Gothic fiction is where beauty meets terror. In this episode, we explore how to write Gothic stories that grip readers with atmosphere, ambiguity, and desire:

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Overthinking Couch Topics:

• Setting as character
• The uncanny and the supernatural
• Romance entwined with ruin
• Gothic subgenres and global traditions
• Pitfalls to avoid

• The Biggest Mistake Writers Make - Writing Break
• Free Writing Tips

Music licensed from Storyblocks.

If you have plot bunnies coming out of your plot holes, it’s time for a writing break.

Today we’re in the grip of Gothic fiction. This is a genre I loved before I knew it was a genre. I told you last week that I completed the edit for a Gothic novel last month, and my goodness did I have a wonderful time. I helped the author create a perfect blend of atmospheric dread, mystery, and romance. Gothic fiction whispers in the shadows, lures you down a candlelit corridor, and dares you to open the locked door. Preferably a locked door in a crumbling castle, and the castle is filled with family secrets, and a storm is on the horizon.

In this episode we’ll explore Gothic fiction’s origins, its most powerful traits, its subgenres across the world, and how to avoid the pitfalls that can turn Gothic from captivating into melodrama.

We have a lot to cover during this break. The Writing Break cafe is open . . . and perhaps haunted. Let’s order something dark and strong, and stay close to each other as we make our way cautiously toward the Overthinking Couch.

What makes Gothic fiction Gothic? For one, atmosphere.

Next week we’re discussing the genre of horror, which as we all know is meant to terrify us. But Gothic fiction aims to leave us unsettled. It lingers in the uncanny. It’s the space where beauty meets terror.

When you read a Gothic fiction novel, you can expect dark and isolated settings. Castles, of course, as well as mansions, moors, and ruins. And if the author is talented enough, they can even capture the quiet unease of suburbia.

In Gothic fiction the setting is never just the backdrop. It’s alive and often oppressive.

In a way, atmosphere acts as a character. The weather, the architecture, and the silence of an isolated place influence the mood and decisions of the novel’s characters.

In Jane Eyre, Thornfield Hall is as much a character as Rochester or Jane, holding its secrets in locked rooms. In Rebecca the grand estate of Manderley is haunted not by literal ghosts but by the memory of Rebecca herself.

When writing Gothic fiction, build your setting with sensory precision. The feel of damp stone, the smell of mildew, even the echo of footsteps, let your readers experience all of it. Your setting must pulse with menace and memory.

Gothic fiction must have uncanny elements, such as curses, ghosts, and madness. In Gothic fiction the past lingers and haunts. I love that Gothic novels don’t necessarily give you a final answer. Uncanny elements are often left ambiguous. Was the house haunted after all, or was the protagonist under a great deal of stress? Or is it madness? Or are the characters trapped by their own secrets?

The familiar is made strange. A smile that lingers too long. A mirror that shows what shouldn’t be there.

In Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Is Hill House haunted, or are Eleanor’s own fears and instability turning the house against her? Jackson never gives us certainty, and that’s what makes it memorable.

When writing Gothic, resist the urge to explain everything. Leave space for uncertainty. Readers should feel unsettled, unsure whether the danger is external or internal.

Heightened emotions can be found in many characters across many genres, but the heightened emotions in Gothic fiction tend to be fear, grief, obsession, and passion. Romance and ruin are intertwined. As are desire and danger as well as passion and destruction. Love is often obsessive, destructive, or forbidden.

In Wuthering Heights, the passion between Heathcliff and Catherine burns hot enough to outlast death, but it also destroys families, land, and futures. The romance is inseparable from the ruin.

Going back to Jane Eyre, because Rochester is my book boyfriend, love is shadowed by betrayal, secrets, and the lurking presence of Bertha Mason. The Gothic thrives on this kind of tension; the thing you long for might also be the thing that undoes you.

Explore this duality in your writing. Show the beauty of love or desire as well as the shadows that fall across it.

An optional but popular theme of your Gothic novel can be redemption through sacrifice. Gothic often ends with ruin, but sometimes it ends with hard-won redemption.

What should writers of Gothic fiction avoid doing? What are the pitfalls?

For starters, having atmosphere without plot. Atmosphere sets the mood and is a large part of Gothic fiction, but your story still needs to move. Atmosphere alone won’t carry a novel. Do not neglect your characters. As in all fiction, readers must care about the characters.

Another pitfall is taking things a bit too far and ending up writing melodrama. We don’t need to hear thunder or have a character faint every time something sinister happens.

The third biggest pitfall would be explaining the supernatural away. If you end by saying, “hey, don’t worry, readers, it wasn’t a ghost, just old plumbing,” you’ll remove the power from your novel. Just don’t think you need to leave everything unresolved. That will leave your readers frustrated. It’s a balancing act, to be sure, but one that will wow your readers when properly executed.

Gothic fiction is considered to have emerged in the late 18th century with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto. From there, it spread like ivy across the walls of literature: into the works of Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, the Brontë sisters and continues well into today’s modern Gothic authors, like Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

The Castle of Otranto and Dracula are Classic Gothic novels. Classic Gothic is where we are almost guaranteed castles, curses, and aristocratic secrets. But Gothic has developed many subgenres over time.

There’s Gothic romance, of course, such as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. In Gothic romance, desire is entwined with danger.

Then there’s Southern Gothic, featuring grotesque characters, moral corruption, and rotting mansions. Flannery O’Conner and William Faulkner wrote Southern Gothic novels.

Weird Gothic crosses sci-fi and cosmic horror. Here is where H.P. Lovecraft’s haunted alien landscapes belong.

Like other Gothic novels, modern Gothic features haunted houses, family secrets, and dread, but it tends to be heavy on psychological dread. Think Rebecca and Mexican Gothic.

Each subgenre shifts the setting and symbols, but they all preserve the Gothic’s essence of beauty and terror in equal measure.

Though it is said to have begun with crumbling castles in England, Gothic fiction can be found worldwide, shaped by local histories, dangers, and fears.

In Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, which can be classified as Latin American Gothic, colonialism, patriarchy, and family legacy are explored through Gothic tropes of haunted houses and corrupt bloodlines.

Japanese Gothic tends to be rooted in ghost stories, blending spiritual unease with psychological horror. The uncanny is in the shadows, but it is usually silent.

From Puritan repression to Southern Gothic, what is called American Gothic is focused on guilt, decay, and grotesque legacies of violence and oppression.

By looking at the Gothic globally, we see that it’s not just castles and fog. It’s a universal language of fear and longing, expressed through different landscapes and histories. There is certainly global common ground. Gothic fiction around the world returns to the same contrasts of beauty and terror, secrets and repression, and the past intruding on the present.

So, if you’re making your foray into Gothic fiction, unsettle your readers with the uncanny and the supernatural, and perhaps leave some things ambiguous. Entangle us in romance and ruin. Bind desire and destruction together. Remember the importance of atmosphere, although this is something that should be remembered in any genre. And no matter what subgenre of Gothic fiction you’re attempting, give your readers that sublime mix of beauty, decay, and dread.

For your overthinking prompt this week, imagine one of your characters finding a beautiful object, such as a painting, a mirror, or a piece of jewelry. Then imagine that object slowly turning sinister. What makes it unsettling? Does it maybe whisper of the past, change in appearance, or reflect something it shouldn’t? How would your character’s relationship to that object reveal their deepest desire or dread?

Next time, we’ll step fully into the shadows with Horror. And since the episode will land right around Halloween, it’s the perfect time to talk about how to make readers’ spines tingle and their hearts race.

Until then, thank you for listening, and remember, you deserved this break.

If you would like us to visit your favorite independent bookstore, feature your favorite independent author (even if it’s you), or discuss something you’re overthinking about, please email me at podcast@writingbreak.com.

Thank you for making space in your mind for The Muse today.

Writing Break is hosted by America’s Editor and produced by Allon Media with technical direction by Gus Aviles. Visit us at writingbreak.com or contact us at podcast@writingbreak.com.