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Year 8 · English · Gothic fiction · Lesson 5

Writing a Gothic opening

Planning and writing a Gothic story opening: the writer's toolkit, show don't tell, and building to a hook.

Whiteboard video lesson: Writing a Gothic opening

24-minute video lesson

Teaching, worked examples and 20 practice questions solved step by step.

Watch free for a month

What your child will learn

  • Plan a Gothic opening
  • Use Gothic techniques in writing
  • Show rather than tell emotions
  • Vary sentence lengths for effect
  • End with a hook

The method

  1. Plan the setting, character, threat and a hook.
  2. Use Gothic techniques: pathetic fallacy, personification, similes, the senses.
  3. Vary sentence length, with short sentences for impact.
  4. Show, don't tell; hint at the threat instead of revealing it.

Key words: plan, hook, show don't tell, pathetic fallacy, personification, simile, sentence variety.

Worked examples

The first three practice questions from the lesson, with every step.

Question 1

Improve this sentence for a Gothic story: ‘The house was old.’

  1. Step 1: How: show its age through decay
  2. Step 2: ‘Ivy choked the crumbling walls, and the shutters hung like broken wings.’

Answer: e.g. ‘Ivy choked the crumbling walls, and the shutters hung like broken wings.’

Question 2

Improve this sentence for a Gothic story: ‘I was scared.’

  1. Step 1: How: show fear through the body, not by naming it
  2. Step 2: ‘My heart hammered against my ribs, and my hands would not stop shaking.’

Answer: e.g. ‘My heart hammered against my ribs, and my hands would not stop shaking.’

Question 3

Improve this sentence for a Gothic story: ‘I heard a noise.’

  1. Step 1: How: make the noise specific and unexplained
  2. Step 2: ‘From somewhere below came a slow, dragging scrape, then silence.’

Answer: e.g. ‘From somewhere below came a slow, dragging scrape, then silence.’