# Gothic Horror plot



## Storm Kesocascay (Oct 30, 2013)

Hey, I'm writing a horror-based Gothic horror story for an English class assignment. The only requirements are that it must match the characteristics of Gothic literature, be a minimum 2 pages, and be done by Monday (November 4). 

I'm thinking on making an adaption of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I'm taking only the image of the Headless Horseman and applying a different back story to him and a different plot. I want to make him either an Incarnate of Death or a Grim Reaper and have my common character, Arylos, the god of War, magic, and alchemy, and ruler of Death, fight the Horseman. Here's a basic plot I have so far.

The Headless Horseman was originally born in Sarajevo in 1,003 BCE. He was born as the Incarnate of Lord Death. As with any Death Hunter, he lives a life of 1,000 years before taking as many lives as he can to restore his life force ad repeats the next 1,000 years. In year 0006 CE, he rises again to take more souls, but Arylos has claim to the same souls. The two fight and Arylos takes the Horseman's head. Arylos didn't know that the Horseman's spirit remains and now, 2013, the Horseman returns for another cycle. (he's done some before this year) Arylos finds that the Horseman still lives and tries to hunt him down before the Horseman brings about an early Armageddon. The Horseman first attacks the city of Springfield, where Arylos resides in hiding, and the journey takes them all the way to Kansas City, where Arylos finally puts the Horseman to rest, for good.

Let me know how this works or if you think it needs to be modified. I don't want the piece to be too long since it needs to be presented. Any ideas?

Thanks.


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## buyjupiter (Oct 30, 2013)

Since this is a school assignment, I would definitely take a look at the common tropes of Gothic fiction presented here: Gothic fiction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Choose a couple of things you want to reference, so at least your teacher knows you know what Gothic fiction is.

In such a short piece (because I imagine like most teachers, she wants it double spaced wide margins, etc), I don't know how much of the back story you'll be able to fit in without the piece going to 20 pages. I think it's a good starting point for you to know all of this back story, but I would definitely keep the flashbacks and/or infodumps to a minimum. Plus, the less you start the reader with, the more suspense you can bring into the piece which will help create a mysterious Gothic feel to the piece.

You may also want to consider some type of framework to go around the main chunk of the action. Take Shelley's Frankenstein as an example here. Writing letters in character is also a big staple of the time period. 

Or...you could write the whole piece as a letter. "Dearest Fran, you won't guess what happened in Springfield this week. I was all set to go shopping down at the market when this great big hulking horseman whooshed past me. But that wasn't the oddest thing. He didn't have a head! Can you believe that? How did he see?...." etc etc.

I hope any of that was helpful.


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## Storm Kesocascay (Oct 30, 2013)

buyjupiter said:


> Since this is a school assignment, I would definitely take a look at the common tropes of Gothic fiction presented here: Gothic fiction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> 
> Choose a couple of things you want to reference, so at least your teacher knows you know what Gothic fiction is.
> 
> ...



It actually helped quite a lot! 

My teacher knows that I am an author and she actually wants to see what I can do with the Headless Horseman. She didn't give a max page count and she said that she doesn't care how long it is, as long it is at least 2 pages long. She also doesn't care about the format. It can be MLA, or not. She really, quoting her, "doesn't give a s***."


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