Charlotte Lesemann

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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Part I: Male Protagonists

We’re goin’ there! The dreaded, dangerous domain in which we dare to parse out differences between the genders in Gothic writing. And there are some distinct ones. I will add a caveat that modern writers are blurring the lines between these more than authors did in the past. In this series of articles we’re going to take a broad look at both historical Gothic and some quasi-contemporary examples and examine the differences between male and female Gothic protagonists.

Not surprisingly, there seem to be fewer male protagonists, at least in my library. In this post, I’ll highlight some of the dominant traits of eight different Gothic male characters and then, after we take a look at the females in post two, we’ll examine the commonalities and differences in our third post.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Victor Frankenstein is the inventor, scientist and creator of the creature that he brings to life by harnessing the power of electricity. Shelley portrays him as single-minded to the point of being obsessive, very intelligent, enterprising, ambitious and arrogant. He refuses to consider the danger of his actions until it’s too late, is stubbornly insistent that he can conquer death, and then must attempt to counteract the terrible consequences of his creation.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Dorian Gray is a playboy. He has it all – wealth, social connections, and beauty – but it isn’t enough because he’s thoroughly amoral. Completely lacking in any moral convictions. Thus he has to try everything, taste every forbidden fruit, commit every illicit act. There’s nothing he will withhold from himself. His narcissism won’t allow it. Thus, while his face continues to project his physical beauty, his soul – presented to the readers in the portrait Basil paints of him – becomes uglier and uglier.

Salem’s Lot by Stephen King

The star of Salem’s Lot is gentle, compassionate Ben Mears. He’s afraid of the vampire Barlow who has come to Jerusalem’s [‘Salem’s] Lot and his growing horde, but acts courageously in his attempts to warn the people in the town. One of the criticisms of Ben is his lack of flaws. He’s personable, intelligent, put-together, and concerned for others. At the end, he becomes something of a father-figure for young Mark with whom Ben faces down the vampires.

Child of God by Cormac McCarthy

McCarthy’s spare and precise storytelling features, in this case, Lester Ballard, a displaced man in the mountain country of Tennessee in the 1960s. Having lost his home and land, Ballard wanders from abandoned shacks to mountain caves, watching the lives of those who still have a place in society. As he does, his anger consumes him, driving him to become a homicidal monster. But despite his violence and animalistic acts, McCarthy portrays him as something of a childlike man – someone any one of us could become under certain circumstances.

I’ve written a book review of this one in case you’re interested. You can find it here: Child of God.

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Oskar is a twelve-year old victim of bullying who lives in a newer housing development in a suburb of Stockholm. His inability to change his circumstances leaves him frustrated and angry, given to lying and theft, and entertaining thoughts of violence. It’s fitting then that he soon befriends a vampire, Eli, whom he believes is a young girl. Oskar’s development leads him, not to health and wholeness, but rather to greater acts of violence and destruction. In the end though, it’s only through his friendship with Eli that he survives.

Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin

Martin’s vampire tale tells the story of Abner Marsh, a steamboat captain on the Mississippi River in the mid-1800s. Marsh is struggling financially and is ripe for the plans of an elegant vampire, Joshua, who offers to buy the business and engage Marsh as his captain. Abner is stubborn, ill-tempered, and both awkward and unattractive, especially in comparison with the many vampires in the novel. However, he’s also loyal and surprisingly intellectually adept (particularly his memory). Those traits, combined with his stubbornness make him a relentless adversary for the antagonist, the vampire bloodmaster Damon Julian.

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

Bradbury’s gothic tale has three main characters, each of them male. There are two young boys, William Halloway and Jim Nightshade, along with Will’s father, Charles. These three are pitted against a strange carnival that comes to town in October, led by an evil ringmaster by the name, Mr. Dark.

To describe very rich characters very succinctly: William is righteous, holy as his name would suggest. He wants to do what is wise, fears evil, and cares about protecting others. His friend, Jim, is the one who wants to age prematurely, wants to sample the things that are forbidden him. He’s impetuous, foolhardy, and selfish. Will’s father Charles is a kind janitor, but he’s afraid. Afraid of the theme of the book: aging and death, the something wicked that comes to us all. Initially, he lacks his son’s courage and has become oppressed by the thought of his own mortality. However, he’s virtuous and finds his strength in the end.

I’ve written a book review of this one as well. You can find it here: Something Wicked This Way Comes.

The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice

In Interview With the Vampire, Lestat de Lioncourt played a distinctly villainous role, constantly thwarting Louis’s desire to understand his new life as a vampire and to find a sense of family (Claudia) and belonging. But, whether you loved him or hated him, you were probably surprised if you picked up the second book, The Vampire Lestat.

Yes, he’s still braggadocious in his newfound role as a rock musician, constantly flaunting his true [dark] nature while seeking the fame and prestige of a public figure. He’s still self-centered and reckless. But he has a backstory. He has a mother – something we’re inclined to forget in the lives of vampires. He’s willing to do whatever he has to do – boldly, fiercely – in order to protect her and anyone else he loves. And he’s hellbent on discovering his origins as a vampire and the sense of belonging and purpose he believes it will offer him.

Conclusion

It was extremely eye-opening to pull together all of these characters in one snapshot (especially alongside the female ones you’ll see in the next post). There are some strong commonalities here: stubbornness, courage, unrelenting determination, arrogance, ambitiousness, intelligence and a tendency towards violence. Thus, as different as these characters are, they have much in common.

Stay tuned for the next post in which we examine the female characters and some of the very surprising ways authors have represented them!

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Inspiration for Your Gothic Setting

Clearly I’m in a setting groove. From last week’s post about how to use the best expected – or, even better, unexpected – types of settings in your writing: The Best Setting for a Gothic Book: The Expected and Unexpected Options for Gothic Writers. To my post back in April about Gothic settings that became synonymous with the books themselves: The Most Memorable Gothic Settings: And How to Apply Them to Your Writing. Not to mention the post that kicked it all off in early April: How to: Write Better Setting Descriptions: The Art of Reading with a Critical Eye. I’ve been thinking a lot about setting. This week I thought we’d look at something similar, but slightly different: Gothic places around the world, meaning those places that are known for having something of a Gothic flavor already!

I’m going to avoid touching on most of the obvious ones: Savannah with its history of ghosts; New Orleans and its voodoo past that Anne Rice capitalized on in her Vampire Chronicles; the Tower of London with its violent history; and all of Romania and its association with Dracula. Instead, I’m going to give you some lesser-known but equally awesome options to explore.

Hopefully these will inspire you either to use them in your writing, or to craft similarly-powerful locations of your own making!

Gothic Quarter – Spain

Suicide Forest – Japan

Cape of Good Hope – South Africa

Sac Uayum – Mexico

Ghosts Lagoon – Iran

Bhangarh Fort – India

The Pine Barrens – New Jersey, USA

The Myrtles Plantation – Louisiana, USA

The Grande Hotel Trilogia – Cambuquira, Brazil

The Carlile House – New Zealand

Conclusion

There are so many more! Haunted castles in Germany, fantastical cemeteries in Brazil, and hotels and houses packed with paranormal legends the world over. Of course none of these locations have to be the exact site of your Gothic story, but hopefully the legends surrounding them inspire you as you craft your own tale.

And of course, let me know! I’d love to know where you’re setting your book(s) and why.

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The Expected and Unexpected Options for Gothic Writers

The setting of our books can make all the difference in the world to readers. Think of books that have such a strong sense of place that the story and the setting are interconnected. Books like Dracula in Romania (in the beginning of the tale), The Twilight series in The Pacific Northwest, and Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles in New Orleans. Something about the setting brings the Gothic to life. But what is that something? Is it inherent in the setting itself? Is it how the writer describes the place? Perhaps it’s something else. Let’s look at what makes the best setting for a Gothic book.

The Obvious

Let’s start with the obvious – but still good! – choices and why they make sense.

Dark & Stormy…Literally

The first category falls under the dark and stormy weather umbrella. Since dark and stormy weather is often used as a trope in Gothic literature (for good reason), it makes a whole lot of sense to set a book in a place in which the weather is generally as moody as the Gothic genre tends to be.

Some books borrow from their setting’s inherently dreary climate. These writers use this type of setting to parallel murky themes such as man’s potentially treacherous attempts to play God (Frankenstein) and the consequential storm that can ensue. They use it to point to the violent and changeable emotional state of their characters (Wuthering Heights). And they use the dark and stormy setting to hint that much of the truth is concealed from most people and that often things aren’t what they seem to be (Woman in White).

Of course, dark and stormy weather plays so many other roles in Gothic fiction. For more insight into how it’s used and why it fits into the genre so well, check out this post: How to Use Dark & Stormy Weather to Enhance Theme.

Dark…Figuratively

Then there’s the second obvious category: those settings that come with a dark history. That includes settings such as Savannah with its history of ghosts and other evil spirits, and New Orleans with its notorious background in voodoo. Whatever you believe about these places or practices, it’s hard to deny that these places are steeped in a history of interaction with the spirit world.

That has more to do with the Gothic genre than simply setting an ominous tone. The Gothic genre is principally defined by its irrational themes – those things that can’t be known through reason or empirically through the five senses. Spiritual themes and tropes fit snugly within this irrational umbrella. Thus, settings that pull from this type of history work well within Gothic writing.

Much of the Southern Gothic subgenre plays off of this figurative history. One of the primary issues explored in these works is the dichotomy between the romanticized southern history with its genteel lifestyles and the oppression of those who were kept as slaves.

Awhile back, I wrote an article about this in case you’re interested. For more information on this fascinating group of writers and works, find it here: The Southern Gothic Subgenre.

In the article, I discuss works and writers such as:

• A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams
• The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
• The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice
• The writings of V.C. Andrews and Truman Capote
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt (which is actually nonfiction)
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• The Gates of Evangeline, by Hester Young

The Unexpected

But what about those settings that don’t inherently come with either the dark and stormy weather or some type of dark history? Can those be used in Gothic literature? And how?

Option 1: History

I remember my surprise when The Vampire Diaries television show came out…set in Virginia. I remember thinking, Virginia?? Why on earth would a vampire story be set in Virginia? I’ve watched some of the show and I can see why it works. The show borrows extensively from Virginia’s history both as one of the earliest founded portions of The United States and also as a part of the confederate army during the Civil War.

To get into why it’s Gothic would be an entirely different article – watch for that in the future. However, in short, the author/ screenwriter uses the love-hate relationship between two brothers to parallel the animosity between the north and south in the country. In the middle of them stands Elena, a young woman with a distinct European history. This plays nicely off of Virginia’s tumultuous past as part of the early colonies that revolted against England’s oversight.

That’s a very short summary of a story that entails so much more. However, the point is that if you can find a conflict-ridden piece of history in an area, that can factor into an effective use of the Gothic genre.

Option 2: Human Nature

Another example comes from Shirley Jackson’s writing. One of her most well-known works is The Haunting of Hill House. The exact location of the house is unclear although there’s some evidence that points to inspiration she found in California. (Others say Massachusetts.)

The author decided to write “a ghost story” after reading about a group of nineteenth century “psychic researchers” who studied a house and somberly reported their supposedly scientific findings to the Society for Psychic Research…She later claimed to have found a picture in a magazine of a California house she believed was suitably haunted-looking. She asked her mother, who lived in California, to help find information about the dwelling. According to Jackson, her mother identified the house as one the author’s own great-great-grandfather, an architect who had designed some of San Francisco’s oldest buildings, had built.

Guran, Paula (July 1999). “Shirley Jackson and The Haunting of Hill House“. DarkEcho Horror. Archived from the original on March 14, 2018.

Clearly neither of these is necessarily dark and stormy and though Salem, Massachusetts has its history of witches, she doesn’t play off of this. Rather, Jackson uses the entire novel to delve into the depths of Eleanor Vance’s psychological state. She establishes the fact that the house is believed to be haunted, a premise that readers increasingly question as they work their way through the book. Rather, it’s Eleanor’s mind that is most at issue.

Jackson took a similar but different approach in We’ve Always Lived in the Castle. In that novella, she focuses outside of the characters’ (Merricat’s and Constance’s) mental state – though Merricat is a fascinating study! Instead, she deals with more of a sociologial phenomenon: the group mentality that results in the collective being a danger to the individual outsider.

Because either of these – mental illness or a vicious human tendency – creates a treacherous landscape for the character(s), often with strongly irrational themes, these types of stories are also excellent fits for the Gothic genre. And, of course, they can occur in any setting.

Option 3: Fantasy

This last option is especially open-ended and leaves room for many types of settings. It entails engineering any of the above into your work. [The one exception is weather. Unless you’re literally writing in a fantasy setting, readers will struggle to believe that Phoenix is suddenly dark and stormy.]

For example, you can use a place such as Denver or Barcelona or Melbourne and imbue it with a dark history. Alternately, you can use those places to mirror a character’s mental or spiritual state. Perhaps the shimmering desert mirage in a small town in Nevada parallels the protagonist’s wavering grasp of reality. Maybe you decide to play off of a legend or place name such as the Gothic Quarter in Barcelona and give it a Gothic history that works with the story you want to tell.

You could even do as Stephen King does and take the ordinary landscapes of America – a farming town or a sleepy suburb in an out-of-the-way place – and play off of the usual. Make it uncanny. Ooh…another article for you: Stepping into the Void: A Look at the Uncanny. Take the everyday and give it meaning, nuance and distortion.

Example

For example, let’s say you set your story in a Midwestern small town in the 1920s. That’s about as un-Gothic feeling as they come. There’s a creek that runs through the town. It used to be a seasonal creek. A rather deep one, but still, it ran dry every summer around July 4th like clockwork. Until one year when a new family comes to town. They moved in the prior winter. They’re different. Now the creek is full and threatens to flood the town. Several people have fallen in and drowned, including a couple of young boys.

Their deaths seem inexplicable. Something’s clearly wrong. The water is rising and, for some reason, people are drawn to it and led to their deaths. Or perhaps they drink from it and are changed in some way. The creek comes to represent the hidden portion of their nature. The part that they never give vent. Now, as it rises, it threatens to overthrow them and to destroy the others around them.

Once peaceable families are plagued by violence. Fights break out in workplaces. Betrayals tear apart relationships. All because of the creek and this strange new family in town.

What would make this Gothic is if the creek, the new family, and any other tropes you incorporate support an irrational theme. Perhaps it’s a spiritual one: that the things that a person keeps hidden, unaddressed, will always destroy her in the end.

Conclusion

If you’re reading actively you’ve probably noticed that really any setting can be a wonderfully Gothic one if it addresses a Gothic theme. And if the tropes support that. I posit that these unexpected settings could be that much more powerful because they really hit home. There’s nothing like seeing the truth wrapped in the ordinary, everyday setting to shake readers and cause them to stop and consider what you’re exploring as an author.

That’s not to say I don’t love a great dark and stormy setting. I do and so do many readers! But don’t neglect the unexpected. And in either case, remember that the setting is the supporting actor, not the principal agent. The theme has to take center stage regardless of where you set the story.

P.S. I will be on vacation next week, so expect the next post in two weeks.

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Not Just a Character Flaw

When we think of Marvel movies and all superhero writing (or film) in general, it’s easy…even obvious…to think of characters’ weaknesses. The most obvious is Superman’s Kryptonite. Spider-man fears Ethyl Chloride. The villain, Sandman, can’t handle water or extreme heat. The genre expects as much. But what if we write in a different genre? Your antagonist still needs a weakness, not just character flaws. That gives her more to fight for, makes her more relatable, and increases the severity of the protagonist’s journey.

Plot Spoilers Ahead!

The Governor

One of my favorite television programs of all time (and there aren’t many) is The Walking Dead. The show is a perfect mix of plot and theme and character. It’s such a character gold mine with so many unique and interesting personalities that it’s almost impossible to choose a favorite. Even the villains – for the most part – are fascinating and well-written. One of the best is easily Brian Heriot, who’s known by the moniker, The Governor.

When Andrea and Michonne stumble out of the zombie-strewn streets and woods into Woodbury, a fortified community, Andrea thinks they’ve landed in a virtual heaven-on-earth. The town is safe, filled with food, water, and peaceable people, and the leader of it all, a man known as The Governor, catches her eye.

Michonne is, of course, suspicious. She knows what Andrea, a perennially poor judge of character, doesn’t: that something isn’t right with the town. Without morphing into a Walking Dead post, it isn’t long before she discovers that The Governor has a room filled with tanks holding the zombie/ still moving heads of his enemies.

And a chair.

The Weakness

But that’s not his weakness. Michonne uncovers that later when she finds his shackled zombie daughter, Penny, locked in the closet. You see, Penny was bitten and died. She came back from the dead as a zombie, but her father can’t let her go. So Brian is on a mission to find a way to heal zombies and to bring his daughter back from the walking-dead.

On the surface, that sounds like a noble mission. Except he’s anything but. He’s actually a very cruel, sadistic man. But his love for Penny gives him several things:

• A mission to fight for
• A weakness to protect
• A way for viewers to empathize with him

These are all invaluable in the process of crafting a villain. To extrapolate on these, the villain’s mission becomes more desperate because of his weakness. Brian isn’t just sadistic or committed to ruling the town. He can’t lose because of what’s at stake: his daughter’s possible resurrection. And if she’s taken from him, he’ll only become that much more unhinged (watch the show!).

But it also humanizes him. Writers talk about this often. Gone is the era in which good guys are good just because and bad guys are bad just because. The bad guy has to have reasons, a backstory, a trauma, something that created in him the monster that he is today. The loss of Brian’s daughter does just that. It makes him cruel, but viewers can understand. In the back of our minds, some of us are wondering what we might have done in his situation.

Possible Weaknesses

That’s the key. You want to give your antagonist a weakness that they’ll fight to the death (or a proverbial death depending on the genre) to protect. As you’re searching for one, ask yourself these kinds of questions:

• What is the antagonist most afraid to lose?
• What did she love the most before she became so evil?
• What wound would hurt the antagonist more than death?
• What is the antagonist fighting for (not just against)?
• What does your antagonist want most of all? If you answered, to defeat the protagonist or to stop the protagonist’s plan, why? What does the protagonist threaten?

Perhaps your antagonist has a secret that she cherishes. Something she did in the past or a relationship she had at one point by which she defines herself. If the protagonist brings that to light in a negative way, it threatens everything the antagonist believes about herself.

Maybe your baddie has a hatred for a certain person or group in his fictional town. That person harmed him or someone he loved and now he plans to destroy him. The problem is that your protagonist is now in the way, rallying around that other person. It may be that the person your baddie wants to destroy really is terrible and the protagonist doesn’t know it.

Look for something that the antagonist loves/loved and would do anything to protect or avenge. Something greater than his reputation or her pride. Something outside of himself. The more human it is, the more likely the readers will be able to relate to him. And rather than making him weaker, when written well, a weakness makes the antagonist much more formidable. It brings out his teeth and gives him more desperation. This will make your protagonist’s journey much harder and your readers’ experience much better!

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Ways to Write a Dinner Scene that Won’t Fail

Ah, the dinner scene (or breakfast or lunch). It’s bound to fail, they say. Guaranteed to result in boredom for the readers, with your novel instantly relegated to the trash heap. It seems like hyperbole, but there’s a strong disdain for these meal scenes – sometimes for good reasons. We’ll look at what these are, how to avoid them, and how to write a dreaded dinner scene so that it’s a success.

I was hoping to write something more personal in this blog post, and this topic certainly fits the bill. It highlights an internal debate I had while working on my upcoming novel. I’ll weave the outcome of my meal-scene-decisions throughout.

But first, what’s the problem?

What’s Wrong with the Dinner Scene?

The characters sit down to eat. They pick up the fork, spear the piece of mutton, and mumble small talk around their masticating jaws. It happens. It’s even realistic. But it’s boring! It bores the readers. And hopefully, it bores us enough to correct it when we rewrite our drafts prior to publishing.

Why are these scenes so often boring?

First of all, the action, by definition, ceases. Since the characters aren’t doing anything, we turn to what they are doing: spearing asparagus, sipping wine, etc. Things that readers will naturally assume and which brings all conflict and tension to a screeching halt.

Further, all of our writer-knowledge about increasing subtext and cutting any unnecessary details and dialogue goes out the window. We seem to believe that at the table, all of those things are suddenly acceptable. Characters can focus on picking out a piece of chicken, wiping their lips, asking each other about their day. Fine. It was fine. How was your day?…Well, I suppose mine was fine too…

Yawn. All is lost.

But there’s a way to write those dreaded meals so that we don’t lose readers. Not only that. If we write them the right way, we can further the plot, character arcs and theme to the same extent as we do in any other scene.

This Meal is Not a Meal

The root of the problem with the meal scene seems to be the meal itself. Unless there’s a significant reason to focus on the food or the act of eating, it shouldn’t feature as anything other than a scarcely-mentioned aspect of the setting.

In my upcoming novel, The Death of Clara Willenheim, I included three scenes in which the characters are eating. Yes, three! I hesitated. I debated. I doubted. But then I included them. Why?

Because they make sense. Not at first, they didn’t (one did, but not the other two), but now they do.

In my story, Clara is a prisoner in her family’s estate. She lives there with her mother and grandmother, her father having just died before the novel opens. Her everyday life would be one of monotony – time with her private tutor and her art instructor and family meals – except that she’s able to move through the hidden passages in the estate, along with the ghost of her long-dead aunt, uncovering the truth behind her family’s dark doings and the criminal underworld in Bavaria.

It makes sense that, for a prisoner who’s rarely allowed outside of her classroom or her personal suite of rooms, her interactions with the family would occur almost exclusively at meal times. But that doesn’t mean that they’d be anything other than boring if I hadn’t revised them based on the principle that the meal is not the meal.

Meaning: the point of the meal is never the meal. Her time at the table is almost entirely focused on something else. [And I eliminated all unnecessary small talk.] I’ll explain what that is as we move through the examples below.

The Meal as Scene

If you’ve studied the craft of writing, you’ve probably heard of the scene-sequel sequence. What that means is that each Scene is comprised of two parts: a scene – an action or a new incident in the character’s life – that’s followed by a sequel – the character’s reflection on or reaction to what just happened. Each of these can be a separate and complete scene, or a short or condensed portion of a scene.

Meals are more often a sequel opportunity, which we’ll get to next, but they can also be the initial scene (the action-packed) segment of the sequence.

[This isn’t the case in my book, so I’ll use a hypothetical example here.]

Let’s say your characters are struggling financially. This is putting a lot of pressure on their marriage. They sit down to a meal. It’s a sad affair. Perhaps you highlight this (briefly) through a reference to what they’re eating, which readers will either immediately associate with hardship (they’re eating Ramen noodles) or will compare with the characters’ prior luxurious dining and will see as such.

But that’s not really what matters. It’s just the backdrop.

Perhaps the wife is suddenly very servile, submissive, interested in her husband’s dinner experience. Her dialogue and demeanor is packed with subtext. She might present her changed response to him as an attempt to reignite their marriage, but you’ve written her dialogue so that readers instantly suspect that something is wrong. (Whether the husband does or not is another matter.)

Of course, that makes sense since she’s poisoning him in an attempt to gain his life insurance.

Not an original plot by any means, but you get what I’m doing here. The meal matters. It’s central to the plot, to the wife’s devolution as a character, and to the story’s theme. Maybe you’ve even prepared a twist: the husband knows and has a counter move prepared in which the wife dies instead.

That’s a meal scene that could be riveting. It could be suspenseful, chalk-full of subtext. And the Ramen noodles have nothing to do with it.

The Meal as Sequel

More often than not, a meal is a great way to give the readers a sequel to the character’s prior scene sequence.

If this scene-sequel talk is confusing, see K.M. Weiland’s articles explaining it: How to Structure Scenes in Your Story (Complete Series).

In my upcoming novel, two of my meal scenes are sequels. What that means is that something pivotal has just happened in the prior scene and the characters are reacting to it. In the first instance, the family has just experienced a terrible séance-gone-wrong. (Don’t they all?) None of the characters, save for the antagonist, wanted to participate in it in the first place. And now that it’s done and over, they’re still reeling from the outcome.

If this was a quick response on the part of the protagonist alone, I could have accomplished it as a one-sentence or one-paragraph reaction. (Sequels don’t have to be a full scene.) But I wanted to do more. By showing a full breakfast scene with all of the family and extended family members present, I reveal several things, including:

1. The other characters’ experiences at the séance calls into question the reliability of the protagonist, our narrator for much of the book.
2. I reveal some of the characters’ personalities (this scene is in the first quarter of the book in which introductions are crucial to setting the stage). For example, the mother’s skepticism is completely in line with her history as a scientist. This foreshadows her future actions in the story and how they will juxtapose with the supernatural elements.
3. The antagonist’s response is surprising for readers. Up until that point, they’ve seen her as a steely bulwark. Now they [should] wonder why she’s so shaken by what apparently happened. The truth behind her response is incredibly important to the future unraveling of the mystery.
4. The protagonist who actually witnessed the full extent of the séance and who was required to make a choice at that point, now has to solidify her decision. The ghost who appeared to her has made it clear that she will sacrifice greatly if she goes forward. But that if she doesn’t, her end will be disastrous…and soon. This is the point at which she makes a decision to participate in the conflict.

Hopefully you can see how important a full scene is when it comes to accomplishing this many things by several characters simultaneously. It requires interaction. And dialogue. A meal worked well as a backdrop as it forced them to remain in an environment in which that’s exactly what’s expected (while eating, of course).

A second meal I included came on the heels of a very unexpected (and disturbing to one character in specific) arrival of another character. The meal provided just the opportunity I needed to force them all back into an interaction that brought numerous things to the surface. (I’ll leave it at that and let you discover it when you read the book!)

The Meal as Mood

The meal can also exist simply to set the tone for something more important. This will most likely dictate a shorter scene.

In my case, I have another quasi-breakfast scene. It falls early in the book, at the beginning of a scene in which the family inters the body of Clara’s father. After a terrible premonition, Clara arrives in the dining room where the family and guests are milling around waiting for the priest. No one is really eating much of anything as they wait in awkward silence for an event that will end on a catastrophic note.

As a plot component, it makes sense that they would be at breakfast since the internment is due to commence afterwards. But that wasn’t necessary. I could have held the event at any time of the day. However, I chose breakfast because watching Clara’s grandmother smear her eggs around the plate, and her Uncle Horst chain smoking, and her Aunt Lotte neglecting her unfinished pastry slowly builds the mood of the scene.

It’s ominous. The preceding dream reference foreshadowed something terrible. The mood at breakfast allows that to hang over the readers, albeit not for too long. And outside the window, “…the crooked form of a raven lying on the gravel path, its wing bent back from its body, one beady eye fixed on her,” increases Clara’s [and the readers’] sense of dread.

In this case, the breakfast works, but I kept it very brief – about 200 words or so – as it’s merely meant to set the mood. Anything longer would have been overkill. I would have risked losing readers in a sea of melodrama. But as part of a larger, very dramatic scene, it increases the tension.

Conclusion

All this to say that when we bring our characters to the table, we can’t lose sight of the rules we follow in any other part of the novel. The table scene has to have a very strong purpose. It must further the plot, provide more insight into the characters’ personalities and growth, or (as succinctly as possible) set the tone within a larger context.

Any dialogue that isn’t advancing these things and any actions or setting descriptions that aren’t laden with subtext will usually need to go. Make your dinner scene(s) deeply impactful or risk losing your readers.

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That Impacts Readers the Right Way

As many of you know, I’m about twenty minutes (ok… maybe a week) from sending my manuscript off to the editor. I’ve written and [extensively] rewritten it and am in draft number six, right around the 90% point. This is smack dab in the middle of the story’s showdown. It’s rolling at full speed straight into the end of the story (and has been since the 75% mark). But there’s one scene I’m agonizing about. A death scene. I’m asking myself if it’s all that it could and should be. To that end, I’ve been revisiting all the wisdom I can find about how to write a death scene.

If you’ve ever written a very emotionally-charged scene, you probably understand why I’m hesitant to move on without a meticulous examination of this event. When it comes to emotional scenes, it’s very hard to get it right. Too much focus on the event and it loses its impact. Too little and readers gloss over it. Too much of an emphasis on the tragedy and the character’s response to it and it reeks of melodrama. Too little and the character comes across as cold and heartless.

Getting it right is hard.

[I love non-writers who think we’re just playing. Let’s see them try to write a book and do it well!]

So how do we write such a significant moment in the character’s life without over- or under-doing it?

The Obvious

Lots of websites will highlight the obvious things such as:

• Readers should care about the character who dies
• The protagonist and the character-to-die should have a good relationship so that readers can relate to the sense of loss she’s feeling
• Or the protagonist and the character-to-die should have a terrible relationship so that readers feel vindicated and/or relieved when the character dies
• Writers shouldn’t kill characters merely for shock value
• The character’s death should serve a purpose in the plot
• The death should tie into the story’s theme, illustrating or supporting the moral lesson from another angle.
• The death should happen at the right point in the story (the point at which it furthers the plot, character, and theme or acts as an end cap to that advancement.)

But what about other situations such those in which the protagonist and the character-to-die had a complex relationship – both good and bad? And how do we actually write the scene? Should we just stick to the actual events? Should we highlight the protagonist’s internal response? Should we do something else entirely?

Perspective

Part of the answer depends on the perspective of the scene. And there’s more than one. Even if the scene only includes your protagonist (or another character) and the character-to-die, the scene can be written from either angle. An example of the unexpected comes from Stephen King’s book Doctor Sleep. In this passage, the young boy Danny from The Shining has grown up and still has his ability to look into and sense the paranormal. He’s sitting with a man, Charlie, who is dying.

Charlie has lived a long and happy life. As he’s dying, his mind plays back over all of the images of joy and fulfillment that he experienced in his life. Dan is able to see these due to his gift, so while the story is told from Dan’s perspective, this scene is really from the perspective of Charlie, the dying man. Notice some of the things King includes:

[Dan] saw Charlie’s twin sons at four, on swings. He saw Charlie’s wife pulling down a shade in the bedroom, wearing nothing but the slip of Belgian lace he’d bought her for their first anniversary…He smelled bacon and heard Frank Sinatra singing “Come Fly with Me” from a cracked Motorola radio sitting on a worktable littered with tools…He tasted blueberries and gutted a deer and fished in some distant lake whose surface was dappled by steady autumn rain. He was sixty, dancing with his wife in the American Legion hall.

Stephen King

This scene is powerful and brilliant because it doesn’t focus on Charlie’s death. It focuses on his life. Death scenes can be powerful in either case, but since this is a scene from Charlie’s perspective and Charlie is greeting death from a resigned point of view that basks in all that was better about life, it makes sense for his memories to take center stage.

Readers feel a poignant beauty in the summation of all that Charlie experienced. We feel the weight of his death by seeing all the beauty that his life entailed and, by extension, what he loses as he passes away.

Purpose of the Death

It’s essential in determining how to write the death scene that we ask ourselves what readers should feel beyond just the surface answers – sad, angry, free? How should they view the character’s death? Is it a tragic loss that shouldn’t have happened (Romeo and Juliet or Pet Cemetery)? Is it a sad relief after a long battle with difficulty and suffering (The Fault in Our Stars or Frodo in Lord of the Rings)? Is it celebratory relief such as the death of a terrible antagonist (Dracula or Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca)? Or is it complicated?

Since we can’t look at every one of these, let’s look at the last one since it’s the one I’m faced with at the moment. Sometimes the character’s death is tragic and yet the character who dies had a complex relationship with the protagonist. Clearly, the perspective of the death will be complex as well.

Since I don’t want to give away what happens in my book, let’s look at a complicated death from the Lord of the Rings movies: the death of Boromir in The Fellowship of the Ring.

Minor plot spoilers ahead!

Boromir is a tricky character. He’s what we would call morally gray. In many ways he comes across as greedy and self-serving and yet the audience can relate to him. He’s driven to please his very cruel and demanding father and to protect his people. In addition, Tolkien has already established that the ring is nearly irresistible, especially to men, so it’s no surprise that Boromir isn’t strong enough to avoid its siren call. Thus his desire to take the ring from Frodo is something viewers can empathize with though, of course, we know he shouldn’t do it.

Long-story short: Boromir struggles to avoid taking the ring from Frodo and, near the end of his story, almost fails in a big way, and doesn’t only because of Frodo’s ability to outwit him. But then he feels the weight of his shame and ultimately sacrifices himself to protect Frodo from the enemy and allow him to escape.

The point of Boromir’s death is manifold:

• He serves as a warning of the ring’s power
• He demonstrates the incredibly gracious natures of both Frodo and Aragorn
• He’s a case study for many characters who might also struggle to accept a king’s authority over them

His death, though acting as a capstone for all of these, primarily demonstrates the last point. In the end, he finally acknowledges Aragorn as “my brother…my captain…my king.” Those are his dying words. Boromir’s story is one of redemption.

Silence: Is it Golden?

In Boromir’s case, it’s essential to the story that he say something at the point of his death. The audience sees his faithful defense of Frodo in his last act, but we don’t see that he has overcome his pride and submitted to the king until we hear his final words.

That’s not the case in every story though. Sometimes, the point of the death is simply to serve as a warning. Sometimes it’s to highlight a parallel experience or a deficient character trait in the protagonist. Sometimes it’s to sever the protagonist from a mentor or helper so that he has to face the ultimate battle alone, using the skills that he has [hopefully] built throughout the story.

Notice that in King’s example above, Charlie says nothing. [He says a little in the context of the scene, but the death moment is almost strictly images.] His memories give readers more of a sense of the beauty of his life and the loss of his death than any words would.

In Boromir’s case, words were essential.

Notice that in neither case does the author (or screenwriter) focus on the reaction of the living characters. No excessive sobbing. No melodrama. Why? Because readers don’t feel the weight of the death scene because your character is crying. They feel it [if they do] because they’ve entered into the moment and are experiencing the importance of the event for themselves.

That’s not to say that the protagonist should sit there mute and emotionally unaffected. Unless that’s what you want to say for one reason or another. The protagonist can and usually should react, but the focus generally shouldn’t be on the character’s emotions.

Conclusion

Without telling you anything [yet!], I know how my scene needs to change. I had already tweaked it quite a bit in prior drafts, but something about it still bothered me. And I know what that is now. Why? Because I know what the purpose of the character’s death is and I know what it needs to accomplish in my protagonist.

She needs to come away with the final pieces to the lesson that she’s been learning throughout the story. In this other character’s death, she’ll see the kind of outcome she would suffer if she – like the character who dies – doesn’t take the high road.

Words can be spoken…but don’t need to be. I can show all of this lesson coming together in her mind in the midst of this tragedy simply by showing the protagonist’s memories of her relationship with this character and all that it wasn’t…but should have been. Particularly through the lens of what the character-to-die has done wrong.

This article was tough. It’s a HUGE concept and I came away from studying for and writing it with the sense that I could write an entire book on this subject alone. But I hope this gets your mind working and helps you move forward in your writing journey. Let me know if you’ve written difficult emotional scenes in the past and what method made the event impactful for your readers!

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