H.P. Lovecraft on His Craft

Michael L. Berry's recent intriguing post about editorial and writing lessons learned from H.P. Lovecraft brings several things to mind, among Berry's own lessons drawn, which are listed below in condensed form:

1. Be Polite to editors.
2. Sometimes Tone and Mood are the most important elements of a story.
3. You really ought to learn how to write realistic dialogue.
4. A solid social network is crucial.
5. You never know how you'll be viewed by posterity.
   

One glaring detail is the eldritch influence Lovecraft continues to exert on horror and fantasy writers seeking to learn their craft. Despite being criticized down the decades as a stilted, excessively archaic, overly descriptive, or even just "poor" writer, the proof of HPL's literary ability (and its popularity), as they say, is in the pudding. And that delicious dish is comprised of thousands of writers across the board of the speculative genre, who typically began writing by producing Lovecraftian pastiches, before moving onto the finer points of what made Lovecraft truly great: specific imaginative and literary qualities, not inferior attempts at aping tentacled monsters and obscure adjectives.

Even beyond that, it's impossible to deny Lovecraft's style possessed a certain charm. The subdued narrator typical in many tales--who was merely an (often sanity-blasted) observer of the bizarre phenomena at hand in a given story--is only one element of Lovecraft's style that's popped up among later writers. There is also something to be said for flamboyant adjectives, powerful historical descriptions, and creative phrases like "Cthulhu f'tagn!" or "Tekeli-Li," which HPL lifted from his own mind or other writers like Poe. Of course, it would be ludicrous for anyone to try copying the Lovecraftian style verbatim today, but many of the grotesque author's crowning achievements have been and can be well translated into contemporary prose.

Perhaps more importantly, however, Lovecraft never really commanded a specific style to younger writers. His seminal essay on the subject (well worth reading as a piece of interesting ephemera and for advice on fiction), "Notes on Writing Weird Fiction," underscores this. Indeed, this entire work echoes Mr. Berry's clear second observation: sometimes tone and mood are the most important elements of a story. Widely regarded by subsequent fantasists and weird writers as the best piece to date on writing in the weird genre itself, "Notes on Writing Weird Fiction" puts unmistakable emphasis on cultivating the eerie, awesome mood forming the heart of weird fiction. While it lists suggestions on the writing process and is stamped with Lovecraft's own unique stylistic authority, crafting a weird story is at the top of the list in this work. H.P. Lovecraft's suggestions on fermenting the appropriate mental and thematic settings for the crucial weird atmosphere are themselves encapsulations of other greats from his own era and before him: Edgar Allan Poe, Lord Dunsany, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood. And it's difficult to disagree with Lovecraft's analysis of key strengths of other writers (and his own). Few scholars and aspiring writers of the strange dispute HPL's timeless words in this essay, and the absence of a worthy successor piece by any giant of weird literature means it will continue to issue down golden advice from the Providence writer.

-Grim Blogger