Everyday Hauntings: Writing Contemporary Gothic Fiction with JD Scott

This writing workshop is now sold out. Please email [email protected] to join the waitlist—and become a member for early access to future programming.

Gothic fiction has existed since the 18th century, and its aesthetics of fear, haunting, and charged atmosphere continue to entice us. In this six-week generative workshop, we’ll learn how to trade the candlelit castle for contemporary life, all while building the same kinds of characters, settings, and tensions that have shaped Gothic fiction for centuries.

This is a generative writing class in which we’ll discuss key elements of the Gothic, read short stories and novel excerpts from 20th- and 21st-century writers, and transform our insights into creative prompts. Topics will include moving between literal and metaphorical hauntings; layering the past and present; crafting atmosphere within inherited spaces such as family homes; exploring regional Gothics; and learning techniques for unsettling realism or adding a touch of the supernatural to our fiction.

To explore atmosphere and mood, character psychology, and disquieting settings, we may read from writers such as Shirley Jackson, Daphne du Maurier, Toni Morrison, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Donna Tartt, and Mona Awad. Participants will have the option to generate several short fiction pieces through prompts and have the opportunity to workshop one of their stories during the class.

Course Outline: Every student will have the chance to share generative writing responses and to workshop one of their pieces created during this course. The class will include weekly readings (all provided by the instructor) and opportunities for peer feedback. This workshop is ideal for both beginner and intermediate writers.

• Week 1: Introduction to the Gothic. We’ll start by defining the Gothic and its key elements: fear, isolation, atmosphere, and the return of the past. From there, we’ll examine how castles and catacombs have given way to our contemporary landscapes: suburbs, apartments, and cities. Particular attention will be paid to how traditional Gothic architecture can be reimagined in modern settings.
• Week 2: The Atmospheric Image. Building on our first week, we’ll explore the poetic unit of the image in more detail, considering how atmosphere doubles as the emotional landscape of place and character. By focusing on sensory detail, we’ll discuss how to evoke sensations such as dread, unease, and haunting—and how subtle shifts in tone can make a scene feel charged or uncanny.
• Week 3: The Haunted Mind & Character Psychology. After focusing on exterior spaces, we’ll turn inward to the interiority of characters: isolation, repression, obsession, and unreliable narration. We’ll study examples in contemporary fiction to see how psychological confinement can substitute for physical entrapment—and how alienation and obsession drive Gothic tension.
• Week 4: The Past Isn’t Past – Temporal Layering and Inheritance. The Gothic has a clever way of layering time, allowing the past to persist within the present. We’ll discuss how history, trauma, and family legacy haunt characters and spaces. Focusing on motifs such as the inherited home, heirloom, or artifact, we’ll study narrative techniques for weaving memory, time slips, and echoing voices into a single narrative thread.
• Week 5: Between Metaphor and Manifestation – The Supernatural. Something central to the Gothic is the space between realism and the supernatural. Sometimes characters feel so haunted that it almost seems as if a ghost is in the room with them; sometimes there are literal specters and monsters. We’ll discuss writing metaphorical ghosts (trauma, guilt, repression, absence) and explore how ambiguity can heighten narrative tension. We’ll also examine the more literal monsters of the tradition—ghouls, vampires, and mad scientists—and how these figures can be reimagined today.
• Week 6: The Regional Gothic. After exploring the many tropes and ingredients of the Gothic, we’ll turn to how they intersect with American (and international) regionalism. What makes the Southern Gothic its own subgenre, and how might Gothic ideas take shape in the Northeast, Midwest, or Southwest? We’ll discuss how regional culture, landscape, and history can shape our stories—and how the myths of place reveal what haunts us collectively.

Teaching Style: In this workshop, I emphasize close reading, open discussion, and creative experimentation. Each week, we’ll look at literary examples to see how writers build the Gothic, then use generative prompts to begin our own pieces. Students can expect a supportive, open-minded environment for drafting and workshopping fiction in whatever form feels most authentic to them.

Level: Introductory

This course is held online via Zoom.