How to Write Pulp Fiction

by James Scott Bell

  “Then what?”

  “She’s on a train coming west, right?”

  “Right.”

  “What happens on the train?”

  “Um, she has dinner and a good, long sleep.”

  I stuck the cigar in my maw so I could rub my head with both hands.

  “No,” I said. “She’s in her sleeper when a guy with a gun breaks in and covers her mouth.”

  “But why?”

  “Figure it out! That’s your job, kid. Bad stuff happens. Your character fights against the bad stuff, because if she doesn’t, she’s gonna lose something important, maybe even her own life. That’s plot and story and the name of this game all rolled into one. When in doubt, when your fingers are frozen over the keys, just bring in a guy with a gun. I said that to Chandler once, and look at him now.”

  “Raymond Chandler?”

  “No, Homer Chandler the delivery boy. Of course Raymond Chandler!”

  “But what if I want to write a quiet story about a character, and how he––I mean, she––becomes a better person.”

  “Ah, you mean you want to be one of the literary boys?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Instead of a guy with a gun, you bring in someone who has a psychological gun. Who has power to crush the spirit.”

  “Yes!”

  “Personally, I prefer the rod. But you get to choose, Benny. Just make sure it’s real bad trouble.”

  “That does it!” Benny said. “I’m making her a woman, and bad stuff’s going to happen to her.”

  “That’s the ticket. Now go back to your room and start writing. In the first paragraph I want to see a disturbance.”

  “A what?”

  “Am I speaking Chinese here? A disturbance! I don’t want to see a florid description or a character who is sleepwalking through life. I want to know that there’s a change or challenge happening to your character right from the jump.”

  “Like a train wreck maybe?”

  “It doesn’t have to be big, remember that. It can be anything that’s disturbing, from a late-night shadow outside a window to a knock on a hermit’s door. It can even be some tense dialogue. Just don’t warm up your engines! So get to your typewriter and bring me the first three pages when you’re done with ’em.”

  “This is gold, Mr. Armbrewster, gold! I can’t thank—”

  “It’s all right, Benny—”

  “—you enough. I’m so excited I’m going to write to my ma and pa and tell ’em—”

  “Good-bye, Benny.”

  “—what a great and wonderful—”

  “Benny!”

  “What?”

  “If you don’t go and start writing now, something disturbing is going to happen to you.”

  “Got it!” He rushed out.

  I was looking forward to what the kid was going to show me next. A young writer’s enthusiasm, if it’s mixed with a desire to grow in the craft, always pleases me.

  I went back to the scene I was stuck on. Where was I going to go? And then I found myself typing: A guy with a gun walked in.

  The Fiction Factory

  In 1912, a little book called The Fiction Factory came out. The subtitle was: Being the Experience of a Writer Who, for Twenty-Two Years, Has Kept a Story-Mill Grinding Successfully.

  It was by a man named William Wallace Cook using the pseudonym John Milton Edwards. (You can access the entire public-domain book at Gutenberg.org)

  The book is his no-nonsense account of becoming a successful pulp writer through discipline and hard work. His mind and his typing fingers were, to him, a factory, producing product for the various publications open to him.

  Jack London advises authors not to wait for inspiration but to “go after it with a club.” Bravo! It is not intended, of course, to lay violent hands on the Happy Idea or to knock it over with a bludgeon. Mr. London realizes that, nine times out of ten, Happy Ideas are drawn toward industry as iron filings toward a magnet. The real secret lies in making a start, even though it promises to get you nowhere, and inspiration will take care of itself.

  There’s a lot of “fiddle-faddle” wrapped up in that word “inspiration.” It is the last resort of the lazy writer, of the man who would rather sit and dream than be up and doing. If the majority of writers who depend upon fiction for a livelihood were to wait for the spirit of inspiration to move them, the sheriff would happen along and tack a notice on the front door – while the writers were still waiting.

  Cook/Edwards developed a process for himself that produced a certain joy, which was crucial for keeping the fiction factory in full operation. Writing in third-person POV, he states:

  More and more Edwards’ experience, and the experience of others which has come under his observation, convinces him that inspiration is only another name for industry. When he was paymaster for the firm of contractors, he went to the office at 8 o’clock in the morning, took half an hour for luncheon at noon, and left for home at half-past 5. When he broke away from office routine, he promised himself that he would give as much, or more, of his time to his Fiction Factory.

  What he feared was that ideas would fail to come, and that he would pass the time sitting idly at his typewriter. In actual practice, he found it almost uncanny how the blank white sheet he had run into his machine invited ideas to cover it. After five, ten or fifteen minutes of following false leads, he at last hit upon the right scent and was off at a run. With every leap his enthusiasm grew upon him. A bright bit of dialogue would evoke a chuckle, a touch of pathos would bring a tear, an unexpected incident shooting suddenly out of the tangled threads would fill him with rapture, and for the logical but unexpected climax he reserved a mood like Caesar’s, returning from the wars and celebrating a triumph.

  In the ardor of his work he forgot the flight of time. He balked at leaving his typewriter for a meal and went to bed only when drowsiness interfered with his flow of thought.

  Whether he was writing a Five-Cent Library, a serial story or a novel which he hoped would bring him fame and fortune, the same delight filled him whenever he achieved a point which he knew to be worthwhile. And whenever such a point is achieved, my writer friend, there is something that rises in your soul and tells you of it in words that never lie.

  The ideal state of the pulp writer Cook/Edwards described this way:

  The main thing is to break the shackles of laziness and begin our labors; then, after that, to forget that we are laboring in the sheer joy of creation with which our labor inspires us.

  Cook/Edwards made a steady income writing pulp novels which, a hundred years ago, were called “nickel novels.” They were the precursors to the mass market paperbacks of the 1950s. Cheaply printed, fast to read.

  Of course, the literati looked down upon these “dreadfuls” as an affront to art. Cook/Edwards had no patience for this snobbery. He had this to say about the “ethics” of the nickel novel:

  Is the nickel novel easy to write? The writer who has never attempted one is quite apt to think that it is. There are hundreds of writers, the Would-be-Goods, making less than a thousand a year, who would throw up their hands in horror at the very thought of debasing their art by contriving at "sensational" five-cent fiction. So far from "debasing their art," as a matter of fact they could not lift it to the high plane of the nickel novel if they tried. Of these Would-be-Goods more anon—to use an expression of the ante-bellum romancers. Suffice to state, in this place, writers of recognized standing, and even ministers, have written—and some now are writing—these quick-moving stories. There's a knack about it, and the knack is not easy to acquire. No less a person than Mr. Richard Duffy, formerly editor of Ainslee's and later of the Cavalier, a man of rare gifts as a writer, once told Edwards that the nickel novel was beyond his powers.

  So far as Edwards is concerned, he gave the best that was in him to the half-dime "dreadfuls," and he made nothing dreadful of them after all. He has written hundreds, and there is not a line in any one of
them which he would not gladly have his own son read. In fact, his ethical standard, to which every story must measure up, was expressed in this mental question as he worked: "If I had a boy would I willingly put this before him?" If the answer was No, the incident, the paragraph, the sentence or the word was eliminated. In 1910 Edwards wrote his last nickel novel, turning his back deliberately on three thousand dollars a year (they were paying him $60 each for them then), not because they were "debasing his art" but because he could make more money at other writing—for when one is forty-four he must get on as fast as he can.

  The libraries, as they were written by Edwards, were typed on paper 8-1/2" by 13", the marginal stops so placed that a typewritten line approximated the same line when printed. Eighty of these sheets completed a story, and five pages were regularly allowed to each chapter. Thus there were always sixteen chapters in every story.

  First it is necessary to submit titles, and scenes for illustration. Selecting an appropriate title is an art in itself. Alliteration is all right, if used sparingly, and novel effects that do not defy the canons of good taste should be sought after. The title, too, should go hand in hand with the picture that illustrates the story. This picture, by the way, has demands of its own. In the better class of nickel novels firearms and other deadly weapons are tabooed. The picture must be unusual and it must be exciting, but its suggested morality must be high.

  The ideas for illustrations all go to the artist days or even weeks in advance of the stories themselves. It is the writer's business to lay out this prospective work intelligently, so that he may weave around it a group of logical stories.

  Usually the novels are written in sets of three; that is, throughout such a series the same principal characters are used, and three different groups of incidents are covered. In this way, while each story is complete in itself, it is possible to combine the series and preserve the effect of a single story from beginning to end. These sets are so combined, as a matter of fact, and sold for ten cents.

  Each chapter closes with a "curtain." In other words, the chapter works the action up to an interesting point, similar to a serial "leave-off," and drops a quick curtain. Skill is important here. The publishers of this class of fiction will not endure inconsistency for a moment. The stories appeal to a clientele keen to detect the improbable and to treat it with contempt.

  Good, snappy dialogue is favored, but it must be dialogue that moves the story along. An apt retort has no excuse in the yarn unless it really belongs there. A multitude of incidents—none of them hackneyed—is a prime requisite. Complexity of plot invites censure—and usually secures it. The plot must be simple, but it must be striking.

  One author failed because he had his hero-detective strain his massive intellect through 20,000 words merely to recover $100 that had been purloined from an old lady's handbag. If the author had made it a million dollars stolen from a lady like Mrs. Hetty Green, probably his labor would have been crowned with success. These five-cent heroes are in no sense small potatoes. They may court perils galore and rub elbows with death, now and then, for nothing at all, but certainly never for the mere bagatelle of $100.

  The hero does not drink. He does not swear. Very often he will not smoke. He is a chivalrous gentleman, ever a friend of the weak and deserving. He accomplishes all this with a ready good nature that has nothing of the goody-good in its make-up. The hero does not smoke because, being an athlete, he must keep in constant training in order to master his many difficulties. For the same reason he will not drink. As for swearing, it is a useless pastime and very common; besides, it betrays excitement, and the hero is never excited.

  The old-style yellow-back hero was given to massacres. He slew his enemies valiantly by brigades. Not so the modern hero of the five-cent novel. Rarely, in the stories, does any one cross the divide. And whenever the villain is hurt, he is quite apt to recover, thank the hero for hurting him—and become his sworn friend.

  The story must be clean, and while it must necessarily be exciting, it must yet leave the reader's mind with a net profit in all the manly virtues. Is this easy?

  Please note this extract from a letter written by Harte & Perkins Dec. 25, 1902—it covers a point whose humor, Edwards thought, drew the sting of dishonesty:

  "Your last story, No. 285, opened well, had plenty of good incidents and was interesting, but there are several points in which it might have been improved.

  Your description of Two Spot's scheme of posing Dutchy as a petrified boy is amusing, but the plan was dishonest and a piece of trickery. It was all right, perhaps, to let the boys go ahead without the knowledge of the Hero, but when he learned of it he should have put a stop to the plan immediately. It was all right to have him laugh at it, but at the same time he should have spoken severely to the boys about it and ordered them to return the money they had received through their trick. He did not do this in your story and it was necessary for me to alter it considerably in the first part on that account.

  The Hero is supposed to be the soul of honor, and in your story he is posed as a party to a deception practised on the citizens of Ouray, by which they were defrauded of the money they paid for admission to see the supposed "petrified boy." Such conduct on his part would soon lose for him the admiration of the readers of the weekly, as it places him on a moral level, almost, with the robbers whom he is bringing to justice."

  Consider that, you Would-be-Goods, who are not above putting worse things in your "high-class" work. And can you say "I am holier than thou" to the conscientious writer who turns out his 20,000 or 25,000 words a week along these ethical lines? Handsome is as handsome does!

  Somebody is going to write these stories. There is a demand for them. The writer who can set hand to such fiction, who meets his moral responsibilities unflinchingly, is doing a splendid work for Young America.

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  On Writing Well (William Zinsser)

 
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  Recommended Writing Blogs

  KillZoneblog.com

  WriterUnboxed.com

  WritersHelpingWriters.net

  HelpingWritersBecomeAuthors.com

  TheCreativePenn.com