Gothic Traditions and the Contemporary Genre Writer

Hey, writers! Let's talk about the Gothic traditions. Big, old houses. Creepy relatives. Family secrets that still affect the present... If the success of shows like The Haunting of Bly House and Midnight Mass show us anything, they show us that these tropes are still with us and aren't just limited to old-timey stories. 

What's your history with Gothic stories? Are you a fan, or did you come to them by seeing the stories they influenced in novels and on TV? 

Marian Allen: A friend introduced me to Gothic romances in college: The kind with a heroine in a long dress or a nightgown running in the light of a full moon from a mansion, looking over her shoulder in apprehension. The cover didn't always match the book's contents; they were (the ones my friend passed to me) much more interesting than that. Then there was Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, parts of Frankenstein, parts of Vanity Fair, and other classics influenced by the Gothic tradition. Oh --Rebecca! 

John L. Taylor: I grew up both reading books like The House of Seven Gables and watching old horror films from Universal and Hammer. These are heavily Gothic in their visuals. Also, German expressionist films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari gave me a solid visual influence rooted in Gothic, if distorted imagery. 

Cynthia Ward: I enjoy Gothic fiction in its various iterations, and I've written a gothic horror story (whether or not it's supernatural is left to the reader).

Shannon Murphy: I love old Gothic horror stories! The chilling atmosphere, the spooky plot twists.

Ef Deal: I live in a Gothic house. We were haunted for a few years, and we have had a few things visit us. I grew up with ghosts in my bedroom. Naturally, I gravitated toward Gothic stories. 

Sean Taylor: My first exposure in novels was Dickensian rather than pure Gothic, but from Charles' dusty old mansions it was an easy leap to the worlds of dark romances like Wuthering Heights and The House of the Seven Gables and creepy settings of early horror like Dracula and Frankenstein. My movie and TV habits at the time only reinforced the visuals of a Gothic style and the storytelling motifs of family secrets and isolation from the surrounding villages and towns, thanks to Dark Shadows, Hammer's horror movies, and, of course, Elvira introducing me to lots of Gothic revival B-movies I had been too young to see when they originally hit theaters.  

In what ways have the tropes of Gothic fiction influenced your work? 

Lucy Blue: My latest book, The Devil Makes Three, is a Southern Gothic horror novel -- NOT a romance, though as with most gothic stories, there is a relationship at the center of it. It takes place at Briarwood Plantation, which was deserted in 1837 when the English fiancee of the owner's daughter axe-murdered the entire family. When my book begins in the present day, Briarwood has just been purchased by a bestselling horror novelist, Jacob McGinnas. He's been suffering from writer's block, like you do, and he intends to open it back up to write his masterpiece about the murders and the hauntings they have allegedly inspired. A widowed local librarian, Serena Decatur, is helping him with his research, and together they find out the grisly murders are just the tip of a very nasty iceburg. Briarwood, both the house and grounds (a wilderness that hasn't been touched in almost 200 years), and Saxonville, the small town nearby, are pretty well soaked through with evil that's both human and supernatural. So we've got a grand but ruined haunted house and a whole bunch of creepy family secrets--Serena, a Black woman, discovers she has connections to Briarwood far beyond academic interest. And every horror in the present is rooted somehow in the past. Pretty much everything I've ever written has had some kind of gothic element. I mean, my medieval romances have stuff like vampires and haunted oubliettes, and my westerns have zombies. But The Devil Makes Three is me going full-on Gothic horror.

Ef Deal: Then I read Rebecca and thought WOW, THIS is what real Gothic is. I want to do this! Scary, romantic, a buried secret, a grisly murder, a mystery... And I have tried include them all.

John L. Taylor: It influences my work mainly in the form of descriptions and imagery, but also in the form of having female leads who are often confronted by the supernatural. Also, motifs like family secrets in far-flung locations, old mansions, etc. are a theme I'm toying with in an upcoming short story, though mixed with more cosmic horror tropes. 

Marian Allen: My period (1968) suspense, A Dead Guy at the Summerhouse is basically the opposite of those romances I read in college: The protagonist is a young man, and he tries his damnedest to NOT find out anything about the creepy relatives and their haunting past. Nope, just wants a paycheck, thanks.

Cynthia Ward: If anyone's interested, my story, "The Midwife," is available to read for free at https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-midwife/

Sean Taylor: As a pulp, horror, and mystery writer, the idea of family secrets and the past influencing the present negatively are strong elements in my work, even though I rarely set any of my stories in a Gothic mansion. For my superhero fiction back during the days of Cyber Age Adventures, not so much influence at all though. 

How do you see them changing in light of a far more digital world, and do you believe these historically important parts of stories will continue to stick around for new and upcoming writers?

John L. Taylor: I can see these tropes being continued in the digital publishing era, The Gothic story just resonates so well with audiences it is unlikely to fade away yet. Things like gender roles or locations may change, but that visual style will always be reinvented in some form. For a few years now, the Gothic aesthetic has been reduced to a caricature, a cartoon trope. But I believe it's set for a resurgence like the one it had in the early 1990s under Burton and Sonnenfeld's influence.

Sean Taylor: I think the setting that originally defined Gothic traditions will become less and less used,  particularly in contemporary mainstream fiction, but never truly go away. Building on what John said, movies tend to re-visit that at least once during each new generation of filmmakers. I do think that the concepts and themes of Gothic works will continue to inspire stories for years and years to come. We see bits of it in nearly all the works of Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and even in non-horror works such as Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres and even several works by Joyce Carol Oates.  Horror will always have a place for it, and dark romance as well. But I also feel sure that literary writers too will continue to look for ways to either subvert the tropes or play off them for new effect or to use them as a sort of storytelling shorthand when needed. 

Shannon Murphy: I wrote a Gothic story about a werewolf. I let my Beta reader read it, and he said I should scrap it, that such stories are "out of date." It made me sad, but I think he might be right

Marian Allen: I see no reason for the old tropes to vanish, no matter how the stories are told. There are still foreboding houses of whatever age or size, still family secrets, still creepy relatives. Anything that works will always be with us.

Cynthia Ward: What they might be like in the future, I don't know. Tamsyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth is a recent (and excellent) SF novel that very imaginatively shifts the tropes you mention into space and mixes in necromancers, lesbian swordswomen, and a locked-room mystery.