Post-mortem: writing The Longing Trees

Critiquing choices in character, tone, setting, conflict, and climax for this Gothic-folk horror short story

Photo by neil macc on Unsplash

Welcome to this post-mortem of my short story The Longing Trees. In this post we’ll dig into:

• Establishing character

• Setting the tone

• Suspense and conflict in this Gothic-folk horror

• The climax.

I post a free short story (typically horror or horror-adjacent) every month, and these post-mortems will follow the week after for paying subscribers.

Before moving on, this post will contain spoilers throughout, so please go ahead and read the story first:

All done? Let’s get started…

Establishing character

This story is written in close third-person, meaning that we perceive the world through the eyes and mind of the lead character. That’s great in terms of forming an emotional bond, but sucks if you want to give a physical description. Why? Because no-one sits around thinking:

I’m so glad I’ve worn my typical blue jeans and Converse trainers, but this red blouse doesn’t complement my complexion. At least my hair is tidied away in a neat bun reminiscent of a strict librarian, but the large gold hoop earrings were a mistake.

There might be a cursory self-description in a mirror or reflection, if there’s a convenient moment, but otherwise the close third-person perspective presents a challenge when it comes to establishing physical details of the protagonist.

How do we go about solving this? A more important question is should we solve this, i.e. does it matter if we don’t know their appearance? If it doesn’t matter, then don’t worry!

In The Longing Trees, it isn’t of great importance what the protagonist looks like. I left out almost all physical description and instead used context to paint the picture:

• The time-period - she’s riding in a two-seater carriage (likely 19th century or earlier)

• Her class (1) - she’s inside the carriage, not the driver, and they’re in a rural location, therefore she has money

• Her class (2) - her name is ‘Genevieve Forsythe’. A name can conjure a whole picture by itself, and the French-derived first name alongside ‘Forsythe’ speaks of old money and aristocracy

• Fur-lining - we get one physical detail: she returns a cold hand to her “fur-lined mitt”, giving a sense of elegance and wealth

• Grieving - There is the carriage’s second empty seat: “It would never be filled again. No other could replace him.”

If you’re not imagining a young woman dressed in Victorian-ish mourning-black then I didn’t do my job right! Genevieve could be old, or one-legged and gap-toothed. All of these could be true, but the likely picture you painted was probably more like The Woman In Black than a goth extra on Captain Jack’s pirate ship.

While her physical appearance isn’t important, the motivations of her character (who she is) are essential. The extremity of her grief (‘it would never be filled again’) will drive her to take a risk. For many readers, we’ve also hit a note of relatability here, because grief is awful.

We also have a tiny ‘save the cat’ moment. I talked about this in the post-mortem of Fresh Salmon for McTavish. We use ‘save the cat’ moments to improve the likeability of characters. Genevieve is clearly a figure of authority and in a hurry, but she has sympathy for her driver’s discomfort: when he asks to stop for the night, she says ‘of course’. She’s grieving, quiet, but also kind. Who wouldn’t be on her side?

Setting the tone

This is Gothic-folk horror, so we need to hit a few tropes along the way to ensure the reader is in the right mood: