Stick a fork in it, it's done! Time to put on the critiquing hats! Check out the awesome submissions over in the gallery o' gothicness.



Introduction

The following workshop was found in the attic of an ancient Catholic family in the north of England.

I'm `IBinsanity, and I'll be your host for this workshop.You quite probably haven't encountered me, but I've been involved in a few projects around the lit community in the past, particularly the fiction side of ~WordCount, and can often be found chatting with other literature addicts in #getlit. I like to write a few oddly-spaced genres - human nature poetry, journalism and sociopolitical fiction. Outside of the site, I've taken undergraduate-level courses in world and Gothic lit, and have written a few too many essays on both.

The workshop I'm hosting is based around the broad category of the Gothic novel, and no, I'm not asking you to write a novel. I'll be making you do some thinking though, because each of you who participate will write a mise-en-scene in the Gothic style. It'll be a little more complex than that, but that's the gist of the workshop - to create a modern Gothic setting that will have impact on your audience. I'm going to be a little long-winded in my explanation of Gothicism, but bear with me - it's all going to be information that will make your experience in this workshop a lot more positive.

Workshop Task

Gothicism

Gothicism can be defined loosely as human nature fiction dealing with sociopolitical themes, using outlandish situations in familiar but slightly removed settings. Gothic literature usually uses terror as a driving force to create suspense - either by rationalizing any horror elements it uses, or keeping the horror strictly implicit - so the common misconception that Gothic literature is a subcategory of horror isn't quite accurate. The genre's main popularity was during the Romantic era, when authors such as Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelley expanded the example set by Horace Walpole in his novel The Castle of Otranto.

In all Gothic literature, from Romantic-era to modern, the setting is a driving factor both in the audience's relation to the piece and, in a more sweeping sense, in directing the plot. In the novels now called Gothic Romance, the setting was based on places and times known but not completely familiar to the English audience. An element of the grotesque was implicit in the setting, which was invariably displayed as being evil, static and reflective of a mentality not embraced by the audience.

As you might have guessed, what I want you to do is create a setting - just a setting - for a piece of Gothic literature. I want you to write an excerpt for me that would parallel the examples below for the reaction they'd inspire in your audience.

Workshop Criteria

Your piece should involve no major plot and no major characters - and written in the third person. It should describe a setting, and only describe a setting. It should give the reader a sense that this setting is static, and unpleasant, and you should explain a bit about the mentality of the people who live or work or generally exist around the area. It should feel gritty and it should make the reader uncomfortable.

It should be written targeted specifically at your audience - the audience you most frequently write for. Make note in your artists' comments of who you think this audience is, and try to make it clear - but without bluntly stating it - that your audience would be uncomfortable in this environment through your writing.

You should be able to establish a setting effectively in about 1000 words; anything under 500 might be a little light on detail that would really drive the point home for the audience, and anything over 2500 might end up seeming a bit indulgent or purple, so I'd recommend you stick within those confines.

If you're feeling extra-creative, in your artist's comments list a theme or two that would lend themselves especially to this setting and that would cause a similar upset for your audience that would be created by the setting.

Examples and Resources
Radcliffe's The Italian is a good example of that - a novel set thirty-three years before its publication date in Italy, for an upper-class English Romantic audience that viewed Italy largely as a place of Catholic oppression and excess. They knew Italy very well historically, but viewed it out of context as a place of strict Catholicism. This, paired with the mentality of the Romantics that the traditions associated with religion were horribly outdated, allowing the novel to focus on corruption in the church and a protagonist that was a free-thinking "modern" man - a concept that the Romantics thought was novel in a country under control of the Church.

Gothicism later was applied to a variety of other situations, not just Romantic England. The Southern Gothic of the United States dealt with themes of segregation and class divides in gritty settings, both rural and urban: Flannery O'Connor's short story "The Artificial Nigger", targeted to an audience of educated white people in the American South and set in a contemporary urban city, specifically in a black neighbourhood, to demonstrate the fallacy of racial stereotypes of African-Americans is an example of this. In the story, this "foreign" metropolitan setting lent itself to the theme of urban, southern blacks being more civilized than rural, bigoted whites in Georgia - a concept that, again, would have been novel but acceptable to the author's market. Gothicism can be found later in American literature too, this time in the north of the country, in the subgenre of New England Gothicism. A good example is Stephen King's Dolores Claiborne, where a remote setting on an island in Maine that has no contact with the mainland is used to build themes of social stigma for a broad American audience - dealing with issues of alcoholism and incest in small towns by using a setting that is so rural even rural Americans would find it to be backwoods.

A very good example of making the setting seem as remote and abnormal as possible can be found in the prologue to Claiborne; an example of the static and abnormal setting can be found in the beginning of the first chapter of Peyton Place, by Grace Metalious; examples of lavish, excessive and evil settings can be found throughout Radcliffe's The Italian. The relevant excerpts of these works can be found in my gallery folder, Workshop Resources. If you'd rather read a short piece of Gothic-era poetry that gives you a sense of the grittiness of a setting, take a look at Ozymandias by Percy Shelley, which uses a desert setting to give a sense of hopelessness, emptiness and, quite literally, grit.

Also, if you haven't, give a read to Showing by ~onewordatatime, a good piece about the importance of relevant description.

Summary
As a recap, I'm asking you to identify an audience, and then use prose to establish a setting that will make your audience uneasy - a setting they're familiar with but would still find strange, and one that embodies a sense of stasis and a social mentality that your audience wouldn't approve of.

Deadlines
The workshop will be open for submission from July 5th, with the deadline for those submissions on 13th. Critique week will then begin, and the workshop will conclude on 20th. Please ensure you submit to the correct folder.

If you want any direction, or help, or more resources about Gothicism, or have any questions about the workshop itself, don't hesitate to note me personally (`IBinsanity) or comment on this blog entry. I hope you find this workshop enjoyable, and I can't wait to see how you all decide to terrify your audiences without using characters or plot! It sounds difficult, but get creative and you should do excellently.

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who participated in this workshop, either by submitting a piece, or critiquing, or both. We had nine submissions in all, which apart from anything else makes a neat three-by-three arrangement in the gallery, and - guess what - we have some great stories on top of that.

There were a number of genres covered (science fiction, fantasy, historical, contemporary realism...), and a number of themes and issues explored (crime, divorce, mental illness, gender and sexuality, all kinds!). This workshop did have a lot of scope; all I specifically asked was that the pieces followed a character through a significant period of time (a very elastic term, but in this case it means five or more years), and showed their growth and development. I can see that these authors put a lot of work into their stories, and all have performed to the best of their abilities. Whatever advice I gave in my critiques, I always got was a very good sense of story, and I was able to get behind all nine of your central characters.

I saw merit in all the pieces submitted, but it is customary to pick out a few, so I'm going to start by highlighting two that particularly struck me. Both are by experienced writers, who I feel surpassed themselves with this particular challenge.

'Here' by *cloudtographer

Four year old Keaton gripped a green crayon in his tiny fist, pressing it hard against the paper.  His parents fought beneath the sound of the tv in the background.  Scribbling in rhythmic circles, he furrowed his brow.  His mother came into the room, a dishtowel in her hands.   "What are you drawing, Keaton?"  Her voice had the tremble of someone forcing their words to sound happy.   "Money," he said, then glanced up.   She came closer, examining the pages scattered around him from behind.  All contained a dollar, done again and again in various sizes.  &nbs

This is a great story in many ways, but there is one thing in particular that I wish to point out: with this piece, *cloudtographer gives us a valuable lesson in economising on words. She has used a number of words somewhere in the 1,800 region, which isn't many when you consider that she's telling a story that spans thirty or more years. But those words are so well chosen, and so imbued with layer upon layer of meaning, that our minds can effortlessly fill in the gaps.

'Tiresias Unbounded' by *orphicfiddler

I. The Beginning   My life - such as it was at the time, nothing more than a polliwog in my mother's belly – began one warm summer night when the earth's shadow momentarily obscured an overripe harvest moon.   My mother was nineteen at the time, a tiny creature with silver eyes and sun-gold hair that ran to her waist like unfurled skeins of silk. On the night in question, however, it was bound and tucked beneath a little red cap, and my mother was not my mother, but a young girl playing dress-up as a boy in order to deal cards to tourists. Still, this had not prevented her from being lured into a nearby gondola in ord

This piece impressed me in many ways. Perhaps this is not surprising, as *orphicfiddler is an experienced and talented writer. She ventures into bold territory with this piece, which is beautifully written, and maintains a strong narrative voice throughout. I found this character is unique, fascinating and, most importantly, likeable.

As only nine people submitted to the workshop, and everyone worked hard on their piece, I do want to mention everyone. There were three other stories in particular that I remember for their particular merits. 'And When I Come to Die' by :devwilesofstarlight is succinct, compelling and technically excellent. 'Another World' by ~demonsweat is a bold venture by someone with very little writing experience, and very good for someone's 'first real attempt at serious fiction'. 'A Ribbon for Ana' by *Elizelda hooked me with its beautiful, poetic language and sense of atmosphere. The other four pieces are great too, for various reasons. ~DigiTails, *unforgottendoom and ~insignificant-ant all started with great ideas and communicated them well, and =oblivion00 gets a special last mention for being brave enough to write historical fiction.

Areas for improvement varied from author to author. Some needed pointers on the technical side of things; some had used an awful lot of words, while I felt that others needed to use more. Perhaps the greatest challenge with this task was weaving together the threads of the story seamlessly, so that (for example) the nine year old that we are reading about initially is recognisably the same character as the fifty year old at the end of the story. I generally got more of a sense of continuity reading stories written in the first person, perhaps because I have a lazy mind, and it's easier to remember that a character referred to as 'I' is always the same person, regardless of how that character changes. It is also easier for the author, I think, to follow a character through life if they are writing in that character's own voice.

Now, onto critique. You were brilliant! I want to thank ~DigiTails, *cloudtographer, =oblivion00 and ~demonsweat for critiquing very nearly all the pieces, if not actually all of them. I'd also like to thank everyone else who critiqued at all, even though I can't be bothered to find and type out all your names. You know who you are! A few of you began critiques with words to the effect of, I don't know much about bildungsroman, but... You know as well as I do that this does not disqualify your opinion, and we're all in this workshop to learn, right? (I'm not exactly what you might call an expert, and I'm hosting it!)

How can I highlight a few of the best critiques? There are so many more critiques than stories, and so many good ones! Well, let me start by highlighting *cloudtographer's critique of =oblivion00's story. The author earned my deep respect for daring to write historical fiction, and I feel that my critique of a genre I'm so frightened of fell sadly short. This critique, on the other hand, is very comptetent, and prompted =oblivion00 to make some improvements. ~StormyWolf wrote a great little critique on *unforgottendoom's story, offering a lot of helpful advice on how better to tailor the piece to genre, despite being 'not fully versed in bildungsroman'. ~Vocable made a short comment on *orphicfiddler's story to start off with, but then responded to her questions with specific points, which just goes to show the importance of communication. There is much swapping of questions and comments between author and critics on *cloudtographer's piece - I am not going to link them all! Oh, and ~demonsweat made *Elizelda's day by comparing 'A Ribbon for Ana' to the writings of Neil Gaiman, which is a small but very lovely thing to come out of my workshop.

Thank you very much again to everyone who participated. I have enjoyed this workshop immensely, and will be basking in the glow of the positive responses until well into next week.

*ThornyEnglishRose