Charlotte Lesemann

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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Wisdom Gleaned from Zen in the Art of Writing

Since I’m nearing the end of the book, I thought I’d share some of his insights that have encouraged me or persuaded me to alter my writing habits.

Write Only What You Either Love or Hate

By the time many people are fourteen or fifteen, they have been divested of their loves, their ancient and intuitive tastes, one by one, until when they reach maturity there is no fun left, no zest, no gusto, no flavor.

p. 37

As you may have guessed from the title of his book, joy permeates everything he has to say about writing. It should be fun. Perhaps the sixth draft might not be as fun, but the initial draft, and the overall love for storytelling, definitely should be. If it isn’t fun, you shouldn’t be writing.

…if you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. It means you are so busy keeping one eye on the commercial market, or one ear peeled for the avant-garde coterie, that you are not being yourself.

p. 2

His point is that in everything you write, you should be pursuing things that are of supreme interest to you. He talks about finding your greatest loves, or the things and experiences that meant the most to you. Or your greatest fears and hates. Give those things to your character. Give him that one thing (or one of them) that you want the most and send him running. Then follow after him, writing down his story.

One of the exercises Bradbury employed to find the things that sparked his interest the most was to keep a notebook in which he wrote down nouns. Just nouns. Words that filled him with a sense of wonder or love or fear or hatred. Anything that evoked in him a strong emotional reaction.

Words like LAKE, NIGHT, RAVINE, NIGHT TRAIN, RAVINE, CRICKETS, CARNIVAL, CAROUSEL.

If you’ve read much Bradbury, you can probably see where each of these words led. He would then examine the word to see what it meant to him. Or how multiple words fit together. More often than not, out came a story – either a short story or a novel.

What would your words be?

Giving Your Writing Wings

Bradbury speaks much about how to fuel your inspiration. In one section he discusses accessing memories and the fact that our senses perceive much more than we think they do. Given time to breathe, those memories can be a wonderful source of material for us.

In another section, he talks about keeping and feeding your muse. Because a muse (our inspiration) is a tricky thing. Gaze at it too long or with too much focus and she runs. Don’t look at it at all and she’s inaccessible for our writing needs. Keeping that balance is the key to having a wealth of inspiration to access and the tools with which to apply it.

Feeding the Muse

The Feeding of the Muse then…seems to me to be the continual running after loves, the checking of these loves against one’s present and future needs, the moving on from simple textures to more complex ones, from naïve ones to more informed ones, nonintellectual to intellectual ones.

P. 30

What he’s getting at here transcends writing. It’s a holistic life spent seeking after experiences and things that one truly loves with no thought for what you should like, or what others will think about the thing you treasure.

He talked about his childhood love for Buck Rogers. Bradbury collected the comic strips…until his friends mocked him for it. In response, Bradbury cut up all of them and threw them away. But he realized afterwards that he felt as if a part of him had died. Something he treasured had been devalued and stripped away. When he came to his senses, he went back to collecting Buck Rogers comics. And he found different friends, true ones.

He also talks about surrounding ourselves with different types of writing and other forms of art – from poetry to theater; to reading science fiction if we write thrillers, or vice versa. All of these things feed our muse by filling our soul with beautiful things that we love and which inspire us.

Keeping the Muse

Once we have this deep (and growing) well of inspiration, we have to be able to use it in our writing. I would summarize his points in three suggestions, which overlap to a significant extent:

1. Train yourself enough so that grammar and story structure are intuitive.
2. Read and observe everything critically
3. Do repetitious writing exercises.

Starting in Mr. Electro’s year, I wrote a thousand words a day. For ten years I wrote at least one short story a week, somehow guessing that a day would finally come when I truly got out of the way and let it happen.

P. 46

The “it” that he let happen is the quality story. Bradbury understood that, in writing, there’s no substitute for an intuition that’s developed from hundreds and thousands of hours of practice. In some ways this is surprising because most of us would classify Bradbury as a pantser – one who writes by the seat of his pants.

But I suspect that the truth behind most pantsers is that rather than having an innate understanding of story structure, pacing, character development, etc., they’ve spent so much time reading critically and practicing the craft that they’ve developed one.

Bradbury points out that you need this intuition if you’re ever to write a really good story. Otherwise, the outcome will be stilted, forced, or pretentious.

…have you trained well enough so you can say what you want to say without getting hamstrung? Have you written enough so that you are relaxed and can allow the truth to get out without being ruined by self-conscious posturings or changed by a desire to become rich?

P. 32

To fuel our inspiration, we have to fill our lives with things of beauty – people and experiences that we love, we have to observe and read as much and as critically as we can, and we have to train ourselves so that our writing flows easily with no need to focus on structure or the underpinnings of how to write – pacing, plot points, character growth, etc.

Write [the 1st Draft] As Fast As You Can

At that point you can write your first draft. To produce the best work possible, Bradbury says that you should write as fast as you can.

The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are.

P. 7

This goes hand-in-hand with the preceding quote. Once we have a deep intuition of how to write, the story can flow out of us unencumbered by the rigid requirements of storytelling that, though necessary, would impede the very best ideas if we have to focus on them.

Before [learning to write effortlessly], like every beginner, I thought you could beat, pummel, and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course, any decent idea folds up its paws, turns on its back, fixes its eyes on eternity, and dies.

P. 59

There’s some of Bradbury’s characteristic charm – his joie de vivre and his effortless way with metaphor. But it’s also something many of us forget. We have to let a story have its own way. It has to demand to be told or it will never be of any value.

That’s not to say that Bradbury (or we) simply tear the page from the typewriter and ship it out the door at that point. No. He had a habit of writing approximately six drafts of his short stories – one each day from Monday through Saturday – until shipping the finished draft out the door. That’s a lot of rewriting. But all of it started with a fantastic idea that came from his truest loves or hates, and which, given his years of training, fell onto the page as a solid foundation.

Conclusion

It’s inspiring and encouraging to me to be reminded that even those writers who seem to write effortlessly, by the seat of their pants, are only able to do so because they have spent countless hours refining their abilities and their knowledge of the craft. And that, after all, writing should be about joy. It should be something that we treasure and love to practice.

Hopefully you found some inspiration here, as I did! There’s more to the book, but those are just a few pointers to encourage you and help you grow as a writer.

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Happy Memorial Day! If you’re like me, you grew up on Scholastic book magazines: that time of the school year when the teacher passed out that beloved newspaper-like magazine chalk full of tiny photos and descriptions of books for young readers. I took it home and poured over every option, selecting all of my favorites. Since then, the summer season has evoked in me a feeling of lazy days lying beside a lake with a bag of fireballs and a pile of books. In that spirit, here are ten books for your 2023 summer Gothic reading list. Happy reading!

Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin

Bag of Bones by Stephen King

The Deathless Girls by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Summer of Night by Dan Simmons

My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

The Toll by Cherie Priest

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

Daughters of the Lake by Wendy Webb

In the Night Wood by Dale Bailey

A Review of Let the Right One In

I loved this book. And I hated this book. If you know much about Sweden, and Swedish writing, you know two things: there’s very little crime in Sweden; and the region puts out a disproportionate number of crime writers. My take on this is that for a Scandinavian audience (my paternal grandfather is from Norway), crime writing is especially shocking. There’s something tantalizing about reading a book that’s dangerously threatening while living in a place in which such a thing is unlikely to ever occur. It’s safe to relish the danger.

All that to say that this is a very gritty book, which is what I hated about it. Lindqvist’s portrayal of crime and what man is willing to do is especially dark, at times quite disturbing, and, overall, unsettling. However, the writing is extremely captivating. The pace is quick. The character sketches are deep. It’s a well-written book.

I won’t give away any plot spoilers, but I’ll give you a taste of what the author has to say throughout the story.

The book features a twelve-year-old boy, Oskar, who’s the victim of several schoolyard bullies. Simultaneously, his suburb of Stockholm is shaken by the news of a grisly murder. In response to both of these, readers see some of Oskar’s latent violent tendencies. Much of Oskar’s story centers on the anger and shame that he feels because of the abuse he suffers. He’s ripe for an external influence – positive or negative.

Enter Eli, a young girl whom Oskar meets in the dark of his housing development’s snowy courtyard. She only comes out at night. She speaks in strange ways, has no knowledge of commonly understood cultural references, and demonstrates unnatural strength and dexterity.

This is a vampire novel, after all.

[The story also follows the journey of several local adults who struggle to navigate the world of personal responsibility and relationships.]

Hearkening back to Dracula, Eli appears to be an immigrant from an eastern European country. However, rather than painting her as a threat to Sweden, Lindqvist crafts Eli’s story as one of tragedy and isolation. Readers sympathize with her and see in her something of a savior for Oskar – a friend, sympathizer, and encourager. It’s Eli who builds in Oskar the courage to face his fears.

Mixed in with this is a very contemporary portrayal of the depressing, homogeneity of modern urban development, the underworld of pedophilia and even a nod to transgenderism.

And yet, this is still a vampire novel.

Lindqvist incorporates many of the vampire legends, especially the superstition that vampires cannot enter a residence without being invited. After all, in a book in which the author focuses heavily on community, particularly those bonds that see us and love us for who we are versus manufactured ones that leave us hollow and empty, that is the crux of the matter: that we let the right one in.

In summary, this is a gritty book, one that paints an unvarnished picture of the darker elements of humanity and the things that we might like to ignore. But it’s a well-written and thoughtful story. And in case you’re wondering, yes I would classify it as a Gothic novel. Lindqvist deftly uses Eli’s character to bring several intangible themes to light. But I’ll leave those to you to discover!

If you like gritty books that take a harsh look at reality, check this one out.

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And How to Apply Them to Your Writing

Welcome back to our discussion about creating powerful settings. If you missed the first post in which I talked about how to write better setting descriptions, you can find it here. In this post, we’ll look at some settings that have lived on in readers’ memories long past the point at which they finished the book. Whether it’s a whole-book setting, or an individual scene. In each of these, we’ll talk about why the setting worked so effectively for that story. This will give us a better sense for how we can also create powerful settings that our readers will remember as some of the most memorable Gothic settings of all time.

Note: Though we’re examining Gothic writing in this post, everything we talk about will translate to other genres as well.

Whole Book Settings

The first category we’ll examine includes novels in which the entire book’s setting is overwhelmingly powerful. These probably won’t surprise you, but we’ll talk about each of these and why they play the role that they do.

Interview with the Vampire

One of Anne Rice’s greatest strengths was her ability to craft settings that immersed readers in her books’ time and place. This was one of the first things that stood out to me when I first picked up Interview with the Vampire. Alongside Louis’s angst, Lestat’s desperate search for community and history, and Claudia’s despair stands New Orleans. It surprised me at first – a southern town surrounded by swamps and bayous. Now it just makes sense.

For Louis, this town parallels his murky sense of his new identity as a vampire. The atmosphere of festering waters and sweltering heat reflects his new life – surrounded by those who, like him, live as a plague on mankind. A sickness that slinks through the dark alleys of the night, lying in wait to destroy or ensnare.

But in the midst of this, Rice portrays the lush opulence, the heady floral-scented air of the city in that era (the late 1700s, early 1800s) as something overwhelmingly enticing. It is the vampirism itself that neither Louis nor his readers can resist: that promise of everlasting health, vitality, comfort, and access to all of the best things of life…at least according to Rice’s presentation of the vampiric lifestyle.

New Orleans imbues the book with all of the rich color and depth that most locations would struggle to provide.

Wuthering Heights

Across the pond, we see a similar power in the moors of Yorkshire in Northern England. One of the most obvious elements in Emily Brontë’s classic novel is the restless spirit of both Heathcliff and Catherine. Throughout the early portion of the book, Heathcliff acts on his desperate need to prove himself and to rise above his sense of inferiority and his circumstances. Later he fights against those who oppressed him as a child and who have the things that he wanted and now wants for himself.

Catherine has a willful, rebellious spirit that finds a home in Heathcliff. Even her marriage to Edgar Linton is nothing more than a selfish desire to raise herself to a better situation. From early childhood on, she’s haughty, disobedient, and bossy. No matter her situation, she is unhappy. She wearies of her life at Wuthering Heights with her brother’s overbearing nature and Joseph’s self-righteous oversight of her. Later she tires of her dull life as Edgar’s wife and wants to be back in her childhood days of freedom with Heathcliff.

It isn’t surprising that Brontë set these characters amongst the wuthering heights of the moors. “Wuthering,” indicates a place that is characterized by strong winds. This reflects the restless unhappiness of the characters in the story. Their circumstances assail them with constant challenges and they themselves are a consistent force against one another. Their setting is as wuthering as they are.

Even so, I can’t imagine this book without the windswept, rocky barrenness of the moors. They embody a poetic nature that mirrors the story so perfectly that the scene, plot and characters are one.

Fevre Dream

Long before Game of Thrones, there was Fevre Dream. As far as I know, this is George R.R. Martin’s only vampire novel. As you would expect, it’s immersive and filled with colorful characters. The story is set on the Mississippi river in the mid-1800s – the days of the steamboat trade. Some of the book takes place in downtown New Orleans and on a nearby plantation. However, the bulk of the story, and its central focus is the river.

Martin brings the Mississippi river to life with all of the various types of cargo and passengers that traversed her, along with the necessary means of doing so: the wood yard businesses along the shore that supplied the fuel to run the boats. He portrays the frequent comparisons in the business between older and newer boats, slower and faster ones, those built simply for [or retired to be used strictly for] cargo versus the luxurious boats that the wealthy chose for transportation.

If those were the only things, the setting – the river – wouldn’t necessarily play anything more than a utilitarian role. But it does.

Martin weaves the river throughout the story as if she herself is a character. It helps that, though the main character, a steamboat captain, Abner Marsh, can travel by day, the vampires can only come out at night. [Doing so by day is possible but comes with the legendary consequences.]

Thus we see the river as if it is a black ribbon of a highway connecting all of the prominent towns along her banks. Her darkness hides dangerous sawyers that can tear up the hulls of the boat and constantly shifting sandbars that would beach all but the smallest vessels. Things that even the best captain would struggle to see by daylight and which are all the more obscure by night. But most of all, she acts as a connecting thread between the history of human and vampire – two races, as Martin envisions them, that have coexisted since the dawn of man.

As Marsh traverses the river, his constant exploration of the river (particularly the southern section with which he is less familiar) mirrors his journey into the history of the vampire race. And his struggle with the river parallels his war against those who threaten humanity. Martin’s use of the river is subtle but masterful as he ties together the plot, character, and theme through his use of setting.

Single Scene Settings

There are also books in which the overall setting may or may not be as memorable as a given scene. I’ve chosen a couple of Gothic stories in which the overall setting is less than memorable, but within which a given scene is strikingly powerful. We’ll look at why this is the case for each of these.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

In this strange story of duality, an upstanding man, Dr. Jekyll, consistently battles with his dark, hidden nature, Mr. Hyde. Robert Louis Stevenson uses a chemical concoction as a Gothic trope that symbolizes Jekyll’s desire and ability to return to himself each day after indulging his dark proclivities by night. As you might expect, its potency wanes as the story progresses and he is compelled to double his dose and increase the frequency with which he takes it. This demonstrates Stevenson’s theme: that our dark side will always, in the end, win out over any goodness we might possess.

Or course, this is most strongly exemplified in a scene towards the end of Jekyll’s story in which he awakens unexpectedly, not as Dr. Jekyll, but as Mr. Hyde. This is when he realizes that his potion has lost something of its efficacy. Or his body requires more than it used to. The only remedy is to immediately increase his dosage, but the potion is in his laboratory, on the other side of the house. With servants moving from room to room, he doesn’t dare show himself as Mr. Hyde as they would think him an intruder. Simultaneously, he can’t bear the fact that his dark nature is now visible in the light of day.

He concocts a plan to access the potion, but that isn’t what makes this scene so memorable. Rather, it’s the horror of his condition – that what he embraced and fed by the darkness of night is so vile and shameful when he sees it by day. This scene is powerful because it nails the theme. Hyde is trapped in his bedroom – symbolic of the self that he indulges by night – and can no longer escape. His laboratory – symbolic of his righteous, upstanding public persona as Dr. Jekyll – lies so far from his reach that it may as well not exist.

Though he finds a workaround – temporarily – the reader feels the theme so deeply that it would be impossible to miss it.

The Turn of the Screw

In another example, The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, a governess takes over the care of two orphaned children who reside at their uncle’s country estate. It isn’t long before she discovers that all is not well with the two youths. Just prior to her arrival, Miles has been expelled from his school for violence against another child. The new governess also learns that the former governess, Miss Jessel, had had an affair with the former valet, Peter Quint. Subsequently, both had died suspiciously.

This novella deals with the loss of innocence and the role that adults play in this – either willingly or unintentionally. [If you want to know more, I wrote a book review of this one. Find it here.]

Thus, it’s fitting that the most memorable scene in this story is the one in which the young girl, Flora, goes missing. The new governess searches for her everywhere and finally finds her by the lake. From a distance, she sees that the girl is talking with the ghost of Miss Jessel, but when she arrives, the ghost is gone. Further, the girl lies and says that she wasn’t with the woman.

On the surface, this sounds somewhat innocuous, but within the context of James’s brilliant storytelling, it’s chilling. Readers instantly understand something that they had missed before: the children are not innocent. They were willing participants in the sexual activities between Quint and Jessel and are tainted by the abuse they suffered. But rather than traumatized, they have become evil and manipulative.

The setting of this scene, far from the house, within the trees, beside the lake, sets the scene beautifully. Here there is no shelter. No four walls to protect either the children or the governess. Instead, there are the trees that obscure her view of the truth and the lake that hides the secrets of the past. This scene has as much power as it does because the setting leaves readers feeling that lack of safety, that lack of sight, and the inability to plumb the depths of what is wrong with the two children.

Conclusion

As you can see from the whole-book settings that we discussed, those that are the most memorable are those that symbolize and parallel the entire story: plot, character, and theme. The authors have taken a setting – whether it’s the sweltering, heady fragrance of the deep south, the chill isolation of the northern moors, or the long, twisting route of the Mississippi river – and they have used that setting not just to advance the plot, but more importantly, to portray the state of the characters and the story’s theme.

Single scenes do this on a smaller scale, but they still accomplish all of the above: using the setting to advance the plot and to symbolize the character’s growth or devolution, and the story’s theme. Notice that the two scenes we examined are both pivotal moments in which the author is putting forth the theme in its richest, most tangible sense. This may or may not be the climactic point. [It isn’t for The Turn of the Screw.] However, this is the point in the story at which the theme is communicated most profoundly. They also show us most clearly who the characters truly are.

That’s the key to powerful settings. Authors who use them well, use them to say something in such a way that readers have a visceral response to the story. We can accomplish this in our writing by using our settings wisely!

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