Lovecraft once said, “Atmosphere, not action, is the great desideratum of weird fiction.” I’ll go one step further and state: good weird fiction (and good horror fiction) lives or dies by its atmosphere. I’ve given this much thought over the past couple of weeks, in fact I haven’t stopped thinking about it, and thus my conclusion as stated. I have spent my last couple of weeks reading as much “horror” short stories as I can, and when I cannot I listen to those I can find on the Internet. Some have been “professional” (as measured by being published in a for-pay magazine) and others have been “amateur” (as measured by being given away as free online). This latest bit of reading coupled with my memories of reading ghost story collections as a kid has led me to agree with Lovecraft.
There are a good many weird tales out there which I have passed over because they lacked impact; they fell flat; they were uninteresting. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve thought about those stories that did grab me and those that didn’t and did a quick mental comparison. I found that the essential story in either case was not all that different. Even the most atmospheric ghostly tale is still quite banal under a microscope. The deciding factor was the atmosphere.
In my opinion really good weird fiction will have it’s own atmosphere, and will not require you to create your own. I have read such stories, and it’s a bit of a thrill to sit in a parking lot in the middle of the day and still feel the foggy, creepy, haunting atmosphere of a story.
If I may speculate, I’ll suggest that this aspect of “horror” literature is what makes it so difficult to write (and if you write horror in order to scare I think you’re doubly challenged). I can be more relaxed about atmosphere in my sword swinging fantasy stories, and atmosphere is not what people generally look for in a good sci-fi yarn. Yet when a story will either fall flat or resonate with the audience due in part to the atmosphere, frankly I find that a bit of a task. In all my writing classes not once was setting stressed beyond plot or characters, nor was atmosphere really discussed.
There is more to a weird tale or a horror story than at first glance. I have more respect for those authors who write them well.