Welcome to Quibble’s brand new newsletter:The Editor’s Desk
My name is Emerson, and I am a writer and editor on Quibble’s editorial team. I am a lot like most of you—a nerd with a story she’s been desperately trying to tell, but without any real idea of how to do it. I’ve been at it for about three years now, and friends, unfortunately, there is no miracle trick that’s gonna teleport you from that blank page to a finished novel. Even at the best of times, writing can feel difficult and wrought with self-doubt. However, that shouldn’t discourage us from telling great original stories. That’s where this newsletter comes in.
Every week, we’ll cover the methods of some excellent storytellers–filmmakers, mangakas, and authors alike. Each piece will focus on specific genres and tropes that writers do well, or exploration of what went wrong when they don’t. To kick things off, I figured we’d keep it relevant and talk about a creator you may be familiar with. And if you ever want company along the way, our Discord community is always there to share ideas, encouragement, and a love for storytelling.
Guillermo Del Toro is a monsterphile and filmmaker known for creature design and generally incredible films—if not in storytelling spectacle, then in costume and set design.
It was released on Netflix and in theaters in early October, and I am ashamed to say that I enjoyed the movie on my couch when I probably should have just gone to see it on the big screen. Del Toro is a master at creating grotesque creatures and then humanizing them to the extent that it becomes completely acceptable to watch a romance between a cleaning lady and a fish creature (I’m talking about The Shape of Water here, another excellent Del Toro film). If anyone is talented enough to rework the titular mad scientist tale, it’s definitely this guy.
Most modern interpretations of Mary Shelley’s famous novel recognize Frankenstein as foundational to the science fiction and horror genres.
There are many layers to the text. It’s littered with evidence of Shelley’s worldview as an unusually educated woman, clear nods to the legacy of her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, a prominent feminist and radical thinker. Historians analyze the differences between her 1818 and 1831 editions, noting the tonal changes that shift the blame for Victor Frankenstein’s crimes to fate rather than the price of his own ambition.
In the 2025 adaptation, Del Toro brings his own interpretations to the tale, keeping some of the same themes while holding a broader light to the father-and-son dynamic between Frankenstein and his Creature.
The film splits its time evenly between building up two different kinds of monster:
The human kind and the classical kind.
If you haven’t yet seen the film, here is your spoiler warning–I’m going to get into the specifics of what made this movie a good one for me, and what I learned from it.
In Frankenstein, Del Toro nails something I am constantly trying to bring into my own writing. It's called “sympathy for the monster”.
Villains and antagonists with complicated development arcs have become increasingly trendy in modern storytelling. “Because they’re evil” is generally a less convincing framework justify a character’s actions. Audiences often want complicated, grey-tinged tales, true reflections of the world around us. Or, at the very least, I want that for the specific story I am going for at the moment.
1. Setting
One unique marker of a Del Toro film is his consistent ability to build atmosphere. Frankenstein’s setting is full of desolate cliffside moors and the dripping underbellies of castles, hammering home themes of hostility and isolation. The macabre maximalism of Victor’s study is a clear reflection of his obsession with overcoming death.
Given that movies are primarily visual media, it makes sense Del Toro is naturally inclined to do this, but I’d argue it’s just as important in writing. As a writer, it is your job to build a world unique to the story you are trying to tell. Setting should be treated as seriously as character–because, in a way, it is character. Think about Derry in Stephen King’s It or Area X in Annihilation. We buy into these set pieces because they are integral to the story, and possess elements necessary to tell that story.
In Frankenstein, the tower itself becomes an antagonist after Victor decides to blow it up in an effort to kill the Creature, wounding himself grievously in the process. The looming face of Medusa in the tower lab constantly reminds the audience of the future in store: a misunderstood monster, and the folly of man. Your setting provides an opportunity to foreshadow, hint at larger themes, and create obstacles for your characters to navigate
2. Situational motivation and backstory
Speaking of obstacles, the situations that Del Toro places both his monsters in inform their actions throughout the story. The unfortunate death of Victor’s mother and the cruelty of his father provide sympathetic reasons as to why he pursues the reanimation of corpses so ardently.
However, Del Toro also doesn’t shy away from how thoroughly Victor is corrupted by his ambitions: giving us scenes where he examines criminals awaiting the noose as corpses rather than living men or pillages battlefields without an ounce of respect for the dead. In this sense, he is both relatable and unforgivable–we hate his behavior, but sympathize with his reasoning because we understand the suffering he’s been through. In this framework, Victor truly is the villain of Frankenstein, but he is far from a flat one.
Leaning as far as possible into the darker sides of a character makes them more interesting, but the situational motivation behind their actions should be roughly proportional to the actions themselves
3.Tragedy
Both Victor and the Creature’s story are ultimately framed around the tragedy, but this is more true for the latter. The Creature is only alive because he’s an experiment–it’s clear that Victor has little regard for him beyond this capacity, sometimes even to the detriment of the film, as it becomes increasingly obvious that Victor could solve his issues simply by righting the wrongs with his creation. The Creature’s only frame of self-worth is through his creator, who abuses him as Victor was once abused.
We are constantly provided with evidence to the Creature’s innate kindness, especially when he interacts with symbols of purity, such as Elizabeth and the deer in the forest. While the romance between Elizabeth and the Creature is not given the time needed to be gracefully developed in De Toro’s film, there is clear value in setting up that potential. Del Toro is giving us the foil which sees beyond the unnaturalness of the monster and recognizes the potential for intelligence and humanity in the Creature where Victor cannot.
This is foundational for creating that sense of tragedy for anti-hero characters. We know that if the Creature was given a chance to be with Elizabeth, his obsession with Victor would not come to fruition. Each encounter further develops different aspects of his character—he gains wisdom from the old man, gentleness from Elizabeth, and violence from the hunters. Forced into insolation by everyone, including his creator, the Creature has little choice but to be cruel, making his eventual turn towards violence highly sympathetic to an audience. The more evidence of a character’s potential good is provided, the more we can excuse their fall into villainy
These three points are by no means the end-all-be-all of the “sympathy for the monster” trope.
The reason why Frankenstein is so relevant more than 200 years after it was originally published is because it was so deliberate with its parallels, philosophies, and themes.There are endless talking points, so many that a complete dissection of Frankenstein (pun most definitely intended) could easily morph into an entire lecture series.
Still, hopefully, this piece captured enough of it to pull back the curtains on Del Toro’s adaptation and the character arcs within.
