Help me start my Pinterest board!!!

For the contest, send pictures via twitter, to my email info@bethanygriffin.com or put links in the comments!

Okay, so today I'm very excited about starting my brand new Masque of the Red Death Pinterest board. I'm very excited about the idea of Pinterest, in fact I just had my creative writing students create low tech collages of their works in progress. I wanted to do my own, but as ever, was behind on grading and ended up commenting on papers while they were cutting, pasting, and glueing.

The other day I discovered a copy of Masque that I had forgotten I had, AND I have a copy that's being mailed back to me by a friend who didn't have time to read it.

I wanted to have a fun contest, so I'm collecting Masque inspired pictures for my interest board. I'm going to pick my favorite pictures and the winners will get their choice of a Masque ARC (I want to get these out since the book comes out in 3 weeks!) or a Masque bracelet. Including the limited edition white bracelet which you can see here

I'll pick the winners by Thursday evening and send prizes on Thursday. Good luck everyone! 

Here I am on Pinterest http://pinterest.com/bethanygriffin1/  follow me, and I'll be sure to follow you back! 

So excited about this contest and endeavor. 

For the Love of Vocabulary

I'm going to reveal myself as a geek right now, and admit that I LOVE words. Love them. As a teacher, I am willing to spend a small amount of time on proscribed vocab...I once observed a teacher who spent more than half her teaching time on vocabulary, and that's just...icky. Time is better spent increasing vocabulary through reading, imho.

I think I have a somewhat formidable vocabulary, but when I started writing The Fall I was overwhelmed and intimidated by a lot of things, most of which stemmed back to reworking something by Poe. Or course the vocabulary was intimidating.

The following is a vocab list of words and phrases from The Fall of The House of Usher that I wanted to use.

Dull

Dark

Soundless

Clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens (this is circled- meaning I don't think I used it)

Melancholy

Pervaded

Insufferable Gloom

Vacant eye-like windows

rank sedges (not sure I used this either as there was already some confusion on what a tarn was)

white trunks of decaying trees

sinking, sickening of heart

black and lurid tarn

unruffled luster

sullen

ethereal

ghastly and inappropriate splendor (this is the title for the sequel..kidding, kidding, what would it be about? but A Ghastly and Inappropriate Splendor would be an awesome title for...something)

tenebrous

Somewhere someplace there is a tattered internet copy of The Fall of The House of Usher that I carried around for over a year (I think it's in my desk at work) that has lots of other words and phrases highlighted. I really hope I can find that, as it seems like it almost became a part of me and my life. :)

Atmosphere

Okay, so in my Wikipedia exploration of Gothic Lit, one of the big factors was atmosphere. And I have to say that Atmosphere is something I love. I'm much more attracted to "dark" movies than colorful ones. I could watch Sherlock Holmes over and over, just for the atmosphere.

True Blood is a show that definitely has atmosphere...somehow the combination of vampires and the deep south is perfect for atmosphere...though there's more to it than that.

Recently I've picked up several books that claimed to be Gothic, but as far as atmosphere went, they were really paranormal. Beautiful Creatures (again with the southern thing) had a lot of atmosphere, and what I've read so far of The Monstrumologist. It's been a long time since I read Twilight (some darn kids stole it...really from my classroom library. I guess I need some kind of surveillance system) the idea of being in Forks Washington where it's gloomy and rainy does seem to be the perfect setting for some great atmosphere.

So, atmosphere is something I recognize when I see it (or listen to it, like The Cure) but how do you create it? I don't know that I'm any expert on this, but I have been looking into it for almost a year.

Imagery- What images are you creating...and do they create atmosphere? Heavy, dark brooding ruins, castles, deteriorating mansions...dense forests, places that are steamy and hot or places that are cold (mild and pleasant is great for picnics but not so much for the atmosphere) what things do you focus on or describe?

Word Choice- I studied Poe's Fall of the House of Usher for word choice, and made a list that I'll probably post on the blog tomorrow. There were certain words that I used (probably too much) tattered, dark, gloomy, etc. But in finding new variations I found some new words. Tenebrous is another word for darkness. Even sometimes when I'm focused I will have to use the thesaurus because I'll be so focused on certain words. When I wrote the first scene of The Fall, I was using the word shaking over and over. It took me a few drafts to switch some of them to trembling.

Sentence Structure- Poe ties you up and abuses you with his sentences. For a modern (and possibly lazy reader) his sentences are like some kind of hedge around the castle that is the story. You have to hack your way through. I'm a short sentence and fragment type of writer, so finding a balance was a lot of fun. Atmosphere does require some long and in depth sentences, but I think it is nicely punctuated with some ominous fragments. Here and there.

Voice- voice is such a weird thing. I keep reading that we all have a certain authorial voice that comes through in our writing. Maybe, maybe, one day I can take The Fall, and Handcuffs, and Greedy an unpublished realistic contemporary that I really loved writing and see the same authorial voice in them (the character voice is certainly very different in all of them). I do think that you could find similarity in the turn of the phrase, etc. To me, working on atmosphere with voice is about what the character notices. In The Fall, Madeline does not really know what is normal or how normal people live, if, for example (and this doesn't happen, but whatever) if the walls start bleeding, she's like, hmmm that didn't happen yesterday. Whereas another character might be freaked the hell out. I've started another Gothic haunted mansion sort of manuscript in which the main character is much more aware of what is weird and creepy and what isn't weird and creepy. Both ways are fun.

So, in conclusion, for writing things with atmosphere, I think the key is to figure out what you want, and how far you're willing to go to get it. I don't think the modern reader is willing to hack through a jungle of words (they'll do it for Poe, but probably not for many others). But I do think that the modern reader loves good atmospheric stuff.