On 25th Aug 26, I asked Claude (Sonnet 5 medium) to give me 6 gothic story premises.
Here are the premises:
Here are six gothic story premises:
1. The Inherited House
A woman inherits a decaying estate from an aunt she never knew, only to discover the will requires her to live there for a full year before she can sell it. The portraits in the hallway seem to rearrange themselves each night, and the locals refuse to say why the previous owner never left the grounds alive.
2. The Physician’s Ward
A doctor at a remote Victorian asylum becomes obsessed with a patient who claims to remember her own death. As he digs into the asylum’s records, he finds his own name in ledgers dating back a hundred years, in handwriting identical to his own.
3. The Drowned Bride
On the eve of her wedding, a bride finds an old wedding dress in the attic, still damp, that fits her perfectly. As the wedding approaches, she begins losing time, waking near the lake with no memory, while guests whisper about the groom’s first fiancée, who vanished the same way.
4. The Cartographer’s Debt
A mapmaker is hired to survey a fog-bound coastal village that appears in no official records and disappears from any map drawn of it within a week. He accepts a night’s lodging from a gracious family, only to realize the village has been trying to map itself onto him.
5. The Twin in the Wall
After her twin sister’s death, a woman moves into their childhood home to settle the estate and starts hearing her sister’s voice through the walls, giving her small, helpful warnings, each one true. She isn’t sure whether she’s being protected or slowly replaced.
6. The Choir of St. Agnes
A restoration architect is hired to repair a fire-damaged church organ and finds that playing certain notes summons a choir no one else can hear, singing hymns older than the church itself, always one verse further along than they should be able to know.
I’m going to write to each prompt for 30 minutes and see what happens.
I’m going to use a system that I started using with In-grid, but I was first introduced to through Rowena Murray’s writing retreats. Timed writing
1 (write about anything, but try to write in full sentences) 3 5 9 13
My hope is that by taking the pressure off of writing, I can start to build some of my practice centered work. It’s a process I’ve used before and it’s worked well.
aside Should I see if there is any writing on creative writing to develop visual practice?
1. The Inherited House
A woman inherits a decaying estate from an aunt she never knew, only to discover the will requires her to live there for a full year before she can sell it. The portraits in the hallway seem to rearrange themselves each night, and the locals refuse to say why the previous owner never left the grounds alive.
1 min: Is this a contemporary story or an older one. I don’t think I want to lean into it being Victorian etc for the sake of it, but I think I would like to have some of the vibes consistent to that time. Does that mean I will be anacronistic?
3 min: Anna stumbled slightly as the toed off her sodden shoes in the entryway to the small cottage she was about to call home for the next year. Dripping on the stone flagstones, she fumbled for
5 min: a switch. Numb fingers found what she was looking for but the room remained dim but for pale moonlight pooling through window. There must be a generator or battery of some kind on the property, but she was damned if she was going to go back out to look for it now, she’d probably set her neck trying to find it. The cottage was old, but had been, as she understood it, inhabited by her Aunt’s grounds keeper until his passing earlier in the year. It seemed that Anna’s Aunt had remained in situ as her staff had died around her, not bothering or able to hire someone new, before she had stepped off this mortal coilaside is that the saying?
9 min: Instead of braving the mailstrome outside, Anna clattered around the drawers of the small kitchenette until she found a pack of cheap tea lights. Dotting them around as she explored the cottage she got her barrings. The main house, some 15 minutes drive further into the estate, seeming a bit too daunting to visit just now, Anna had instead opted to spend her first night as someone with land in this vastly smaller servants quarter. It felt a little laughable in all honestly. She was currently renting a flat she couldn’t afford, while (nearly) owning a stately home she hadn’t yet set foot in, and sleeping in a shed. Well, the cottage wasn’t that bad. There was one room with a small kitchenette and a space to sit with a hard wearing sofa and a stubby bookshelf. Through one door she found a sink and a chipped porceline bath. In another a toilet, and finally a small bedroom with a single bed on an iron frame. Trying the taps she was pleased to find water running, although it was freezing.
15 min: A bit too much to ask for the electricity and hot water to be running perhaps, but at least there was indoor plumbing. She could rough it tonight before heading up to the big house tomorrow to meet with Mr Gingridge from the solicitors.
She really was exhausted. The drive here would have taken it out of her at the best of times, nervous driver that she was, but the conversation with David has taken much longer than she had hoped. It had rung her out, despite the fact it was a rehash of their last three arguaments just delivered in more resigned tones. That being the case, compounded by the late hour she had crawled about the ill kept roads of the estate to find this small restbite.
While eating some noodles boiled on the gas hob of the kitchenette, Anna wandered the cottage opening draws and cupboards. She would need to ask the solicitor whether the grounds keeper had any family, and whether they had, or might want to look at the belongings left here. There wasn’t much. Most of the drawers in the kitchen held exactly what you would expect, and a glass faced cabinet by the front door had bits of fire lighter, matches, some batteries, dry goods that were mostly dust. The stubby bookshelf had some cheap paperback thrillers, some ordinance survey maps, some mugs and a pack of cards, CDs and cassette tapes. A radio sat on top. Anna riffled through the CDs, mostly classic rock, some
Someone had removed perishables from the fridge.
She had never met her Aunt.
Reflection: This was nice, it went a lot quicker than expected, as it always does. I haven’t read it back over, and I imagine I might be vaguely embarrassed by it if I did. I think I spent too long describing the logistics of the world rather than getting into the creepy meat of it. Maybe next time I’ll jump right into the action. Also, I’ve been reading quite a lot of trashy fiction recently and am getting into my own head about style. I need to read/reread some gothic really.