Question

Can someone write me a gothic description of a setting?
I have "It was a cold, clear and errie night, the moon...." I need about about a paragraph? Thanks! :)

Answer 1

f you're setting the story outside the tomb, some of the obvious features would be "terrible noises", "skeleton-like trees", "blood-red leaves", "the deathly pallor of the dusk sky" images which suggest horror without actually introducing them. The theme of decay is quite common weather it's the walls of a building or the dying trees. So you could describe the inside of the tomb as smelling like death because of the mold. Make a comparison between the cracks in the walls of the tomb and the narrator being cracked-up inside his head. A lot of gothic stories compare the horror of the place with the mental stability of the narrator, so you'll get brownie points for that.

Some good elements specific to your story would be claustrophobia which is a common theme. Your character might be trapped in a tomb and be unable to get out. Describe his/her feelings in as much detail - the dread, the pit in their stomach, the panic, the inability to breathe, the cold, sinking feeling. Do they go crazy? Insanity is a common theme in gothic literature.

If you're writing from first person, then it would be good to explore how the setting the character is in is being internalised (e.g. what does it remind him/her of?) One key theme is suspense, so the reader must be kept guessing as much as the main character? So perhaps if there's a ghost in the tomb, the reader might never be able to tell if it's the main character's imagination or that it's real, in other words, the unreliable narrator.