Learn from some of the fiction writing greats of yesteryear! This book contains 17 articles written by pulp era authors, helping you learn: - Several methods of plotting a story - How to make your characters memorable - How to study your genre - How to write a fight sequence - Tips for revising your novel - And much more...
Type Hard. Type Fast. Make Dough. That was the formula of old-school pulp fiction-plot-driven, popular and gobbled up by a reading public hungry for more. And it produced many writers who hammered out a living selling "cash-and-carry" stories and novels. Some of these writers were among the best America has ever produced. Writers like Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and John D. MacDonald. Others are numbered among the bestselling authors of all time, including Erle Stanley Gardner, Lester Dent, and Frederick Faust (better known by his pen name, Max Brand). What were the secrets of these successful pulp writers? And how can any writer, of any genre, use them to produce fiction that sells? How to Write Pulp Fiction will teach you: - how to be more prolific - the secrets of pulp plotting - how to elevate your pulp prose - the fiction "formulas" of some of the best pulp writers of all time - the bestselling genres - how to harness the power of the series character - the most effective publishing strategies - how to market your pulp fiction Added bonus! The Start-A-Plot Machine, a brainstorming partner that will help you instantly generate a story or novel idea. You'll never again wonder what to write next. There has never been a better time to be a writer. By tapping into the vibe of the pulp writers of old, and making use of the tools of publication available now, any hard-working writer has a serious shot at realizing steady income from their fiction. "James Scott Bell is my go-to writing guru!" - Terri Blackstock, New York Times bestselling writer
A deep dive into mid-century African American newspapers, exploring how Black pulp fiction reassembled genre formulas in the service of racial justice In recent years, Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Marvel’s Black Panther, and HBO’s Watchmen have been lauded for the innovative ways they repurpose genre conventions to criticize white supremacy, celebrate Black resistance, and imagine a more racially just world—important progressive messages widely spread precisely because they are packaged in popular genres. But it turns out, such generic retooling for antiracist purposes is nothing new. As Brooks E. Hefner’s Black Pulp shows, this tradition of antiracist genre revision begins even earlier than recent studies of Black superhero comics of the 1960s have revealed. Hefner traces it back to a phenomenon that began in the 1920s, to serialized (and sometimes syndicated) genre stories written by Black authors in Black newspapers with large circulations among middle- and working-class Black readers. From the pages of the Pittsburgh Courier and the Baltimore Afro-American, Hefner recovers a rich archive of African American genre fiction from the 1920s through the mid-1950s—spanning everything from romance, hero-adventure, and crime stories to westerns and science fiction. Reading these stories, Hefner explores how their authors deployed, critiqued, and reassembled genre formulas—and the pleasures they offer to readers—in the service of racial justice: to criticize Jim Crow segregation, racial capitalism, and the sexual exploitation of Black women; to imagine successful interracial romance and collective sociopolitical progress; and to cheer Black agency, even retributive violence in the face of white supremacy. These popular stories differ significantly from contemporaneous, now-canonized African American protest novels that tend to represent Jim Crow America as a deterministic machine and its Black inhabitants as doomed victims. Widely consumed but since forgotten, these genre stories—and Hefner’s incisive analysis of them—offer a more vibrant understanding of African American literary history.
Want to write a novel? What's holding you back? Lack of confidence? Not sure where to start? There has never been a better time to be a writer, provided you know how best to go about it. In this short but to-the-point introduction, publisher, editor and writer, Jim Driver reveals the secrets the experts use to write bestselling novels. Taking inspiration from the classic Pulp Fiction writers of the golden era, Jim shows how to banish writers' block forever and reveals the easiest ways you can create and plot commercial novels. Don't let your doubts hold you back: let Jim show you how you can take action and start writing your profitable novel today. NEW 2019 EDITION Reviews of Previous Editions "Right to the point, no fluff or filler, just what I was looking for as a starter guide to writing. Will definitely read Jim's other books in the future." Amazon Customer, Amazon.com "I loved this book, I really did. I found it refreshing, full of no-nonsense honest advice that tells it like it is, a book in which the author likens the old pulp fiction books to modern Kindle short novels." Poet's Wife, Amazon.co.uk It's time to start your novel. Download your copy of How To Write A Novel The Easy Way today.
Have you struggled to expand your initial idea into a complete story? Plotting can be frustrating work! What if there were a tool for this very problem, so you could navigate these uncharted waters as quickly as possible? A tool that starts with what you have (a situation, perhaps, or a group of characters) and sets you on the road to new possibilities? Plotto does all this. Created by a master of organized creativity, William Wallace Cook (one of the most prolific writers in history), Plotto has been prized by professional authors and screenwriters since its publication in 1928, and is still in demand today, with copies of the original edition selling for up to $400. This Norton Creek Edition is an exact reproduction of Cook's work. To keep the book down to a manageable size (300 pages of very small type) while retaining its powerful features, Cook uses a telegraphic format that takes some getting used to, so working your way carefully through the introduction and its examples is the key to professional-quality results. Because Plotto was written in the Twenties, its situations can seem old-fashioned and its terminology politically incorrect, but these problems are more apparent than real. Cook himself wrote both westerns and early classics of science fiction, so you see how replacing stagecoach with star ship or dance hall girl with male stripper are within the reach of anyone using the Plotto system, and, in fact, this kind of substitution is how the book is intended to be used, and is the key to its flexibility and enduring popularity.
The search for a murderous outlaw has brought the long roving Grey O'Donnell near to his hometown of Retribution, Arizona. Bounty hunters might not be popular but old fashioned manners, kindness to regular folk and a face for the ladies make Grey an exception when he rides into town. Grey has a job to do, upholding the law when others won't, like the odious Jasper Roberts who has made himself Sheriff of Retribution and who has a personal score to settle with Grey.
To Have and to Hold (1899) is a novel by American author Mary Johnston. It was the bestselling novel in the United States in the following year (1900). To Have and to Hold is the story of an English soldier, Ralph Percy, turned Virginian explorer iIPn colonial Jamestown. Ralph buys a wife for himself - a girl named Jocelyn Leigh - little knowing that she is the escaping ward of King James I, fleeing a forced marriage to Lord Carnal. Jocelyn hardly loves Ralph - indeed, she seems to abhor him. Carnal, Jocelyn's husband-to-be, eventually comes to Jamestown, unaware that Ralph Percy and Jocelyn Leigh are man and wife. Lord Carnal attempts to kidnap Jocelyn several times and eventually follows Ralph, Jocelyn, and their two companions - Jeremy Sparrow, the Separatist minister, and Diccon, Ralph's servant - as they escape from the King's orders to arrest Ralph and carry Jocelyn back to England. The boat they are in, however, crashes on a desert island, but they are accosted by pirates, who, after a short struggle, agree to take Ralph as their captain, after he pretends to be the pirate "Kirby". The pirates gleefully play on with Ralph's masquerade, until he refuses to allow them to rape and pillage those aboard Spanish ships. The play is up when the pirates see an English ship off the coast of Florida. Ralph refuses to fire upon it, knowing it carries the new Virginian governor, Sir Francis Wyatt, but the pirates open fire, and Jeremy Sparrow, before the English ship can be destroyed, purposefully crashes the ship into a reef. The pirates are all killed, but the Englishmen (and woman) are rescued by the Governor's ship.
During the 20th century's first half, millions of Americans flocked to newsstands every month in search of thrills provided by all-fiction magazines printed on cheap pulp paper. These periodicals introduced and popularized such famous characters as Tarzan, Zorro, Sam Spade, Buck Rogers, Doc Savage, Hopalong Cassidy, and Conan the Barbarian, to name just a few. The producers of pulp fiction churned out their vigorous and occasionally outre stories at a feverish pace, generally for a mere penny per word. Some eventually graduated from the pulps to become world-famous, best-selling authors-among them Edgar Rice Burroughs, Max Brand, Erle Stanley Gardner, Ray Bradbury, Louis L'Amour, Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler. Often derided in their own time, the "rough paper" magazines had an incalculable effect on American pop culture. They gave birth to modern science fiction and the hardboiled detective story, but also to plot devices, character types, and storytelling innovations that live on in today's most popular novels, movies, and TV shows. Illustrated with more than 600 magazine covers and original paintings, THE BLOOD 'N' THUNDER GUIDE TO PULP FICTION presents a complete and lively history of this unique literary form, covering genres individually and identifying key titles, authors, and stories. It also offers advice on collecting the vintage magazines and directs readers to recently published reprints of classic pulp."
