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Writing Notes: Quirks, Habits & Mannerisms

Character Quirks - the memorable little things about a character’s personality that make them charming, endearing, weird, or unique. A quirk is anything worth describing about a character that makes them stand out, like certain speech patterns (a character who mumbles), or behavioral tics (someone who can’t make eye contact). Quirks can also be a character’s clothing, the way they smell, or whether they use their left hand or if they’re ambidextrous. Little quirks or idiosyncrasies can humanize a character—or at the very least, make them interesting.

Character Habits - the patterns of behavior exhibited by characters either involuntarily or in response to other stimuli. For example, a character who can’t stop winking when they get nervous, or someone who always smokes a cigarette with their morning coffee. Habits are often repeated under specific circumstances, or in some cases incorporated into a character’s routine. Good habits can reveal things about your character, like someone who always cleans their house before company arrives can be a stickler for neatness and presentation. However, bad habits can also be especially powerful, as they expose certain flaws about your characters, paving the way for growth and development.

Character Mannerisms - a character’s unconscious individual gestures, affectations, or other distinctive behavioral traits. Characters’ mannerisms can indicate particular aspects about them. For example, someone who is always slouching may perpetually lack confidence, or a character is always squinting because they’re too prideful to admit they need glasses. Mannerisms can help your audience tell your fictional characters apart from one another, giving them their own identity. They can also help your characters feel more three-dimensional, like people you’ve met in real life.

Tips for Using Quirks, Habits, and Mannerisms for Writing Realistic Characters

Quirks, habits, and mannerisms can be so useful for writers to incorporate during the character creation process. Whether your focus is writing a novel or short stories, little aspects of a character’s personality can help make them feel layered and real, strengthening the connection and empathy your audience has with them.

Make a list. Write your own list of quirks, habits, and mannerisms. Think about the people you know. Which family members are introverts? Who is always the life of the party? Do they say any specific things or behave in a particular way that indicates these aspects of their personalities? Think of a character you’ve read about in a book or seen in a TV show or movie—what were their strengths? What were their foibles? Also, consider complete strangers you’ve passed on the street. Which ones do you remember, and why?

Ask yourself why. If you’ve thought of a list of character traits you find interesting, consider why those particular ones stood out to you. Why do you want to give your character a weird sneeze? Why is it important that they’re vegan? Why you want to use a trait and its effect on personality are two important things to be cognizant of when building your own characters.

Show, don’t tell. Use quirks, habits, and mannerisms to say more about your characters than words can. You don’t have to tell your readers that your protagonist always feels awkward when he enters a crowded room—show them he feels that way by putting it into his movement. Instead of normally walking into the room, the character always shuffles meekly, or has to give themselves a pep-talk before entering. Descriptions like these can paint a more vivid picture of both the scene and your character for audiences.

Consider your setting. If you’re writing a piece that takes place in the 1990s, your main character isn’t going to check their cell phone constantly, or use certain types of modern slang. Make sure the behaviors and habits you incorporate into your character development line up with the time period or setting you’ve established.

Don’t overdo it. In fiction writing, a good combination of quirks can help create more memorable characters by including small things that make them charming, endearing, weird, or unique. However, overloading your character descriptions with these traits will have the opposite effect, and make them feel ungrounded and unrelatable. Quirks, habits, and mannerisms should be used sparingly, and only to enhance the character as a whole. If your character walks with a limp, has a catchphrase, wears ugly clothes, speaks with a stutter, and considers their stuffed animal their best friend, they will seem like a complete caricature to your audience. Characters shouldn’t need an overload of gimmicks to be memorable, just a few specific details that help bring them to life in a natural and interesting way.

Avoid clichés. Nothing makes a character feel less realistic than an adherence to unbelievable and tired tropes. If you want to develop unique characters, go against the grain. The gruff character with the eyepatch might be the nicest person in the neighborhood, or the clumsy girl-next-door might actually be a serial killer. Even if you’re experiencing writer’s block, don’t rely on clichés. Instead, think of all the basic ways characters have been portrayed throughout and go in the opposite direction.

Try writing prompts. Character writing prompts can help you imagine new combinations of traits to give to your characters. A prompt can force you to think outside the box you’ve built for your character, putting them in other situations and seeing how they behave. This can help draw out features of the character that you hadn’t thought of yet, while also expanding your character writing skills.

Source ⚜ More: Notes & References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

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Get to Know Your Character

Here are some questions to consider for character development:

What parts of their childhood trigger them?

How do they treat themselves when they're feeling sad?

What parts of themselves do they tend to hide?

How do they punish themselves when they make mistakes?

Who are they loyal to? Why?

Who do they avoid? Why?

What emotions or situations do they try to avoid? Why?

What angers them?

What are their insecurities?

What are their emotional triggers?

How do they feel about love?

What are their fears?

What is their relationship with their family like?

What kind of people do they tend to gravitate towards?

What do they like/dislike about themselves?

Happy writing ❤

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do you have anything on gothic horror and gothic erotica?

Writing Notes: Gothic Horror & Gothic Erotica

GOTHIC HORROR

A subgenre of horror novels that focus specifically on death.

Originated in the 18th century.

Exemplified by the author Edgar Allan Poe.

Also known as gothic fiction.

It is a literary genre characterized by elements of:

mystery,

horror, and

the supernatural.

Features of Gothic Horror

These are a few of the distinctive features of Gothic Horror:

Complex heroes: In Gothic tales, writers portray the protagonist as an anti-hero—someone with a complex personality that reveals elements of good and evil. As an outcast of society, the protagonist usually has monotonous features, which appear physically or emotionally. For example, the hero may have an uncontrollable rage. Thus, the troubled and doomed anti-hero is a Gothic motif that has influenced the literary canon.

Damsel in distress: A damsel in distress—typically an innocent, young woman—is a classic, Gothic trope used across stories. Often a supernatural being has held the helpless woman in captivity, locking her away in an isolated tower or castle. In Gothic romance, the damsel in distress often falls in love with the anti-hero, who has a seductive and charming personality combined with a dark side, such as a violent temper.

Existential themes: Explores existential themes to dramatize the plot. Gothic writers examine and question morality, reality, religion, and philosophy to match the ominous setting.

Extreme emotions: The idea of emotional extremes is another creative tool used in Gothic fiction to dramatize the story. Characters experience an internal torment that can assume a variety of different forms. Tragic and ominous plot points, such as the death of a loved one or an unsolved murder mystery, often send the protagonist into a spiral or raging catharsis.

Ominous setting: An eerie and spooky setting is a pillar of the Gothic novel, invoking suspense into the narrative. Common locations in Gothic fiction include Medieval ruins, haunted houses, and dilapidated monasteries. These types of ominous spaces often have secret hallways, trapdoors, and mysterious rooms that conjure fear and curiosity in the reader.

Supernatural elements: Supernatural elements—such as the use of ghosts, vampires, monsters, and demons—are another defining feature of Gothic fiction. Gothic writers employ these spooky elements to explore paranormal activity, embed terror into the plotline, and evoke fear within the reader.

Inspired by the aesthetic and architecture of the Middle Ages, Gothic literature gets its name from the Gothic castles, churches, ruins, and abandoned estates it uses as a setting for the haunting storyline.

Writers combine dark imagery with suspenseful narrative to reflect the decayed and battered state of the architecture, fusing terror with pleasure.

Romance often plays a role in Gothic fiction literature, as writers interweave the element of death into romantic relationships to build tension and capture the reader’s emotions.

Gothic Horror is one of the oldest of the horror genres.

Darker, edgier and on the Romanticism end of Romanticism Versus Enlightenment (in fact, it quite literally emerged alongside the Romantic movement in the late 18th century as a reaction against the values of the Enlightenment), it tends to play on both the thrill and the fear of the unknown and places a great importance on atmosphere.

It's usually heavily symbolic, sometimes even dreamlike.

In addition to being important to the horror genre, the first Science Fiction, Mystery Fiction, Fantasy, Romance, Thriller, and Adventure authors drew inspiration from Gothic horror, so it's sometimes considered the parent of all modern genre fiction.

Gothic fiction is usually used as a synonym or is the name given to Gothic horror stories that are saturated with the above mentioned sci-fi, fantasy, romance, mystery, or adventure elements.

As new writers contributed to the Gothic genre, numerous subgenres developed, such as the Southern Gothic, Gothic romance, Gothic ghost story, and modern Gothic, all of which fuse aspects of the supernatural into the story.

While the popularity of the Gothic novel soared during the late 18th century, it peaked during the Victorian era.

Today, Gothic fiction continues to inspire the themes and styles of thriller and horror novels.

Modern writers that use Gothic elements in their stories include Toni Morrison, Shirley Jackson, Susan Hill, and Stephen King.

If you’re looking for a basic answer for what makes up gothic horror, some of the hallmarks are:

Haunted and decayed settings (castles, homes, etc.)

Supernatural elements (especially ghosts)

Themes of isolation and/or confinement (both physical and mental)

Emotional and psychological overwhelm (characters doubting their reality, facing emotional turmoil like grief and loss, etc.)

Morally ambiguous characters (these characters engage the reader’s thinking on a deeper level)

Discussions of religion or philosophy (often tied to the morally ambiguous character)

Terror vs. horror (terror is when authors use suspense to build unease, and horror is when the promise of that terror is delivered)

Examples

Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897). A gothic horror novel about a vampire who wants to spread the undead curse to as many people as possible.

Frankenstein (1818): Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is one of the most well-known works of Gothic fiction. In this classic Gothic novel, Shelley explores the ramifications of science, as protagonist Victor Frankenstein attempts to create life from a corpse. Shelley’s image of a monster sewn together from human body parts has become a famous symbol associated with Gothic literature and horror.

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891): Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is a Gothic horror story that uses a portrait as a base for entering the supernatural world. Wilde examines morality in the text, as the protagonist chooses to sell his soul in the pursuit of sin.

GOTHIC EROTICA

This blends elements of gothic literature (see Features of Gothic Horror above) and the erotica genre.

The erotica genre intends to arouse the reader.

Any genre can become an erotic genre, as long as it has a place for sex—explicit sex scenes, to be precise.

Romance novels might be a gateway to the erotic women’s novel, but the romance novel has more emphasis on the sweet relationship between the characters, where, the erotic novel is more tuned in to the sex acts.

Erotic Literature - (or Erotica) written stories about people having sex.

Although it's like porn, Erotica can be educational, well-written, and sometimes even pass into the literary canon as acknowledged classics.

A way to divide the two is to mentally remove the sex from the story. If you still have a story, it is erotica.

Modern day books tend to deal with the emotional side of sex and sexuality, and often — with varying degrees of success — attempting to introduce a story or arching plotline.

Erotic Horror works often push against the limits of our comfort zones. Typically includes:

Consent issues

Graphic violence

Sexual themes that shock

A blend of discomfort with titillation

"Psychosexual Horror" Trope

This trope is when eroticism, sexuality, and scenes of a sexual nature are the theme or genre of a story, usually done through Personal Horror, Psychological Horror, Supernatural Fiction, or represented by characters and monsters with Freudian associations.

These powerful feelings of desire are depicted as uncontrollable hormones, instincts, and temptations that overwhelm a character's better judgment with great force and intensity, leading to conflict when it overcomes their judgment.

The psychosexual horror genre explores themes of:

sexual exploitation,

emotional manipulation,

sexual violence, and

sexual identity.

Often involving:

power imbalances in relationships,

manipulation,

obsessions, and

traumas that are linked to past sexual abuse, childhood trauma, or other traumatic experiences.

In relationships, sex is a weapon in these stories by using sexual tension and sexual prowess as a means of control and dominance.

Examples

Bitten: Dark Erotic Stories by Susie Bright. An anthology of gothic-style erotic horror.

The Bloody Chamber: Many of the stories (including the title story, which is based upon "Bluebeard") explore themes of sexual awakening, intimate relationships and predatory behaviour via Gothic fairytale retellings. The stories usually focus on a female perspective, with girls and women having to outwit predatory men, although some stories play around with this (for example, "The Lady in the House of Love" has an innocent, idealistic young man preyed upon by a female vampire, who struggles to overcome her monstrous nature to obtain her dreams of love).

Sources: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ⚜ More: Notes ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

Writing Notes: Gothic Fiction & Gothic Romance ⚜ Horror

Hope this helps with your writing!

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I’ve never thought about leaving the country, not until I worried about having to flee it. Hell, I’ve never thought about leaving the state. Dreams don’t have a lot of room to grow in Arkansas. Where would I get the money to leave one of the poorest states in the country? Would people look down on me because I am from one of the least educated states in the US? Maybe I could go somewhere like Colorado, I heard people are pretty accepting there, plus I wouldn’t have to part with an abundance of trees. I’ve always felt like it was the trees keeping my head above water. There’s no opportunity in Arkansas, but there’s some pretty nice trees.

Colorado is a sanctuary state. That was originally why it was up for consideration as a place to go if things get bad after the election. If deportations start getting bad again, maybe we’ll have a few more resources to choose from in a sanctuary state. Maybe it won’t be as hard to get a humanizing job. Maybe my husband wouldn’t have to sell his time to wash dishes. When he told me he was a dishwasher I didn’t think anything of it. I thought it was a perfectly decent job, a job someone had to do, a respectable job, but my mind always gets casted back to what my ex said when I was leaving him for my current husband.

“I hope your dishwasher can take care of you.”

Mind you, this was coming from a guy who’s never had to wash a plate in his life and therefore never learned how to. This was someone whose middle name was malicious incompetence. This was coming from a white guy who was handed everything on a silver platter growing up so he never learned how to appreciate anything, including me. I was just another thing the world owed to him because he deserved it.

Of course, things got much worse than we could’ve ever predicted after the election, and I’d bet you anything that ex is MAGA now. People feel much more emboldened to say that now, to believe it and instill it into their lives. The election change the course of our lives to the point that even Colorado couldn’t save us. How could it? The administration is targeting sanctuary cities now. Is there anywhere safe here? Is there anywhere I can go that I won’t have to worry about my husband being ripped from his family and myself? Obviously not anymore. Deportation has shifted from “worst case scenario” to “at least he’s in Mexico and not El Salvador.”

I set my sights on Mexico before anyone else did, somehow. His family is only one generation removed from the country, maybe the things they were running away from are still too fresh in their mind. But I’ve been reading about Mexico, and it’s done nothing but grow and flourish in the last 20 years. Maybe It’s not such a bad place after all. Maybe all those horror stories we Americans hear growing were more propaganda than fact the whole time.

I’ve never thought about leaving the country, not until I worried I would have to flee it. The more I think about it and the more oppressive this administration gets, the less likely it feels that we will ever have a good life here. It’s not safe to apply for a green card or citizenship and it won’t be for the next four years at least. Then we get to wait another possibly 10 years before he actually gets a social security number. We’ll be in our mid 30s by then, what do we do until then? Wait for ICE to show up at our door?

I’ve never thought about leaving the country, not until I worried about having to flee it. But maybe I won’t just be fleeing it, maybe I’ll be running towards something bigger, something better. Something that maybe isn’t perfect, but the sun still shines a little brighter and the air is a little warmer. Maybe I’ll have a better experience in my husband’s home country than he has had in mine. I think I’ll start learning Spanish tomorrow.

-TLGR

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Edinburgh

Mvdso

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https://pin.it/5Zz53jCeV.

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New York City, 1970s

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Hey. Don't cry. Weird teenage girl somewhere out there reading Frankenstein for the first time. Ok?

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It’s April of 2023 and I’ve undoubtedly just met the love of my life. I don't think I really understood love before this moment, not really. I’m not much a believer of love at first sight, but I know the overwhelming feeling I had when we met was a feeling of recognition. We’ve met before. We have taken this journey thousands of times across many lifetimes, and I’m sure my soul has been calling him Angel for longer than I could ever know. He’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a man but never thought could be wrapped up into one person. He looks like all of my imaginary boyfriends I had as a kid. He’s soft spoken, he’s gentle, not to mention he’s built like a Greek god. Everything about him is perfect, he’s just missing one thing: a social security number. That’s no big deal, I tell myself. We can figure that out later. I've never had much respect for this country or its rules anyway. After all, how hard can it be to get a green card or citizenship?

Really hard, apparently. He tells me his uncle has citizenship but it took him ten years to get it, not to mention the thousands of dollars it cost as well.

I knew very little of the hatred towards brown people in this country. Of course I knew it existed, and that it got a lot worse when a certain orange got on stage and called them drug addicts and rapists, an action that to my utter shock and horror- was met with a symphony of cheers. I pass it off as a boomer mentality and the lingering of racism from a past much closer than I realize, and tell myself that people with that mindset will all be left behind eventually. It's a dying breed, after all.

It’s our first date and we’re going to the movies. Whatever movie we saw probably sucked, because unfortunately any memory of that movie or even its name is not what I remember from this day. What sticks out in my mind is the strange feeling of being watched while we waited in line for tickets. I looked around, and to my deep disturbance I was right. There are several older men, middle aged white women, and even a group of teenagers that are looking at us with a glare I can't quite understand. Disgust? Anger? Maybe even fear? Am I dating the town weirdo and everyone else knows it except me? I squeeze my boyfriend's hand, and almost say something to him before I have a sudden realization that, before this moment, I had truly not even thought twice about: we are an interracial couple. Oddly, I didn’t think it would be a big deal in 2023, even in a small town in the south, but I was all of sudden very much aware that we didn’t share the same skin color, and that might be a problem for more people than I thought.

Over time I get used to these looks. It happens almost every time we go out and I hardly notice it anymore, unless somebody gets a little too close for comfort. Angel acts like he doesn’t notice it either, or maybe he hasn’t noticed, I can never tell.

In August of 2023, we are going to see my favorite band live in my hometown. It’s his first concert and I feel so grateful I get to be there to have that experience with him. I know it's going to be a good night. That is, until about halfway through the third band to play that night. The drunkest man I’ve ever seen in my life is sexually harassing two women in front of us. We scoot up, putting space between the belligerent drunkard and the girls. He gets as close as he can to Angel without touching him. He puffs his chest out like a bird, and says,

“You’re one of those fucking savages, aren’t you?”

I feel the blood rush to my face. I wish I could say I was angry, that I got in his face and yelled at him, threatened him, told him that Angel has been boxing since he was a child, but I didn’t. In reality I was more scared than anything. My boyfriend stays silent to keep himself calm, and so do I. The regretful silence is so loud, louder than the band playing in front of us, louder than my heartbeat pounding in my ears. The man tries multiple times to start a fight without throwing the first punch.

The drunkard's friends come to get him after an uncomfortably long time and apologize for his behavior. “Just keep him away from us, please.” “Yes of course, I promise he’s not usually like this.” I don’t care what he’s usually like, please just keep him away from us. Naturally, he sneaks away from his friends who are too busy moshing to notice and meanders his way back over to us. He sticks out his hand for my boyfriend to shake, as a faux truce. They do not shake hands. He tries another five times, repeatedly jutting his hand towards my boyfriend's chest. They still do not shake hands. He tries a different strategy to get a reaction, which I have to say was much more effective. He snakes his hand around my waist and attempts to pull me in for a hug. I am quickly whisked away, and Angel pushes the man down through quite a few rows of people trying to enjoy the show, who are now looking back at Angel and the man. His friends come and grab him again and I don't see him on the floor for the rest of the night. After the concert, I’m afraid he is following us.

Angel, who I have always known to be very level headed and gentle, rants on the way to the car. He’s so angry I could almost see tears forming in his eyes. He says he would’ve fought him, he wanted to hit him, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t risk being arrested because that would probably be the end of his life here in America. There was a security guard, maybe five feet away from us, watching the entire stand off take place without stepping a toe out of line until the drunk man hit the ground. We knew right there which side of history the guard was on.

It’s May of 2024 and my now boyfriend has been at Walmart for an alarming 3 hours. After another hour of sheer panicking and his family and I running around the store asking everyone who walked by if they had seen our person, the Walmart manager, tall, lanky, and ironically sharing the same skin tone as Angel, informs us with a smirk that he has been arrested for stealing bananas.

The woman at the window at the county jail doesn’t seem to be interested in talking to anyone except for me, and is particularly venomous towards my mother in law. I know it’s because she is a brown hijabi woman. I've figured out at this point how things play out when you don't have a bubble wrap layer of white skin around your body. The bondsman is also interested in talking to nobody but me. He asks me questions that make me feel like I am vouching for him not with the money I gave the bondsman or the papers I’ve signed, but with the esteemed value of my opinion of my partner as a white woman.

Angel comes home with us that night, but my sense of security is shattered. I don't let go of him for the rest of the night. I can’t even give a convincing portrayal of anger towards him. I can only think of how terrified I was that I didnt think I'd ever be able to touch him again, that God or the Universe or karma had decided I only deserved this one, short, blissful past year with my Angel.

We got very lucky with the deal we were offered in court, I think. Though I still don't think the court's time would’ve been wasted over a bundle of bananas if Angel's skin were a different color. The judge said if he goes through a sort of mental health rehabilitation program lasting 4-8 months, his record will be wiped clean. We take this deal, worried that the longer Angel's name was in the books, the bigger the chance that he could be picked up and shipped away from the only country he's ever known. While in the program, the counselor working with us sets up goals that we have to complete before he is able to graduate. The last item on the list is marriage.

Of course I wanted to marry him, and of course I did in November of that year. That very same counselor, who just so happened to be ordained, signed our marriage license. I can’t help but feel like our marriage is somehow now as real as everyone else’s. It wasn’t exactly on our own terms. Marriage was something we talked about looking forward to in the future, but not something we talked about doing any time soon. It felt like we were being asked to do this, it felt rushed, it felt somehow illegitimate, even though we all knew it was meant to legitimize Angels humanity to the higher ups in this program.

We certainly couldn’t afford a wedding, or even a fancy dress to go to the courthouse in. I’ve had my wedding dress picked out since I was 16 years old. As we drive to the courthouse, my husband promises me that I will have my day to wear that dress. I hope I do, but it feels like it gets farther out of reach by the day. Our wedding cake was a delicious cookie and cream cake from the same store that began all of this just 6 months earlier. This was the closest thing I've had to a wedding as of yet, but I still hope to one day tell that story too.

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