"H.P. Lovecraft was a genius when it came to tales of the macabre, but a terrible dialogue writer. He seems to have known it, too, because in the millions of words of fiction he wrote, fewer than five thousand are dialogue. [...] Lovecraft was, by all accounts, both snobbish and painfully shy [...] the kind of writer who maintains a voluminous correspondence but gets along poorly with others in person — if he were alive today, he'd likely exist most vibrantly in various Internet chatrooms. Dialogue is a skill best learned by people who enjoy talking and listening to others — particularly listening, picking up accepts, rhythms, dialect and slang of various groups. Loners like Lovecraft often write it badly, or with the care of someone who is composing in a language other than his or her native tongue."
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Horror authorsAbsurdistsNovelists from the United StatesCritics of religionAgnostics from the United States
Original Language: English
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Sources
Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000), Scribner, pp. 181-183
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft
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