Episode 162: Setting as a Monster

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This week, we’re continuing our series on monster and spooky stories by exploring the use of setting as a monster or antagonist.

Throughout the month of October and part of November, we’ll be talking about monster, supernatural, and spooky stories. Digging into some of the important things these stories have to tell, the psychological explorations they engage in, strong emotions they can bring to life within us, and the storytelling lessons we can take away from them.

In today’s episode, we start by exploring the connection between Gothic Novels, spooky houses, and the rebellious literature wave of the Victorian era that dared to explore taboo subjects of death and sex.

In setting as monster or antagonist stories, we usually have two main types:

  • Confined indoor spaces - Often houses and hotels - Character must reveal the hidden secrets and escape. Some examples:

    • High Place in Mexican Gothic

    • Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre

    • Northanger Abbey in the novel of the same name

    • Highmoor in House of Salt and Sorrow

    • Allerdale Hall in Crimson Peak

  • Natural expansive settings - Often paths, forests, mountains, and deserts - Man Vs. Nature -Character must survive journey through nature. Some examples:

    • The Appalachian Trail in The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

    • The malevolent Wood in Uprooted

As we talk about setting, we focus on establishing the tone, mood, and reader expectations using saturated description, memorable and sensory details, purposeful language choices, and similes and metaphors that further the intention for the story. We also touch on the idea of employing and orchestrating elements - such as weather - at key times to underscore and highlight moments and beats in a story.

Towards the end, we talk about some examples of subversions that can be used. For instance, placing a creepy scene in the sunlight giving it the discordant feeling that it should be safe, but isn’t.

We hope you enjoy this conversation. Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

The Verbivore reads some of the introductory description to the house High Place from Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic. Here are those words:

  • “Francis took out a key and opened the heavy door. Noemí walked into the entrance hall, which gave them an immediate view of a grand staircase of mahogany and oak with a round, stained-glass window on the second landing. The window threw shades of reds and blues and yellows upon a faded green carpet, and two carvings of nymphs—one at the bottom of the stairs by the newel post, another by the window—stood as silent guardians of the house. By the entrance there had been a painting or a mirror on a wall, and its oval outline was visible against the wallpaper, like a lonesome fingerprint at the scene of a crime.”

Here are a few articles and videos we referenced for this conversation:

We touch on several of our previous podcast episodes. They are as follows:

Books Mentioned:

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
‘Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Bethany Stedman