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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body bgcolor=white lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:windowtext'>Anders Sandberg wrote on Wednesday, May 08, 2013 5:09 PM:<br></span></font>> think of Lovecraft: his adjectives rarely explain anything.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p><p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#1f497d" face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>I have my own pet theory about Lovecraft’s ability to instill fear without detailing his monstrous creations very much. I have analyzed Lovecraft’s writings, and I believe I have determined his method for doing this more effectively.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#1f497d" face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p><p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#1f497d" face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Most people claim that Lovecraft is vague in his descriptions, such that the reader has to fill in their own ideas. And the general hypothesis that I have heard is that readers fill in their own personalized ideas of what would be fearful. But I don’t think this is true. Lovecraft has very detailed descriptions in his writings. He just doesn’t describe his monsters in very much detail.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#1f497d" face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p><p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#1f497d" face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Instead, I think Lovecraft was more direct and insidious than that. Lovecraft bypasses all but the briefest descriptions of the fearful triggers. Instead, he jumps directly into describing what fear itself feels like to the protagonist. He spends more time directly describing what the protagonist is feeling in response to the fear than describing what is triggering that fear. I believe that this is a more direct communication to the reader, telling the reader exactly what to feel and how to feel, than the indirect communication used by other authors to try to trigger those feelings in the reader. I believe this is what makes Lovecraft a true genius of the genre.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#1f497d" face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p><p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#1f497d" face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>I have never heard this theory expressed anywhere else. I would love to hear what other people think of my hypothesis.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#1f497d" face=Calibri><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>--<br>Harvey Newstrom <www.HarveyNewstrom.com><br><a href="http://harveynewstrom.com/index.html"><font color=black><span style='color:black;border:solid #CCCCCC 1.0pt;padding:1.0pt;background:#CCCCCC;text-decoration:none'>CISSP CISSP-ISSAP CISSP-ISSMP CSSLP CISA CISM CRISC CGEIT IAM</span></font></a></span></font><font size=2 color="#1f497d" face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p></div></div></body></html>