How to Write Pulp Fiction

by James Scott Bell

  1—First line, or as near thereto as possible, introduce the hero and swat him with a fistful of trouble. Hint at a mystery, a menace or a problem to be solved—something the hero has to cope with.

  2—The hero pitches in to cope with his fistful of trouble. (He tries to fathom the mystery, defeat the menace, or solve the problem.)

  3—Introduce ALL the other characters as soon as possible. Bring them on in action.

  4—Hero's endeavors land him in an actual physical conflict near the end of the first 1500 words.

  5—Near the end of first 1500 words, there is a complete surprise twist in the plot development.

  SO FAR: Does it have SUSPENSE?

  Is there a MENACE to the hero? Does everything happen logically?

  At this point, it might help to recall that action should do something besides advance the hero over the scenery. Suppose the hero has learned the dastards of villains have seized somebody named Eloise, who can explain the secret of what is behind all these sinister events. The hero corners villains, they fight, and villains get away. Not so hot.

  Hero should accomplish something with his tearing around, if only to rescue Eloise, and surprise! Eloise is a ring-tailed monkey. The hero counts the rings on Eloise's tail, if nothing better comes to mind. They're not real. The rings are painted there. Why?

  SECOND 1500 WORDS

  1—Shovel more grief onto the hero.

  2—Hero, being heroic, struggles, and his struggles lead up to:

  3—Another physical conflict.

  4—A surprising plot twist to end the 1500 words.

  NOW: Does second part have SUSPENSE?

  Does the MENACE grow like a black cloud? Is the hero getting it in the neck? Is the second part logical?

  DON'T TELL ABOUT IT***Show how the thing looked. This is one of the secrets of writing; never tell the reader—show him. (He trembles, roving eyes, slackened jaw, and such.) MAKE THE READER SEE HIM.

  When writing, it helps to get at least one minor surprise to the printed page.

  It is reasonable to expect these minor surprises to sort of inveigle the reader into keeping on. They need not be such profound efforts. One method of accomplishing one now and then is to be gently misleading. Hero is examining the murder room. The door behind him begins slowly to open. He does not see it. He conducts his examination blissfully. Door eases open, wider and wider, until—surprise! The glass pane falls out of the big window across the room. It must have fallen slowly, and air blowing into the room caused the door to open. Then what the heck made the pane fall so slowly? More mystery.

  Characterizing a story actor consists of giving him some things which make him stick in the reader's mind. TAG HIM.

  BUILD YOUR PLOTS SO THAT ACTION CAN BE CONTINUOUS.

  THIRD 1500 WORDS

  1—Shovel the grief onto the hero.

  2—Hero makes some headway, and corners the villain or somebody in:

  3—A physical conflict.

  4—A surprising plot twist, in which the hero preferably gets it in the neck bad, to end the 1500 words.

  DOES: It still have SUSPENSE?

  The MENACE getting blacker? The hero finds himself in a hell of a fix? It all happens logically?

  These outlines or master formulas are only something to make you certain of inserting some physical conflict, and some genuine plot twists, with a little suspense and menace thrown in. Without them, there is no pulp story.

  These physical conflicts in each part might be DIFFERENT, too. If one fight is with fists, that can take care of the pugilism until the next yarn. Same for poison gas and swords. There may, naturally, be exceptions. A hero with a peculiar punch, or a quick draw, might use it more than once.

  The idea is to avoid monotony.

  ACTION: Vivid, swift, no words wasted. Create suspense, make the reader see and feel the action.

  ATMOSPHERE: Hear, smell, see, feel and taste.

  DESCRIPTION: Trees, wind, scenery and water.

  THE SECRET OF ALL WRITING IS TO MAKE EVERY WORD COUNT.

  FOURTH 1500 WORDS

  1—Shovel the difficulties more thickly upon the hero.

  2—Get the hero almost buried in his troubles. (Figuratively, the villain has him prisoner and has him framed for a murder rap; the girl is presumably dead, everything is lost, and the DIFFERENT murder method is about to dispose of the suffering protagonist.)

  3—The hero extricates himself using HIS OWN SKILL, training or brawn.

  4—The mysteries remaining—one big one held over to this point will help grip interest—are cleared up in course of final conflict as hero takes the situation in hand.

  5—Final twist, a big surprise, (This can be the villain turning out to be the unexpected person, having the "Treasure" be a dud, etc.)

  6—The snapper, the punch line to end it. The suspense held to the last line.

  Everything been explained?

  It all happen logically?

  Is the Punch Line enough to leave the reader with that WARM FEELING?

  Did God kill the villain? Or the hero?

  [JSB note: The bit about God killing the villain is a warning against Deus ex machina, which basically means you can’t have some coincidence or “outside agency” killing the bad guy (or solving the major plot problem). It has to be the hero, in some form or fashion, doing the work and “earning” the victory.]

  All this should be enough to convince you that plots can be found in abundance. If you’re still unsure, then let me suggest my Start-A-Plot Machine in the back of this book.

  No more excuses, okay?

  Taking Your Pulp to the Next Level

  Pulp fiction is action-oriented. Its motto is, Grab ’em and don’t let go.

  As a result, pulp is often charged with being hack work. Meaning that the style is too simple to be considered “literary.”

  The charge is made among those who think it is a cosmic injustice that popular fiction makes more money than literary fiction (as a general rule).

  Mickey Spillane, the hard-boiled paperback king who was once the best-selling author in the world, was always being put down as a hack. One day he took a break from counting his money and said, “Those big shot writers … could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar.”

  I happen to like salted peanuts and caviar. But when I write pulp fiction, I want the bowl filled with goobers.

  Which does not mean you cannot shape those legumes into a pleasing form. That, after all, is what the really great pulp writers did. As I’ve mentioned earlier, some of the best American writers period came out of the pulp era. Raymond Chandler is studied in college classrooms today. His style is inimitable and has stood the test of time.

  One of my favorite authors is John D. MacDonald. He wrote a string of paperbacks in the 1950s that I would place alongside any output of that time. Better than Norman Mailer or James Jones or a whole host of middlebrow writers (the Book-of-the-Month club crowd). His insights into character and his unobtrusively poetic prose set him apart from most of his contemporaries.

  Elmore Leonard got his start in the 50s with pulp-style Westerns before moving on to crime paperbacks. He is now considered a master of the fiction craft, especially dialogue.

  So there I’ve mentioned three areas for you to consider if you want to kick your pulp writing up a notch—style, deeper characterization, dialogue. I’ll add a fourth: cliché hunting.

  Style and Characterization

  Chandler used to type his stories on half-sheets of paper. In this way he concentrated on every sentence. While that process may prove to be too slow for most pulp writers, slowing down in certain strategic sections offers you a chance to put some sparkle in your prose.

  John D. MacDonald’s prose had what he said he strove for, a bit of “unobtrusive poetry.” In other words, it was evocative but didn’t get in the way of the story. It added to the depth of the tale.

  Second, his insight into human nature was broad, so
when you got into a character you really got into the push-and-pull of his inner life. While that aspect never takes over the story, it certainly makes it all the more compelling. You want to know how the plot ends, but also how a character’s life is going to be changed—for better or for worse?

  Your prose style should be intentional—something you are aware of and work on. At minimum, pulp fiction has a straightforward, storytelling function. Isaac Asimov had some thoughts on this in his memoir I. Asimov. Reflecting on how to be prolific, he said:

  If you try to turn out a prose poem, that takes time, even for an accomplished prose poet like Ray Bradbury or Theodore Sturgeon.

  I have deliberately cultivated a very plain style, even a colloquial one, which can be turned out rapidly and with which very little can go wrong.

  That is certainly enough to be a pulpster, but you may want to go further. I’m going to give you a technique to make that happen, but I will mention that I’ve written an entire book on Voice: The Secret Power of Great Writing, which is my complete statement on this subject.

  My suggestion is that you find places in your story where your character is experiencing emotional pressure. Ideally, a story has that thread running throughout, because if a character doesn’t feel pressure, the stakes aren’t high enough.

  What I mean is to pick a scene and locate the “hot spot” in that scene, the central focus of it. Let’s say in your crime thriller your protagonist, Dirk Jones, a PI, has to tell a woman that her husband has been murdered. He goes to the house, there’s some hemming and hawing, the woman offers coffee, etc. But then the news must be delivered. The hot spot is like this:

  “There’s no easy way to put this,” Dirk said.

  “It’s Hank, isn’t it?”

  Dirk nodded.

  Jen put her hand on her mouth. Closed her eyes. A pitiful whimper sounded in her throat.

  Dirk said, “You need to sit down.”

  “Don’t tell me that!” Jen turned and ran upstairs.

  A door slammed.

  Dirk thought for a moment about going after her. But he decided to let it go. She needed time to be alone.

  He took a sip of coffee. It was bitter and lukewarm.

  Then he put the cup down and left through the front door.

  That’s fine, and in fact may be just the right tone for you. But let’s play with this. Put a mark after the word lukewarm. This is the place where we’re going to go a little deeper.

  Open up a new document. You are going to write a “page-long sentence.” This is a run-on, fast-as-you-can-write sentence exploring as much of Dirk’s emotional landscape as possible. If you really are feeling it, please don’t stop at one page. Keep going. Don’t worry about style. Just get the thoughts down, and let them lead you wherever they want to go.

  Yeah, bitter and lukewarm, like my damn life, like it’s always been, and Pop told me that’s what I was, lukewarm and a coward, afraid to face anybody or anything, so when I left home for the first time at sixteen I made sure I screamed in his face How’s this for lukewarm! How’s this, Pop! I’m getting out for good! and all he could do was stare at me like I wasn’t even his son, like I was an alien or something, and here I am in the middle of this thing, this killing, and my damn soul is as cool as that damn coffee, because I don’t really care, I closed off caring, remember when you did that, pal, you were in San Antonio that time, that one time you found somebody who really cared about you, loved you in fact, that’s what she said, and you used her for a week then walked out on her and never looked back, so why don’t you for once follow up on something and go up there and tell this woman you’re not going to walk out on this, you’re going to find out who killed Hank, and if you do maybe you’ll connect with a person like a real human being is supposed to …

  After you do your own page-long sentence, set it aside for half-an-hour or so, then come back, read it over and highlight the things that jump out at you. You will find good stuff, every time. It may only be one line, but that line will be gold.

  Now put that material in your text after the mark.

  Try this again in two or three other places, and you’ll have both expanded your style and deepened your character.

  Your style is expanding, your character work deepening. And this material won’t overtake the plot.

  Dialogue

  Pulp writers—especially those who write thrillers, noir, and crime—know that a huge part of the craft is tough talk, dialogue from the mouths of hardboiled protagonists, street hustlers, cops, thugs, hit men, femme fatales, homme fatales, and other denizens of the dark side.

  I’ll tell you off the bat it’s more than just lacing a page with profanities. There are more artful ways to do it.

  1. Be Witty

  This isn’t always easy, but it pays big when you can pull it off. The master of this kind of gab, of course, was Raymond Chandler. His novels featuring PI Philip Marlowe are filled with snappy banter that works because (and this is the key) it is perfectly in Marlowe’s voice. It never seems to be a strain. Like this exchange in The Long Goodbye:

  “See you around,” the bodyguard told me coolly. “The name is Chick Agostino. I guess you’ll know me.”

  “Like a dirty newspaper,” I said. “Remind me not to step on your face.”

  Or this from The Little Sister:

  “That slut. What does she say about me?” she hissed.

  “Nothing. Oh, she might have called you a Tijuana hooker in riding pants. Would you mind?”

  The silvery giggle went on for a little while. “Always the wisecrack with you. Is it not so? But you see I did not then know you were a detective. That makes a very big difference.”

  “Miss Gonzales, you said something about business. What kind of business, if you’re not kidding me.”

  “Would you like to make a great deal of money? A very great deal of money?”

  “You mean without getting shot?” I asked.

  “Sí,” she said thoughtfully. “There is also that to consider. But you are so brave, so big, so—”

  “I’ll be at my office at nine in the morning, Miss Gonzales. I’ll be a lot braver then.”

  Take your time with exchanges like this. Don’t force the issue. Play with the language. A different word here or there can make all the difference. I always liked the line from one of Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder short stories. Two cops are talking about a suspect who is not exactly lovely to look at. One cop asks the other how ugly is this guy? And the other cop says, “God made him as ugly as he could then hit him in the face with a shovel.”

  2. Be Crisp

  Tough talk is often clipped. It gives nice white space to the page, too. This was Robert. B. Parker’s preferred method. Here’s a bit from one of his Sunny Randall novels, Melancholy Baby:

  “Sarah took a lot of drugs.”

  “More than grass?” I said.

  “Oh, yes. Hard drugs.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t use drugs.”

  “Good for you,” I said.

  “I graduate this June, and next year I want to be in a really good MBA program. I don’t want to do anything to spoil my chances.”

  “So her drug use was disruptive?”

  “Yes. She’d come in at night, late sometimes, and act crazy.”

  “Like?”

  “Like she’d be crying and seeing things and …” Polly shook her head. “Did you ever go to college?”

  “I did,” I said.

  “What did you major in?”

  “Art.”

  “Really?”

  I could tell that Polly found that puzzling.

  “How did you do?”

  “I was a good artist and a bad student,” I said.

  3. Be Over the Top

  This is the opposite of #2. It should be done sparingly. But every now and then consider having one of your characters give vent with a paragraph or two of straight tough talk.

  Mickey Spillane like
d to do this. He of course invented the quintessential hard-boiled PI, Mike Hammer. But he also wrote stand-alones. In The Long Wait (1951) the narrator, Johnny McBride, has been dragged in by the cops for questioning. McBride insults the cops (this will get him beaten up later) and tells them to inform him of the charges or let him walk. The lead detective says:

  “I don’t know what kind of an angle you think you’re playing, McBride, and I don’t give a damn. The charge is murder. It’s murder five years old and it’s the murder of the best friend a guy ever had. It’s murder you’ll swing for and when you come down through the trap I’m going to be right there in the front row so I can see every twitch you make, and there in the autopsy room when they carve the guts out of you and if nobody claims the body I’ll do it myself and feed you to the pigs at the county farm. That’s what the charge is. Now do you understand it?”

  Pick a tense moment of tough talk and put yourself inside one of the characters. Write a 200-word rant. Do not pause to edit. Come back to it later and review. Even if you only end up using one line, it’ll be a good one.

  Go over all your dialogue scenes and look for words to cut. Replace some verbal answers with silence or an action beat. You’ll love the results.

  4. Be Suggestive

  Again, tough talk does not have to be laced with expletives. You’re a writer. You have a whole palette of possibilities open to you.