Archetypes in fiction are not always clean cut. For example, a villain is an antagonist but an antagonist doesn’t necessarily have to be a villain. A monstrous antagonist like Frankenstein’s monster (who is arguably an anti-hero depending on how you look at it), can be compassionate; or conversely inhumane like Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Today I’m…
Tag: #gothicfiction
Writing Folk Horror.
I thought there was room to squeeze in another Halloween special before the magic begins; and what better than an article on the hottest creepy sub-genre of recent times! Now largely undefined by location or tropes, ‘folk horror’ was originally used to describe a particular genre of British films spanning the late 1960s to 1970s….
10 Halloween Creative Writing Exercises to Chill and Thrill.
I think I could possibly be Halloween’s number one fan. Watching the leaves change colour and the apples drop ready for a steaming autumnal pie are just two of my favourite seasonal delights. A time when the ancients believed the veil between the world of the living and the dead was so fine, humans could…
5 Literary Genres You May Not Have Heard of
While we’re all familiar with standard literary genres, it can be beneficial to educate ourselves on the subtleties that lie within them. Not only do we become aware of a whole new canon of literature, we’re further increasing our possibility of being inspired! So here are five less common genres and sub-genres, both old and…
Epistolary! Lusty Lovers of Letter Writing
The epistolary style is defined as a story which unfolds through a series of documents such as: letters, newspaper articles, diary entries; even emails and blog posts! It’s a topical subject for me as I’m currently reading Where or When (1993) by the late Anita Shreve which in part makes use of this style as…
3 Ways Shirley Jackson Can Help You Improve as a Writer
Shirley Jackson (b. 1916) is perhaps best known for her 1959 gothic horror The Haunting of Hill House and her seminal short story The Lottery (1948); a piece of writing so controversial The New Yorker was inundated with hate mail from disapproving readers. Jackson is one of my favourite authors and after reading a short…