 Drama: April 29, 2015 Issue [#6943] |
  Drama
This week: The Gothic Edge Edited by: Joy  
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“This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.”
Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan
“I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing.”
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
“She mediated, by turns, on broken promises and broken arches, phaetons and false hangings, Tilneys and trap-doors.”
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
The form of the Gothic novel also implicitly contested the claims of Realism to reflect the world directly by showing how artificial its structure was.”
Michael Richardson, Dedalus Book of Surrealism 2: The Myth of the World
Hello, I am Joy , this week's drama editor. This issue is about Gothic elements in dramatic writing and how they can make serious points in a startling, exaggerated fashion.
Thank you for reading our newsletters and for supplying the editors with feedback and encouragement.
Note: In the editorial, I refer to third person singular as he, to also mean the female gender, because I don't like to use they or he/she. |
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Welcome to the Drama newsletter
The word Gothic may suggest to some of us the glum eighties bands like the Bauhaus or the all black attire and make-up that went with it, but Gothic is a literary term, considered a genre by some. The word has its origins in Goths, a horde of folks who vandalized Europe, and as a contradiction to the word’s literary meaning, they caused serious damage to literature because, as they did all their conquering and savage acts, they also burned most of the Latin texts written on papyrus and vellum. This is why so little of the Latin literature has survived to our day.
What we call Gothic in literature first came to existence after the mid-eighteenth century, a movement credited to Horace Walpole’s first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto. Although the earlier examples were fiction, poets such as Edgar Allen Poe also used Gothic elements in their work.
Gothic took hold in continental Europe as Shauerroman in Germany, in the dark melodramatic works of France, and in the Russian Empire. Then, in the middle twentieth century America, it gave way to New Gothic romance movement with Victoria Holt, Joan Aiken and others, while William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Truman Capote, and Harper Lee influenced the American novel to create the Southern Gothic Genre.
Even if the beginning of dramatic Gothic writing is well known, the ending of it is far away in the horizon, and the ideas and motifs in it are still in use today. Especially with the rise of self-published novels, we keep seeing another increase in Gothic concepts.
The elements that constituted earlier Gothic writing sometimes known as the Victorian Gothic were:
 Horror elements, at least a touch of them to create suspense, such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Psychological portrayals with themes of distress, madness, and feelings of being threatened, such as in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Poe’s Telltale Heart.
Exotic Settings like the Orient, Middle East, or old haunted houses and castles.
Fascination with the past, especially the medieval era, and using the historical settings for romance, horror, or suspense elements.
Tweaking the supernatural, with ghosts, vampires, omens, and the like, to fit in a plot.
Putting stress on romance and sexuality, as in Dracula and Poe’s poetry.
During the later decades, a few other concepts and experimental techniques were used together with the above elements, such as changing narrators or the setting to establish mood and the use of symbolism. At this time, the repeated motifs of characters reflecting the duality of human nature, as in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or the hidden terrors in human experience were employed extensively with the symbols of ruins, black veils, animals, eerie sounds, spilled blood, shadows, darkness, high and overwrought emotion, impending doom, and women in distress.
In our day, to all of the above, powerful elements of romance are added mainly the threat of uncertainty, unreturned love, or feelings with overwhelming force and sudden emotions of strong attraction. Then, \in the meantime, Steampunk Romance has evolved as another form inspired by Gothic.
Through the use of Gothic with flawed main characters from Heathcliff to Hannibal Lecter, great drama has been achieved, and I am quite sure many of our writers here in WdC are taking advantage of some or most of the Gothic elements in their writing. Of those, whose works I have read, especially the published novels, I can easily point to StephBee’s impeccable work both in her steampunk series and in her novels that involve horror featuring royalty plus werewolves and vampires. In addition, a few of the stories that I came across in WdC with Gothic elements in them are in the Picks section of this newsletter.
In closing, may the Gothic advantage in your work thrill you and your readers…
Until next time. 
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This Issue's Tip: One tip while writing a novel or novella, to recall the specifics of location, time, and characters is to note it beforehand. For example: 4 PM, 1945 summer, Chicago by the lake, Madeleine, George, Steve and later the mother.
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billikus
Magic is all around us. I just think that for some, it becomes invisible when we reach a certain age. Magic is a lot like love, the more you give, the more you get.
This is so true of life, love, and magic. Thanks for the feedback, Bill.
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Graham B. 
The challenge of using magic in any story is balancing it with all of the other attributes of a good story. Magic can be a major game changer, depending on how it's used. The best fantasy and science fiction, in my opinion are those works which minimize the use of "magic" as described here. For example, Tolkien's use of magic is subtle, and almost pushed into the background. Also, look to the very first sci-fi book ever written: Frankenstein. In this one, the only sci-fi element is the one which brings the creature into existence, and after that, character development proceeds as it does in any other genre. It's far too easy to fall into the trap of Deus ex Machina with these genres, which of course, cuts off many interesting plot and character developments and often leaves the reader feeling unsatisfied with the story. Time-travel stories are often the biggest offenders in this regard. Magic can be a wonderful element to build out a story, but I think great care should be taken not to substitute it for good writing.
I agree. Thanks for the input.
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