to a fault. They’re often socially awkward, depressive, melancholy, brooding, solitary and selfish. Some are jealous, fiercely territorial, deceitful, powerless and deceptive. Others, like their male counterparts, are prone to violence.

What I pointed out in last week’s look at these female characters (find it here), is that a disproportionate number of them are also emotionally sensitive, delusional, suspicious, neurotic, paranoid, insecure, naïve and immature. It’s extremely common for female Gothic protagonists to be both unreliable narrators and emotionally and psychologically unstable. I mentioned my theory as to why this is so prevalent, but it merits a full post. Watch for that in the future.

Comparison

So how does it shake out?

Similarities

Both the male and female characters are often intelligent, competent and even violent although the violence is often cloaked when it comes to the females. (See my review of The Turn of the Screw for an example of this.) Both are just as likely to fight for justice and to defend those they love, although they often do so in different ways. The male and female protagonists are also just as likely to be strong and uncompromising of what they believe. And lastly, both types of characters can be moody and awkward.

Differences

But…there are still plenty of differences.

For example, though they’re both likely to commit violence, authors portray male protagonists as much angrier than females. The males are also more stubborn, single-minded and ambitious. These could be be positive traits. However, they’re more likely to apply them in ways that are sometimes bold, but more often foolhardy and even reckless.

As I mentioned before, the most striking difference on the part of the females is that authors are more likely to portray them as having various emotional dysfunctions. The best of them are apt to be paranoid, jealous and suspicious. The worst are psychologically unstable, neurotic and divorced from reality.

I would summarize these differences as being an outward versus and inward dysfunction. When the male characters go awry it’s in reckless abandon of any moral center, an embrasure of violence, or an obsession with some pursuit to the point of destruction. When the females wander into unhealthy territory, it tends to be an inward departure from reason and a sound assessment of their environment.

To analyze these would be another post altogether, so I’ll leave it at that for now. But suffice it to say that there are still more similarities than differences. It just so happens that the differences stand out strongly!

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Part II: How Are Female Gothic Protagonists Portrayed?

This post is the second in a trilogy of articles comparing how authors write male versus female Gothic protagonists. If you missed the first one in which we examined eight popular male protagonists and what they share in common, check it out here. This week we’re going to look at ten female Gothic protagonists from both historical and contemporary literature. This will set the stage for next week’s post in which we’ll look for differences between the two genders in Gothic writing. I’ll give you a hint though: the females surprised me a lot more than the males did!

Note: I’ve organized these by publishing date in order to examine whether some of these portrayals shifted over time and are more similar to others within the same general time period.

Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte brontë

The titular character in Jane Eyre is fiercely opposed to injustice, whether it’s her own suffering at the hands of her cousin John, or the treatment of her friend, Helen, at the Lowood school. She’s unwilling to compromise her values, is loyal to her friends and loving family members, has a firm belief in God, and is both strong-willed and outspoken, sometimes to a fault.

The Turn of the Screw (1898) by henry james

The main character, the governess, in The Turn of the Screw, is never given a name. I suspect that James did this in order to pull the readers into the story and see themselves in this role. It certainly fits with the theme. We do see much of her character though. She is very emotionally sensitive, possibly to the point of instability, respectful of others, prone to paranoia but curious enough to push until she ferrets out the truth, and perhaps violent [depending on your reading of the cryptic ending.]

I have a book review of this one and its fascinating theme. You can find it here!

Rebecca (1938) by Daphne duMaurier

Once again, the main character in Rebecca, the second Mrs. de Winter, remains unnamed throughout the novel. The theme of this book revolves around the main character’s preconceived notions of her husband’s first wife. The protagonist is woefully insecure, naïve, immature, and paralyzed by her sense of inferiority in light of the false reality she has created in her mind. And yet she’s also gentle, kind and likeable.

Here’s a book review I did of Rebecca.

The Haunting of Hill House (1959) by shirley jackson

Eleanor Vance sets out to participate in a ghost study of a supposedly haunted house after having cared for her aging mother over the last eleven years. Her sudden emergence into social situations highlights Eleanor’s true state: her immaturity, social awkwardness,and desperate desire to belong; her jealousy and capacity for violence; and her emotional and psychological instability.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) by shirley jackson

In another of Jackson’s Gothic tales, we see Mary Catherine Blackwood, “Merricat,” who’s pitted against her family (which readers see in retrospect) and against the larger community. Merricat is a much stronger version of Eleanor Vance. She shares some of the immaturity and violent tendencies with her, but is otherwise quite different. Merricat is fiercely territorial and jealous of her relationship with her sister, Constance. She’s clever, witty and unyielding. She could easily be perceived as psychologically unstable, but it’s unlikely that Jackson intended that. Her writing portrays Merricat as justified despite the extent of her actions or what the community might think about them.

For a fascinating look at my favorite Gothic character see the book review I wrote here.

Black Ambrosia (1988) by elizabeth engstrom

Angelina is a vampire…or so she says. And that right there is the point of the book: why does Angelina act the way that she does? What we know is that Angelina is violent. She views herself as a vampire, an angel of death. We might label her simply a serial killer. She’s delusional, promiscuous [though she hates sex], deceitful and powerless to overcome her past or her circumstances.

I wrote a blog post about the psychological underpinnings of this book. It’s fascinating! Find the post here: The Psychology of Black Ambrosia.

The Moth Diaries (2002) by rachel klein

Once again, an author writes of an unnamed protagonist. This time in the context of her stay at boarding school in the wake of her father’s suicide. She is extremely intelligent, suspicious, jealous of her friendship with Lucy, neurotic, depressive and possibly both an unreliable narrator and psychologically unstable [again, depending on how you read the text].

This one is a brilliant study in intertextuality, about which I wrote here. The post also gives a good overview of the book and its protagonist.

The Thirteenth Tale (2006) by diane setterfield

Margaret Lea is a biographer. She’s quiet, intelligent, supportive, thoughtful, and hard-working. But she’s also melancholy and carries with her a secret that colors her view of her own existence and the purpose of her life. She’s brooding and solitary.

[I did not enjoy this book. The protagonist’s suffering felt overblown and contrived (I’m not sure anyone in her situation would actually feel the way she claims to) and the ending of the novel hinges on a plot twist which the author does not adequately foreshadow. There’s one quasi-hint, but it’s so small that no reader could have seen the ending coming even if she managed to see through a sea of red herrings. This felt like a trick to me, one which I did not appreciate.]

Mexican Gothic (2020) by silvia moreno-garcia

Noemí Taboada is independent and strong. She’s courageous, outspoken, smart and witty. At the beginning of the novel, her sense of identity hinges on her her family’s social and economic standing. However, over the course of her battle with the antagonist, she develops a sense of herself as a brave and determined young woman who, though capable, can benefit from the help and abilities of others around her.

In many ways, Noemí acts as an outside savior stepping into a classic Gothic novel, albeit set in Mexico, replete with the traditional helpless female (Noemí’s cousin) and the outrageous villain (her cousin’s new husband).

The House of Whispers (2020) by laura purcell

At the onset, Purcell writes her protagonist, Hester Why, in a particularly unlikable way. She’s an alcoholic on the run from her past, who needs to be needed. So much so that anyone who doesn’t need her should prepare to face the consequences! She’s knowledgeable but selfish, socially competent but deceptive. The fun of Hester is that readers don’t really know where she’ll fall out until the end. If you can bear that, it’s worth a read! It’s also an interesting blend of Fae fantasy and the Gothic, making it particularly unique.

Conclusion

What surprised me most as I surveyed these is the extent to which authors portray females as either unreliable, psychologically unstable, or blatantly mentally ill! And the majority of these are fairly contemporary writers. Don’t take that the wrong way just yet. The genre, with its emphasis on irrational themes, lends itself to that sort of psychological imbalance and exploration. But what’s surprising about it is that it doesn’t seem to be prevalent in any of the male protagonists!

I chalk this up to a modern take on the helpless heroine. Rather than presenting female Gothic protagonists as physically powerless, [relatively] contemporary authors seem to have rebranded her as emotionally powerless.

That’s not to say that these women aren’t intelligent though. They’re just as smart and prone to violence as their male counterparts. But that’s where the similarities end. We’ll look at more of that next week!

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