Out of the Overcoat: Learning from Gogol with the Help of a Fiction Writing Coach

Nikolai Gogol occupies a singular, if spectral space in the pantheon of literary innovators. A master of the uncanny, he destabilized the conventions of 19th-century realism and offered instead a world refracted through exaggeration, grotesquerie, and eerie humor. Born in 1809 in what is now Ukraine, Gogol wrote in Russian and produced a relatively small body of work. Yet his stories have cast long shadows across literary history. Writers as diverse as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, and Jorge Luis Borges have cited him as a crucial influence, and it is not difficult to see why. Gogol’s fiction is filled with towns that blur into phantasmagoria and characters who slip from the plausible into the absurd with startling ease. In these strange transitions, one finds the roots of a proto-surrealist technique that would go on to inform entire genres of modern and postmodern literature.

What distinguishes Gogol’s narrative approach is his use of what Russian Formalists later described as ostranenie—or, “making strange.” This literary concept refers to the defamiliarization of the ordinary. In Gogol’s work, mundane objects, routines, or social norms are rendered bizarre through distorted description, unusual metaphor, or inexplicable shifts in logic. This technique compels the reader to look again at the seemingly familiar world and rediscover its strangeness.  In "The Nose," for instance, a petty official awakens to find that his nose has detached itself and is living independently as a higher-ranking official. This premise, comically illogical on its surface, becomes a searing parody of social hierarchy and the bureaucratic farce of rank and privilege.

For contemporary writers seeking to emulate or adapt such strategies, working with a fiction writing coach can be invaluable. The difficulty with “making strange” is not just conceptual—it is technical. Writers inspired by Gogol may find themselves tempted to lean too heavily into absurdity or whimsy without sufficient narrative scaffolding.  A fiction writing coach can help strike the essential balance between surreal invention and structural clarity. Just as Gogol retained a firm grasp on syntax and pacing even as his plots spiraled into absurdity, so must modern writers learn to walk that tightrope. A coach can assist in crafting scenes where dreamlike elements feel earned, symbolic, or tonally congruent rather than random or untethered.

Gogol’s techniques are not confined to surrealism alone. In "Diary of a Madman," he traces the descent of a low-level clerk into insanity with such precise tonal modulation that the line between reality and delusion becomes imperceptible. The story begins with mundane journal entries—tedious complaints about office life, social slights, and romantic frustration—but gradually these entries become consumed by delusion and paranoia, culminating in the protagonist’s belief that he is the King of Spain. What’s remarkable is the seamlessness of this descent. Gogol allows the narrator’s voice to evolve organically, letting language itself betray the encroaching madness. This narrative control is a hallmark of Gogol’s mastery, and one that writing coaches often emphasize in workshops or consultations. Any author attempting an unreliable narrator, a descent into madness, or a fluid reality must be acutely aware of voice, tone, and progression. A coach can guide a writer in maintaining narrative cohesion even as the content becomes increasingly unhinged.

Furthermore, Gogol’s influence is not only thematic or stylistic—it is philosophical. His work inhabits a zone of ontological uncertainty. Are his stories social satire, metaphysical parable, or psychological case studies? The ambiguity is deliberate. In “The Overcoat,” perhaps his most famous story, the simple premise of a poor clerk trying to replace his worn coat turns into a tragic fable of poverty and institutional cruelty. Yet the story ends with the ghost of the dead clerk haunting the city and stealing coats from strangers. This final twist resists a purely realist or allegorical reading, suggesting instead that the world Gogol portrays operates according to a logic more akin to dreams and myth.

Writers who feel drawn to this kind of ambiguity often struggle with how to structure such material effectively. Should the ghost be “real” within the world of the story? Should the narrative remain ambiguous? How much should the reader be guided versus unsettled? These are questions that can rarely be resolved through intuition alone. A fiction writing coach, acting as both first reader and structural analyst, can offer critical insights, identifying when ambiguity is effective and when it simply confuses, or suggesting ways to encode multiple readings into a single narrative strand. Coaches help authors refine the symbolic dimensions of their work, ensuring that surreal or magical elements resonate with thematic significance rather than feel like arbitrary intrusions.

The writers who followed Gogol learned these lessons well. Dostoevsky often cited Gogol’s “The Overcoat” as the origin of Russian literature—so much so that the quip “We all came out of Gogol’s overcoat” became proverbial. Kafka inherited Gogol’s sense of bureaucratic nightmare and ontological slippage, refining it into the existential dread of “The Metamorphosis” and “The Trial.” Borges admired the way Gogol created myth from absurdity, noting how his stories often hint at infinite meanings within brief, tightly wound frames. These successors did not merely imitate Gogol’s techniques; they developed them further. The reason they could do so lies in their deep understanding of narrative form—an understanding that can be cultivated through mentorship, feedback, and rigorous editorial practice, all of which are core to the work of a writing coach.

In today’s literary landscape, where genre boundaries blur and readers are more open than ever to surrealist or speculative fiction, Gogol’s techniques are ripe for rediscovery. However, the challenge remains the same: how does a writer preserve the integrity of their fictional world while introducing elements that distort, defamiliarize, or outright deny reality? This is a craft question as much as a conceptual one. A fiction writing coach, trained to ask the right questions and probe the story’s architecture, can help writers examine their work from multiple angles—focusing on what the strangeness achieves, how it is introduced, and whether it supports or undermines the narrative as a whole.

Gogol’s legacy is one of productive unease. He forces both his characters and his readers to confront the absurdity lurking beneath the surface of the everyday. In doing so, he opens a space for writers to experiment with voice, logic, tone, and form in transformative ways. But to do so effectively requires discipline, revision, and a sophisticated awareness of how estrangement works. A fiction writing coach can serve as an invaluable partner in this process, not by prescribing answers, but by helping writers clarify their intentions, sharpen their techniques, and embrace the power of the uncanny without losing coherence.

Gogol’s greatness lies not in how strange his stories are, but in how closely they resemble reality before slipping just slightly out of joint. It is in this slip—in the space between what is and what might be—that literature reveals its most haunting truths. Writers who want to explore this space will find that working with a coach can turn experimentation into art, and the surreal into something not just strange, but unforgettable.