Flippin' Gothic Tropes

A recent Substack post prompted me to examine gothic tropes and think about fresh angles.

I write gothic romance mostly with historical settings, and I’ve been thinking hard about gothic tropes as I fool around with an outline for a future book.

Let’s call a trope a motif that appears over and over. In gothic stories, motifs cover many aspects, like settings, situations, and character features. For example, an isolated, crumbling mansion is a popular setting, and a locked room is a favorite problem. Main characters often nurse hidden secrets about their past. There are more tropes, but you get the idea.

I like the reliability of a trope—take the romance trope: enemies to lovers. It’s fun to live through the emotional intensity and the dramatic conflict. Still, I have to admit that a writer’s slavish devotion to this trope can be boring to read if it’s too predictable. Stories I enjoy put a unique spin on the trope, changing the characters, or setting, or relationship. When the author takes something recognizable and flips it around, I’m eager to keep turning pages. Good examples of this are in a couple of terrific books I read earlier this year (I won’t go into details because I don’t want to spoil anything): Tea & Alchemy by Sharon Lynn Fisher and The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. (Are you writing a great read that exemplifies playing with gothic tropes? Leave your link in the comments!)

What prompted me to think about all this now is an installment of author J.D. Iredell’s retro-noir occult detective, Private Investigator Dash McCain. I enjoy noir for its psychological darkness and moral ambiguity, which overlaps a bit with the gothic vibe. So, I approached the installment with the expectation of having a good time reading a hard-boiled detective story. The story certainly delivers; however, the author caught me off guard by changing the predictable world in which I assumed Dash operates to delight with a fresh and unpredictable narrative.

I hope to give my gothic romance readers the same quality of experience through my work. Which is why I’m studying gothic tropes more carefully as I brainstorm. I want to better understand where familiar concepts appear and what they might mean for a reader. Is she really an innocent in distress? Is the monster thoroughly evil? Then I’ll intentionally explore how I can turn what is usual into something unforeseeable and, hopefully, surprise the reader. I may even trot out some questions and thoughts over time and hope you’ll share your opinions and reactions.

Understanding the conventions of your genre is your asphalt runway—a strong, solid support for your creative flying machine. But you really take off when you pull back on the throttle and flip predictable elements into fresh twists, defying expectations to engage your readers in new ways.