Ghostwatch (1992) made good use of the cupboard under the stairs. In The Conjuring (2013), clues hide in the wall spaces, as well as the basement. In The Skeleton Key (2005), Kate Hudson’s character finds a locked room in the attic. I still don’t like walking under our loft hatch on the upstairs landing. Everyone has a space they never liked, but couldn’t figure out why. Is there a weird stairwell in a block of flats? A cupboard no one will use?
A haunting might affect the whole building, but it’ll always start in one particular room. What does it look like? Sound like? Smell like? Is there an atmosphere? By John Holmes, CC BY-SA 2.0, here.Īnd think smaller. Think of the spaces as being the world building you’d do in fantasy or sci fi. It can also be funnier – see What We Do In The Shadows (2014). In some ways, it’s even creepier if the weird stuff happens somewhere totally normal. On the other hand, you’ve got dilapidated apartments in modern cities, suburban duplexes and even hospitals. On one hand, you’ve got your stereotypical crumbling castles, isolated manor houses, and creaky cabins in the wood. There are loads of characteristics to the Gothic as a genre, but what 3 things make an awesome Gothic story if you’re just starting out?
#GOTHIC LITERATURE STORY IDEAS MOVIE#
By Screenshot from “Internet Archive” of the movie Dracula (1931) here, Public Domain, here. It’s a really fun genre (well to write, not necessarily to read), and it is well worth having a go if you’re into all things dark, spooky, or just not-quite-right.
#GOTHIC LITERATURE STORY IDEAS TV#
It’s had a recent boom in interest through the ‘dreadpunk’ genre, spawned from TV shows like Penny Dreadful, and Stranger Things brought a taste of the Gothic to Netflix.
It’s never really gone away, though its popularity goes up and down depending on the society of the time. Since then, Gothic has given us Frankenstein and his Creature, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Dorian Gray, Dracula, Melmoth the Wanderer, Lord Ruthven, Sweeney Todd, and many more. But as a genre, you have to go to 1764 to find the first novel, Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto. You can find Gothic stories in some form or another right through history. If you want to know some neat little tricks to perfecting gothic tales, check out Icy’s tips below: Our lovely Icy Icy is studying a PhD in film studies looking at space in haunted houses, so she really does know a thing or two about this. Today the lovely Icy Sedgwick, who came to the Bloggers Bash 2016 is talking to us about an area of her expertise: gothic stories. Be nice, play gentle and happy clappy rounds of applause please. So a few lovely friends have offered to step in and take the reigns for some of the posts. I wanted to keep to two posts a week, but couldn’t with all the extra writing. Over the next month or so I am trying to finish my book so I can do the underwear eating exercise of handing my book baby to beta readers, *gulp*.