On Writing Something Completely Different

I don't really know how to start this post...so I guess I'll start by admitting that the first novel I wrote (in this case novel is synonymous with a whole bunch of dot-matrix printer paper that I put in a box) was a vampire novel inspired by Anne Rice and my fascinating experiences as a 10th grader.

With that being said, (mostly because I tried a lot of other ways to start this post and discarded all of them) :) I will address the fact that in the last couple years, I've changed many things about the voice, style, and scope of my stories.

I guess the best way to understand is to drift back to the circumstances in my life when I wrote Handcuffs. I had a one year old and a three year old. I wanted to do something for myself, to get back to the creative self that I had sort of left behind in graduate school and marriage and being an intern teacher. But I wasn't ready for intense world building. I hadn't slept for a full night in 3 years!

And there were a lot of things about Handcuffs that were cathartic. High school demons exorcised (okay that was a bit too dramatic), how about impressions about the awfulness of high school that I wanted to try to express.

And there's a lot of me in Parker, the main character in Handcuffs.

A few years later, I had an idea. I wasn't sure if I could carry it out. I questioned myself constantly. But I jumped into it, and the results have felt pretty right.

What I came up with was a mix of gothic, historical, dark, with some romantic/sexy elements. Now that my kids are older, I have enough sleep to tackle world building! I'm not planning any more big changes. I have a new idea bouncing around in my head. Haven't talked about it yet, except with my poor sounding board husband and my favorite YA librarian, but it's very gothic/victorian, dark, and sexy, with no reference to Edgar Allan Poe at all. I'm very excited about it.

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering...I have less desire to ever write about the vampires I envisioned in 10th grade, than I do to try to load my laser printer with yellowing dot matrix paper... :)

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.