Charlotte Lesemann

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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While Building Up Your Weaknesses

As you might know, last week I started a series on how to be a better writer. This, of course, omits the most obvious method: writing frequently. And the second most: reading good quality writing. But not entirely. I started with how to improve our setting descriptions and in the upcoming weeks we will move on to dialogue, character depth and growth, etc. However, this week I want to stop and talk about something that I wasn’t able to address in the initial post, and which deserves its own discussion: how to magnify your writing strengths while you’re building up your weaknesses.

This is crucial because if we’re honest with ourselves, we know that we’re not [yet] the writers that we want to be. We have author heroes who wow us with their witty dialogue, or their deeply-immersive historical depictions, or their intensely evocative emotional journeys. And we would like our writing to grow in various ways.

But that’s not to say that we aren’t stronger in some areas already. Those are the areas you want to highlight and magnify as you’re studying and refining your craft. But how can you do that?

That’s a question I’ve asked myself and still consider on a regular basis. These are the answers I’ve discovered and which will hopefully help you as well!

Step 1: Self-Awareness

Part I – How Do You Write?

The first step requires a lot of honesty. What do you do well? Where are you weaker? You might be naturally self-aware and already know the answer to this. But it’s always good to have feedback. Join writing groups, attend writing conferences or retreats, beta read for others and request beta reading from them. And in each of these instances, ask people for the hard truth – what is your strongest area and what is your weakest?

Another resource is the following link that a number of writers were recently passing around online: https://www.codingrobots.com/iwl/

It’s a quick and easy tool. You copy and paste a section of your writing into the box and click “Analyze.”

The tool will compare your writing to that of different authors and will tell you which famous writer’s style is the most like your own. From the different responses that people were giving, it seemed like the software used writing samples from a LOT of different authors for the comparisons.

You can do this for multiple sections of your writing – from the same, or different works – to assess whether your style is consistent, or if you have a mix of styles. I used the first chapter (2,700+ words) from my current manuscript. The software said that my style is most like the writing of Ray Bradbury.

Part II – Qualifying Your Style

That alone might not help you…but other sites which discuss that author’s style will. For example, the following site had a wonderful breakdown of a number of writers, of which, one of them is Ray Bradbury:

https://literarydevices.net/writing-styles/

If you look at the description of Bradbury’s style, you can see an example of things that might be different from writer to writer. Elements such as a heavier or lighter use of metaphor, rhythm, sentence structure, and types of themes.

Literary Writing Style of Ray Bradbury

This sort of analysis should point you towards your strength(s). In my case, I agree that, like Bradbury, I am very cautious and intentional in my word choice; I tend to write in figurative ways, using metaphors and highly symbolic language; and I have a rhythm to my writing that I see reflected in some of his.

Keep in mind that Bradbury is one of my favorite writers and I am nowhere near his ability level yet, but it isn’t surprising that I gravitate towards his writing. It resonates with me. It mirrors something in my own voice that I can understand and appreciate. My writing, given more time and practice, could grow into a similar version of his style. Not his exactly, but my own version of it.

What this tells me is that I could benefit by:

1. Studying Bradbury’s writing more critically and practicing using some of the methods he used in order to accomplish things that I’m also seeking to do in my own writing.
2. Focusing my current writing on the things I do best: the use of figurative and symbolic language, etc.

Part III – Marrying That to Your Personality

Another tool in our self-assessment is our own personality. I’m partial to the Myers-Briggs personality profile. Here’s a very comprehensive test if you haven’t take the test before:

https://www.personalityhacker.com/genius-personality-test/

As you learn about your personality (and other personalities), you’ll begin to see where you excel… and where you don’t. I’ve been so interested in this for so long that I can spot a number of different personalities just by reading portions of their writing. Especially other introverts like myself.

For example, when I see a section of writing with deep character introspection and profound themes, I usually guess that I’m looking at an INFP’s writing. They’re so in tune with people and what’s true about each person, along with what they believe – what is right and what is wrong. It’s not surprising that this comes out on the page. But they often struggle to organize their thoughts. So a complex plot line will be harder for this personality to pull off until they’re a more seasoned writer. (A mature INFP writer though is a thing to behold!!)

In contrast, if I see a rich fantasy landscape with lots of nuance and color mixed with deep character emotion, I’m usually looking at the writing of an INFJ. They have the mind to write Fantasy with all of that rich, detailed world-building. It’s in their bones. I know this because an INFJ is very intuitive – seeing the underlying meaning and patterns across countless data points – very in touch with the feelings of others, and very organized. (Others may also write Fantasy well, but may have a slightly different feel to their work.)

Step 2: Put It All Together

Then we need to apply this self-awareness in our writing.

I’ll use myself as an example. I’m an INTJ. If you know much about personalities, you know that an INTJ is (like the INFJ) very intuitive. I also have a high-degree of pattern recognition. INTJs are very good at more complex plots. We can handle a lot of moving pieces and keep them all in order. Of course, this can still be challenging since I just push myself much harder and build more complex stories than a different personality might choose.

For me, the obvious answer is to focus on plot complexity with all of the figurative language that I love. For now. That doesn’t have to mean any one genre, but it will likely exclude some. A lot of literary fiction – brilliant though it tends to be – is focused more on character and theme and less on plot. These are better left to some of my INFP writer friends. Mysteries however, can be very complex. As can Fantasy or Science Fiction.

Hopefully what you’re seeing is that, if I want to write literary fiction that’s a great goal and I can work towards it. But in the short-term, I’m probably not going to see the results I want to see if that’s where I’m focusing my energy. It doesn’t magnify my natural strengths.

The same could be true if I long to be a screenwriter but I’m not as strong in dialogue as I am in thematic symbolism. If that were my goal, I would focus my publishable writing on those types of stories that use the rich themes I love. Meanwhile, I would practice writing shorter side pieces that build up my dialogue.

[I’m not saying that dialogue isn’t always important in writing. Just that it plays a more dominant role in some writing than in others. Even outside of screenwriting, if you read carefully, you’ll notice that some writers use a lot less dialogue than others and still tell a wonderful story.]

On the other hand, INTJs are not as strong in extroverting emotion. Thus, that is one of the things I constantly work on. I read craft books about creating an emotional journey for readers. I practice this in shorter pieces for writing contests. I work on it in focused segments of my current manuscript, etc.

It’s something I’m highly aware of and am working on, but it’s not the central component of my work. I’m not going to write a story about a young mother who loses her child in a horrific accident and has to overcome her bitterness and forgive those who bear the guilt of her child’s death. It wouldn’t come off as well as it should. But I might have a side story about someone who suffers a loss in the midst of a very complex Gothic mystery.

Conclusion

That’s the key. We each have strengths and weaknesses as writers. And we’re each trying to improve these as we grow. But the best way to do so is to give ourselves the room to magnify the things that come most naturally to us while we’re building up the areas of our writing that are more challenging for us.

This gives our readers the best of our writing ability today, while still moving towards the goals that we have for our writing in the future.

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The Art of Reading with a Critical Eye

Like most of the posts I write, this one stemmed from a subject that interested me, about which I wanted to learn more. As a writer, I’m always looking to improve my skills. I can see where I’m doing well today, but I can also see ways in which my author-heroes have more experience and ability. Of course, the most obvious way to improve is to just write on a regular basis – daily if possible. We all know that already, so I won’t even discuss it in the rest of the post. But beyond that, how do we actively work to improve certain aspects of our writing? How can we apply ourselves so that our seventh book is profoundly better than our second? This post is the first in a series. In this one, we’ll look at how to write better setting descriptions.

Assess Your Abilities

Step one is to be real with yourself about what needs to change in your writing. That can be hard to know, especially when we’re freshmen writers, when we don’t have twenty novels under our belt. And I’m right there with you!

The first way to go about this is with your own [hopefully critical] eye. Set aside your glee about your storytelling and all of the hopes you have for it in the future. Stand back. Read sections of what you write and be real with yourself. Is your dialogue stilted? Are your settings really immersive, or are the descriptions more simplistic? Do your characters feel alive – so much so that they jump off the page – or are they somewhat predictable? Is your story emotionally evocative, or are you just showing readers what the characters are feeling?

Where are you strong(er)? Where are you weak(er)?

If you struggle to do this, as most of us probably do, one way to have a better sense for your strengths and weaknesses is to ask for it. Attend writer workshops, conferences, or online forums. Find writer friends, even if they don’t live near you. Exchange portions of your work. Let them know that you want the hard critique, the one that will help you to grow. And then accept it for what it is: one person’s assessment. Possibly an incorrect one, but also very possibly, something that will take your writing to the next level.

Another way to find help is to read very good quality writing, especially in your own genre, and to examine different elements of it with a critical eye. Your own eye. This is a practiced skill. In this post we’ll talk about how to do this with respect to setting descriptions. In subsequent ones, we’ll look at other areas and how to assess our writing for weaknesses.

Example #1: Lyrical & Rich

The following example is from the first couple of pages in a Fantasy novel, Daughter of the Forest, by Juliet Marillier.

“The swans are coming,” said Finbar at last. He sat up slowly to rest his chin on raised knees. “They’re coming tonight.”

Behind him, a breeze stirred the branches of oak and elm, ash and elder, and scattered a drift of leaves, gold and bronze and brown. The lake lay in a circle of tree-clothed hills, sheltered as if in a great chalice.

“How can you know that?” queried Padriac. “How can you be so sure? It could be tomorrow, or the day after. Or they could go to some other place. You’re always so sure.”

I don’t remember Finbar answering, but later that day, as dusk was falling, he took me back to the lakeshore. In the half light over the water, we saw the swans come home. The last low traces of sun caught a white movement in the darkening sky. Then they were near enough for us to see the pattern of their flight, the orderly formation descending through the cool air as the light faded. The rush of wings, the vibration of the air. The final glide to the water, the silvery flashing as it parted to receive them. As they landed, the sound was like my name, over and over: Sorcha, Sorcha. My hand crept into Finbar’s; we stood immobile until it was dark, and then my brother took me home.

Daughter of the forest, pp 1-2

Assess the Author’s Execution

This book is one that I love. It speaks to me. I’m fully immersed in the setting, the world that she created. That said, it might not speak to you, so keep in mind that the steps I’m outlining here can be applied to whatever writing you find to be beautiful.

When I look at this passage, what I don’t see is a lot of five dollar words. Marillier’s descriptions use simple, everyday language. The one unique word here, chalice, lends a sense of the time and place to the story, as the novel is set in early medieval Ireland – a time of Druids with only the earliest signs of Christianity moving through the region.

Notice how she describes the swans’ arrival. First she sets us down amongst the oak and elm, the ash and elder, beside a lake surrounded by tree-clothed hills. Though she uses merely a few sentences, we’re there. Then she slows the description and focuses in on the swans. Swans are the central figures of this story and thus this event isn’t merely lyrical; it’s crucial foreshadowing of the story to come.

We see the faint white sign of their wings against the dusk. They fly in an elegant formation, their wings buffeting the wind around them. And as they glide down to the water, Marillier doesn’t neglect the way that water flashes silver in the dying light as its surface is broken, or the sound of their collective rushing of wings settling on water. A sound so much like the main character’s name: Sorcha, Sorcha.

This is just one example of one way that one author managed to write description that is immersive and gripping.

Some authors have a powerful knowledge of an area, such as Anne Rice’s history in New Orleans. It comes through these writers’ writing by way of intimate details that others wouldn’t know to include: the smell of bougainvillea, the feel of the humidity, the historic details that add nuance and color to the story.

If we want to write like that, we need to have the knowledge already, or we need to acquire it through experience or research. Simply describing a place as hot or humid or bustling won’t be immersive for our readers. Portraying a plantation as a Greek Revival with columns doesn’t cut it. The readers need to feel the crisp sharpness of the peeling blue paint on the porch, the sluggish, gurgling sound of the muddy river just beyond, the way the gaslights glow with an orange halo in the fading twilight.

Compare

That’s where the next step comes in: taking a very critical look at our own writing. In our first example, you might look at your writing and ask the following types of questions:

1. Have I given readers enough to pull them into time and place? Are my descriptions too general, or is there a way to do more such as Marillier’s lake “sheltered as if in a great chalice?”
2. Have I focused in on something that matters greatly to the story, such as the swans in this case? Beware of jumping around the scene, describing any and every detail, or elements that don’t truly capture the essence of the story.
3. Have I really captured all of the nuance of that thing [that matters most] or place from every angle – such as the swans’ orderly formation, their white forms against the dark sky, and the way in which the air vibrates before their wings?
4. Is there a way to present elements in the scene such that they do more than merely describe the setting? For example: when the swans touch down in the water, Marillier presents this as the water’s “silvery flashing as it parted to receive them.” From this short passage, you might not know that Sorcha’s brothers will be transformed into swans for much of the story. Marillier also presents the land of their home as a secret place guarded by the forest and the lake. Thus, it recognizes them as its own. Notice how this description parallels that. As the water parts to receive the swans, it isn’t merely the silvery flash of the surface that sits so deeply with readers. It’s also the fact that the water’s embrace points to the fact that the swans belong. The water recognizes them and gathers them to itself. This is powerful and descriptive foreshadowing.

Example #2: Sparse & Pointed

Since I mentioned McCarthy, let’s look at another example: the first paragraph from Child of God. His style is so diametrically opposed to that of Marillier that it serves as a great example of a very different writing style that’s equally powerful.

They came like a caravan of carnival folk up through the swales of broomstraw and across the hill in the morning sun, the truck rocking and pitching in the ruts and the musicians on chairs in the truckbed teetering and tuning their instruments, the fat man with guitar grinning and gesturing to others in a car behind and bending to give a note to the fiddler who turned a fiddlepeg and listened with a wrinkled face. They passed under flowering appletrees and passed a log crib chinked with orange mud and forded a branch and came in sight of an aged clapboard house that stood in blue shade under the wall of the mountain. Beyond it stood a barn. One of the men in the truck bonged on the cab roof with his fist and the truck came to a halt. Cars and trucks came on through the weeds in the yard, people afoot.

Child of God, pp.3-4

Assess the Author’s Execution

The first thing you probably notice about this passage is the run-on sentences. McCarthy is known for his sparse use of punctuation. We could spend several posts talking about why that serves him well and may or may not work for another writer.

In the case of this passage, notice how the lengthy sentences emphasize the seemingly unending stream of cars and people caravaning across the hill and into the shade of a farmhouse. McCarthy hasn’t even told us who this character is yet. We don’t see him or know his name, and yet, we feel what the main character is feeling as he watches this scene.

The first few words portray a comical scene of people who are likely less than respectable. “A caravan of carnival folk” is not how a queen’s procession would be described. These aren’t elegant people. The fat man with the guitar and the fiddler with the wrinkled face are down-home folk. Perhaps even contemptible. There’s something slightly insulting about the way in which the protagonist sees these folk. As if they’re nothing but a carnival of comedy.

Readers also gain the sense of the country setting and there is, what appears at first glance, to be a charming pastoral reference to the swales of broomstraw and the flowering appletrees. However, McCarthy isn’t one to waste a single word on anything, let alone ornamental description.

If we look into the historical uses of broomstraw, it was primarily feed and bedding for livestock, particularly cattle. And apple trees tend to represent fertility, but given the theme of this book – the evil nature of all of mankind – it’s much more likely that McCarthy meant for the apple trees to point back to man’s fall from grace in the Garden of Eden. Thus, with these two brief descriptions, he’s already told us that our main character views these other townspeople as merely cattle who are depraved [as he is].

Lastly notice the way in which he describes the other items in the scene: the “chairs in the truckbed;” the “log crib chinked with orange mud;” the “aged clapboard house;” and the “weeds in the yard.” Though the people are celebrating and joyful, their surroundings are succinctly described in an inglorious light.

There’s something dark and ugly about this scene, made all the more striking due to its juxtaposition against the riotous carnival of music and merrymaking.

Compare

I think you can already see that when I said “sparse and pointed,” I didn’t mean lacking in any thematic depth. McCarthy is one whose every word contributes to the point of his story. He’s a master storyteller.

That doesn’t mean that we all love his style. I prefer Marillier’s lyrical, poetic settings, but we could argue that McCarthy’s setting descriptions are deeper and richer, albeit less beautiful. This is great writing.

When we look at all that he has accomplished here, we might look at our own writing and ask ourselves questions like these:

1. Is my description evocative enough that I don’t even need to tell readers what my character is feeling? Are they already in his shoes?
2. Does the way in which I describe the scene fit with the theme of the story and with its tone? For instance, in this case, McCarthy is subtly introducing us to a protagonist who is very angry, who has been cast out from a society that sees itself as greater than he is, but who sees that society for what it really is: a carnival of cattle who are no less evil than he is.
3. Can I introduce elements like the broomstraw and apple trees that both paint the literal setting and also act as metaphors that tell us more about the theme?
4. Are my uses of adjectives appropriate? For instance, if a scene is meant to strike the reader as heavy or heartbreaking, have I portrayed certain elements in a lovely, lighthearted way that reads as incongruous? (Unless, of course, there’s a very specific reason for introducing the incongruity.)

Conclusion

We could do this all day long – examining various well-written setting descriptions and digging into them to learn how we might also employ similar tactics. The power is in doing it – in studying them and then applying similar tactics to our own writing.

You could do this in the scope of a large manuscript in which you choose one description at a time and hone the detail using one or two things that you’ve observed from other writers. Or you could practice by giving yourself various writing assignments to describe settings. Lastly, you could join writing contests or submit short works to anthologies in order to give yourself the opportunity to practice outside of your current manuscript.

You’ll find, as I have, that the more you read with this kind of critical eye and then practice it, the more you discover how quickly your writing improves. Hard work does pay off.

Watch for the next post in this series, in which we’ll talk about how to improve our dialogue!

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And Is There a Place For Them?

I titled this post somewhat facetiously since anti-heroes are sometimes an awkward fit in Gothic literature. But they don’t have to be! And that’s what I really wanted to talk about: why we don’t see anti-heroes in the genre and how Gothic writing could incorporate that type of protagonist. But first, let’s ask ourselves: where are the Gothic anti-heroes?

It helps to briefly revisit the definition of an anti-hero: a character with poor character (generally amoral or immoral standards) who has no desire to be the hero.

Amoral/ Immoral Characters

The first of these two isn’t absent from Gothic writing. We could argue that Anne Rice’s vampires sometimes fight against their nature (Louis) and try to live a morally virtuous life. Sometimes they don’t.

Clearly Heathcliff and Catherine in Wuthering Heights have their own standards. They disdain the God that their servant, Joseph, promotes. They want nothing to do with Christianity or even living upstanding lives. For example, Heathcliff only accidentally saves Hindley’s baby, Hareton, when he falls over the banister. After the fact, Nelly comments that “had it been dark…he would have tried to remedy the mistake by smashing Hareton’s skull on the steps.”

It’s hard to argue that Heathcliff is a nice guy. We still love him. But he isn’t a nice guy.

The same could be said for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Since Mr. Hyde is Dr. Jekyll, a case can’t even be made for the doctor himself. Other than that, for a time, he suppresses his dark proclivities…at least by day.

And then there are modern Gothic books like Black Ambrosia. I just wrote about Angelina, its protagonist, and the truth behind her claims to be a vampire. You can find that article here. Angelina is a serial killer. That’s not a plot spoiler. It’s a known fact from the beginning of the book (and the back cover). It’s her motive and her psychological unraveling that are the mysteries to be discovered. But nonetheless, she’s an amoral character.

You could probably think of others, but suffice it to say, there are some Gothic books with wholly immoral or amoral protagonists. I think they’re less common than the alternative (which would probably shock those who have prejudices against the Gothic and know nothing about the genre), but they do exist.

But that’s only one side of the anti-hero equation.

But Heroes??

The other side of the anti-hero coin is that an anti-hero has no desire to be a hero…which of course implies that there’s a heroic undertaking to be made. That’s where the Gothic genre tends to deviate from Science Fiction or Fantasy in which heroes are employed.

I’ll explain.

Think about most Gothic novels. I’ll list some for you.

• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice
• The Moth Diaries by Rachel Klein
• The Gates of Evangeline by Hester Young
• We’ve Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
• The Haunting of Hill House [also] by Shirley Jackson
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
• Child of God by Cormac McCarthy

I could go on, but you may already see where I’m going with this. Gothic stories tend to be somewhat insular. That marries well with the Gothic themes that tend to be deep explorations of spiritual or psychological matters (or other very introspective types of themes). We rarely see Gothic novels in which the protagonist is engaged in an adventure or journey. The types of stories that require the protagonist to be…well, a hero.

In the Gothic story, the protagonist is usually a hero of his or her own introspective journey. Other characters circle around the protagonist but don’t require his heroic leadership or even participation.

The one exception I can think of is Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. That set of novels is definitely a merger of Gothic and Fantasy-Adventure storytelling. However, Roland Deschain isn’t an immoral or amoral protagonist. So he’s a hero, but not an anti-hero.

A Market to Be Made

That’s where I want to leave you. And me. There’s room for crossover. In some ways, we could argue that Mia Corvere in the Nevernight series is an anti-hero. She’s definitely immoral/ amoral. And she’s something of a leader, but only lightly. She’s still more of a lone wolf than an anti-hero.

But I bring her up to illustrate a point. If characters like Mia were to take up the gauntlet and work through Gothic themes while acting in a heroic role, we’d have Gothic anti-heroes. What would that look like?

Well, I can think of a couple of story ideas I’ve been working on that act upon those lines. One of these is a Gothic/ Dark Fantasy series in which the main character is a vigilante. In some ways he’s a nice guy, but he’s also a killer and a ruthlessly self-justifying criminal. But he doesn’t end there. His journey is a long one in which he has to learn to suppress what he would want to do for selfish reasons and instead apply his personality and abilities to things that benefit a much higher and better goal. [A bit cryptic, but I don’t want to give too much away yet.]

All that to say that I can picture a Gothic anti-hero most easily in the context of more of a Fantasy or Science Fiction story. One in which there’s both the internal, spiritual (or psychological) exploration, but also an external, epic call to battle that involves other characters and especially character participation. Thus, I’m essentially calling for more Gothic-Fantasy storytelling!

That’s not something I’m planning for every Gothic story I write, but it would be great to see some anti-hero stories in the Gothic genre. I hope to contribute along those lines and I’d love to see other Gothic writers do so as well!!

Let me know if this is something you’re working towards.

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A Look at the Meaning & Underpinnings of The Shining

The Shining by Stephen King is something of a modern classic. Who doesn’t know something about it, or at least some clip from the movie (“Here’s Johnny!”)? So it may surprise you to hear that I had never seen the entire movie until this last week. I’ve read the book, of course. But the movie? Never got around to it. And I had heard that King didn’t like what Kubrick did with the novel, so I was in no hurry to see the film. However, now that I have seen it, it feels like it’s time to talk about why this book is gothic.

Keep in mind, this isn’t exactly a book review. I’ve done that before in case you’d like to read it: here. Instead, we’re going to take a deeper look at the gothic nature of the work and how King uses gothic tropes to bring a very gothic theme to life.

Quick Recap

Just to catch all of us up on the book/ movie, the story features an ex-teacher and current writer, Jack Torrance who, after having been suspended from his teaching job takes a winter caretaker position for The Overlook Hotel in Colorado. He moves to the remote hotel, high in the mountains, with his wife, Wendy, and son, Danny, in time for the staff to clear out for the season. The family of three is left alone in the immense lodge to weather the storms without and those within.

As you might guess, the isolation and the stormy weather act as something of a medium, calling forth Jack’s demons and setting him in a war with both himself and his family. The only question is whether they’ll make it out alive.

The movie doesn’t highlight some of the key things in Jack’s past, things that give us a much better glimpse into who he is and what he’s battling within himself. So, I will be speaking from the perspective of the novel. If I highlight something from the movie, I’ll specify as much.

The Shining

But first, what is the shining? That’s a key question because, as authors, we title our novels to reflect the theme(s) we’re presenting.

The shining is essentially a paranormal capacity that’s akin to a merger of telepathy, psychic abilities, and prophecy. A person with this gift can communicate with others who also have the gift via just their thoughts, can sense and even communicate with the dead and can sometimes see what will happen in the future.

Both Danny and Jack have this ability and both experience it unwittingly. However, it manifests in different ways.

Danny

Most of Danny’s experiences with the shining relate to his ability to know what is happening with his parents, particularly his father, Jack. He has a strong sense for what Jack is doing or intends to do in the near future. Danny also sees the souls of those who have been murdered or have committed suicide (those who died violent deaths) at The Overlook Hotel. Lastly, he communicates with Dick Hallorann, the chef of the Overlook Hotel, who has gone home to his house in Miami, but who also has the gift and has promised to be there for Danny.

What do all of Danny’s shining experiences have in common? Danny is something of an intermediary between the unseen suffering of others and the present, seen world. I would liken him to something of a paranormal empath.

Jack

In contrast, Jack’s shining experiences are all related to his own demons. Jack has three strikes against him before the story opens: he has a long history of alcoholism, which he had battled and overcome before the family arrives at The Overlook; he had an affair with a coworker; and he has a history of violence.

Readers learn that one night prior to the story, Jack came home drunk, saw Danny in his office messing up his papers, and, in a fit of rage, broke his arm. We also learn the history of Jack’s employment problems: he seriously injured a student. (The whys in that part of the story are complex and interesting. I won’t give it away in case you’re looking forward to reading it.)

All that to say that the demons of The Overlook have a lot of material to work with when it comes to Jack.

There’s the satanic bartender, Lloyd, who’s preying on Jack’s struggles not to return to drinking. There’s the naked woman in the bathtub (in the film) who appears to be young and virile only to turn into a decaying hag in his arms. And lastly, there’s the former caretaker, Delbert Grady, who wants Jack and Danny to join him…through murder/ suicide of course, as Grady did when he killed his two daughters, his wife, and then himself.

What Does it Mean?

There are many theories about the meaning of this book and the corresponding movie. Everything from a commentary on the slaughter of the Native American people, to it being a metaphor for hell, to a portrayal of child abuse. There’s some truth to most interpretations, but many of these pertain more to the movie and to the various elements that Kubrick added to it. The book itself is more straightforward. Especially when you consider that this book is a Gothic book.

I’ll show you how I can see that that’s true.

Gothic Tropes

If you’ve read about what makes a book Gothic and how the tropes make the unseen theme more tangible, you’ll understand why we’re going to start with the tropes themselves. There are several traditionally Gothic tropes in this story:

• Haunted Hotel/ Ghosts
• Madness
• Isolation
• Stormy Weather

But these, in and of themselves, wouldn’t necessarily make the story Gothic. Rather, it’s what King has done with them that proves that they are.

Haunted Hotel/ Ghosts

The hotel itself is plagued with a dark history. Jack digs into this history via the crates of newspapers and other papers that are in the basement near the boiler. He learns of various past murders and other instances in which evil people stayed at The Overlook.

This parallels Jack’s violent nature. Though he hasn’t murdered anyone in the past, he has been very ruthless and has harmed both his son and his student. King uses the hotel as if it’s a character in and of itself. Through the hotel, we see into the mind of Jack. We see his anger, his grudges, and his struggle not to be violent. In this way, King uses the hotel as if it were Jack’s inner rage made manifest.

Both the hotel and the ghost of Delbert Grady, in specific, act as a mirror of Jack’s true character. Grady shows us Jack’s bitterness towards his family, his circumstances, and much of the world.

Madness

Madness features very prominently in The Shining. So much so that it’s possibly the most well-known aspect of the story.

The use of various types of mental impairment in writing is fascinating. So much so that I wrote an article on the various ways that writers have used it to contribute to plot, character and theme. If you’re interested, you can find that article here.

In The Shining, it’s Jack’s war within himself that drives him mad. If you have to pause to consider that for a minute, that’s a good thing. It would be easy to take the struggling-to-be-a-recovering-alcoholic thing at face value. Lots of people struggle with current or past addictions.

But that’s not enough to understand Jack’s actions as the story progresses. Instead, we have to add Jack’s anger into the equation. What is he angry about?

His wife is loving and faithful and, in the book (not the movie), is a strong, capable woman. His son is a sweet, obedient child who doesn’t cause any problems other than typical childhood ones. Jack had a great teaching job, but he ruined it through his actions with his student, George Hatfield.

Why does he do this? What is really driving his underlying anger?

The cheap answer is that it stems from his father’s abusive behavior when Jack was a child. And that certainly had a role in forming Jack’s anger. We even see the early evidences of that in Jack’s abusive behavior towards animals and other children. But that answer still doesn’t hold enough water to explain Jack’s very extreme actions at The Overlook.

Rather, consider the number one, most important thing to Jack: his writing.

Like many English teachers, Jack writes on the side. His primary objective over the winter season at The Overlook is to write a play. In the book, though King implies that Jack has written in the past, it’s clear to readers that his writing has never garnered much success or acclaim.

Isolation

King places Jack in a place in which he has no distractions. No other people besides his wife and son. No work colleagues. No day job other than the infrequent repairs and daily boiler maintenance that the hotel requires. Nothing to quiet the self-doubt and condemnation he already feels.

Jack is the caretaker at The Overlook because that’s exactly what he believes about himself. He has been overlooked, dismissed, rendered inconsequential. He internalized that message in his father’s abuse and then turned that on others – animals and children. Thus, when his life’s work – his attempts to make something of his writing – continually falls apart, he can no longer deny that he isn’t able to be what he wants to be, or do what he wants to do in life.

Some speculate that the story is one about writers block, but that’s merely the tip of the iceberg. Writers block is frustrating, but not disastrous. On the other hand, an aspiring writer whose only measure of success is renown through his writing, but who discovers that he doesn’t have the ideas, ability, talent…whatever the case may be…that’s a different matter.

For Jack, the isolation leaves him face-to-face with this belief he has and his inability to counter it by producing a play. He knows, just as Wendy soon does, that all he writes all day, every day, is the sentence:

All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy

Jack’s madness stems from his isolation. An isolation that amplifies his knowledge that he is unable to accomplish the one thing he wants in life.

Stormy Weather

This knowledge culminates in a violent showdown within himself (between Jack and the hotel), but tangibly between Jack and his family as he pursues them through the hotel. Readers see this coming. King has already established that Jack has a history of turning his anger and frustration on others. And now, as he faces his own shortcomings, his actions are practically a given.

What makes this book interesting though is that, unlike in Kubrick’s film version, Jack struggles very hard to rise above himself. He wants to be a loving husband and father. He wants to avoid drinking. He wants to be something other than what his nature and circumstances are driving him towards. But he can’t reconcile his goals with his reality.

The weather mirrors this beautifully. The howling wind shows us the rising scream of frustration and desperation and rage within Jack’s soul. His growing confrontation with the knowledge that he has given himself only one benchmark for success – through his writing – and that that outlet isn’t working for him parallels the rising snow, burying him from the outside world. From any other, external hope.

As the story crescendos, readers see the inevitable conclusion, the only solution for the characters, including Jack. And, of course, we aren’t disappointed.

Conclusion

Hopefully you can see it as I outlined it above. King’s use of these tropes is so clearly meant to make an unseen theme – Jack’s war against his belief that he is overlooked and his inability to contradict that through his writing – visible to readers. Through the haunted hotel and its ghosts, the madness, isolation and weather, we see the struggle that he’s undergoing in an attempt to war with himself.

Jack is the overlook hotel. The only question is: who will win?

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A Look at Black Ambrosia by Elizabeth Engstrom

As you may know from my prior post, I’m reading through a number of vampire novels this year. It is, after all, the year of the vampire. I plan to talk about these in different ways, but in some cases I want to look at a book as a standalone blog post. That’s certainly true for Elizabeth Engstrom’s novel, Black Ambrosia. If there’s one thing that stands out most in this novel, it’s how the writer marries psychology and the vampire trope.

This book deserves independent mention due to the complexity of the psychological underpinnings in this tale. Angelina, the protagonist, is a vampire…or she’s not. On the surface, it’s hard to say. And that right there, is the point.

I’m avoiding plot spoilers in this post, so feel free to proceed!

Synopsis

We learn very early on, that Angelina’s father – a man whom she describes warmly and fondly – died when she was eight. Her mother remarries and then, when Angelina is fifteen, she dies, leaving the girl with a stepfather who, though he doesn’t seem overly fond of her, isn’t abusive. They quickly sell the house, divide the proceeds and go their separate ways.

Angelina leaves to see the world, by which she means hitchhiking and wandering around the United States. The book takes place in the 1980s, an era in which this type of travel was more prominent and less problematic. However, readers still have a sense of impending doom. A young girl wandering alone is bound to encounter trouble.

Less than ten pages, but a little over a year into Angelina’s story, she encounters two men – Earl Foster and J.C. Wickers – whose intentions differ dramatically from the hospitable travelers she has met up until that point. The scene isn’t graphic or intense. If anything it’s surprising.

Something awakens in Angelina and she quickly gains the upper-hand in the situation, tearing out Earl Foster’s throat with her teeth and drinking his blood.

Thus begins Angelina’s travels as a self-proclaimed vampire.

The Root

On the surface, it’s merely Angelina’s indignation and fear over this incident that awakens her latent vampiric nature, setting into motion her life as a serial killer. But Engstrom leaves readers with more to ponder than merely this (as significant as that would be in and of itself).

While she doesn’t write the scene with Earl Foster in such a way that we see Angelina brutalized, it’s highly likely that that’s actually what happened. There are two reasons I think this:

1. As the book progresses, readers quickly infer that Angelina is something of an unreliable narrator. The story is told from a very deep first-person perspective. However, at the end of each chapter, Engstrom includes a quick perspective from another character to add color to the story. These are written as if the other characters have been asked, in hindsight, to record their experiences with Angelina. Through these, we often see a slightly different story than what our protagonist has told us. For example, at one point in the story, Angelina tells us that she needed a change and left her job. But at the end of the chapter, her coworker relates a sequence of events in which Angelina’s actions devolved to the point at which she was fired.
2. Also, throughout the book, Angelina displays a distinct interest in men but views sexual activity as repulsive and something that she must occasionally entertain in order to obtain her objective.

Both of these suggest that, though she doesn’t tell us about Earl Foster raping her, it was very likely what transpired. This left her scarred and sexually avoidant.

This is essential to understanding the story because this root dictates how we interpret Angelina’s claim to be a vampire and her actions as a killer.

Trauma-Based Mercy Killings

Angelina is a killer. The back of the book tells us is this so, and the story delivers as much. Angelina herself (and the back cover) would have us believe that these are mercy killings, but readers will quickly see through that claim. As we watch her choose her victims, what we see are well-adjusted, perfectly healthy men who have no desire or need to die.

The real question in the book is not whether Angelina is actually a vampire – she isn’t – but rather why she kills.

This is a psychological tale in which we’re seeing the events unfold through a flawed perspective. When Angelina tells us that she kills to spare this one or that one from his suffering, a trauma that readers can clearly see is, at best, nothing more than a temporary disappointment – what readers need to understand is that Angelina projecting.

In psychological terms, she is reassigning her own feelings to others. When she sees the men around her as victims, it’s because she can’t bear to acknowledge that she herself is a victim. That she’s suffering from what Earl did to her. That she feels weak and helpless and fearful. That she can’t heal or save herself, or undo what has been done.

Instead, a deep part of her mind assigns the role of powerful savior to herself, and takes her own suffering and hands it over to her chosen victim. In each killing, she attempts to put to death her past. To lay to rest the pain that she can’t rid herself of. If you read the book this way, it reads very, very differently than what Angelina claims. And it makes a lot of sense.

Problematic Vampire

Otherwise, Angelina’s vampire nature is a challenge to accept. She doesn’t seem to need to kill in order to eat. After all, she’s able to eat regular food whenever she chooses to (though she begins to starve herself later in the story).

She can walk in sunlight, handle garlic and crosses, and lead a normal human life. Except that she can’t.

Something within Angelina is broken. If you’ve read (or watched) a lot of vampire storytelling, one thing that stands out more than anything is the strength and confidence of the vampire. Vampires have physical limitations depending upon the tale (the sun, garlic, fire, etc.) but they have nothing but psychological and intellectual superiority. They are a race of power-brokers, albeit married to the night.

In addition, despite the vampire’s physical limitations, it’s a universally-acknowledged fact that vampires have a supernatural capacity to heal.

As we read Angelina’s story though, both of these elements are entirely missing, and I’m sure that that’s by design. Engstrom isn’t portraying a vampire with internal spiritual angst like Louis or Lestat in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. Or a vampire with a tormented history of remorse like Anthony Carter in Justin Cronin’s The Passage.

Instead, what we’re left with is the virtual certainty that Angelina is nothing but a mentally ill young girl who has reimagined her identity as a vampire out of the need to feel strong and invincible.

Further, Angelina deteriorates physically as the book progresses. She becomes weaker as time goes on, and when the inevitable happens – another type of assault – she is helpless to escape it. Angelina is no vampire.

Conclusion

I’ll leave it at that. It isn’t the most complex plot on the surface. Rather, this story’s significance lies in understanding Angelina. Watch what she does. Watch what others say about her. Look for what she doesn‘t say, or how her actions differ from what others report. Therein lies the key to understanding this story.

And never forget that the vampire is first and foremost a symbol. A metaphor. Engstrom has taken this to a psychological point and uses it to represent an alter ego that arises out of trauma.

It’s a very dark and disturbing book, but it’s well-written and intensely thought-provoking. If the subject matter isn’t too much for you, it’s an interesting read. Let me know what you think of it and how you read Angelina’s character!

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My 2023 Vampire Books Reading List

If you’ve heard of the Chinese zodiak, you know that every twelve years, the Chinese calendar cycles through twelve different animals, each with its own characteristics. There’s the year of the goat, snake, horse, etc. All well and good, but apparently they forgot the year of the vampire. Clearly an oversight. I took a look at the global and national situation and decided that it’s not the year of the rabbit – calm, gentle and loving – it’s the year of the vampire. Thus, I’m planning on reading through a number of vampire books that I haven’t already read.

This is my vampire-related reading list for the year. These books were all recommendations from Twitter readers-writers who stated that these were among their favorite vampire books of all time. When I saw a book recommended by several different people I added it to my list. In case you’d like to join me, feel free to check these out.

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

They Thirst by Robert McCammon

The Moth Diaries by Rachel Klein

Black Ambrosia by Elizabeth Engstrom

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

Fevre Dream by George R. R. Martin

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

Fledgling by Octavia Butler

Carmilla by J. Sheridan LeFanu

My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due

Conclusion

I think you can see why I’m excited about this year’s lineup. Unfortunately, I’m already almost 50% of the way through these, so I may add an additional list later in the year. Or we may look at some other Gothic tales. Expect to see reviews and/or commentary about some or all of these in the future.

Happy reading!

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