Portrait of the Man as a...

Purpose

This post (Style Guide for Eldritch Journalists) was last edited 1 month ago.

create prose that feels like an overheard confession from a fevered mind, equal parts journalistic observation and cosmic dread — grounded in human experience, but spiked with strange geometry, impossible memories, and wry asides.

This guide marries voice (tone, mood, perspective) with mechanics (punctuation, capitalization, structure) to ensure consistency.

Core Voice & Style Principles

Voice is the distinct personality or worldview of the writer that comes through in the writing. It’s who the writer is — their tone, attitude, and perspective. It’s often consistent across different works.

Metaphor: If the writer were a person speaking to you, voice is what makes you recognize them immediately. Examples:

• Kurt Vonnegut has a dry, ironic, humanistic voice.
• Toni Morrison has a lyrical, empathetic, deeply cultural voice.
• Hunter S. Thompson has a chaotic, biting, hyperactive voice.

Style is how the writer expresses that voice on the page. It includes choices about sentence structure, diction, syntax, figurative language, rhythm, and form. Style can shift depending on the piece, genre, or audience.

Metaphor: If writing were fashion, style is the clothes the voice wears. Examples:

• Hemingway’s style is spare and direct.
• Nabokov’s style is lush, complex, and erudite.
• Margaret Atwood can shift her style between dystopian clarity and poetic ambiguity, depending on the work.

Component Choice

1. Narrative Persona

• Unreliable narrator: Speak with confidence about the unknowable; admit ignorance with theatrical flair.
• First-person dominant, but slip into second-person to confront the reader or draw them into complicity.
• Let objectivity erode under the weight of sensory overload and creeping paranoia.

Example — Sandwiches shouldn't be a dare

The dip becomes necessity. You rehydrate what you’ve leeched out. Moisture as marketing. You have created for yourself this culinary limbo—dry ash made edible only through broth. The meat is but a memory, the bread is penance, the experience a palaver between what could have been great and the Lore2 we construct.

You aren’t eating lunch. You’re participating in a system that devours its own origins and calls it authenticity.

2. Tonal Range

Oscillate between:

• Journalistic clarity — crisp, direct statements.
• Hallucinatory digressions — spiraling clauses, incantatory lists, and impossible imagery.
• Treat the mundane with reverence; treat the horrific with matter-of-fact casualness.

Example — Zen and the Art of Orchard Maintenance  

Today, the air hovers in the low 70s—just warm enough to fool the skin, just breezy enough to stir ancient pollen. I’m slick with sweat, but it clings politely, not yet clawing at my eyes.

At my feet: a heap of limbs. Not human, not yet. Just branches, snipped and scattered—a sacrificial mound that, should I glance away, may very well animate and rampage through downtown in a frenzied, chlorophyll-dripping spree.

3. Imagery

• Favor organic-mechanical juxtapositions: typewriters with tentacles, dusty ledgers that hum with static.
• Blend concrete sensory details (smell of ozone, grit in the teeth) with cosmic abstractions (angles that do not close, a silence that drowns).
• Avoid overusing classic Lovecraft adjectives (“eldritch,” “squamous”); invent your own or twist familiar ones.

Example — Excuse me but what is that? A throbbing mushroom cloud in the sky?

Let’s not mince words: the Trump-era war doctrine is scrawled in testosterone, mushroom-dicked madness, and a delusional belief that every geopolitical itch can be scratched with the throbbing tip of American might. Diplomacy? Please. Negotiation? Whatever. The art of the deal is best used to line my compost bin when I need more dead, useless carbon.

4. Rhythm & Flow

• Build momentum with long, winding sentences — then shatter it with abrupt one-line punches.
• Embrace repetition for ritualistic effect.
• Let paragraph breaks signal shifts in sanity, perspective, or time. Example — Something eternal smiles and the irises outlast us all

We seek out the resonant—tools still humming from use, a pot still stained from a hundred forgotten meals. Not what a thing is worth, but what it meant.  Continuity. A link in a long, strange chain of use, decay, and repurposing, it's stewardship of the left behind.

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No writing is without mechanisms, dastardly ones, ones that support the assault of thoughts bumbling around upstairs. Without it, what would we have?

Screeching.

Endless screeching.

5. Mechanical Rules

Punctuation

• Oxford comma: Always.
• Em dashes (—): Primary tool for asides, interruptions, and manic shifts. No spaces. no robots needed.
• Ellipses (…): Sparing use for unsettling pauses — not filler.
• Parentheses: For sly commentary or conspiratorial whispers to the reader.
• Semicolons: Bind two equally strange but related ideas.
• Colons: Use for dramatic reveals or ritualistic lists.
• Question marks: Employ rhetorical questions freely;
• Interrobang (?!): because incredulity is the only way to live some days

Descention

Some times ideas compound and compound and you need to leave breadcrumbs to get back out.

• Parenthesis to start the aside.
• Braces to double down
• Brackets to disappear into the waters

It was the best of times ( or was it the worst of times {Sometimes it is truly hard to tell [and time is merely a construction to avoid insanity] one from the other} and would I even know) and it was the worst of times.

Capitalization & Formatting

• Sentence case for headings unless intentionally going for pulp-style ALL CAPS.
• Mid-sentence capitalization for shock, mania, or to signal entities/forces.
• Italics for internal thoughts, whispered emphasis, or slippery terms.
• Bold for in-line subheads or urgent emphasis.
• Proper Noun Inflation: Capitalize named horrors, artifacts, or organizations; resist the urge to capitalize random nouns unless for deliberate archaic effect.
• Tags: all lower case, all singular, all lonely.

Sentence Structure

• Allow controlled run-ons to build fevered pacing.
• Mix long sentences with abrupt fragments for rhythm.
• Use repetition to create chanting or obsessive undertones.
• Avoid perfect symmetry in clause structures; let sentences fray at the edges.

Numbers, Dates, & Measurements

• Spell out one through nine; numerals for 10+ unless breaking for tone.
• Time formats:
  • 24-hour time for precision in Field Notes writing; 12h for the rest
  • Archaic phrasing (“the fourth hour past midnight”) for dramatic effect.
• Dates:
  • Verbose narrative format (“On the fifth day of the eleventh month, 2025”) for in-character.
  • YYYY-MM-DD for factual/logbook inserts.

Dialogue & Quotes

• Use em dashes for dialogue in fevered or internal narration.
• Standard double quotes (“ ”) for speech; single quotes (‘ ’) for nested quotes.
• Separate speakers into their own paragraphs.

Paragraphing

• Break paragraphs before tonal or emotional shifts.
• Keep one-sentence paragraphs when they serve as gut-punches.
• Allow white space to act as a beat of silence.
• Single word sentences NOT in the middle of a paragraph become new paragraphs.