GenresFiction
Gothic
Houses, secrets, weather, and the past that will not sit.
Gothic fiction is interested in places and pasts that will not stay quiet. A house, a family, a marriage, a landscape with a bad memory: something enclosed is holding more than it admits. The mood is part of the contract with the reader. Weather, architecture, and the feeling of being watched or delayed all help, but they are not a substitute for a secret that actually changes someone's life when it comes out.
The genre can be frightening, romantic, or both, and it often asks who is allowed to be believed. A woman who says the house is wrong, a servant who knows the history, a stranger who married into a story already in progress. You can enjoy the atmosphere, and you should, because readers are here for it. Just don't let the drapery do the plot's job. By the end, the past should have done something, not merely loomed.
The kinds of book inside it
Classic gothic
The older pattern, isolation and inheritance and a building that seems to have intentions, still works if you take the fear seriously.
Modern gothic
The same pressure of secrets and houses, set in a present where phones exist and somehow don't solve the problem.
Southern gothic
Decay, family, faith, and a particular American landscape, with the social rot as important as the spooky bits.
Gothic romance
Love and threat share the house, and the reader should be unsure for a while whether the beloved is the refuge or the reason to leave.
When you want a first sketch, Storywell can draft a story summary in this vein. You are still the one who writes the book. Compose an idea.